Twin Cities housing sales tax slow to deliver help

A Twin Cities sales tax dedicated to helping house people has raised more than $400 million, but the money has been slow to arrive for the growing number of Minnesotans struggling to find an affordable place to live. Few families have gotten housing with state rental assistance vouchers and the construction of new affordable units largely remains years away. The guidelines for how cities and counties can use part of the money are loose. Some are using it for condo rehab, radon mitigation and “front yard fix-ups” rather than building new homes or apartments. And officials are backing off their goal of giving rent vouchers to more than 5,000 families across the state, saying rising rents mean the money won’t stretch as far. The sales tax was just one of many new housing programs created three years ago when state lawmakers passed a historic $1 billion housing package. But the slow start, particularly for rental assistance, has frustrated some who championed the dollars. Advertisement The state’s careful rollout of the voucher program, and renters’ struggle to find landlords willing to accept them, mean only a fraction of the anticipated vouchers have been used. “We want to see them get out and start to make a difference,” said Rep. Michael Howard, DFL-Richfield, who sponsored the 2023 housing sales tax increase and pushed to expand it this year. “The notion of hundreds, and soon thousands, of vouchers being able to be deployed is going to be absolutely life-changing for families across the metro.” The largest recipient of the voucher funds, the Metropolitan Council Housing and Redevelopment Authority, got $30 million from the state earlier this year. So far, they have housed eight families. The organization, which serves wide swaths of Hennepin, Ramsey, Anoka and Carver counties, hopes to eventually support roughly 900 households.