A last-ditch effort to reform Minnesota zoning fails in Senate committee

Yahoo

05-05-2025

The Minnesota State Capitol, April 24, 2025. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
A legislative effort to make it easier and cheaper to build houses and apartments is all but dead for the year.
A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and advocates entered the legislative session with an ambitious but carefully-crafted set of bills to remake Minnesota's zoning and land use rules, opening up construction of more homes and apartments across the state.
The coalition's chances of passing meaningful zoning reform likely ended Thursday when four Democrats and two Republicans in a Senate committee voted against an amendment that contained a bare-bones version of the package.
'We really brought what we felt was the bare minimum of what we needed to do to help people — we hear them, we understand that they're asking for more housing options, that they're asking for more affordable housing,' said state Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL- Burnsville, who chairs the Senate housing committee. 'This was our opportunity to do a small fraction of that.'
Minnesota is facing a housing shortage, and low supply means higher prices for buyers and renters. The 'Yes to Homes' coalition says local government regulations are restricting building. Cities often dictate minimum square footage, garage sizes, parking spots and lot sizes, for instance, driving up costs and incentivizing developers to focus on expensive single-family home construction.
New apartments, even if proposed in an area zoned for multi-family development, often face long permitting processes, contentious public hearings and negotiations with city planners that result in fewer units and higher costs for future residents, developers say.
Last year's attempt to pass legislation rolling back city control over where housing is built and what it looks like failed after intense opposition from city leaders.
In the leadup to the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers met with lobbyists for city governments to hash out their differences. The result was a more incremental approach to zoning reform, with four bills targeting different aspects of the interaction between housing developers and municipal governments.
Despite lengthy negotiations, city governments still weren't on board with the legislation, and city government leaders and their lobbyists turned out to committee hearings this year to voice their concerns.
The bills passed their respective housing committees with overwhelming bipartisan support despite city opposition.
But the bills never made it to their next stop: the state and local government committees. They stalled out as cities lobbied in opposition and the bill authors failed to secure the necessary votes.
As a last-ditch effort to get some significant housing policy passed in the Senate, Port brought an amendment Thursday to a bill in the Senate State and Local Government Committee that contained a few of the key policies.
The language would have allowed cities to require up to one parking spot per residential unit; prohibited cities from requiring the establishment of an HOA as a condition of development; barred cities from imposing aesthetic mandates, like the type of siding or features like columns, decks, balconies or porches; and required cities to establish and follow an administrative review process for housing construction permits in areas zoned to allow that type of development — i.e. not forcing developers into a protracted negotiation process, or requiring city council approval, for developments that follow existing zoning rules.
It did not incorporate some of the more controversial policies endorsed by the coalition, such as ending single-family zoning statewide, or requiring cities to allow apartment buildings along transit corridors and in commercial areas.
Lawmakers voiced support for city leaders and were reluctant to take power from their constituent cities against their will.
'This shifts power towards developers, not communities,' said Sen. Heather Gustafson, DFL-Vadnais Heights, who voted against the amendment. She also cited the bill's 'one-size-fits-all' approach, and its failure to guarantee the creation of more affordable housing, as reasons for voting no.
The cities in her district, where the average rent is over $2,000 per month, are already doing good work on housing affordability and should retain control over housing development, Gustafson said.
Port said she and other bill authors will bring similar legislation again next year.
'I think these bills, in some version, are inevitable,' Port said. 'It is really up to the cities and the city lobbying groups to decide how much fight they want to put into this — how much reputational damage, or how much they want to put their reputations on the line fighting this.'