Counterpoint: Don't discount the role of state investment in affordable housing
June 29, 2018
Bonding money has helped thousands get homes across Minnesota when other options don't exist.
“I watched this place be built and I remember praying and praying to get in. This was my last hope.”
Although Katie earned a paycheck, she couldn’t afford rent anywhere in Rochester. She shuffled her three children from shelter to shelter, guilt-ridden by the impact that instability had on her young kids. “It was really overwhelming,” she says. But she had no other options.
Katie and her kids are the faces of Minnesota’s growing housing crisis. Rising rents, stagnant wages and soaring housing costs mean more than 580,000 Minnesota households pay more than they can afford for housing, pushing them to the brink of homelessness. Since 2000, the number of cost-burdened families has increased 60 percent, and it’s a weight on the education, economy and strength of communities statewide. For Katie, her last hope to lift that burden was Gage East apartments — a rental complex in Rochester built with the assistance of state bonds.