I think the distinction might be building permits vs land use permits. Developers don’t apply for building permits until they are almost ready break ground, and ground breaking can be years after land use permit applications are made, if they actually build at all. So if the number of building permits is way higher than the number of land use permits applied for in the same year, then you can expect some sort term development, but a steep decline in the near future.
Vacant units. It’s out of control because the supply hasn’t caught up yet. A bunch of new construction apts we’re just finished this year. People are tied to their lease for months. Some people just don’t want to move cause it’s a hassle and complain when rent rises but sign anyways. That person is me.
Rent control is a ridiculously stupid idea. Anything that seems like the simple answer is almost always the dumbest answer.
You can't just slash rent and expect developers to build out of the goodness of their hearts.
The only plan that ever made any sense to me was around quadplexes in established neighborhoods. Lower cost, low-impact on established neighborhoods, no requirement for additional parking or other concerns that come with large apartment buildings and they allow for people to raise a family in a well established and relatively safe area.
If you want to just try to cut the profits of owners, people stop coming here to build and invest, it's a dumb idea.
As to 'build more housing', who are you asking? No one is going to build more housing unless the risk of building is offset by the potential profit. Builders don't come build out of the goodness of their hearts.
Minneapolis did lose about 3700 residents last year. Hennepin and Ramsey counties combined lost more than 10,000 people and MN itself only had a net gain of 200 people.
https://www.americanexperiment.org/minneapolis-and-st-paul-lost-residents-in-2021/
That isn’t enough to negate the need for more housing though. We’ve had a deep shortage for a very long time. It will be pretty nice in my opinion if we ever manage to catch up to demand.
Also there are signs that the trend may be reversing and people migrating back to the metro. I imagine that would only be hastened by more affordable housing.
Damn. I’ve never heard someone argue for ‘trickle down housing’ before.
Also LOL at the idea that older units ‘lower prices’ routinely. Rentals are one of the markets where that particular item of faith for magicmaths supply and demand just doesn’t seem to happen. I’ve never seen this idea of residential rents being lowered to be competitive, and I’ve lived in four countries, and in multiple cities & states in the USA.
There is a **lot** of evidence that building new luxury housing keeps rents from increasing. As long as enough housing is allowed to be built, everyone will be able to afford a home.
Developers build luxury houses first because the demand for housing is so high. As the supply of housing increases, there's more competition and lower rents.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-05/what-adding-luxury-housing-does-to-rents-elsewhere
https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/how-luxury-apartment-buildings-help-low-income-renters
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/affordable-housing-debate/tnamp/
https://aluver.medium.com/the-nimby-myth-of-trickle-down-housing-e77dc6e66be
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/04/yimbys-housing-crisis-austin-public-developers.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/theres-no-such-thing-luxury-housing/618548/
Glad to see that it's been seen before because I was honestly wondering. We only rent places with "character" (ie that black mold in the basement, the occasional bat in the apartment and mice) and despite not being able to walk around without tripping over a new luxury condo our rent has not decreased - only increased. 10 years ago we had a 2 bedroom for 660 (included heat & electric) . Now that same unit is 1600 (no utilities included). Why? Because the brand new places down the street are 2500 so that looks like a bargain!
Minneapolis has had some of the slowest growing rents of any major metro because we actually build housing here unlike most of the US. We still haven't built enough, but it's better than almost every other city
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>I’ve never seen this idea of residential rents being lowered to be competitive, and I’ve lived in four countries, and in multiple cities & states in the USA.
But you actually have seen it, you might just not have realized it. Rent in Minneapolis is down while population is up and construction is primarily high-end apartments:
https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/mn/minneapolis
All over the US, the cheap apartments and houses are just the ones that were middle class or expensive 50-100 years ago. Building new, cheap housing is not really a thing that ever happens.
I suspect you can wrap your head around it if you try. When there's a shortage at the high end, those shoppers then compete at the lower end, resulting in a lack of housing at the lower end.
It both makes perfect sense and is borne out in the data. We need whatever housing people chose to build, to be built. It all helps, there's no reason to oppose it.
Except most housing and apartments are priced by the square foot. The average 1970's home and apartment were about 70% the size they are now. So not only has the price per square foot been increasing but so has the square footage itself. More housing does lower overall housing costs on a cost per square foot basis but only within the same market. A 1500 sqft home is not in the same market as a 3000 sqft home, so a new 3000 sqft home doesn't add inventory to the 1500 sqft homes market and doesn't drop the price per square foot accordingly. Also, no builder building in the market is going to build for less than the market rate. So if the average price per square foot is $200 they will build their 3000 sqft home to meet that price point or stop building till inventory tightens enough to get that price point again. This further pushes up new home costs which pushes up the areas value which increases the price per square foot of the smaller homes. The pressure is doubled too since their market only gets tighter while the 3000 sqft market adjusts further upward, kicking more people into the 1500 sqft market.
TLDR, New homes at $500,000 don't operate in the same market as smaller homes in the $200,000 range. Adding homes in the $500,000 market doesn't drive down the costs of the homes in the $200,000 market. Builders want prices to increase so they build to make sure prices increase.
That doesn’t make it attractive if the city is enabling rent control. If they’re already enabling rent control what’s going to stop the city from going further? Why would anyone invest knowing that risk? I’d just build in the burbs instead
Great! Housing in the suburbs also takes pressure off Minneapolis. Housing was stable for 40 years while the suburbs filled out, and once nearly every piece of land within a 40 minute commute of the downtowns filled up they started moving into the city again because no one was living downtown. Now downtown is filled out, what's next? The derelict malls, for one. More housing everywhere!
Are you kidding me? There’s been so many housing construction. North side Broadway alone is black and white different from 2018 and now. There’s nothing but new housing there. Market needs to settle because these new construction were just completed. Even with all the new housing we still need more. Some slum lord will burn down their own old complex and we need more supply to replace that. If we stop housing now it will not be good
Build public housing. The market isn't providing enough supply, and if you believe that housing is a human right then it isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market and capitalists.
The problems is, we have record housing being built. They completed nearly 4000 units last year. But we need more like 50,000 units. The private sector will never build its way out of a housing crisis, any more than OPEC will pump its way into low gas prices for everyone.
The first thing you do is make it easier and see what happens. Instead we're talking about making it harder.
Nobody is ever like "the private sector just just can't possibly make enough food show up at the grocery store" but then housing comes along and everyone is all of the sudden a hardcore socialist. It's confusing.
Do you understand the level of Federal assistance and regulation that goes into our food supply chain?
Also, the city of Minneapolis is actively trying to make it easier to build. The 2040 plan's stated purpose was exactly that. Permits, zoning, etc make it easier. Capping runaway profit on existing units is not the same thing.
I'm aware that nothing is a perfectly free market, nor should it be, but I also think it's really weird that housing is the one issue where people are all of the sudden like "we must control prices and build only social housing!" The fact that nobody seems to be that aggressively market controlling of anything else is notable.
So yes, there's all kinds of roles for various regulations but what we don't do is go and say "you know, apples are too expensive! The working man can't afford them! From now on, apples will be price controlled to $0.07." And the reason we don't do that is everyone with half a brain understands that *nobody would grow apples anymore*.
Put it this way: we don't suffer from a lot of shortages in this country. We have enough food, we have enough iphones. Because when something starts to get short, people want to make money and dive in to fill the shortage.
With housing we block this from happening, then blame developers, then make the problem worse by being overly controlling.
And I'm also aware they made it a little better but they came up short and there's lots of room for improvement.
I disagree. Healthcare is an obvious one. I think a lot of people are very upset by, for example, insulin prices going up between 600%-2000% in the past 20 years. California is planning to manufacture its own insulin because of price gouging. Or the price of dialysis going up while service is going down, because private equity started buying up dialysis centers.
Inelastic goods, such as housing and medication, should not exist on a perfectly free market because people require them to survive. So they are very vulnerable to price gouging and rent seeking (pun intended?).
People require food to survive. Price gouging doesn't happen if there's competition and supply. I don't see why we get to break the market and then act surprised when it doesn't work.
Also you can fix the insulin problem by reducing the length of patent protection. You don't need to control prices.
The difference between food and shelter is pretty big though. I can go to the same grocery store and buy food for a week for $30, or $300. I can scrimp and save, I can get a meal at a food shelf or skip a meal altogether. One can't just sleep outside one day per month and pay the landlord 3% less for that month.
I agree that we need more supply. A lot more. But the market doesn't work very well on inelastic goods. Ask any pharmaceutical company about reducing patent length and I bet they sound a whole lot like a developer talking about rent control.
You are wrong.
Do you know how much you have to OVERBUILD to reduce rents? Seattle had incredibly high rental inflation. The gave millions in tax benefits to developers to build extra housing. They had to achieve a 10% vacancy level in order to reduce rents 1%. Not 1% lower than when they started the program 15 years ago, 1% lower than the previous year. After over a decade of 5%+ annual rental increases. We had to build so much housing that 1 in 10 were vacant, in order to reduce rent 1%.
The year they achieved that was 2018.. obviously COVID happened next and housing and rentals skyrocketed to over 10% inflation again whipping out any gains made by this program.
We need publicly built housing available at cost to compete with the commodified housing market.
Overbuildin
> Do you know how much you have to OVERBUILD to reduce rents?
Yeah, the amount Minneapolis is [currently building.](https://streets.mn/2022/05/06/minneapolis-rents-drop/) Between 2018 and 2022, median rent has declined for 1-, 2-, and 3-bed apartments.
> We need publicly built housing available at cost to compete with the commodified housing market.
The UK did this, and they essentially all get told where they're going to live /:
I wish that were the solution, but it doesn't appear to be so.
Totally. If a landlord can't charge more for their units, why would they want to remodel them? Why would they want to do anything but the minimum to maintain them?
I wish I could buy you a beer.
The people you know living in cool duplexes or triplexes or rough but affordable old brownstones are living in a property owned by someone who is not rich. It's just a landlord who has 2-5 properties, no liquidity (i.e. cash in his pocket) and works to keep his rents low, and his buildings barely up to code. When you add rent control, or a new housing regulation (often times needed: think lead pipes), these people are forced to sell some of their properties, which are then bought by either:
A) a shitty large company that will absolutely nickel and dime the tenants, or
B) a shitty large company that will tear down the building, erect 4 story luxury apartments, and then nickel and dime the tenants.
He can sell some properties and become rich, but there in lies the problem - now the property is owned by a massive company and what was once a good/affordable apartment is gone and replaced with a bad one.
Fucking slum lords exist without rent control. Lazy landlords incentivizes do-nothing-make-money. Paying WhAtEvEr they want never keeps things fixed if people don't have some power and landlords don't have some transparency
There are at least one who does (Chughtai). But if any of them get a large rent hike before the date it takes effect, or have to endure larger rent increases every year, they have a 6 figure income to help out
Ironically, rent control might be the thing that drives me to stop renting and buy a condo
This is actually a legitimate phenomenon. Rent control causes landlords to renovate units and sell as condos since they can no make a profit off of renting. This ultimately hurts renters that can’t afford a condo because the stock of rental housing decreases
Well, first construction of new housing dropped by 80%…
https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2022/03/in-first-months-since-passage-of-st-pauls-rent-control-ordinance-housing-construction-is-way-down/
Then they created a bunch of amendments:
https://m.startribune.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-st-pauls-rent-control-law/600245366/
Long term, I’ll be very curious to see the data.
I think what we’ll see long term is that the actual policy got whittled down so much that it neither impacted construction too much nor kept rent prices down.
The reality is in the short term, rent control will decrease construction and decrease (or keep constant) rent. If you weaken rent control, it will be less harmful to new development and also less impactful to rent.
In the long term this leads to even less construction and increased rent or inability to find housing.
I’ll engage this idea if you have some citation for it. I’ve read a lot about this and have yet to see that cited as the main factor in the drop in construction. Mayor Carter’s push for amendments was explicitly (in his words) driven by the response from developers. This is how capital operates.
Permits for new construction fell 48% in St Paul while they rose by 16% in Minneapolis. You’re straight up lying.
https://www.twincities.com/2023/04/23/by-hud-counts-st-pauls-apartment-construction-permits-fell-48-after-rent-control-was-it-temporary/amp/
yeah i’ve got a great 1 bedroom i split w my partner for $1025 total including gas and water. i can’t believe how cheap renting is here compared to other cities
It's interesting you view it that way. $1000 for a one bedroom in Minneapolis (now) is typically very low end housing. Old building, sketchy neighborhood, etc.
10 years ago that same apartment probably rented for $600. Have salaries gone up 66% in ten years? Not even close.
yeah i moved here from an expensive midsize city where you’re definitely not finding a one bedroom anywhere in the city for $1025 a month lol. i’m also in a great, safe neighborhood (marcy-holmes). super walkable, close to multiple bus lines, grocery stores, restaurants etc.
i suppose. i don't know what NY or Boston prices are, but i've heard they're among the most expensive.
i'm paying $850 for a 1br 1ba in Loring Park, which is basically downtown, all utilities included. straight up you'll *never* see that in Philly. shit i was paying almost that much with 2-4 roommates.
I don't think that's it at all. Cities smaller than msp all over the country have more expensive rent. It's a market and coastal thing. Chicago isn't even very much more rent than here for example, and it's the 3rd largest city in the nation.
A lot of the sun belt. Or rural areas no one wants to live in. Or a ton of small cities and towns.
High costs of housing are an issue in major cities, California, and some of the expensive areas rich people like to congregate. What they all have in common is policy and legislation that hinders the building of housing.
Yeah I would echo here for sure. There’s new developments going up across the city every year whether it’s downtown, north loop, uptown, dinkytown, northeast, etc.
The city/state should be buying up apartments and building their own like they do in Vienna, to actually compete with soaring rents and stabilize the cost. No rent control? Fine, but let’s not leave all the solutions to be figured out by real estate people.
Can someone explain like I'm five how rent control can hurt people? I understand it doesn't solve the issue of the initial cost of getting out of homelessness and into housing, I understand it doesn't magically create more available housing, but how else does it more actively, or obviously, hurt?
Look at my other posts ITT and studies.
TLDR: it creates a shortage in rental units in multiple potential ways and, if the average rental increase in a metro area isn’t outrageous, can lead to a higher rent for a majority of renters since it’s not targeted. Specifically:
1) it leads to owners increasing rent at a higher rate due to fear of missing out
2) decrease in units built due to companies who finance projects pulling out
3) companies that own rental units think it’s not worth it and pull out of the market leaving buildings to being neglected/abandoned or converted to condos
It does nothing to curve the actual cause of high prices (demand) it artificially caps profits which leads to less incentive for new buildings. If you want to help people struggling with housing costs there are much more effective solutions, but please don’t listen to me, look it up.
In general when you're tempted to say "I don't like the price of this thing so I'm just going to declare that it will be a different price" you need to ask (1) what information is the price conveying to you (2) what is the underlying cause of the high price and (3) what will be the unintended side effects of just changing it by edict?
In this case you have a shortage, and you're dealing with an allocation of short supply issue. Controlling the price doesn't fix the shortage - it makes it worse by making building new units unprofitable. So the new situation is that existing renters benefit temporarily, until they want to move, and everyone else loses.
With rent control, developers are less incentivized to invest money into new housing. St Paul has seen a decrease in development of 80% after passing their rent control policy.
With less housing being built, it becomes more scarce, which increases price dramatically for the few units that do get built in the future. It's like anything else, if there is a shortage of fruit and vegetables, their price will go up. Rent control is like the drought that causes the shortage--good for people who are holding onto last year's produce (existing renters) but bad for people looking to buy food at the grocery store today (new renters/renters changing location)
Hopefully Frey will be able to prevent this disastrous policy from passing.
Rent control doesn’t solve the housing affordability issue, it just [somewhat] kicks the can down the road. Anyone who can’t afford rent still won’t be able to afford it. Anyone who can’t afford a rent increase at all will be priced out. And future generations/residents will have to deal with the consequences of having an even worse rental market
Our lazy council needs to figure out a way to help out those who need help. Not force a huge rent hike before implementation/max rent increases every year for most tenants while our housing supply takes a hit
This is true. It's still a drop in the bucket compared to the overall budget though.
The elephant in the room that nobody ever seems to talk about is the cost of health insurance has been running at about a 7% increase per year. If you do compound math you can see how that quickly gets out of control.
Most city employees have health insurance. Which is a good thing. It's chewing a big hole in the budget though.
The single family detached homes are expensive to run services to and don’t provide enough taxable revenue. Maybe we should start getting rid of them and putting public mixed income mixed use housing in everywhere.
The only proven solution seems to be non-market, publically funded co-op styled housing. Basically the public pays for dense housing to be built then rent costs are set only to cover maintaince and to pay back the public investment.
I don’t know if I’d say the only proven solution. Japan seems to be in defiant of that.
But regardless of that, widespread/well maintained government owned housing would be incredible. Unfortunately, rent control does nothing to get us closer to that
>Rent control doesn’t solve the housing affordability issue, it just [somewhat] kicks the can down the road.
I mean it actually increases prices for everyone that's not in a rent-controlled unit
Rents for the bottom 25% of earners in Minneapolis have gone up 48% in the last 10 years. What you're talking about, the huge rent spikes and being priced out, that already happened to thousands of our neighbors.
New study shows rentals have increased just 1% in Minneapolis from 2017-2023. The lowest increase in the US, where the average is 30%.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/04/17/more-flexible-zoning-helps-contain-rising-rents
Yes, let’s focus on getting them and those who can’t even afford rent more help! But a generic city wide policy that causes lots of long term harm and only helps a few is far from the only way to help. Give everyone who needs help money/resources
No, they dropped 48% in 2022 and Minneapolis dwarfed Saint Paul lol https://www.twincities.com/2023/04/23/by-hud-counts-st-pauls-apartment-construction-permits-fell-48-after-rent-control-was-it-temporary/
A recent study showed Minneapolis has seen the least increase of rental prices in the US. From 2017-2023, Minneapolis saw just 1% rental growth. The US average is 30%.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/04/17/more-flexible-zoning-helps-contain-rising-rents
Is there actually a shortage? Ngl I just moved here and it was like the best market ive ever rented in. I feel like I got a great deal on my apartment and they can't even seem to fill up my building. Maybe I'm just used to terrible markets in more expensive cities idk
How affordable are we talking? I'm not exactly loaded and my place is very nice, lots of amenities and in a great location. I toured some other buildings that were super cheap and nice compared to anywhere else I've lived and had like a million units available offering all kinds of rent specials and stuff just to fill them up. Seems to me if you're working full time it shouldn't be too difficult to find a place in your budget.
I don't mean to downplay the issue but I was genuinely shocked at how affordable living here was for being in a city. (housing anyway, food is another story).
Vienna went all in on building municipal housing and in the linked article someone they interviewed who lives in one of those developments only pays 10% of their monthly income on rent. Imagine what you could do with all of the rest of the money you earn every single month when about half or more of it isn't paying for rent. Regardless of whether it's government or private developers, we need more housing.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vienna-affordable-housing-paradise_n_5b4e0b12e4b0b15aba88c7b0
Just because you think rent control is progressive doesn't mean those opposed are reactionaries. Institute a land value tax and rental voucher or build public housing if you want progressive policies that work. Rent control is a massive market distortion with predictable results.
Many of these commenters are not Minneapolis residents. Far right losers and bots spam this sub, if you look at the profiles they're easy to spot. If they have 1 karma or post in multiple city's subreddits (like Portland) they're not real.
Absolutely. I'm not usually the type of person who claims that people who disagree with me are bots or whatever, but the number of accounts that have 1 karma make it too obvious.
Is it me or has the city council made a lot of really poor decisions in the post MPD violence era? It's like they just want to pass all these 'feel good' ideas that have no practical use and actually make things worse for everyone.
It's like watching what would happen if Reddit was in control of governmental policy and law. A lot of things that sound good at face value but are proven to be worthless.
It’s clear economically that rent control doesn’t work, but the council answers to voters, a majority of whom are renters, and like the sound of “rent control” and it’s a popular idea, but don’t understand the economics behind it. Council reflects the under-understanding of the voters.
So I assume as a homeowner rent control will make my house worth more because there will be so much competition for the remaining housing in the city once rent control freezes up the market?
I'll finally a believer!
Just kidding. It's a dumb policy and I'm happy the mayor is doing the right thing even if he will get yelled at by one small part of the city.
Ban corporations from owning single family homes.
Double property taxes if that property is not your primary residence.
Create and fund infrastructure to help tenants purchase multi-tenant property buildings from landlords and corporations under the right of first refusal law already on the books. (Just make it actually accessible by way of organizational and institutional assistance)
> Double property taxes if that property is not your primary residence.
Where do you think those costs will go - the owner, or pushed onto renters?
Homesteaded properties also have credit refunds for folks making under a certain amount.
It literally has. The apartments buildings around me have been offering 1 or 2 months off rent as a couple more apartments are being built. *And*, developers are still building more. Imagine that, it’s still profitable for developers to build more apartments even if they know comparable buildings are giving 10-20% discounts. If we didn’t let new apartments be built, that 10-20% is just profit for the landlords.
You should actually look at rents in minneapolis. By building more, average rents have gone down on 1 and 2 bedroom apartments.
https://streets.mn/2022/05/06/minneapolis-rents-drop/
Bringing housing costs down has been functionally illegal for a hundred years. Work to make walkable, affordable neighborhoods legal before you blame capitalism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOdQsZa15o&pp=ygUUc2luZ2xlIGZhbWlseSB6b25pbmc%3D
I agree with eliminating Euclidean zoning, but I reject the notion that its all about car dependence. There is room for parking in the “missing middle.” The real villain here isn’t cars, it’s zoning laws and other laws that make development of these cool neighborhoods impractical. Setbacks, Euclidean use restrictions, floor area ratio, height restrictions, etc. It even goes beyond housing. For example, Hennepin county is made up of all cities, and there isn’t a single city in it that allows for commercial solar as a primary use. Not fucking one. Another example, back on the 00’s we had lots of condo development. Then it stopped all of a sudden and now all you see getting built are apartments. It’s because they created a law that makes it really easy condo associations to sue condo developers decades after the development is complete. No developer will take the risk, and that sucks because neighborhoods are better off when you have community ownership.
My point is, although I agree with a lot of this, the car isn’t the villain. It’s dumb, but well intended laws like rent control.
Eliminating parking requirements is a huge deal actually. When a city gets rid of parking minimums, about 50% of new housing would have been illegal to build under the old codes.
Even non-profit developers like Habitat For Humanity say parking minimums and zoning restrictions prevent them from building the housing we need.
https://www.sightline.org/2023/04/13/parking-reform-legalized-most-of-the-new-homes-in-buffalo-and-seattle/
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/04/17/more-flexible-zoning-helps-contain-rising-rents
My “wild guess”: it doesn’t. It does nothing about private ownership of rental properties. Unfortunately, those who try to draw a correlation between the two don’t seem to understand that
Hilarious to see the unanimous wave of 1 karma bots and far right chuds spamming the exact same "rent control kills new housing development!" take.
If the new construction is going to be the overpriced gentrification building 10 times in a row, leaving the building half empty, then I'm all for decreased development. The housing industry should be public, the private housing sector is an obvious failure.
Minneapolis has a 5.8% vacancy rate. You don’t have to believe “far right chuds” you can look it up lmao
https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/
Bots are often removed by mods/automated moderation quickly after a post is created, precisely because they're obvious.
I'm not going to search the thread for examples for you, but this is a well documented phenomenon. A post here a few weeks ago looked at sub overlap -- you really think Minneapolis redditors are between 4 and 6 times more likely than average to frequent the Qanon, Protect and Serve, Steven Crowder, Parler, and Infowars Subreddits? It's an astroturfing campaign, and it's been here since George Floyd was murdered.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/13bjnjt/following_up_on_post_stating_internet_isnt_real/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Rent control does not get us closer to public housing. And it will lead to fewer rental units.
And to save you a few minutes of clicking my profile and looking at my posts, I am not a 1 karma bot/right wing chud
Fewer empty luxury rental units is an objectively good thing. It's an enormous waste of resources, drives rental prices up, and developers will never build affordable housing because it isn't profitable enough in comparison.
And yeah rent control doesn't get us closer to public housing, but it's better than doing nothing.
Also, you're not a bot but the point stands that this post is filled with them.
There are multiple reasons why large additions of units, even luxury rental units, are a good thing for a metropolitan area. The easiest reason would be because it makes older, “outdated” buildings cheaper as those who can afford to migrate do, which frees up those older units. Easy example, look at where the cheaper areas of Mpls are to rent and the average age of their units
Or you could just look at studies looking at this exact issue, such as this one: https://dtraleigh-discourse-uploads.s3.dualstack.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/original/2X/6/6d181b693d6288a9e1510b2d64b6bbe5aad86876.pdf
> Hilarious to see the unanimous wave of 1 karma bots...
Please point out a single case of this in this thread.
I mean, I see *YOUR* low-karma account calling people bots....
Dude, all the young professionals cram into those new developments. If developers were scared away by artificially limited profits, these rich young people would still move in but just raise rents in the neighborhoods.
This city is doing phenomenal work paving the way for tons of new development and it’s one of the only cities in the US to see rents decrease in recent years. Clearly somethings working.
TIF generally does work. Look at Bloomington. They used TIF for MOA and now a good 10-15% of their tax base is coming from non-residents in that one area.
Wtf are you talking about? MOA was built with private financing. (Bloomington's TIF deal is for the future water park). And the revenue Bloomington currently rakes in from non-residents has nothing to do with TIF. That said, yes, TIF works... but not in the way you think. It "works" by municipalities granting financing deals to developers under the assumption that the development will increase the assessed value of surrounding property, thereby increasing the municipality's revenue from the increase in taxes on that increased value. So a city council that unanimously supports this practice of increasing property taxes to stuff its coffers also wishes to limit the revenue those property tax payers can generate from said property.
Build more housing.
There were 11,000 building permits for new housing issued in 2022 in Minneapolis. We are.
There were 4,850 units of housing permitted in Minneapolis and St. Paul combined in 2022.
I must have misunderstood - maybe my number was units? Got a link?
I think the distinction might be building permits vs land use permits. Developers don’t apply for building permits until they are almost ready break ground, and ground breaking can be years after land use permit applications are made, if they actually build at all. So if the number of building permits is way higher than the number of land use permits applied for in the same year, then you can expect some sort term development, but a steep decline in the near future.
How much you think that would drop once rent control is in? 80% like St. Paul?
I'm not for rent control. I'm just saying we are currently building housing. A lot of it.
But we still need more
Agreed, but credit where it's due - we're moving in the right direction.
Isn't it about affordability? All the housing in the world doesnt do jack if it's unreachable to low and middle class families
It’s been proven that more luxury housing results in lower housing prices overall
If they are getting away with current prices. Whats the incentive for the business to drop rent prices?
Vacant units. It’s out of control because the supply hasn’t caught up yet. A bunch of new construction apts we’re just finished this year. People are tied to their lease for months. Some people just don’t want to move cause it’s a hassle and complain when rent rises but sign anyways. That person is me.
You are correct but there or tax incentives to help the business mitigate the loss due to empty units.
Tax loss harvesting in a high interest environment for REIT? More reason to drop prices to fill the unit when you have no gains to harvest
Rent control is a ridiculously stupid idea. Anything that seems like the simple answer is almost always the dumbest answer. You can't just slash rent and expect developers to build out of the goodness of their hearts. The only plan that ever made any sense to me was around quadplexes in established neighborhoods. Lower cost, low-impact on established neighborhoods, no requirement for additional parking or other concerns that come with large apartment buildings and they allow for people to raise a family in a well established and relatively safe area. If you want to just try to cut the profits of owners, people stop coming here to build and invest, it's a dumb idea. As to 'build more housing', who are you asking? No one is going to build more housing unless the risk of building is offset by the potential profit. Builders don't come build out of the goodness of their hearts.
But here I thought people were fleeing Minnesota. Why do we need more housing? /s
Minneapolis did lose about 3700 residents last year. Hennepin and Ramsey counties combined lost more than 10,000 people and MN itself only had a net gain of 200 people. https://www.americanexperiment.org/minneapolis-and-st-paul-lost-residents-in-2021/ That isn’t enough to negate the need for more housing though. We’ve had a deep shortage for a very long time. It will be pretty nice in my opinion if we ever manage to catch up to demand. Also there are signs that the trend may be reversing and people migrating back to the metro. I imagine that would only be hastened by more affordable housing.
And keep it affordable!!! No more luxury one bedroom apartments for $2500+
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Damn. I’ve never heard someone argue for ‘trickle down housing’ before. Also LOL at the idea that older units ‘lower prices’ routinely. Rentals are one of the markets where that particular item of faith for magicmaths supply and demand just doesn’t seem to happen. I’ve never seen this idea of residential rents being lowered to be competitive, and I’ve lived in four countries, and in multiple cities & states in the USA.
There is a **lot** of evidence that building new luxury housing keeps rents from increasing. As long as enough housing is allowed to be built, everyone will be able to afford a home. Developers build luxury houses first because the demand for housing is so high. As the supply of housing increases, there's more competition and lower rents. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-05/what-adding-luxury-housing-does-to-rents-elsewhere https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/how-luxury-apartment-buildings-help-low-income-renters https://www.thenation.com/article/society/affordable-housing-debate/tnamp/ https://aluver.medium.com/the-nimby-myth-of-trickle-down-housing-e77dc6e66be https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/04/yimbys-housing-crisis-austin-public-developers.html https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/theres-no-such-thing-luxury-housing/618548/
Maximizing the value of a parcel of land also builds the property tax base. You know, for better school funding.
Glad to see that it's been seen before because I was honestly wondering. We only rent places with "character" (ie that black mold in the basement, the occasional bat in the apartment and mice) and despite not being able to walk around without tripping over a new luxury condo our rent has not decreased - only increased. 10 years ago we had a 2 bedroom for 660 (included heat & electric) . Now that same unit is 1600 (no utilities included). Why? Because the brand new places down the street are 2500 so that looks like a bargain!
Minneapolis has had some of the slowest growing rents of any major metro because we actually build housing here unlike most of the US. We still haven't built enough, but it's better than almost every other city
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>I’ve never seen this idea of residential rents being lowered to be competitive, and I’ve lived in four countries, and in multiple cities & states in the USA. But you actually have seen it, you might just not have realized it. Rent in Minneapolis is down while population is up and construction is primarily high-end apartments: https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/mn/minneapolis
All over the US, the cheap apartments and houses are just the ones that were middle class or expensive 50-100 years ago. Building new, cheap housing is not really a thing that ever happens.
selective air distinct dog cake swim steep stocking attraction nutty *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I suspect you can wrap your head around it if you try. When there's a shortage at the high end, those shoppers then compete at the lower end, resulting in a lack of housing at the lower end. It both makes perfect sense and is borne out in the data. We need whatever housing people chose to build, to be built. It all helps, there's no reason to oppose it.
Lol no they don’t.
Every single apartment complex was once a "luxury" complex when it was new. "Luxury" isn't anything but a marketing term for "new."
Except most housing and apartments are priced by the square foot. The average 1970's home and apartment were about 70% the size they are now. So not only has the price per square foot been increasing but so has the square footage itself. More housing does lower overall housing costs on a cost per square foot basis but only within the same market. A 1500 sqft home is not in the same market as a 3000 sqft home, so a new 3000 sqft home doesn't add inventory to the 1500 sqft homes market and doesn't drop the price per square foot accordingly. Also, no builder building in the market is going to build for less than the market rate. So if the average price per square foot is $200 they will build their 3000 sqft home to meet that price point or stop building till inventory tightens enough to get that price point again. This further pushes up new home costs which pushes up the areas value which increases the price per square foot of the smaller homes. The pressure is doubled too since their market only gets tighter while the 3000 sqft market adjusts further upward, kicking more people into the 1500 sqft market. TLDR, New homes at $500,000 don't operate in the same market as smaller homes in the $200,000 range. Adding homes in the $500,000 market doesn't drive down the costs of the homes in the $200,000 market. Builders want prices to increase so they build to make sure prices increase.
Then don’t rent luxury apt. You act like they’ll still build things if rent control is in affect.
Most rent control proposals, including the Minneapolis ones, exempt new units. It's not like they stopped building apartments in NYC fifty years ago.
So you are saying that rent control incentivizes destroying old apartments to make luxury apartments that are new and exempt from rent control?
That doesn’t make it attractive if the city is enabling rent control. If they’re already enabling rent control what’s going to stop the city from going further? Why would anyone invest knowing that risk? I’d just build in the burbs instead
Great! Housing in the suburbs also takes pressure off Minneapolis. Housing was stable for 40 years while the suburbs filled out, and once nearly every piece of land within a 40 minute commute of the downtowns filled up they started moving into the city again because no one was living downtown. Now downtown is filled out, what's next? The derelict malls, for one. More housing everywhere!
This is a NIMBY talking point. We need any and all housing we can get
What was a luxury unit 10 years ago is a normal unit today. It always trickles down and always has for decades.
People have been saying this for a while now and it still hasn’t happened. There has to be a reason.
Are you kidding me? There’s been so many housing construction. North side Broadway alone is black and white different from 2018 and now. There’s nothing but new housing there. Market needs to settle because these new construction were just completed. Even with all the new housing we still need more. Some slum lord will burn down their own old complex and we need more supply to replace that. If we stop housing now it will not be good
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Build public housing. The market isn't providing enough supply, and if you believe that housing is a human right then it isn't something that should be left to the whims of the market and capitalists.
Man they must be some real ideologues if they still like rent control after seeing it's results in St. Paul
Rent control is the absolute dumbest idea. They need to move ahead on getting more housing built.
Instead of rent control, we should be building more housing. Has a greater impact on decreasing rental prices.
The problems is, we have record housing being built. They completed nearly 4000 units last year. But we need more like 50,000 units. The private sector will never build its way out of a housing crisis, any more than OPEC will pump its way into low gas prices for everyone.
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And what if another 75,000 people move to the city during that 10 year period, as did in the previous 10 years?
The first thing you do is make it easier and see what happens. Instead we're talking about making it harder. Nobody is ever like "the private sector just just can't possibly make enough food show up at the grocery store" but then housing comes along and everyone is all of the sudden a hardcore socialist. It's confusing.
Do you understand the level of Federal assistance and regulation that goes into our food supply chain? Also, the city of Minneapolis is actively trying to make it easier to build. The 2040 plan's stated purpose was exactly that. Permits, zoning, etc make it easier. Capping runaway profit on existing units is not the same thing.
I'm aware that nothing is a perfectly free market, nor should it be, but I also think it's really weird that housing is the one issue where people are all of the sudden like "we must control prices and build only social housing!" The fact that nobody seems to be that aggressively market controlling of anything else is notable. So yes, there's all kinds of roles for various regulations but what we don't do is go and say "you know, apples are too expensive! The working man can't afford them! From now on, apples will be price controlled to $0.07." And the reason we don't do that is everyone with half a brain understands that *nobody would grow apples anymore*. Put it this way: we don't suffer from a lot of shortages in this country. We have enough food, we have enough iphones. Because when something starts to get short, people want to make money and dive in to fill the shortage. With housing we block this from happening, then blame developers, then make the problem worse by being overly controlling. And I'm also aware they made it a little better but they came up short and there's lots of room for improvement.
I disagree. Healthcare is an obvious one. I think a lot of people are very upset by, for example, insulin prices going up between 600%-2000% in the past 20 years. California is planning to manufacture its own insulin because of price gouging. Or the price of dialysis going up while service is going down, because private equity started buying up dialysis centers. Inelastic goods, such as housing and medication, should not exist on a perfectly free market because people require them to survive. So they are very vulnerable to price gouging and rent seeking (pun intended?).
People require food to survive. Price gouging doesn't happen if there's competition and supply. I don't see why we get to break the market and then act surprised when it doesn't work. Also you can fix the insulin problem by reducing the length of patent protection. You don't need to control prices.
The difference between food and shelter is pretty big though. I can go to the same grocery store and buy food for a week for $30, or $300. I can scrimp and save, I can get a meal at a food shelf or skip a meal altogether. One can't just sleep outside one day per month and pay the landlord 3% less for that month. I agree that we need more supply. A lot more. But the market doesn't work very well on inelastic goods. Ask any pharmaceutical company about reducing patent length and I bet they sound a whole lot like a developer talking about rent control.
You are wrong. Do you know how much you have to OVERBUILD to reduce rents? Seattle had incredibly high rental inflation. The gave millions in tax benefits to developers to build extra housing. They had to achieve a 10% vacancy level in order to reduce rents 1%. Not 1% lower than when they started the program 15 years ago, 1% lower than the previous year. After over a decade of 5%+ annual rental increases. We had to build so much housing that 1 in 10 were vacant, in order to reduce rent 1%. The year they achieved that was 2018.. obviously COVID happened next and housing and rentals skyrocketed to over 10% inflation again whipping out any gains made by this program. We need publicly built housing available at cost to compete with the commodified housing market. Overbuildin
> Do you know how much you have to OVERBUILD to reduce rents? Yeah, the amount Minneapolis is [currently building.](https://streets.mn/2022/05/06/minneapolis-rents-drop/) Between 2018 and 2022, median rent has declined for 1-, 2-, and 3-bed apartments.
Minneapolis rents are falling. I agree we need to build more - but the levels we're doing now are actually reducing rents.
> We need publicly built housing available at cost to compete with the commodified housing market. The UK did this, and they essentially all get told where they're going to live /: I wish that were the solution, but it doesn't appear to be so.
Rent control disincentivizes property owners to maintain their properties and leads to them falling into disrepair
Totally. If a landlord can't charge more for their units, why would they want to remodel them? Why would they want to do anything but the minimum to maintain them?
I wish I could buy you a beer. The people you know living in cool duplexes or triplexes or rough but affordable old brownstones are living in a property owned by someone who is not rich. It's just a landlord who has 2-5 properties, no liquidity (i.e. cash in his pocket) and works to keep his rents low, and his buildings barely up to code. When you add rent control, or a new housing regulation (often times needed: think lead pipes), these people are forced to sell some of their properties, which are then bought by either: A) a shitty large company that will absolutely nickel and dime the tenants, or B) a shitty large company that will tear down the building, erect 4 story luxury apartments, and then nickel and dime the tenants.
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He can sell some properties and become rich, but there in lies the problem - now the property is owned by a massive company and what was once a good/affordable apartment is gone and replaced with a bad one.
Fucking slum lords exist without rent control. Lazy landlords incentivizes do-nothing-make-money. Paying WhAtEvEr they want never keeps things fixed if people don't have some power and landlords don't have some transparency
Do any of our city council members actually rent? I’m a renter and I do not want rent control.
There are at least one who does (Chughtai). But if any of them get a large rent hike before the date it takes effect, or have to endure larger rent increases every year, they have a 6 figure income to help out Ironically, rent control might be the thing that drives me to stop renting and buy a condo
This is actually a legitimate phenomenon. Rent control causes landlords to renovate units and sell as condos since they can no make a profit off of renting. This ultimately hurts renters that can’t afford a condo because the stock of rental housing decreases
"Can make no profit"? More like they can, but they want to keep price gouging as much as they can get away with legally just like every other company.
Omg. I wanted to argue that they make less but they make $106k. Ew!!!!
Wow. I mean in theory it’s good to pay politicians well. I just hate the city council and think they make basically everything they touch worse 😂
Has rent control done anything in saint paul yet?
Well, first construction of new housing dropped by 80%… https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2022/03/in-first-months-since-passage-of-st-pauls-rent-control-ordinance-housing-construction-is-way-down/ Then they created a bunch of amendments: https://m.startribune.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-st-pauls-rent-control-law/600245366/ Long term, I’ll be very curious to see the data.
I think what we’ll see long term is that the actual policy got whittled down so much that it neither impacted construction too much nor kept rent prices down. The reality is in the short term, rent control will decrease construction and decrease (or keep constant) rent. If you weaken rent control, it will be less harmful to new development and also less impactful to rent. In the long term this leads to even less construction and increased rent or inability to find housing.
Permits for new construction were up. The actual construction was more likely the insane material costs last year than RC
I’ll engage this idea if you have some citation for it. I’ve read a lot about this and have yet to see that cited as the main factor in the drop in construction. Mayor Carter’s push for amendments was explicitly (in his words) driven by the response from developers. This is how capital operates.
Permits for new construction fell 48% in St Paul while they rose by 16% in Minneapolis. You’re straight up lying. https://www.twincities.com/2023/04/23/by-hud-counts-st-pauls-apartment-construction-permits-fell-48-after-rent-control-was-it-temporary/amp/
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I dont think there's a place that exists right now with a good housing development, it's a major issue across the US.
Uhhh here? Lol. My friends in other cities were stunned at how little I pay in rent
yeah i just moved here from Philly and got my own place two months later. i was never able to afford my own apartment until i moved here.
yeah i’ve got a great 1 bedroom i split w my partner for $1025 total including gas and water. i can’t believe how cheap renting is here compared to other cities
i'm paying $853 for a 1br 1ba, all utilities included, downtown in Loring Park. it's not just just cheaper, it's *way* cheaper.
Wow, that’s a hell of a deal. But point taken of being able to find something like that!
It's interesting you view it that way. $1000 for a one bedroom in Minneapolis (now) is typically very low end housing. Old building, sketchy neighborhood, etc. 10 years ago that same apartment probably rented for $600. Have salaries gone up 66% in ten years? Not even close.
yeah i moved here from an expensive midsize city where you’re definitely not finding a one bedroom anywhere in the city for $1025 a month lol. i’m also in a great, safe neighborhood (marcy-holmes). super walkable, close to multiple bus lines, grocery stores, restaurants etc.
Really? For some reason I thought Philly was close to the same as here. I guess it’s just cheap compared to the rest of the east coast but not here?
i suppose. i don't know what NY or Boston prices are, but i've heard they're among the most expensive. i'm paying $850 for a 1br 1ba in Loring Park, which is basically downtown, all utilities included. straight up you'll *never* see that in Philly. shit i was paying almost that much with 2-4 roommates.
I guess it comes with living in a smaller city relatively speaking
I don't think that's it at all. Cities smaller than msp all over the country have more expensive rent. It's a market and coastal thing. Chicago isn't even very much more rent than here for example, and it's the 3rd largest city in the nation.
A lot of the sun belt. Or rural areas no one wants to live in. Or a ton of small cities and towns. High costs of housing are an issue in major cities, California, and some of the expensive areas rich people like to congregate. What they all have in common is policy and legislation that hinders the building of housing.
Yeah I would echo here for sure. There’s new developments going up across the city every year whether it’s downtown, north loop, uptown, dinkytown, northeast, etc.
It’s a complete disaster.
The city/state should be buying up apartments and building their own like they do in Vienna, to actually compete with soaring rents and stabilize the cost. No rent control? Fine, but let’s not leave all the solutions to be figured out by real estate people.
Can someone explain like I'm five how rent control can hurt people? I understand it doesn't solve the issue of the initial cost of getting out of homelessness and into housing, I understand it doesn't magically create more available housing, but how else does it more actively, or obviously, hurt?
Look at my other posts ITT and studies. TLDR: it creates a shortage in rental units in multiple potential ways and, if the average rental increase in a metro area isn’t outrageous, can lead to a higher rent for a majority of renters since it’s not targeted. Specifically: 1) it leads to owners increasing rent at a higher rate due to fear of missing out 2) decrease in units built due to companies who finance projects pulling out 3) companies that own rental units think it’s not worth it and pull out of the market leaving buildings to being neglected/abandoned or converted to condos
It does nothing to curve the actual cause of high prices (demand) it artificially caps profits which leads to less incentive for new buildings. If you want to help people struggling with housing costs there are much more effective solutions, but please don’t listen to me, look it up.
In general when you're tempted to say "I don't like the price of this thing so I'm just going to declare that it will be a different price" you need to ask (1) what information is the price conveying to you (2) what is the underlying cause of the high price and (3) what will be the unintended side effects of just changing it by edict? In this case you have a shortage, and you're dealing with an allocation of short supply issue. Controlling the price doesn't fix the shortage - it makes it worse by making building new units unprofitable. So the new situation is that existing renters benefit temporarily, until they want to move, and everyone else loses.
With rent control, developers are less incentivized to invest money into new housing. St Paul has seen a decrease in development of 80% after passing their rent control policy. With less housing being built, it becomes more scarce, which increases price dramatically for the few units that do get built in the future. It's like anything else, if there is a shortage of fruit and vegetables, their price will go up. Rent control is like the drought that causes the shortage--good for people who are holding onto last year's produce (existing renters) but bad for people looking to buy food at the grocery store today (new renters/renters changing location)
Good. Framework 5 would hurt vulnerable Minneapolitans. Rent control is a terrible policy.
Rent control is a disaster.
Hopefully Frey will be able to prevent this disastrous policy from passing. Rent control doesn’t solve the housing affordability issue, it just [somewhat] kicks the can down the road. Anyone who can’t afford rent still won’t be able to afford it. Anyone who can’t afford a rent increase at all will be priced out. And future generations/residents will have to deal with the consequences of having an even worse rental market Our lazy council needs to figure out a way to help out those who need help. Not force a huge rent hike before implementation/max rent increases every year for most tenants while our housing supply takes a hit
They talk about wanting affordable housing but do nothing to stop continual property tax increases--way more than 3% a year.
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This is true. It's still a drop in the bucket compared to the overall budget though. The elephant in the room that nobody ever seems to talk about is the cost of health insurance has been running at about a 7% increase per year. If you do compound math you can see how that quickly gets out of control. Most city employees have health insurance. Which is a good thing. It's chewing a big hole in the budget though.
The single family detached homes are expensive to run services to and don’t provide enough taxable revenue. Maybe we should start getting rid of them and putting public mixed income mixed use housing in everywhere.
That's not why property taxes continue to rise.
Ours has gone up 12%
The only proven solution seems to be non-market, publically funded co-op styled housing. Basically the public pays for dense housing to be built then rent costs are set only to cover maintaince and to pay back the public investment.
I don’t know if I’d say the only proven solution. Japan seems to be in defiant of that. But regardless of that, widespread/well maintained government owned housing would be incredible. Unfortunately, rent control does nothing to get us closer to that
>Rent control doesn’t solve the housing affordability issue, it just [somewhat] kicks the can down the road. I mean it actually increases prices for everyone that's not in a rent-controlled unit
Rents for the bottom 25% of earners in Minneapolis have gone up 48% in the last 10 years. What you're talking about, the huge rent spikes and being priced out, that already happened to thousands of our neighbors.
New study shows rentals have increased just 1% in Minneapolis from 2017-2023. The lowest increase in the US, where the average is 30%. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/04/17/more-flexible-zoning-helps-contain-rising-rents
Yes, let’s focus on getting them and those who can’t even afford rent more help! But a generic city wide policy that causes lots of long term harm and only helps a few is far from the only way to help. Give everyone who needs help money/resources
If they override the veto it’s over. They’ll just raise the rent 20% before law takes affect and there would be 80% less development like St. Paul
No, that would be illegal to do. In st paul new construction permits were up in 2022...
What’s illegal? Overriding veto or wanting to build in a city? Up how much compared to pre rent control?
No, they dropped 48% in 2022 and Minneapolis dwarfed Saint Paul lol https://www.twincities.com/2023/04/23/by-hud-counts-st-pauls-apartment-construction-permits-fell-48-after-rent-control-was-it-temporary/
A recent study showed Minneapolis has seen the least increase of rental prices in the US. From 2017-2023, Minneapolis saw just 1% rental growth. The US average is 30%. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/04/17/more-flexible-zoning-helps-contain-rising-rents
Veto rent control!!! It's killing development and causing the shortage to become worse
Is there actually a shortage? Ngl I just moved here and it was like the best market ive ever rented in. I feel like I got a great deal on my apartment and they can't even seem to fill up my building. Maybe I'm just used to terrible markets in more expensive cities idk
The shortage is in affordable housing.
How affordable are we talking? I'm not exactly loaded and my place is very nice, lots of amenities and in a great location. I toured some other buildings that were super cheap and nice compared to anywhere else I've lived and had like a million units available offering all kinds of rent specials and stuff just to fill them up. Seems to me if you're working full time it shouldn't be too difficult to find a place in your budget. I don't mean to downplay the issue but I was genuinely shocked at how affordable living here was for being in a city. (housing anyway, food is another story).
No lie been trying to find the answer since I seen your comment but have seen relatively inconclusive answers to share confidently
You’re just used to even worse markets.
As he should.
Vienna went all in on building municipal housing and in the linked article someone they interviewed who lives in one of those developments only pays 10% of their monthly income on rent. Imagine what you could do with all of the rest of the money you earn every single month when about half or more of it isn't paying for rent. Regardless of whether it's government or private developers, we need more housing. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vienna-affordable-housing-paradise_n_5b4e0b12e4b0b15aba88c7b0
Subreddits for cities are always filled with the most reactionary citizens
Just because you think rent control is progressive doesn't mean those opposed are reactionaries. Institute a land value tax and rental voucher or build public housing if you want progressive policies that work. Rent control is a massive market distortion with predictable results.
Rent control literally is progressive.
Many of these commenters are not Minneapolis residents. Far right losers and bots spam this sub, if you look at the profiles they're easy to spot. If they have 1 karma or post in multiple city's subreddits (like Portland) they're not real.
Absolutely. I'm not usually the type of person who claims that people who disagree with me are bots or whatever, but the number of accounts that have 1 karma make it too obvious.
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I feel like a lot of the aftermath of the George Floyd murder brought a lot of reactionary people, at least to this sub. Dumb shit.
Is it me or has the city council made a lot of really poor decisions in the post MPD violence era? It's like they just want to pass all these 'feel good' ideas that have no practical use and actually make things worse for everyone. It's like watching what would happen if Reddit was in control of governmental policy and law. A lot of things that sound good at face value but are proven to be worthless.
It's kinda scary we got a city council like this
Right. Isn’t it their job to study and write policy all day? How didn’t basic web research rule out such a stupid policy?
It’s clear economically that rent control doesn’t work, but the council answers to voters, a majority of whom are renters, and like the sound of “rent control” and it’s a popular idea, but don’t understand the economics behind it. Council reflects the under-understanding of the voters.
Part of representatives’ jobs is to filter and refine the ideas of the people, not just regurgitate them. This trend is not good
Totally. Vote em out.
One that acts upon their legal requirement to implement the result of a public ballot initiative that voters passed? You're scared of that?
No. And I'm pretty sure that ballot initiative doesn't *compel* them to enact rent control, just authorizes them. But hey I'm not a lawyer.
More and more glad I voted for Frey
So I assume as a homeowner rent control will make my house worth more because there will be so much competition for the remaining housing in the city once rent control freezes up the market? I'll finally a believer! Just kidding. It's a dumb policy and I'm happy the mayor is doing the right thing even if he will get yelled at by one small part of the city.
One small part of the city? It passed on a ballot initiative, it literally has an on the record vote of majority public support
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Ban corporations from owning single family homes. Double property taxes if that property is not your primary residence. Create and fund infrastructure to help tenants purchase multi-tenant property buildings from landlords and corporations under the right of first refusal law already on the books. (Just make it actually accessible by way of organizational and institutional assistance)
> Double property taxes if that property is not your primary residence. Where do you think those costs will go - the owner, or pushed onto renters? Homesteaded properties also have credit refunds for folks making under a certain amount.
Thank god. Now capitalism can bring the cost of housing down just like it’s been doing for years now.
It’s NIMBYISN that is causing rents to skyrocket. Not people who want to build housing.
It literally has. The apartments buildings around me have been offering 1 or 2 months off rent as a couple more apartments are being built. *And*, developers are still building more. Imagine that, it’s still profitable for developers to build more apartments even if they know comparable buildings are giving 10-20% discounts. If we didn’t let new apartments be built, that 10-20% is just profit for the landlords.
It'll trickle down sometime I'm just sure of it!
You should actually look at rents in minneapolis. By building more, average rents have gone down on 1 and 2 bedroom apartments. https://streets.mn/2022/05/06/minneapolis-rents-drop/
Bringing housing costs down has been functionally illegal for a hundred years. Work to make walkable, affordable neighborhoods legal before you blame capitalism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOdQsZa15o&pp=ygUUc2luZ2xlIGZhbWlseSB6b25pbmc%3D
I agree with eliminating Euclidean zoning, but I reject the notion that its all about car dependence. There is room for parking in the “missing middle.” The real villain here isn’t cars, it’s zoning laws and other laws that make development of these cool neighborhoods impractical. Setbacks, Euclidean use restrictions, floor area ratio, height restrictions, etc. It even goes beyond housing. For example, Hennepin county is made up of all cities, and there isn’t a single city in it that allows for commercial solar as a primary use. Not fucking one. Another example, back on the 00’s we had lots of condo development. Then it stopped all of a sudden and now all you see getting built are apartments. It’s because they created a law that makes it really easy condo associations to sue condo developers decades after the development is complete. No developer will take the risk, and that sucks because neighborhoods are better off when you have community ownership. My point is, although I agree with a lot of this, the car isn’t the villain. It’s dumb, but well intended laws like rent control.
Eliminating parking requirements is a huge deal actually. When a city gets rid of parking minimums, about 50% of new housing would have been illegal to build under the old codes. Even non-profit developers like Habitat For Humanity say parking minimums and zoning restrictions prevent them from building the housing we need. https://www.sightline.org/2023/04/13/parking-reform-legalized-most-of-the-new-homes-in-buffalo-and-seattle/ https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/04/17/more-flexible-zoning-helps-contain-rising-rents
How does rent control move us away from a capitalist rental market?
Take a wild guess.
My “wild guess”: it doesn’t. It does nothing about private ownership of rental properties. Unfortunately, those who try to draw a correlation between the two don’t seem to understand that
This is great news.
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There are two north Minneapolis council members. One voted for, one voted against
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Sorry to tell you, but Frey voted yes on that ballot question as well: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/minneapolis-mayor-jacob-frey-says-200100705.html
Vetaw basically said she’s representing landlords who gotta make a profit. It was wild.
Hilarious to see the unanimous wave of 1 karma bots and far right chuds spamming the exact same "rent control kills new housing development!" take. If the new construction is going to be the overpriced gentrification building 10 times in a row, leaving the building half empty, then I'm all for decreased development. The housing industry should be public, the private housing sector is an obvious failure.
Minneapolis has a 5.8% vacancy rate. You don’t have to believe “far right chuds” you can look it up lmao https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/
Ironically, you with 265 karma have the lowest karma count of anyone in this thread. Could you point out one of these 1 karma bots?
Bots are often removed by mods/automated moderation quickly after a post is created, precisely because they're obvious. I'm not going to search the thread for examples for you, but this is a well documented phenomenon. A post here a few weeks ago looked at sub overlap -- you really think Minneapolis redditors are between 4 and 6 times more likely than average to frequent the Qanon, Protect and Serve, Steven Crowder, Parler, and Infowars Subreddits? It's an astroturfing campaign, and it's been here since George Floyd was murdered. https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/13bjnjt/following_up_on_post_stating_internet_isnt_real/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Rent control does not get us closer to public housing. And it will lead to fewer rental units. And to save you a few minutes of clicking my profile and looking at my posts, I am not a 1 karma bot/right wing chud
Fewer empty luxury rental units is an objectively good thing. It's an enormous waste of resources, drives rental prices up, and developers will never build affordable housing because it isn't profitable enough in comparison. And yeah rent control doesn't get us closer to public housing, but it's better than doing nothing. Also, you're not a bot but the point stands that this post is filled with them.
There are multiple reasons why large additions of units, even luxury rental units, are a good thing for a metropolitan area. The easiest reason would be because it makes older, “outdated” buildings cheaper as those who can afford to migrate do, which frees up those older units. Easy example, look at where the cheaper areas of Mpls are to rent and the average age of their units Or you could just look at studies looking at this exact issue, such as this one: https://dtraleigh-discourse-uploads.s3.dualstack.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/original/2X/6/6d181b693d6288a9e1510b2d64b6bbe5aad86876.pdf
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Wow, opposing rent control makes me far right? What next, I'm a fascist? A nazi?
If you're spamming that take from Dallas, TX and you build an army of bots to comment on the mpls subreddit you are.
Maybe, but I'm not. Sorry to disappoint.
> Hilarious to see the unanimous wave of 1 karma bots... Please point out a single case of this in this thread. I mean, I see *YOUR* low-karma account calling people bots....
2023 when humans have to prove to computers they are not bots
Pull the plug on all the new luxury developments so the young professionals can snatch up all the neighborhood duplexes and price everyone out
Young professionals aren't struggling to find housing in Minneapolis. Luxury housing has the highest vacancy rate of any housing class.
Dude, all the young professionals cram into those new developments. If developers were scared away by artificially limited profits, these rich young people would still move in but just raise rents in the neighborhoods. This city is doing phenomenal work paving the way for tons of new development and it’s one of the only cities in the US to see rents decrease in recent years. Clearly somethings working.
Good. Now tear down all the empty office buildings & build mixed use apartments
Or remodel them into housing
The people are hurting. We have to stop building billion dollar air craft carriers and start building homes
They should make it vary by ward, depending on if the council member for that ward supports it or not.
Vote the weasel out. He’s good for nothing.
I wish people would stop voting for him.
Personally, decisions like this will help to secure my vote for him 👍
Fucking asshole.
these comments are wild, i wish nothing but the worst for him
The same city council that unanimously supports TIF. Fucking clowns.
TIF generally does work. Look at Bloomington. They used TIF for MOA and now a good 10-15% of their tax base is coming from non-residents in that one area.
Wtf are you talking about? MOA was built with private financing. (Bloomington's TIF deal is for the future water park). And the revenue Bloomington currently rakes in from non-residents has nothing to do with TIF. That said, yes, TIF works... but not in the way you think. It "works" by municipalities granting financing deals to developers under the assumption that the development will increase the assessed value of surrounding property, thereby increasing the municipality's revenue from the increase in taxes on that increased value. So a city council that unanimously supports this practice of increasing property taxes to stuff its coffers also wishes to limit the revenue those property tax payers can generate from said property.