While touting progress on violent crime and access to inexpensive housing, the mayors of St. Paul and Minneapolis on Tuesday called for his or her state and suburban counterparts to do more to forestall homelessness in the primary place.
St. Paul’s Melvin Carter and Minneapolis’ Jacob Frey said most of the residents they meet in homeless encampments in or near downtown didn’t grow up in either city. Communities across the state effectively have “exported” their housing crisis to the state’s two largest cities, the elected leaders during a “Breakfast with the Mayors” event jointly hosted by the St. Paul Area Chamber and Minneapolis Regional Chamber.
“House is a right. Housing is a right,” added Frey, who has come under criticism for dismantling homeless encampments like “Camp Nenookaasi” in the town’s Ventura Village area. “That right shouldn’t be presently available for everybody.”
Carter noted that homelessness is also a growing concern in nearby Dakota County, yet within the face of public pressure, the Dakota County Board of Commissioners recently modified course and opted not to use for a $10 million state grant to deal with the homeless on the Norwood Inn and Suites, a 118-room hotel in Eagan.
“Lower than half of the oldsters I confer with in homeless encampments say they grew up in St. Paul,” Carter said, and when suburban lawmakers turn a blind eye towards homelessness of their midst, “you’re just exporting it.”
Pointing to drug addiction’s influence on housing instability, Frey called for a state-funded, regional approach that features a care facility with “full scale wrap-around service” to treat fentanyl addicts through “culturally sensitive” means.
The Minneapolis mayor said inexpensive housing production has increased six-fold in his city since he took office in January 2018, yet there isn’t any way that Minneapolis and St. Paul can construct their way out of the homeless crisis evident in each downtowns. “To do that right it must be a statewide, regional solution,” Frey said. “Every considered one of us needs to be demanding that.”
Frey said recent data shows crime has fallen in Minneapolis “in almost each category” but easy accessibility to guns still makes violent crimes too prevalent. “We still have loads more work to do.”
St. Paul, which averaged 17 homicides per 12 months between 2010 and 2018, saw its homicide numbers climb starting in 2019. The number peaked at 40 homicides in 2022 and fell to 32 last 12 months.
Frey said that in light of legal challenges to the “Minneapolis 2040″ comprehensive plan, the town is asking state lawmakers for explicit authority to remove single-family zoning as an obstacle toward greater housing density in neighborhoods citywide.
“We’re moving to eliminate single-family zoning, as well,” said Carter, emphasizing that loosening zoning restrictions doesn’t stop a developer from constructing single-family homes.
Within the eyes of critics, “that’s ‘latest, that’s strange, that’s different,’” Carter added. “The one thing that individuals hate greater than the establishment is any change in any respect.”