Ashley Hackett and Greta Kaul report on Minnesota’s severe housing shortage.
Despite the economic slowdown brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, cranes tower over new apartment developments all over in-demand neighborhoods in the Twin Cities and homebuilders are busy putting up a wave of new single-family houses.
But housing has still been getting less affordable: Between 2000 and 2019, rents in Minnesota increased 14 percent, while renter income remained relatively flat, according to the Minnesota Housing Partnership. Home values, meanwhile, increased four times faster than the income of households that own homes.
A big part of the problem, experts say, is a housing shortage hangover from the Great Recession. For a decade following that downturn, the number of new housing units built was not enough to keep pace with demand. Now, even as construction has picked up, the state still has catching up to do.
“We need to produce 10,000 more units a year, every year, for the next 10 years in order to support Minnesotans,” keeping up with job growth and population growth, said Anne Mavity, the executive director of the Minnesota Housing Partnership.
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