Star Tribune
Duplex bill, facing opposition from local leaders, likely doomed this session
A bill aiming to make it legal to build duplexes on any residential lot in Minnesota is out in the cold this session.
The bill, carried by Rep. Larry Kraft, DFL-St. Louis Park, would create statewide zoning rules requiring cities to allow duplexes, small apartment buildings with up to six units, and smaller single-family homes. In suburban cities especially, local zoning rules make it essentially illegal to build anything other than a large, single-family home.
Many city leaders balked at the bill and asked lawmakers not to support it, tanking its chances this session. It would have been a disruption to the status quo, said Rep. Mike Howard, DFL-Richfield, who chairs the Housing Finance and Policy Committee, adding that legislators “heard from cities the sky was going to fall.”
City leaders, for their part, said they worried about ceding power to the state and about how more duplexes would affect their communities, and wondered if the bill would really make housing more affordable.
South St. Paul Mayor Jimmy Francis said he worried the bill would make it more profitable for a landowner or corporation to knock down an existing single-family home and build a fourplex and even an accessory dwelling unit in its place. They could then rent it out for five times as much, he said.
“We’ve been fervently working on this issue for decades and to have that local control taken away is not in the best interest of any of our residents in our city or any other city,” Francis said. “I’m screaming for local control right now because we’re right there with boots on the ground.”
Prior Lake Mayor Kirt Briggs said mayors and city leaders came together quickly to oppose the bill, making sure their legislators knew about their concerns — such as infrastructure that wouldn’t be able to handle even a small apartment building because city sewer and water pipes couldn’t accommodate increased capacity. He also said the bill undermined the work that cities do to create comprehensive plans.
Briggs said those opposing the bill included some superintendents, real estate agents and local chambers of commerce. He said he worried that pieces of the bill could be resurrected next year or included in this year’s omnibus bill.
Though the bill appears to be dead this session, Kraft said he wants to keep trying.
“I think we’ve started a really important conversation, and raised the profile of the issue in cities around the state,” he said.
For the League of Minnesota Cities, a path forward would be more of an opt-in system, and not a statewide requirement. “That would be far more likely to result in meaningful changes to housing density, affordability and availability, and could be better tailored to individual community needs and sensitive to regional market differences,” said League lobbyist Daniel Lightfoot in an email.
Kraft said that after hearing cities’ concerns, the starting point would be much different. But ultimately, he said, it will be important to have a statewide standard so that smaller and more affordable homes can be built in any city, rather than in just a few islands of less-expensive places.
“We have to address this housing deficit we have,” Kraft said. “We are not doing right by the next generation.”
Howard said the Housing Committee will shift its focus to another bill that would create a statewide requirement to allow apartment buildings in commercial zones. Briggs said he thought that bill, carried by Rep. Liish Kozlowski, DFL-Duluth, could bring “significant harm” to a city like Prior Lake by taking a bite out of the potential commercial tax base. Howard said he wanted to see the bill altered to require mixed-use developments, maintaining a commercial space on the ground floor of a new apartment building.
Howard said he wants to see more statewide zoning rules to help ease the housing affordability crisis. “I think that it’s time for the state to have a more vested interest, when you look at the scope of the housing crisis and how zoning has been used to exclude,” he said.
You hear a lot of women saying they’d rather be alone in the woods with a bear, not a man, because they considered the man to be more dangerous.
I always chose the man, because my interactions with men have generally been positive, and a man wandering through the woods seemed likely to be a hunter or a naturalist or just someone out enjoying nature. Someone reasonable. Someone more likely to harbor a save-the-maiden fantasy than a desire to harm. Bears, on the other hand, if they have it in their head to attack, there is little you could do but try to survive.
A recent visit to Ely’s North American Bear Center changed my mind. Not that I think less of men, but that I think more of bears. Black bears, at least.
The Bear Center provides refuge to three black bears, at least one of whom would have been otherwise euthanized. There’s Lucky, abandoned or orphaned as a cub, who was begging for food near Madison, Wis., and who came within an hour of being put down before a rescuer whisked him off to Ely. There’s Tasha, fat, sleek, and gorgeous, discovered in 2015 in Kentucky trying to nurse on her dead mother, who was believed to have been hit by a vehicle. And Holly, separated from her mother during an Arkansas fire, and who had slipped off to hibernate before our visit.
The bears were fascinating, delicately lipping up cranberries and shelling out nuts with their back teeth during our visit. We learned that their sense of smell is seven times stronger than that of a bloodhound, and that they can smell through an organ on the roof of their mouths.
In fact, sometimes they’ll stand erect and open their mouths – which looks threatening, but it’s really just to get a better sense of their surroundings, said Spencer Peter, assistant director and biologist at the center.
Hollywood trains them to stand like that for movies, he said. “But they’ll dub in the sound.”
ST. PETER, MINN. – Moments before Erica Schwartz approached a house on a door-knocking campaign in this key swing district, a campaign staffer read from an app on his phone that provided the political loyalties of the people inside. In this home lived two soft Democrats in their 50s, the app said. In the next, a soft Republican in her 80s. In several homes, Republicans and Democrats lived under the same roof.
Schwartz, a Republican from Nicollet, is running for the purple District 18A in the Minnesota House of Representatives against DFLer Rep. Jeff Brand of St. Peter.
Brand won the district in 2018 before losing to Republican Susan Akland in 2020, and then winning again in 2022. Control over the seat could determine the fate of the Democratic trifecta — the governor’s office, Senate and House — that since 2023 has allowed the party to pass a raft of bills, including for free school lunches and paid family and medical leave.
Both candidates said they believe they have the secret to talking to voters in this purple district, which includes North Mankato and St. Peter, Gustavus Adolphus College and numerous rural townships.
Brand said he started knocking on doors in January. The Democrat from St. Peter said he emphasizes his experience when talking to voters. He’s served two terms in the House, where he’s passed 40 bills, after seven years on the St. Peter City Council. People aren’t as tribal about their political affiliations in 18A as they might be elsewhere, he said.
“There’s a lot less conversation about the political culture war stuff, and more conversation about, ‘What are you going to do for us?’” Brand said in a recent interview.
Schwartz, too, said knocking on doors has been a focus of her campaign. The Republican from Nicollet said that many of the people who talk to her already know how they’re going to vote in the presidential contest.
But while door-knocking, Schwartz said she tries to talk less about national politics and more about kitchen-table issues such as inflation. She and her husband run the Nicollet Mart, a gas station and convenience store, and she said people have been struggling to pay for food. “What they’re concerned about is cost, the increase of gas prices, groceries and taxes,” Schwartz said in a short interview in early September.
The University of Minnesota has postponed a scheduled Tuesday night lecture from infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci after pro-Palestinian protests that included some protesters barricading Morrill Hall the day before.
On Monday night, several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters gathered at the building, which houses the Minneapolis campus’ administrative offices, as Students for a Democratic Society used tied-up patio furniture to form giant barricades blocking the building’s large front windows and its entrances. The protesters demanded the U divest from companies with ties to Israel. At least 11 of the protesters were arrested.
The university decided to postpone Fauci’s lecture set for Tuesday night because of “unexpected and complicated incidents” over the past day, university spokesman Jake Rickersaid in an email.
“Given the importance of this lecture and the unexpected and complicated incidents that occurred on campus in the past 24 hours, University officials determined it best to reschedule to ensure a great experience for attendees and our University community,” Ricker said.
All tickets for the lecture will be voided and information about the rescheduled date will be posted later, the university said in an online post about the postponement. Pre-paid parking will be automatically refunded, the university added.
Additional pro-Palestinian protests took place Tuesday afternoon at the university in front of Coffman Memorial Union. The protests prompted university officials to temporarily close down at least a dozen buildings in a Tuesday alert. Those included: Coffman Union, Weisman Museum, Hasselmo Hall, Ford Hall, Vincent Murphy Hall, Tate Lab, Morrill Hall, Northrop Auditorium, Johnston Hall, Walter Library, Smith Hall, and Kolthoff Hall. All other East Bank campus buildings were switched to keycard access only, according to the alert.
An anti-Fauci rally had also been planned by conservative group Action 4 Liberty to coincide with the lecture at the university, but that was moved after the lecture was canceled.
