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Our homes are not just where we live. Our homes are our refuge from an increasingly chaotic world. Home is where our family is and where we often feel the most safe. But for many of us, keeping our homes is becoming more and more difficult. With skyrocketing Rent, Property taxes, and Home Prices, Minnesotans’ homes are on eroding ground.
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Homes and apartments have been bought up by more and more out-of-state corporate landlords. These landlords are using algorithms to collude and artificially raise rents. This is exacerbated by the lack of building of new homes and apartment buildings for decades, and only recently building more. leaving only old buildings in need of repairs and new buildings still paying off their construction.
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There are two main reasons. Due to the skyrocketing prices of homes, even without raising tax rates, when your home value doubled on average in the past decade, so too did your taxes.
The other reason is that Minnesota redistributes property taxes between cities to help those that bring in less. This goes from high density to low density. Due to the lack of densification in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the cities are not bringing in enough extra revenue to help the less dense cities like Lakville, whose infrastructure is more expensive, causing the city to have to collect more taxes per home.
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There are not enough homes. The state of Minnesota is over 100,000 housing units short of what it needs. In addition, we are not building enough affordable houses. Focusing primarily on building big houses on big lots out in the suburbs rather than dense housing in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. So more people are fighting for the same few houses. Corporations are also buying up homes at ridiculous prices to then rent out. Causing all the houses in the neighborhood to jump in price.
Ok, But What Are We Going To Do About It?
Cut red tape to allow us to build more housing.
Regulate corporate ownership and give Minnesotans the first right to buy a home, not corporations.
Promote Co-op Housing over corporate landlords for apartments. Cooperatives are democratically run and owned, and even when they enter at market rate, they raise rents much less, so they only become more affordable over time.
Focus on adding density up in the cities and building transit there to support that housing. Reducing the pressure in places like Lakeville’s housing market and reducing traffic on 35W.
Spur economic interest in Greater Minnesota, also reducing housing pressure in the metro.
Ban algorithmic rent setting.
