With a vacancy rate of 2.4 percent, St. Paul is in the midst of a housing crisis, and the city needs to take decisive and wide-ranging steps to address it.

That, in a nutshell, was the declaration from the St. Paul City Council, which voted 7-0 on Wednesday to approve a wide-ranging resolution “calling for action to create and preserve housing that is affordable at all income levels.”

The housing resolution also calls on the city to “address racial, social and economic disparities in housing, and create infrastructure needed to stabilize housing for all in St. Paul.”

The goal, in part, is to send a strong message to St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s office in advance of the mayor’s budget address next month: the 2019 city budget needs to set aside funds for new housing initiatives, including a new staff member to focus exclusively on housing.

“I’m really proud of us as a city for taking this problem on head on,” said city council member Rebecca Noecker, “and not something that we’re going to shy away from or expect others to solve for us.”

NEW STAFF POSITION

The resolution urges the mayor’s office to commit to a handful of potential strategies:

Funding an Affordable Housing Trust Fund to assist in the creation of new affordable housing, and to renovate and preserve affordable housing that already exists.

Creating a down-payment assistance program to help residents who hope to become first-time homeowners, and an emergency repair fund to fund essential repairs in rental properties, which would later be assessed to the landlord.

Adding a staff position to develop a fair housing strategy “with a user-friendly dashboard to track and report on outcomes, coordinate between departments, monitor the housing landscape and propose programs and policies to improve housing stability citywide.”

The wide-ranging resolution was sponsored by four of the seven council members — city council president Amy Brendmoen, Samantha Henningson, Rebecca Noecker and Dai Thao.

The resolution notes that the Metropolitan Council has forecast the need for St. Paul to house approximately 15,000 more households by the year 2030.

The city’s housing vacancy rate is 2.4 percent, and together with stagnant wages and “skyrocketing rents,” the tight market contributes to a lack of housing affordable to everyday families.

It goes on to say the St. Paul Area Association of Realtors has stated that a healthy housing market has a six month supply of homes for sale, and that in June 2018 the city’s supply was at 1.7 months: “St. Paul needs to increase the homes for sale from 500 to 1,720 to achieve a healthy housing market.”

Carter on Thursday released a brief written statement through a spokesperson. “The city council made a bold statement of intent … on the future of housing in St. Paul,” the mayor said. “I applaud their vision and look forward to working with them closely to realize it.”

ALL CITY-BACKED PROJECTS WOULD ACCEPT SECTION 8 VOUCHERS

The resolution also calls for the city council to require that all housing projects that receive public funding — either directly or as a “pass through” from state, federal and other sources — from the city’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority accept federal Section 8 housing vouchers.

Another policy change would give senior housing more points under the “Low Income Housing Tax Credit” scorecard, a ranking of affordable housing applications, to assist city residents as they age. A third goal is to work with community partners to increase the use of “Tenant Remedies Actions,” or emergency legal petitions that require landlords to immediately rectify serious issues such as the loss of power or heat. Related Articles St. Paul City Council approves $600,000 charge for downtown improvement district

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The resolution also calls for mandating training about federal Section 8 housing vouchers in the “Landlord 101” course, which is required for all new certificate-of-occupancy holders in St. Paul, and promoting “Landlord 101” to existing landlords.

Brendmoen said she’s already received strong feedback on certain initiatives, which will continue to be tweaked as needed. Brendmoen said it was important to get a plan together on paper, even if particular aspects of it still need vetting.

“We don’t want perfect to get in the way of good … but we do hear you,” she said.

St. Paul City Council Member Chris Tolbert, who chairs the city’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority, said: “There’s no single solution here, but I think there’s a lot of strategies here that we can implement.”

The city has already undertaken several initiatives to promote housing creation.

St. Paul currently directs low-income housing tax credits toward affordable new and existing multifamily rental units.

The city’s Inspiring Communities program provides financial support to develop affordable single-family homes. A home improvement loan program aims to preserve owner-occupied housing, and a “Rental Rehab” loan program aims to preserve small, affordable rentals. In partnership with Ramsey County, the city provides “Emergency Solutions” grants to outside organizations serving the homeless.

ACCESSORY DWELLINGS, NOAH INVENTORY

Additional projects and strategies are on the horizon. The city council is weeks away from voting on a policy that would allow accessory dwellings, or mother-in-law apartments, citywide. A proposed update to the city’s 2040 Comprehensive Plan calls for denser development and new amenities in 56 neighborhood intersections, or “nodes,” throughout the city.

The city is also creating an emergency housing plan for tenants who are displaced due to building and code issues discovered by the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections.

St. Paul plans to create a citywide inventory of non-subsidized, naturally occurring affordable housing, or NOAHs, and expand the Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity Department’s “Fair Housing Training Program” for property managers and landlords.

The city council is asking for a legal analysis from city staff of possible tenant protection ordinances, such as potentially mandating advance notification when a rental housing development is about to be sold, and ordinances aimed at reducing barriers to finding rental housing, such as limiting application fees or banning questions on initial applications pertaining to criminal history.

The city council would also like to study the possibility of increasing the maximum number of unrelated adults from four to five in apartments with more than four bedrooms, an analysis of allowing more multi-unit buildings such as triplexes and fourplexes along transit routes and neighborhood nodes in single-family zoning districts, and reviewing and updating the definition of “family.”

St. Paul City Council Member Jane Prince cautioned against embracing tri-plex and four-plex housing in single-family neighborhoods without careful study.

“This is a really big change that we’re contemplating here,” said Prince, who represents a large section of the city’s East Side.

Prince noted that after the national housing foreclosure crisis, “we ended up with whole blocks purchased by absentee owners … allowing — there’s no better way to say this — slumlords to (increase) their earnings in some of our single-family neighborhoods.” Related Articles St. Paul City Council approves $600,000 charge for downtown improvement district

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“I appreciate the intent behind it, but I definitely want us … to get a lot of feedback from our neighborhoods,” she said.

The city council is recommending further study of “inclusionary zoning” policies that allow greater density for landlords who set aside a portion of their housing developments for affordable housing. It’s also proposing the creation of an advisory committee dedicated to housing stability, composed of housing experts, renters, landlords and advocates who would provide input to the city on housing issues.