ST. PAUL — The Minnesota House passed its housing omnibus budget bill in a 106-25 vote on Tuesday, April 29, increasing spending by $75 million with a total appropriation of $319 million.
The bill, , makes a $75 million one-time investment for 2026-27 — a drop-off from the last budget-passing session in 2023, when the Minnesota Legislature made a in housing.
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Co-Chair of the Housing Finance and Policy Committee Rep. Michael Howard, DFL-Richfield, said before the floor vote Tuesday that he’s proud of what the House was able to come up with under a tight budget and a tied House, but that it's not “nearly enough.”
“This last session was the first year, really ever, we made really significant investments at that $1 billion level,” Howard said. “In the context of our current budget, you know, having a $75 million target … I mean, there’s a lot of really good, tangible things that we can do at that $75 million level, but it is not nearly enough compared with the need across the state.”
This session’s February budget forecast showed state lawmakers would be working with a $456 million budget surplus and a looming to consider. Lawmakers are looking to craft a roughly The 2023 budget, when Minnesota was working with an , marked the state’s largest in history, — a jump from the previous $52 billion budget.
The House’s budget target for a $75 million increase is higher than the Senate’s proposed $3 million increase in . The House’s total housing appropriations from the general fund — including debt service — come to , compared to the .
Among the $319 million investments are: $100 million in housing infrastructure bonds; $31 million for the Family Homeless Prevention and Assistance Program, aiding roughly 8,500 renters and homeowners, according to Anna Mavity with Minnesota Housing Partnership; and $10 million for the Greater Minnesota Workforce Development Program.
The House also passed its omnibus Housing policy bill Wednesday, , in a 109-22 vote. Rep. Jim Nash, R-Waconia, said during the floor debate Tuesday for the housing finance bill that the housing bills needed to go further.
Nash said Minnesota’s “main barrier” is the need for more “regulatory reforms” like aesthetic mandates and density reform. Earlier this session, Nash was part of a bipartisan coalition pushing the “Yes to Homes” bill package — a slew of zoning reforms to allow for more multi-family housing, among other housing policy reforms.
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“A lot of the regulatory reform is being conducted in blue states and red states alike, quite successfully,” Nash said. “Something has to get done, and funding isn’t the only way out of it.”
Howard said that in one of the funding allocations — $20 million for Greater Minnesota Housing Infrastructure Grants — there’s language in Section 3 of the bill that is meant to “incentivize” cities that want the grants to build multi-family homes like townhomes and duplexes.
“We’re still pushing this year to move the needle as far as we can,” Howard said before the floor vote Tuesday. “Cities and their city groups and their lobbyist organizations have been fundamentally opposed to anything that usurps their sort of local control.”
Minnesota has a shortage of for low-income renters, and $56,728 is the annual household income needed to afford a two-bedroom rental home, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates.
In 2018, the Minnesota Task Force on Housing estimated that Minnesota would require an additional .
“Every year we don’t take bold action on housing is another year that we … dig a deeper hole,” Howard said before the floor vote Tuesday.
The House has the largest housing spending increase target, while Gov. Tim Walz has proposed a $1.4 million reduction in housing spending. The Senate, House and Walz will meet in the coming weeks in conference committees to hash out their differences in spending targets before the session wraps on May 19.
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The Trust Project
