City/Town: Eden Prairie

Legislative District: Senate District 49

Party: Independent

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?

Eliminating housing inequities requires pragmatic, market-driven policy that expands housing supply, cuts regulatory overhead, and opens clear pathways to homeownership for all Minnesotans.

Key priorities include:

Regulatory Reform & Zoning Flexibility: Streamline local permitting processes and eliminate outdated zoning restrictions that artificially limit housing inventory. Analysis from The Pew Charitable Trusts demonstrates that expanding missing-middle housing options and reducing mandatory parking minimums helps stabilize rent costs and encourages diverse development.

Expanding Workforce & Accessible Housing: Partner with local builders and non-profits to incentivize mixed-income developments, accessible single-story options for seniors and individuals with disabilities, and transit-connected housing near major employment hubs.

Targeted Homeownership Programs: Expand access to transparent, audited down-payment assistance and financial literacy initiatives—such as first-time buyer assistance through state-backed Minnesota Housing Programs—to help historically underserved families build long-term generational wealth.

Cutting Construction Overhead: Reduce burdensome state and local fees that add tens of thousands of dollars to new construction, making starter homes affordable for working families again.

Housing stability is the foundation of economic opportunity. State policy must focus on expanding market capacity, protecting taxpayers, and ensuring every Minnesotan has access to safe, affordable, and high-quality housing.

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?

Supportive housing is a cost-effective, compassionate strategy that breaks the cycle of chronic homelessness while protecting taxpayer dollars by reducing emergency room visits, shelter overcrowding, and public safety expenses. To ensure unhoused and unstably housed Minnesotans receive effective, long-term support, state policy must focus on four pragmatic legislative priorities:Expand Wraparound Care: Support targeted state investments through HB101 Minnesota Housing Support to pair stable, affordable shelter with essential on-site services, including mental health care, addiction recovery, and job placement assistance.Prioritize Early Prevention: Strengthen intervention resources like the Minnesota Housing FHPAP Grants to deliver targeted, short-term financial assistance before families face eviction or homelessness.Coordinate Regional Partnerships: Streamline county and non-profit integration across Hennepin County Housing Services to simplify navigation for individuals seeking housing stability through coordinated entry systems.Enforce Outcome-Based Accountability: Institute line-by-line audits and clear performance metrics for state housing grants to guarantee taxpayer dollars directly reach frontline service providers and deliver verifiable outcomes.Addressing homelessness requires moving beyond temporary emergency measures to sustainable, evidence-based solutions that foster personal independence, community dignity, and long-term economic self-sufficiency.

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?

Increasing homeownership opportunities requires market-driven solutions that lower development costs, expand starter home inventory, and help working Minnesotans build generational wealth.Key legislative priorities include:Lowering Development Overhead: Streamline local land-use regulations and eliminate outdated zoning restrictions—like excessive minimum lot sizes—to encourage starter home, condo, and cooperative construction.Targeted Down-Payment Assistance: Support proven, audited programs like Minnesota Housing Homebuyer Programs and county initiatives like the Hennepin County Homebuyer Assistance Program that give qualified first-time buyers a bridge to ownership without inflating overall market prices. Property Tax Relief: Keep local property taxes manageable through fiscal discipline at the state level so working families and seniors aren’t priced out of their homes by rising carrying costs.Supporting Alternative Ownership Models: Modernize statutory frameworks to facilitate cooperative housing and limited-equity housing models, providing accessible entry points for renters transitioning to equity-building ownership.

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?

Modernizing Minnesota’s zoning frameworks is essential to lowering construction costs, expanding middle-income housing, and expanding local commercial tax bases.

I support market-driven land-use reforms that cut red tape while preserving local community standards:

Commercial Corridor Rezoning: Allow flexible, mixed-use commercial development—permitting multi-family units and upper-story apartments in existing commercial districts. This revitalizes aging strip malls, boosts municipal tax revenues through higher property values per acre, and integrates housing near transit and job centers.

Eliminating Costly Parking Mandates: Streamline or eliminate rigid parking minimums for new developments. Parking construction can add tens of thousands of dollars per unit; removing blanket mandates lowers overall building costs, encourages infill development, and lets consumer demand drive parking capacity.

Legalizing “Missing Middle” Housing: Modernize statutory guidelines to allow duplexes, triplexes, and Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) in residential zones where infrastructure already exists. As seen in data from The Pew Charitable Trusts, expanding missing-middle housing increases overall market capacity and helps stabilize regional rent growth.

Lot-Size and Bulk-Rule Flexibility: Reduce excessive lot-size minimums and administrative setback rules that artificially constrain home builders. Smaller lot options enable starter home construction, lower land overhead per unit, and create more accessible price points for first-time buyers.

By giving private property owners and local builders greater flexibility, Minnesota can naturally expand housing availability, improve municipal infrastructure efficiency, and strengthen local business corridors without relying on heavy-handed mandates or taxpayer subsidies.

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?

Addressing Minnesota’s housing needs requires fiscal restraint and accountability, not creating broad sales tax increases that raise living costs for everyday families.I oppose adding a constitutional amendment for a statewide sales tax increase for housing. Sales taxes are regressive and directly inflate the cost of everyday necessities for working Minnesotans, families, and seniors living on fixed incomes—the very groups struggling most with affordability.Instead of raising taxes, state government should prioritize reliable funding through existing state revenues and market-driven solutions:Prioritize Core Budget Appropriations: Rather than treating housing as an afterthought, the Legislature should dedicate a consistent, baseline portion of existing general fund revenues—and surplus funds—directly toward proven housing stabilization, emergency shelter, and infrastructure programs.Reallocate Wasteful Government Spending: Conduct line-by-line audits across state agencies to redirect underperforming state grants and administrative overhead toward high-impact housing programs.Expand the Private Tax Base Through Growth: Simplify local permitting, update zoning rules, and cut unnecessary construction regulations to make building starter homes and multi-family units more affordable. Expanding market inventory naturally grows the local property tax base for cities without burdening consumers with higher sales taxes.Targeted General Obligation Bonding: Utilize traditional state bonding bills for infrastructure and capital projects—such as infrastructure support for affordable developments and permanent supportive housing—ensuring legislative oversight and transparency. Sustainable housing solutions must come from fiscal discipline, economic growth, and regulatory reform—not permanent tax hikes on Minnesota consumers.

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

In addition to statewide reforms, my priority for District 49 focuses on suburban workforce stability, senior aging-in-place options, and transit-connected commercial growth:Suburban Senior & Shared-Housing Options: Support local initiatives like the Eden Prairie Housing Alliance Home Sharing model—matching local seniors with extra space to adults needing affordable rentals—allowing long-time residents to age in place safely while expanding low-cost inventory without taxpayers subsidizing new construction. Transit-Oriented Development Around Light Rail: Optimize commercial corridors near Southwest LRT transit hubs. Encouraging multi-family, mixed-income developments along major transit routes ensures local retail and service workers can live near employment opportunities while driving local economic density.Commercial Adaptive Reuse: Streamline state environmental review and local building codes to help property owners convert underutilized commercial, retail, and office spaces into modern multi-family housing units.Protecting Infrastructure & Property Values: Ensure state bonding supports local infrastructure—such as water treatment and road upgrades—so suburban communities like SD49 can handle smart growth while preserving established neighborhoods, green spaces, and property values.