Desperate to build more housing, the city just rewrote its decades-old zoning rules.
MINNEAPOLIS—On recent early summer day, Janne Flisrand and John Edwards took a victory lap through their neighborhood.
“Lots of people want to live here,” said Flisrand. “It’s a great city to live in. And we have used our city policies to keep people out.” “We’ve avoided a political coalition between folks who want to stop development and [those who] support progressive change,” said Lisa Bender, Minneapolis’ city council president. “In Minneapolis, for now, we have a political coalition that is supportive of adding more housing and demanding a race-equity approach to housing access. Now it’s incumbent on the city to actually do that in a meaningful way. And I’m not sure any city has done that.
Minneapolis’ embrace of urban density began in 2013, when voters elected several young, progressive new city council candidates, including Bender. A Minnesota native, she’d worked as a San Francisco city planner before coming home. “When I moved back to Minneapolis, I saw that housing costs were much lower, but I saw the progression of folks moving in,” she said. “I didn’t see the city having the right kind of aggressive policy in place to keep our city affordable.
By 2017, housing had become a major issue in the city elections. Frey, a young councilman, was elected mayor on a platform of increasing housing density, tripling spending on affordable housing, and reducing residential segregation. “I unabashedly took stances saying that I believe in affordable housing in every neighborhood throughout the city,” said Frey, 37, a Virginia-native lawyer who moved to Minneapolis after running a marathon there.
“When those explicitly racist policies became illegal through the Civil Rights Act, we and other cities throughout the country started doing things implicitly through our zoning code,” said Frey. “And we’ve set it up so that unless you can own a really big home on a really big parcel, you can’t live in huge swaths of the city.”
“I’m not sure we bought the argument that more density increased affordable housing,” said Lisa McDonald, a former city council member and a member of the anti-2040 group Minneapolis For Everyone. “We felt we’d get very little affordable housing, but we would be giving developers carte blanche.” The package deal also helped gather support for the 2040 plan from nonprofit affordable-housing advocates, who were lukewarm about zoning for more density.
Top: Tabitha Mongtomery and Russ Adams of the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association are also skeptical of the 2040 plan. Without market regulation, Adams said, nothing will change. Bottom: City Councilman Cam Gordon chairs the housing committee and decided to support the 2040 plan after considering his adult children's difficult searches for affordable homes.
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