Housing Rules Keep The Metro Segregated
From the Star Tribune l By MaryJo Webster and Michael Corey
Left At least 73% of residential land in the Twin Cities metro area is governed by local zoning ordinances that only allow single-family detached homes, like this Prior Lake neighborhood.
Right Only 7% of residential land in the metro allows apartments to be built without special permission. Advocates for allowing multifamily homes in more areas of the metro say it could reduce the need for large complexes such as this one in New Brighton. Photos by Mark Vancleave.
Liz Stroder has dreamed of owning a home since she was a teenager. Definitely a garden. Maybe some chickens.
More than anything, the St. Louis Park apartment dweller wants to give her 14-year-old son the stability that comes with homeownership. But Stroder has realized that’s out of her reach, with a median home price in the Twin Cities now topping $350,000 and her income as an insurance underwriting assistant holding stagnant. Those “rose-colored glasses were lifted,” she says.
All of this was on the 42-year-old’s mind when she approached the microphone during a contentious public meeting in St. Louis Park early last year. The crowd had spent the first hour opposing a developer’s plan to build a 4-story, 80-unit apartment building, saying it would threaten their property values and bring crime into the Elmwood neighborhood.
“There’s a monster being built in front of our cottages!” one woman exclaimed.
“I will not risk my children for this kind of stuff,” said another.
Despite hecklers and a lot of “hatefulness” in the room, Stroder said she felt compelled to speak up for people like herself who cannot afford the American dream of a single-family home.
“I’m used to not being heard because of the fact that I’m a renter, and I’m a Black woman, and I do not make a lot of money, not enough to afford a $400,000 house in St. Louis Park,” Stroder told the mostly white crowd. “Do I not deserve to be here because of that?”
The opposition to multifamily housing and to the people who need to live there — that Stroder witnessed that night stems in part from decades of local government land-use rules that prioritize single-family housing. Today, however, these rules are increasingly viewed as a major reason that Black and Latino families are essentially shut out of the vast majority of the Twin Cities.
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