Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity hosted a “Red Blue Build” in St. Paul yesterday, bringing Minnesota legislators together to help build affordable houses. Max Nesterak of the Minnesota Reformer quizzed the builders on their views on various affordable housing policies. The five Minnesota legislators (three R, two DFL) expressed more respect for local control in zoning laws than South Dakota’s centralizing authoritarian Legislature and Governor did last Session.
But Nesterak does find one Minnesota legislator, Rep. Donald Raleigh (R-Circle Pines), who seems to struggle with his conception of the free market:
Nesterak: Speaking of local control, Minneapolis and St. Paul voters are going to vote on rent control this fall. And there’s been discussion among your Senate Republican colleagues about blocking cities from enacting rent control. I’m curious if you would support something like that.
Raleigh: I don’t know enough about it. I understand rent control as a concept [but] I’m more of a free market capitalist guy. I want the market to dictate what’s going on.
Nesterak: But local zoning ordinances interfere with the free market do they not?
Raleigh: How would that interfere with the free market?
Nesterak: You said local communities should be able to decide what kind of housing is built?
Raleigh: Yes.
Nesterak: And so a lot of communities make rules that make it almost impossible to build affordable housing. And does that not interfere with the free market?
Raleigh: No, I think the free market will dictate what’s going to be built in each one of the locations. I mean, I truly think that if a community wants to have higher-end houses, and the population can afford it, that’s what they should build there.
We’re building single family houses today. Could these be multi unit housing? Absolutely. But it’s going to be dependent upon the zoning of this area. And so I want the local control as much as possible to dictate what’s going to be going on in their community.
Nesterak: Gotcha. But that’s not free market.
Raleigh: Why is that not free market?
Nesterak: Well, free market is — and I’m not trying to be difficult — but free market is providing what the customer wants. So why can’t developers build apartments wherever people will buy them?
Raleigh: They would work with their local zoning. They’d work with their local communities, and they would then get either variants or they would build within the confines of the existing charters that that particular city has. Again, it is not every single community has to match what every other community is doing [Max Nesterak, “They Came to Swing Hammers. We Came to Talk Housing Policy,” Minnesota Reformer, 2021.08.04].
Representative Raleigh provides one more example of the chronic Republican ailment of using many words as easy slogans without any consistency or understanding their real meaning.
It’s easy Cory NIMBY.
The Minnesota Reformer is a great publication. I read this piece this morning and had the same reaction as the reporter.
I don’t think the legislator is a NIMBY, in the traditional sense. But oy vey, he really should take a real estate economics course at UM or Metro State.
Well…legislators like this one in Minnesota and the “apartment building protesters” in Sioux Falls not only don’t understand economics they refuse to acknowledge the demographic shifts in the labor market and how the labor market impacts housing….its not the 50’s anymore…we’ve got to provide housing for young people working their way up the ladder….they want to kick the ladder down…We can only hope young working people get fed up and vote Democratic.
“Free market for me…but, not for thee.” Yep, it baffles me how this fragile economy of ours keeps puttzin’ along, especially here in the Black Hills and all your resort areas where most workers can not afford to live. Down in one California community the city council held an emergency meeting to approve a special zone area where low income workers could live in tents?!? If a city council has to pass an emergency resolution to allow tent communities for workers in 21st Century America, then our nation needs to seriously question our humanity as a society. You have extremely wealthy people living in gated communities that zone out affordable housing for workers. The people who can afford to live in those communities are concerned they can not find and keep people to service their local economies. What is up with the major disconnect in any type of logical thinking in regards to this issue? Has greed grown so bad it has zapped the last brain cells out of our collective heads?!?