City/Town: St. Paul

Legislative District: Senate District 65

Party: Republican Party of Minnesota

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

Rocco for State Senate — Housing
Housing gets better when we build it and when we stop making it illegal or unaffordable to live here. “Inequity” language that only means more mandates, more agencies, and less local control will not put a roof on a family in SD 65. It will raise the rent on the family already in the duplex.

What I will do

Build. Speed permits for small infill, duplexes, and starter homes so regular contractors can play, not only downtown developers who can survive two years of process.

Stop taxing people out. Property taxes, tabs, and the state income-tax load get passed into rent. No new housing “investment” paid for by squeezing the bungalow that already exists.

Clean the housing programs. Housing Stabilization and related lines exploded, then got shut or raided for fraud. Yearly audit. If a vendor is kicked off for alleged fraud, they do not shop another housing grant until that conviction is overturned. Fake stabilization is not equity.

Rural and disabled access is capacity, not a slogan. Reciprocity and less paperwork for builders and for the clinicians who keep someone in their own home. A rule written for Minneapolis should not freeze a Greater Minnesota lot.

Safety is a housing policy. People do not move onto a block the state will not police. Let cops be cops.

Equal rules, more units, honest grants. That advances opportunity for every Minnesotan — including communities the question names — without a new racial spoils system.

Stop voting in the same people that placed us in this mess in the first place. If you have had enough too, stop voting blue no matter who, vote red instead, vote Rocco, and together we can make a better tomorrow.
www.RoccoForStateSenate.com

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?

Rocco for State Senate — Supportive housing
Supportive housing only works if there is a real unit and a real service in it. “Fiscally responsible” is not a press line on a program that billed Housing Stabilization into the stratosphere and then had to be shut for fraud. Dignity starts with a lock that turns and a vendor who can show the client was there.

What I will do

Pay for housing that exists. Money follows a person in a unit with a lease and a documented service — not a coordinator and an empty address.

Audit and lockout. Yearly review of supportive and stabilization grants. If a provider is kicked off for alleged fraud, they do not join another housing or human-services program until that conviction is overturned.

Keep the people who can stay housed. In-home help, addiction and mental-health care that has a wait measured in days not seasons, and kinship when a relative can take the household.

Rules in the building. Autonomy is not an open-air camp. Programs that will not enforce basic conduct dump the cost on the block and lose the neighbors who would have accepted the site.

Work and safety. A job and a street the cops still work are how someone keeps a home. Catch-and-release and sanctuary theater do not stabilize housing.

I will support supportive housing that can survive an audit. I will not expand a model that already taught Minnesota how to bill “home” and deliver a scandal.

Stop voting in the same people that placed us in this mess in the first place. If you have had enough too, stop voting blue no matter who, vote red instead, vote Rocco, and together we can make a better tomorrow.
www.RoccoForStateSenate.com

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?

Rocco for State Senate — Homeownership
A first home is how a family stays put. Minnesota priced that out with high purchase prices, insurance, property taxes, and a cost of government that leaks into every closing statement. A State Senator cannot set the Federal Reserve. I can fight the state costs that keep the payment high after the Fed moves.
What I will do

Cut the property-tax pressure. Stop dumping unfunded mandates and failed “housing” programs onto the local levy. Audit housing grants. Fraud lockout: kicked off for alleged fraud means no other program until the conviction is overturned. Every stolen housing dollar is a mill rate someone else pays.

Push the payment down where the state has a lever. Oppose new statewide taxes and tab schemes that raise household bills. Support policies that lower insurance risk — let cops be cops so carriers are not pricing carjacking and theft into the premium. That is how you ease the monthly nut without a fake “state interest rate.”

Build starter stock. Faster permits for modest homes, condos, and co-ops so first-time buyers are not bidding only on scarce inventory. Do not strip local control in the name of “affordability” and then tax the bungalow next door.
Renters into owners. Clear path, honest underwriting, no new layer of equity theater that only large nonprofits can navigate.

More units, lower state-driven cost, safer streets. That is how renters buy and owners keep the house.
Stop voting in the same people that placed us in this mess in the first place. If you have had enough too, stop voting blue no matter who, vote red instead, vote Rocco, and together we can make a better tomorrow.
www.RoccoForStateSenate.com

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?

Rocco for State Senate — Zoning
I was president of my HOA for five years. The lesson is simple: you cannot get 21 homeowners to agree on anything. Multifamily and fourplexes look clean on a white paper. On the block, most people still want the same thing — room for 2.5 kids, two cars, and a single-family house with a fence. I will not pretend St. Paul knows their backyard better than they do.

What I will support

Local call, not a statewide wipe. Cities that want smaller lots, a duplex, or an ADU should be able to allow them. The state should not force a fourplex onto every residential street to “modernize” a tax base. That is how you blow up the very neighborhoods that pay the levy.

Commercial corridors first. Multifamily on tired commercial strips can add units and sales tax without erasing a block of houses.

Honest parking. Limit mandates where transit actually exists. Do not delete parking on West 7th and then act shocked when the bakery dies. Two cars is not a moral failure.

Starter singles. Smaller homes on smaller lots — yes, if the city votes it. That is how first-time buyers get the picket fence instead of a theory.

Affordability comes from building what families will buy and from cutting property-tax pressure — not from a mandate that 21 neighbors already told you they will fight.

Stop voting in the same people that placed us in this mess in the first place. If you have had enough too, stop voting blue no matter who, vote red instead, vote Rocco, and together we can make a better tomorrow.
www.RoccoForStateSenate.com

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?

Rocco for State Senate — Housing “revenue”
I will not champion a sales-tax increase, and I will not lock a new tax into the constitution so a housing lobby never has to face voters again. Housing is the biggest household bill because we made houses scarce and government expensive — not because 0.3% of the state budget failed a branding test. Dedicating a higher sales tax to “affordable homes” is how you tax groceries and work boots to fund the next vendor who cannot survive an audit.
Revenue I will champion

The money we already collected. Yearly audit of housing and human-services grants. Housing Stabilization and related lines already showed what “reliable funding” looks like without integrity. Fraud lockout: kicked off for alleged fraud means no other program until the conviction is overturned. Recovered theft is housing money that does not require a new tax.

Growth, not a levy. Faster permits for starter homes and commercial-corridor apartments cities actually want. More taxable rooftops beat a statewide sales-tax raid.

Cut the cost that eats the mortgage. Property-tax pressure, tabs, and insurance risk from crime. Let cops be cops so the monthly nut falls.

A constitutional sales-tax amendment is a permanent raise dressed as compassion. I will vote no. Fund homes by building them and by stopping the leak — not by reaching into every cart in SD 65.

Stop voting in the same people that placed us in this mess in the first place. If you have had enough too, stop voting blue no matter who, vote red instead, vote Rocco, and together we can make a better tomorrow.
www.RoccoForStateSenate.com

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

Rocco for State Senate — District housing
SD 65 is West Seventh, West Saint Paul, and the households paying St. Paul and Dakota freight. They do not need a constitutional sales tax. They need a house they can keep and a street they can park on.
District priorities

Keep the single-family block livable. I ran an HOA for five years. Neighbors want kids, two cars, and a fence — not a fourplex mandate from St. Paul. Allow modest infill where the city asks for it. Do not erase the tax base by punishing the bungalow.

West 7th is housing policy. If reconstruction kills parking and lanes, storefronts die and the upstairs apartment is worth less. Rebuild for cars, customers, and a bus that shows up — not a five-year art project.
Crime and tabs are housing costs. Carjacking and soft charging price insurance. Tab-fee formulas and property levies price the first house. Let cops be cops. No new tax-and-tab habit.

Clean housing grants. Audit. Lock fraudsters off the next program until a conviction is overturned. Workforce and elders need units, not another stabilization mill.

Commute equals rent. Fix Lafayette / 94 West / 35E North. A 20 mph hairpin is a hidden housing tax on everyone who works on this side of the river.

Build what families will buy. Police the block. Stop using SD 65 as the ATM for someone else’s plan.
Stop voting in the same people that placed us in this mess in the first place. If you have had enough too, stop voting blue no matter who, vote red instead, vote Rocco, and together we can make a better tomorrow.
www.RoccoForStateSenate.com