Senator Tina Smith Talks Housing

DULUTH, Minn. — Minnesota Senator Tina Smith held a hearing this week on the lack of housing nationwide and ways the housing situation could be improved. Smith is the Chair of the Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development. She says the housing shortage is not a new issue, it’s been happening and growing for the past 30 years.

Smith said, “I learned that we have fewer houses for sale or for rent than we’ve had in the last 30 years. Just in Minnesota, that’s a 95,000 home gap between the demand and the supply in housing.”

Smith says right now it’s too hard, too complicated, and too expensive to build new properties. Smith said there are a number of reasons for the shortage, but there are ways to address the problem and pointed to Duluth as an example.

“The innovations that are happening at the local level to make it easier and less expensive and complicated to build homes and there’s a great example in Duluth with the Fairmont (Cottages) project,” said Smith. “Projects like that are most cost-effective because of the way they use land. The zoning laws in Duluth are allowing for that kind of project to happen now, and are good examples of what we need to be doing more of.”

Smith also talked about the need for people to consider modular housing. That is when the home is actually built off-site and brought to the property. Smith says these modular houses cost about 20 percent less and take half the time to build.