St Paul Mayor Wants To Modify Rent Control

St Paul Mayor Melvin Carter may be changing his mind about rent control.

You may remember it was Carter, whose last-minute endorsement of the rent control proposal helped the measure get passed.

It seems the marked slowdown in housing and multiunit construction, has the mayor worried. So much so that he wants rent control restrictions to be applicable only for properties built before 2005.  Properties constructed after that would not be subject to rent control.

Carter told the St Paul Pioneer Press, “The underlying economics of maintaining a 50-year-old building are fundamentally different than maintaining a new one.”

The mayor has clearly never owned a rental property. The cost to replace a roof is the same on an older building as it is on a newer one. So too are insurance premiums.

Carter also cites higher mortgage interest rates as a contributing factor to the slowdown.

Of course, St Paul City Council members pushed back almost immediately. Council Member HwaJeong Kim quickly stated her opposition, while Council Member Rebecca Noecker basically asked for proof the slowdown was a result of rent control.

The city councils of both Minneapolis and St Paul were warned by multifamily property owners and members of the multifamily housing industry of the chilling effect rent control would have on not only development, but the care and maintenance of existing properties as well.

They were also directed to studies by prominent universities and the Brookings Institute that found rent control had proven to be an utter disaster in every U.S. community where it had been implemented.