City/Town: Dayton

Legislative District: House District 34A

Party: Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party

Candidate responses in italics.

Q1: Housing plays a critical role in economic stability, health, and quality of life for individuals and families. However, disparities in housing continue to affect communities of color, people with disabilities, rural communities, and other historically underserved populations. What meaningful actions should be taken to acknowledge, address, and eliminate housing inequities and advance housing opportunities for all Minnesotans

Every Minnesotan should have a fair opportunity to find a safe, stable home in a community where they can thrive. Addressing housing inequities requires both building more homes and making sure existing programs actually reach people who have historically faced barriers to renting and homeownership.

I support enforcing fair housing protections, expanding pathways to first-time homeownership, supporting accessible housing for people with disabilities and seniors, and investing in the infrastructure needed to build housing in communities where demand is growing. Just as importantly, policymakers need to listen to the people affected by these decisions. I would work with local governments, housing providers, builders, nonprofits, and residents themselves to make sure state housing policy responds to the different challenges facing communities across Minnesota.

Q2: Supportive housing combines affordable housing with support services that help people who face the most complex challenges to live with stability, autonomy, and dignity. Supportive housing provides better outcomes and is fiscally responsible. What will you do to ensure community members who are unhoused or unstably housed receive the support they need to obtain or keep their own homes?

Housing stability often requires more than simply providing someone with a roof. People experiencing homelessness may also need mental health care, substance-use treatment, employment assistance, disability services, or help navigating government programs. I support continued state investment in supportive housing and partnerships with local governments and nonprofit providers that combine housing with the services people need to remain successfully housed. As a prosecutor, I have seen how challenges involving housing, mental health, addiction, and the justice system can intersect. Stable housing makes it easier for people to obtain treatment, maintain employment, comply with supervision, and successfully reenter their communities. Investing in stability can improve both individual outcomes and public safety.

Q3: Homeownership is a way to build generational wealth, provide family and household stability, and support community vibrancy. More and more Minnesotans are priced out of owning a home because of rising housing costs, including purchase price, homeowners’ insurance, and property taxes. What steps will you take to increase opportunities for renters and first-time homebuyers to purchase homes, condos, or cooperative ownership models?

For too many working families, homeownership is moving further out of reach. The long-term solution has to include building more homes, particularly starter homes and housing options at different price points. I support reducing unnecessary barriers to new housing construction, investing in the roads, water, sewer, and other infrastructure needed to support new development, and expanding programs that help first-time buyers overcome the upfront cost of purchasing a home.

We should also encourage a wider range of ownership opportunities, including townhomes, condominiums, cooperatives, manufactured homes, and community land trusts. Not every family needs or can afford a large detached home, and our housing policies should reflect that. In a fast-growing district like ours, we need to plan ahead. If our children grow up here, get good jobs, and want to raise their own families here, they should have a realistic opportunity to do so.

Q4: In the last several years, bipartisan action to streamline building of new homes and apartments has passed in several states, including: allowing for multifamily buildings in select commercial areas, limiting parking requirements, allowing smaller homes on smaller lots, and more homes per lot in residential areas like duplexes, fourplexes, and accessory dwelling units. What reforms do you support to modernize zoning to both enable homes to be more affordable statewide and improve city tax bases?

I support practical zoning reforms that allow Minnesota to build more housing while preserving an important role for local communities in planning how they grow. That includes making it easier to build accessory dwelling units, duplexes, townhomes, smaller starter homes, and appropriately located multifamily housing. I also support examining excessive parking, lot-size, and other requirements that can unnecessarily increase the cost of building a home. Zoning reform also has to be paired with infrastructure investment. Telling a growing city to approve thousands of additional homes without helping it address roads, sewer capacity, water systems, schools, and public safety is not a sustainable solution. The state should establish reasonable expectations that communities allow enough housing to meet demand while giving cities flexibility in how they achieve those goals. I want state and local government working together to make housing easier and less expensive to build, not simply shifting costs or responsibilities from one level of government to another.

Q5: Despite housing being the largest cost in the average household budget, housing receives only a small fraction of the total state budget at just 0.3%. A lack of ongoing reliable funding for housing in Minnesota’s state budget has resulted in an undersupply of stable homes affordable to our workforce, our elders, and our families. In recent years, a constitutional amendment for housing, which would dedicate revenues from a sales tax increase to housing, has gained momentum at the legislature. What revenue options will you champion to more adequately meet our need for reliable funding for homes we can afford?

I would support reliable ongoing, dedicated revenue for housing, including the proposed constitutional amendment, but I would want to carefully evaluate the impact of increasing the sales tax on working families before committing to that approach. A sales tax is ultimately paid by the same families already struggling with the cost of groceries, housing, and other necessities. Whatever funding mechanism we choose, it should be predictable enough for communities and developers to plan projects years in advance, focused on actually producing and preserving homes, and accountable to taxpayers for measurable results. Housing cannot be something Minnesota funds heavily in one budget cycle and neglects in the next.

Q6: If you have other housing policy priorities, especially specific to your district’s housing needs, please share them here.

House District 34A is growing quickly, and our housing policy needs to keep pace. Champlin, Dayton, and Rogers need a diverse supply of housing so young families can buy their first homes, workers can live near their jobs, and seniors who want to downsize can remain in the communities they helped build. That means encouraging starter homes, townhomes, apartments, senior housing, and other options while investing in the infrastructure that makes responsible growth possible. Roads, water and sewer capacity, schools, parks, and public safety all have to be part of the conversation.

My goal is straightforward: people who work in our communities should be able to afford to live in them, and families who have built their lives here should be able to stay.