Too many families in Minnesota are having difficulty affording a place to live. According to a recent State of the State Housing report, median rent increased by 8% over the previous 12 months.
“Housing is a basic human need, everyone needs a place to lay their head at night,” stated Anne Mavity, executive director of the Minnesota Housing Partnership.
Half of all renting households pay more for housing than they can afford, according to the survey. Additionally, it revealed an 8% increase in evictions from the prior year. This just serves to increase the alarming figure of the nearly 20,000 Minnesotans who experience homelessness every night.
“Across Minnesota we are actually 114,000 units short that are available and affordable to our lowest income community members,” Mavity stated.
According to Mavity, affordable housing should not exceed thirty percent of your household income.
“For the folks who are serving us our coffee in the morning for the folks who are taking care of our kids taking care of my mom right now those essential jobs don’t pay enough to afford an average two-bedroom apartment,” Mavity stated.
She claims that although the state’s housing system is malfunctioning and being fixed, it is not their fault.
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“There is a broad spectrum of need and people who are looking for housing and sometimes that supportive housing and you need case management you need support for addiction and sometimes we just need affordable units,” the Executive Director of the PERIS Foundation Carla Godwin stated.
Anishinaabe Apartments and Lydia Apartment are two instances of how groups are attempting to address the issue.
“The price to build in terms of development is often standing in the way and so we have public and private partners trying to figure out the way forward in those types of situations and try to figure out how to get enough units built, ” Godwin said.
