Housing for All

On Election Day in 2021, Minneapolis voters said yes to rent control because they wanted to keep their families and their neighbors in their homes. Relentless rent increases and corporate profiteering must stop. As a renter myself, I will continue to fight for a Minneapolis that we can all afford to call home.

In my first term, I:

  • Led the push for a strong Rent Control policy with a 3% rent cap, vacancy control, and no exemptions.

  • Amended the Rent Control Work Group to be more equitable by barring landlords with documented property condition or labor violations, and adding a public housing resident

  • Initiated a conversation about prolonged residential vacancies and its impact on the housing crisis.

  • Attempted to take legislative action to prevent the Frey administration from using the ban on camping as a pretext for an inhumane and completely ineffective approach to encampments of unhoused residents.

  • Led Council to allocate $1.2 million for installing fire sprinklers into five public housing high rises that did not have them, endangering thousands of residents. 

  • Testified at the state Capitol alongside many community and elected partners in support of public housing and public housing residents, resulting in the first-ever direct allocation of state funds to the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority. 

  • Supported the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority and the Board of Estimate and Taxation in establishing a $5 million Public Housing Levy. A lack of political will has resulted in 7000 families stuck on a waiting list for housing and $200 million in back repairs to ensure public housing residents have safe and clean homes. I will continue to push for a fully funded Public Housing Levy.

This term, I will:

  • Pass a rent control that limits annual rent increases to 3% with no exceptions to allow our neighbors to stay in their homes. Any policy that does not control rents is not rent control.

  • Empower renters with the first right of purchase if their landlord chooses to sell by passing the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA). Our communities are stronger when our neighbors who rent are able to invest in their housing.

  • Enact Just Cause Eviction because renters deserve to have the confidence that they can raise their kids in their home without fearing the end of their lease each year.

  • Expand and revamp the Vacant Building Registration (VBR i.e vacancy fees) to include both commercial and residential vacant properties. Corporate landlords have spent the last decade purchasing up affordable housing and now let units sit vacant rather than rent at reasonable rates.

  • Prioritize City resources to build affordable housing and vibrant communities by only funding projects that are permanently affordable to residents, increasing the amount of funding for housing units that are targeted for unhoused residents and ensuring City-owned land parcels are sold and developed into entities that enrich neighborhoods.

  • Halt encampment evictions. No one believes encampments are a suitable place for our most vulnerable residents, but brutal evictions that only shuffle residents to new sites elsewhere in the city at the cost of millions of dollars solves nothing.

  • Implement a “Housing first” approach to homelessness with increased coordination with Hennepin County, state agencies, and non-profit groups to find unhoused residents permanent housing and provide the wrap-around services needed for success.