Letter to the Editor SPOTLIGHT
This LTE was originally published in the Star Tribune on August 24, 2024 in response to the article "Ramstad: Minnesota needs affordable housing to be available in more places".
Regarding “More housing is needed in more places”: The issue of integration vs. segregation doesn’t divide the Twin Cities and the suburbs. Segregation exists in every Minnesotan city because of land-use laws.
Suburban cities exclude and segregate by allowing only the most expensive homes to be built. Cities often require large lots (15,000 square feet or more), three-car garages and other standards that exclude starter-home prices. Many cities simply ban apartments and/or require yearslong approval processes so costly and time-consuming that developers run out of money or just give up. In some cases, cities ban all new housing development of any kind.
The inner cities make affordable apartments easier to build but have maintained their own form of segregation. In Minneapolis, attached homes with three or more stories and more floor space that creates affordability are only legal in a quarter of the city. Arbitrary limits on “floor area ratio” mean that our century-old naturally affordable fourplexes cannot be built today.
It would be wonderful if we could integrate our cities simply by directing developers to build more, but there is nowhere to build. We need the Legislature to set new ground rules and expectations for every city, which make it possible to build new homes of all kinds — subsidized and market rate, detached and attached — in all parts of our state.
Brit Anbacht, Minneapolis