Why I'm Voting No

It's Election Day tomorrow. I hope you're voting (or have already voted), most of all. I'm happy to talk to you about why I am making the choices for mayor and school board that I am.

But this post is why I'm voting no on the "rent stabilization" ordinance, despite the fact that affordable housing is extremely important to me, and is the reason I got into historic preservation as a community planning tool in the first place years ago.

Yes, I'm a landlord, so you would assume that we might have an incentive to vote "no." One reason we have the properties that we have is so that we are able to help people out by renting at below-market rents. I understand that this is not the usual business model, and that maybe we are the *only* ones in the city of Saint Paul who do that. But it means that, as it stands, should something happen to our current tenants or with the properties, we could raise our rents somewhere between $12-30 a month. This is not sustainable.

I'm voting no because, even if there are other landlords not quite like us, there are a lot of small landlords in town that rent only a couple of units. These people often do not raise rents year to year, but bring the rents up to market when there's a vacancy, and they will no longer be able to do that. This kind of small-scale rental is the most naturally occurring affordable housing that we have in the city, and the ordinance would significantly decrease or eliminate it.

I'm voting no because the larger but not huge landlords, who own up to 100 units, are already bailing because of this (the Skally family, one of the most respected landlords in my area have already sold all their buildings and their tax service). 

I'm voting no because I think if this passes, many landlords will raise rent extremely in the next 5 months until it goes into effect, and then be sure to raise rents 3% annually, which will result in rents in the next few years going up precipitously more in the next few years.

I'm voting no because property taxes are increasing 11% next year, and a 3% increase does not keep up with that. Our taxes on the house my father-in-law is in have already tripled since we bought the house.

I'm voting no because the ordinance makes no exception for improvements, unless for code compliance. That means, if I wanted to replace kitchen appliances between tenants, and they lasted a standard 10 years, I would NEVER make that money up with a 3% increase, even if all other costs stayed flat. It's an incentive for landlords to defer maintenance until it gets to be a serious code issue.

I'm voting no because there's no clear answer if this applies to things like student dorms, sober houses,  and senior housing.

I'm voting no because the potential effect on  new construction seems huge, which others have gone into in depth (Ryan Companies announced today it would strongly affect Highland Bridge). I'm not always Bill Lindeke's biggest fan, but if you google his articles on it they are clear and well-written and address an area that is decidedly not my wheelhouse well.

I'm voting no because the ordinance is not clear at all about how the city will deal with appeals from landlords for higher increases. There's no such current office to do it, and such an office would likely be expensive and difficult to run and be flooded with requests from landlords and unable to keep up in a timely manner. It's an unfunded mandate.

I'm voting no because, despite Mayor Carter saying it could be "tweaked," from what I can tell the ordinance could not be changed substantially for a year, and there are too many unanswered questions. The majority of the city council, by the way, is also voting no.

And it's not just me. Naomi Kritzer, who is one of the smartest people I know on election issues, also advocates voting no.

But I AM in support of affordable housing. So if this isn't right, what SHOULD we be doing?

- We as a city need to re-assess what "affordable" means. If a "livable" wage is assumed to be $15/hour, which is $31,200/year. 30% of that is $9,360 a year, or $780 a month. I would propose that the first thing we should be doing is be focusing on dramatically increasing our housing that fits in this range. The current schedule (30% of 60% of AMI for the metro area) is just not applicable.

- One we have done that, we should require a certain number of affordable units in any large developments, for the entire lifetime of the project.

- We should be enhancing the already-existing city program that reduces property taxes in exchange for a 10-year commitment to low rents and a maximum 3% increase. In the past few years, that program has only been sporadically open for short periods of time in the year.

- We should require area colleges and universities to increase their on-campus housing requirements, freeing up rental housing (often larger, more family-friendly places) to be naturally occurring,  affordable family rentals.