Tuesday, January 28 

Senate Housing and Homeless Prevention Committee – The Committee held a hearing to hear from advocacy groups on the state of housing.  Multiple groups presented, including the Coalition for Greater Minnesota Cities, and housing costs and development drivers were a prevalent topic of conversation. As part of this conversation, CGMC Lobbyist Elizabeth Wefel testified before the Committee about the unique housing challenges that cities in Greater Minnesota face. Her major point for lawmakers was that Greater Minnesota communities face a significant gap between housing construction costs and what residents can afford in both rental and homeownership housing. This challenge is an ongoing market failure, and CGMC and GMNP have advocated for a number of programs focused on closing this gap. Elizabeth also raised concerns about the slow rollout of these programs by Minnesota Housing, a point of ongoing frustration for both the CGMC and GMNP.  I briefly joined Elizabeth at the hearing table to echo her concerns. Finally, Elizabeth raised CGMC and GMNP's ongoing concerns about the “missing middle” bill from last year, arguing that it wouldn’t solve Greater Minnesota’s housing challenges but could create more barriers or add additional costs and delays to the housing development process.   

Wednesday, January 29 

Senate Committee on Jobs and Economic Development – State Demographer Presentation, DEED Overview Presentation. The Committee dug into the State Demographer’s Presentation with multiple questions about the state’s in- and out-migration patterns. The State Demographer shared more detail the drivers of population changes.  You can review the presentation provided here. WCCO also ran a story about this report and hearing entitled “More Young People Moving Away from Minnesota Than Coming: Impacting Workforce” which you can read/watch here.  

 

DEED also provided a Legislative Update to the Committee.  You can review the presentation here: DEED 2025 Legislative Updates_ Senate Jobs.  During the hearing, members expressed their interest in additional hearings providing better information on the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program as well as the Paid Leave (PL) program.  Senator Pratt raised a number of questions about the balance in the UI program.  Republicans also asked additional questions about the PL program roll out and staffing updates. Agency staff shared that key PL staff have been hired and their work is underway.   

Senate Housing and Homeless Prevention Committee  

The Committee heard a number of landlord tenant bills and then heard SF 0536 (Lucero) which would exempt residential housing construction materials from state sales taxes. Senator Lucero shared his goal for this bill, which is to decrease the costs of home construction by exempting materials and supplies from sales taxes to incentivize the construction of new homes. Mark Forster from Housing First testified in support of this bill. He shared that one of his developers estimated that this bill would lead to the potential cost savings of $9 – 10K per standard rambler.  Multiple DFL members raised concerns about the bill disproportionally benefiting luxury home development and that it didn’t include a mechanism to deliver cost savings to the homebuyer. The bill author and Senator Draheim pushed back against these concerns.    

The House and Senate agreed to the following Legislative Breaks:   

• Eid Break - March 29 – March 31 with Committee activities resuming on April 1, 2025.  

• Easter/Passover break – April 11 at 12pm – April 21 at 12pm 

Typically, we would also have committee deadlines to share with you but with the House yet to move forward, leadership have not yet agreed to those deadlines.