Provide and Prioritize Investments & Incentives for Maintaining and Increasing Affordability

• 4d Programs. Utilize 4d tax programs to offer property tax breaks in exchange for owners maintaining the affordability of a portion of their units for at least 10+ years. 

• Affordable Housing Trust Funds. Local housing trust funds are a reliable and flexible resource for supporting a range of different local needs and priorities for preserving and enhancing existing income restricted and non-income restricted housing.

• Preservation Funds. Local governments can establish and expand funds to assist eligible buyers (typically mission-based non-profit owner-operator) to acquire and preserve existing properties that are at risk of losing affordability.

Increase Funding for Reinvestment, Rehabilitation & Recapitalization

• Capital and operating subsidies. Local governments can offer subsidies, grants, and other cost supports to help property owners reinvest in and maintain older buildings.

• Tax Incentives & Low-income housing tax credits. Local governments can provide tax incentives to building owners who invest in rehabilitation projects and to developers who rehabilitate existing rental housing and keep units at affordable rents.

• LIHTF for Operations & Supportive Housing.‍ Ensure adequate funding for services provided by qualified organizations and modify the scoring criteria so workforce projects are not mandated to add PSH supportive housing with limited services available.

Ensure Swift Enforcement, Ongoing Engagement, and Coordinated Collaboration

• Swiftly Enforcing Code Violations. When there are serious code violations and limited response from owners, utilized existing local authority to remedy to protect resident safety, fix properties and enhance neighborhoods.

• Create supportive relationships. Local governments can proactively meet with existing property owners to provide resources for residents struggling to pay rent, safety, and building maintenance issues before there is a problem.

• Supporting responsible housing providers. Work with property owners on code violations and provide access to financial or technical support.

Increase assistance for low-income residents to reduce displacement.

• Target direct assistance for those with the lowest of incomes who are challenged to afford the full cost of rent or utilities to reduce the risk of displacement.

• Target Bring It Home New State Voucher program to those experiencing housing instability, rising rents or short-term housing displacement.

• Job Training and Economic Mobility. Provide assistance for the economic mobility of lower income households with increased access to job training and placement programs.

Increase the amount and effectiveness of tenant and project-based vouchers.‍‍

• Increase funding for tenant-based vouchers as an effective tool for reducing segregation and other inequities in communities where there is no stock of public housing or deeply affordable existing units in opportunity-rich neighborhoods. However, the Housing Choice Voucher program is significantly underfunded and administratively burdensome. Currently only one in four households who qualify for a federal housing voucher actually receive one. As such, public housing agencies should prioritize increased funding of vouchers and modify criteria to make the vouchers more attractive and financially viable for the private sector market to accept.

• Modify source of income requirements to reduce the added burden on housing providers particularly when the payment standards are under the market price and they come with increased monitoring and documentation.  Only support these requirements where it does not create a hardship for existing property owners and where there are efforts to streamline the operational burdens that are tied to voucher programs by providing resources to assist in administration to increase acceptance by property owners.

Enforce and modify tenant and fair housing protections

• Support responsible property owner’s efforts to increase housing safety and security by modifying current tenant protection and eviction policies that have shifted the pendulum where residents are not held accountable for unlawful behavior.

• Enforce effective tenant and fair housing protectionsto protect against unfair housing practices and discrimination by providing funding and access to legal assistance for residents facing eviction or dealing with unsafe or unlivable housing conditions rather than implementing blanket onerous ordinances.

Elimination of Unnecessary Barriers to Production

• Allow higher densities in more locations, particularly in places with high frequency transportation and in amenity rich neighborhoods.

• Allow Multi Family Housing in existing commercially zoned areas with administrative approvals to reduce the time and costs of a lengthy rezoning process resulting in more housing in more walkable, amenity rich areas.

• Support Metropolitan Council efforts to expand housing choices throughout the Region as part of the 2050 Comprehensive Plan Update. 

• Reduce local fees to reduce impact of incremental costs to the development of housing.

• Clarify and standardize the approval process to reduce the political exploitation by even a small minority of residents where their self-interests delay or derail more housing options.

• Modify parking requirements by partnering with housing providers to reduce or eliminate parking when they do not match the needs of the neighborhood or the specific development.

• Eliminate supply stifling local and state policies that impact the ability of housing providers to raise capital for new market rate and affordable housing and often have unintended consequences on residents.

• Support tools to encourage the conversion of economic obsolete buildings to housing.

Reduce the cost to finance new income-restricted affordable housing.

• Simplify legal negotiations for income-restricted affordable housing projects that utilize tax credits and local/regional sources of funding by encouraging the utilization of a variety of instruments, such as intercreditor agreements, to simplify and align these legal agreements and processes in order to reduce costs and delays.

• Provide flexible financing and cost reduction measures for income restricted housing to align with private market housing by reducing the added administrative and design costs of projects financed by Minnesota Housing when utilizing state bonding and LIHTC tools. 

• Modify state and local QAP funding priorities that support the development and recapitalization of income restricted LIHTC projects without requiring that projects add additional units of PSH into the development but rather fully funding 100% permanent supportive housing projects.

Increase Public Investment in Housing at all Levels of Government.

• Expand the use of project-based vouchers in new privately-owned and managed housing development to ensure that those units are affordable for low- and extremely-low-income households.

• Allow flexible use of tax increment financing such as utilizing pooled funds and issuing bonds to pay for public costs necessary to support private development of new workforce and income restricted housing.

• Expand utilization of tax abatement as a temporary reduction in property taxes on the portion of assessed value added by new construction to increase housing affordability.

• Support utilization of 4d property tax for new income restricted housing and limit city’s ability to utilize zoning authority on the basis of the projects ability to access 4D.

• Increase use of housing trust funds and dedicate Local Affordable Housing Aid (LAHA) to fill gaps created in the development of affordable housing production.