How a Federal Housing Bill Could Finally Push Minnesota’s Duplex-Friendly Act Over the Finish Line
If you heard Congress passed a housing bill, you may not know how it could indirectly help Minnesota build more duplexes.
The 21st Century Road to Housing Act not only reduced the number of single-family home rental properties institutional investors could own, but it aimed to streamline and eliminate some of the roadblocks that make it difficult for homes to be built in the first place.
The federal bill aims to encourage participation by offering incentives, not mandates.
That both sides of the aisle recognized and worked together to help address the nation’s housing shortage was a hopeful sign to Minnesota state legislators who’ve been trying to get a piece of legislation called the Minnesota Starter Home Act passed here.
Sponsored by Rep. Spencer Igo (R), Rep. Michael Howard (DFL) and Sen. Lindsey Port (DFL), The bill has gone through several versions over the past couple of legislative sessions; almost, but never passing. Its core idea is to make it easier to build the kind of housing that gets people onto the property ladder. That includes single-family homes, duplexes, townhomes, and accessory dwelling units (ADUs), as well as additional multifamily development along commercial corridors.
If passed in the legislature’s 2027 session, cities statewide would be required to:
- Allow duplexes as a permitted use in any residential zoning district.
- Permit ADUs statewide, including mother-in-law suites and backyard cottages, as a source of “invisible” density and rental income.
- Reduce minimum lot sizes for duplexes and single-family homes.
- Drop certain cosmetic design mandates like required porches, shutters, or oversized garages that add cost without increasing housing.
- Open up more commercially zoned land to multifamily. The most recent version dialed this back from 100% of commercial land in earlier drafts to 33%. This was a concession to city concerns about losing all commercial tax base.
To offset the objection that not every city in the state is the same, the bill gives larger cities a “menu” of 11 additional housing-production options to choose from. This includes things like eliminating minimum parking requirements or allowing 8-plexes in more places, and requires them to adopt a set number of menu items, depending on their size. Large cities would need to pick six, mid-sized cities four, smaller cities three.
Why hasn’t this legislation, that’s already made two trips through the state legislature passed?
The sticking point hasn’t been politics. It’s been local control. Cities have consistently worried that a one-size-fits-all zoning mandate ignores real differences between a first-ring suburb and a small town. The “menu” approach was a direct response to that pushback, trading blanket mandates for a set of choices cities can tailor to their own situation.
Neither of these laws changes anything about duplex zoning in the Twin Cities metro today. The Starter Home Act did not pass in 2026, and its authors are talking about 2027 as the next realistic opportunity. The federal ROAD to Housing Act is real and signed, but the degree to which it shapes city-level decisions in the metro and statewide is still an open question.
We’ll see what happens when the legislature reconvenes in January.