What not to do in Minneapolis: Rent control

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I believe in facts, and the facts don't support rent control.

Minneapolis has a problem: The lowest-income people in our city have a hard time finding rental property that is safe, well-maintained and affordable. That's factual.

The false narrative here is the idea that capping rent increases at 3% each year will solve this complex problem. It will not. Rent control might have a short-term positive impact for some renters. However, this policy will likely make the affordable housing problem worse in the long run.

Another fact: For the last 20 years, the average rent in Minneapolis was mostly stable, meaning it increased somewhere between 1.5% and 2.5% each year. So, a 3% yearly rent increase cap would mean a higher-than-average increase. Feeling confused? Don't worry, so am I.

I am confused about why so many of my colleagues on the Minneapolis City Council continue to insist that rent control is the answer when they are presented with so many facts to the contrary. New York City enacted rent control more than 100 years ago in 1921. San Francisco enacted its policy 44 years ago. Today, both of these cities are still known for extremely high housing costs.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis' sister city to the east is dealing with the fallout of its recently adopted rent control policy. New housing development in St. Paul ground to a nearly complete halt.

Without new development, we will never get out of this housing crisis. We need more housing, and we also need the additional revenue that new development brings.

City of Minneapolis staff from the Community Planning and Economic Development Department conducted a thorough study of the potential impact of rent control on the Minneapolis economy. They presented this study to the City Council in May. Findings indicate that a Minneapolis rent control policy could result in as many as 25,000 fewer new units in the next 10 years and could result in a loss of up to nearly $75 million in city revenue. The "cost" of this lost revenue would likely be shifted to homeowners in the form of increased property taxes. Low- and fixed-income homeowners would feel this the most, and this could price people out of their homes.

I represent the Fourth Ward, the upper half of north Minneapolis, on the City Council. I hear from residents about housing issues almost every single day. These are the housing issues I hear about: rental properties that are not well-maintained, residents not feeling safe in their own homes because of public safety concerns, and people feeling like they get closer every year to being priced out of their homes by increasing property taxes. Rent control will not solve any of these problems.

The city's own staff told the council that rent control would be counterproductive to solving our housing crisis. Yet, many of my colleagues persist in pushing a narrative that rent control is the solution.

I used to believe that those of us on the left side of the political spectrum had the facts on our side. That no matter what, we believed in the power of data to help us make smart policy decisions. Governing by tweet and sound bite was for the party of Donald Trump. Now, I am not so sure. Increasing housing affordability is a complicated undertaking. The solutions are complex, and it is hard to boil them down to a tweet or campaign slogan.

We need to explore actual solutions: increasing rental assistance for low-income residents, preserving existing affordable housing, reducing the cost and barriers to develop low-income housing, holding landlords accountable so that rental properties are well-maintained and supporting higher density housing options.

These solutions are not sexy — I get it. They are long-term solutions that will take years to actualize. In other words, these policies aren't easily explained on the campaign trail or at a rally in the City Hall rotunda. It is hard to come up with a protest chant about "reducing the barriers to building low-income housing developments." But these are not the criteria that we as policymakers should be using to evaluate our policy options. We need to look at the facts, and the facts don't support rent control. The residents of this city need us to stop wasting time and get to work on policies that will actually help solve our housing problem.

LaTrisha Vetaw is a member of the Minneapolis City Council.