Expected to pass in the City Council next month, the Minneapolis 2040 plan intends to upzone nearly the entire city to tackle issues such as affordability, density, and climate change, according to Curbed’s Patrick Sisson. The large-scale plan will allow taller buildings, with more units, in areas that previously only housed single-family structures. In a country with many cities struggling with affordable housing, Sisson asks will Minneapolis become a national model?
Like the rest of the nation, Minneapolis faces an affordable housing crisis that is expected to get worse. More than half of the city’s residents rent, and half of those renters are cost-burdened. The city has added 83,000 households since 2010, while building just 64,000 new homes, and is expected to welcome another 233,000 households by 2040, according to its Metropolitan Council. With Minneapolis 2040, officials hope to head off the housing shortage, all while showing how land-use policy can address critical climate challenges and the city’s history of racial inequality.
Combined with a proposed $40 million investment in programs that support renters and combat homelessness planned for by recently elected Mayor Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis 2040 plan positions the city as one of the few in the U.S. proposing—and likely passing—a large-scale plan to tackle the pressing problems facing American cities.
“Affordable housing is a right,” Frey has tweeted. “Addressing our housing supply—and shortage—is going to be a key part of realizing that right.”
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