Blog

Update on Housing from the Legislature

by Ben Helvick Anderson, Vice President of Policy and Organizing

We are entering the last month of the 2023 Minnesota legislative session. We can be proud that we have moved substantial legislation forward because of our advocacy. At this point, committees have finished their bills and the Senate and House have passed the omnibus bills for each area (education, housing, health).   

The Senate and the House are passing different versions of the omnibus bills, so the next step is forming a conference committee that will agree to a final version. Our advocacy of the conference committee members will be important in determining the final outcome of the session. 

Here are the issues Beacon has been working on and where they stand:

Bring it Home, Minnesota

Beacon’s top priority has been to pass Bring it Home, Minnesota, which would create a Minnesota rental assistance program allowing all low-income renters to afford their homes. These rent vouchers would be transformational, but we always knew achieving a program at its full $2-billion a year scale would be difficult in one session. This year’s goal was to get the program started at a transformational level.

We were disappointed at the lack of ongoing dollars in the housing budget, and it wasn’t easy to create Bring it Home, Minnesota, even at our lowest acceptable starting point. The Housing Chairs attached the voucher to a new ¼ cent metro sales tax to provide ongoing funding. Combined with some one-time dollars, this would create the beginning of Bring it Home, Minnesota with 7,000 vouchers, which is acceptable. These vouchers would be transformational in thousands of lives and would be a strong foundation to the program.

Unfortunately, opposition in the Senate pulled the sales tax from the Senate bill. We are advocating for the House version and are creating opportunities for everyone to contact key legislators to make Bring it Home, Minnesota a reality.

Below is a table of the number of vouchers each bill creates:

Strengthen Supportive Housing Fund

The Governor and Minnesota Housing proposed creating a new program to fund gaps in the operations of supportive housing. These funds would fill a gap critical for supportive housing success and pay for a 24/7 front desk, enhanced security services, and on-site service coordinators. These services are core components of the wrap-around services provided by supportive housing providers and must be approved for housing development financing to do a feasible project.

Beacon supports this effort, especially as the environment we operate buildings in has become more turbulent. It has become essential to have trained, qualified, 24/7 front desk staff at supportive housing buildings as well as security at some.

Creating this program at the Senate’s proposed $40 million is critical to the success of Beacon and other supportive housing providers.

Housing Bonds and Capitol

The state’s housing bonds have been essential to Beacon and other supportive housing developers. These Housing Infrastructure Bonds, often called HIBs, are the primary source of public funding directed at deeply affordable supportive housing.

We celebrate that the House and Senate acknowledge the great need to build more affordable housing. They not only are proposing a large number of housing bonds, but also are using some of the one-time surplus to provide capitol for affordable housing.

Beacon supports both bills’ efforts on this front and hopes the largest sum, currently proposed by the House, passes.

Family Supportive Housing Act

There is an acute lack of supportive housing directed at families, where both the caregivers and children receive wrap-around holistic services. The lack of a funding source for these family-centered services stretched current providers. The state only directs service funds toward individuals, not family units. It has been proven that keeping families together and providing services for them to grow together is more successful and healthier for the community.  

Beacon is working to meet the need by building three new family supportive housing developments across the Twin Cities metro. But we will face the same funding gaps current providers encounter. Our policy staff worked to design and introduce a new bill called the Family Supportive Housing Act, which would provide funding for these holistic services.   

We are excited that in its first year, legislators supported the effort, and in the Senate, they funded it at $8 million for the biennium. It was unfortunately not included in the House bill, and we will advocate that we fund this critical new program.

Next Steps

We will be sending out action alerts and contacting individuals whose legislators are on the conference committees. For a full report of what is going on and what can be done, please register for our May Rent is Due call at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, May 1^st.