Jordan Fontenello (DFL)

Minnesota Votes for Housing 2020

Candidate responses in italics.

Name: Jordan Fontenello

City/Town: Preston

Legislative District: 28B

Party: DFL

1: A national poll in May 2020 found that 78% of the public believes our elected leaders are not putting enough attention on people’s need for help to pay for their housing during the coronavirus outbreak. What do you believe is the role of government in ensuring everyone has access to housing?

I believe that the government has the responsibility of unobtrusively watching over its citizens, helping them when the need is present, and assisting in providing the eight basic necessities of daily existence in this post-industrial society we live in. Those eight necessities are: Food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education, a job, communication, transportation. The government should act as the distributor of resources while the industries act as the suppliers.

2: In Minnesota, 80 of 87 counties do not have the capacity to provide sufficient shelter or temporary housing to those who are homeless. Nationally, a study of US cities found that 25 percent of all requests for emergency shelter went unmet. What will you do to end homelessness?

Homelessness is not a one-shot deal that implementing one single piece of legislation or policy will solve. It is a multi-faceted problem that can include employment situation, cost of living, medical difficulties, family/marital problems, substance abuse issues, criminal record/activities, ethnicity, age, sex, religious affiliation, etc. Fixing homelessness will thus require a similar multi-faceted approach to fixing it. Looking at jobs, housing, pay, rent/mortgage costs, systemic ethnic discrimination (along with all other forms of discrimination), transportation, education, healthcare. Our society is so integrated that you CANNOT fix only one thing, you've got to fix ALL of them simultaneously. It can be done, but it'll take a lot of work by a lot of intelligent, dedicated people who go out and interact with, listen to, and live in the areas that they represent.

3: According to the Census Bureau's July 22 Household Pulse Survey for Minnesota, and Stout’s analysis of this data, there are 132,000 potential eviction filings over the next 4 months in Minnesota. Over 90% of evictions in Minnesota are for non-payment of rent. What will you do to prevent evictions?

Put an absolute moratorium on evictions. People need a place to call 'home', even it isn't the White House. Removing the shelter from the eight basic necessities immediately makes the acquisition of the other seven nigh near impossible. What's the first thing you do when you're lost in the Alaskan wilderness? -- find shelter. Then food. Money is the issue here, period. Our economic reality is based on the endless search and destroy mission of gaining more dollar bills. If we could acknowledge that this is the base problem, then we can move on and devise an entirely new system of work, reward, and moving up towards the top of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs to the pinnacle, where all human beings are motivated to better themselves and their society for the sole purpose of a better life and a better world. We've got to keep people in their homes.

4: Being denied where to live because of race, family status, or disability is discrimination. In Minnesota, 53% more whites are homeowners than Black residents, a statistic that dwarfs the national racial homeownership gap of 30%. What meaningful steps will you take to address the root problems of racial disparities in housing?

First of all, remove any and all reference to age, sex, ethnicity, religion, or any other discriminatory question on all government forms. Asking these questions immediately allows for the profiling and pigeon-holing of entire categories of individuals. A number identifier only when filling out forms. After that, empowering panels of qualified people to determine which request to fill first, then go from there. This panel will also have the power to lay charges at the feet of those who purposefully and willfully try to evade or get around the fair housing rules, including fines, bankruptcy of their business and selling it to someone who will follow the law, jail time. Enforcing the laws EQUALLY is absolutely necessary if there are rules to be put in place at all. Ensure that those who require assistance are given priority in selection before those who have more resources available.

5: Our housing crisis includes a lack of safe, stable homes in Minnesota. The 2018 Minnesota Task Force on Housing identified a need for 300,000 new ownership and rental homes over the next decade. While there are 180,000 Minnesota renters with incomes at 30% area median income, only 100 units affordable to these families are produced each year. What steps will you take to support Minnesotans’ access to homes, especially for under resourced households?

Begin programs just like were in put in place by FDR to solve the Great Depression: Building of infrastructure, building of homes, of roads, of communication lines, of power production, and all the other necessary pieces that make the entirety of our day-to-day lives possible. Negotiate with all available construction companies to get the job done. Inspection of the building process must be a continuous process to ensure that corners are not cut just because the housing units are being build en masse and for low-income individuals. High and fair standards must be rigorously enforced, with the same penalties provided to those individuals who wantonly disregard the law as was stated previously in this questionnaire. Adherence to standards of construction must be maintained. Everyone needs a place to live. We can make this happen if we put our collective will to the task. Granted, there is a shortage of available workers in the construction industry, so this will also need to be addressed at the education level and even the re-training of unemployed people to new skills. But we cannot continue to set aside poor people, homeless people, people with disabilities and or mental or substance abuse issues. Every single person deserves a place to call home so they can work towards improving themselves and their community.

6: More than ever, the public understands the connection between housing and health, as well as education, transportation, and more. What housing-based strategy would you use to improve health outcomes for Minnesotans?

Working with all sectors of the economy in order to produce real neighborhoods, real communities, where the necessary resources exist for everyone to thrive in a particular area so that people don't have to drive distances to get milk or go the doctor or school or to a park. Integration of all necessary segments of a society should be made a goal of city planners and developers, regardless of the size of the city. Smaller towns of a few thousand people should also have the same goals in mind of having available businesses and needs within a reasonable distance of any given person. Work with the huge retailers to build housing for their employees at the same time that they are building a new store. Ask such businesses to work with their employees to contract for a home nearby their workplace that they can pay for as they are working with the caveat that they must work for the employer a minimum of (x) number of years in order to qualify for the lower-rate or lower-cost housing. Work with large hospitals to provide small satellite clinics to people who live far from a big city or metropolitan area. Make it mandatory that these huge profit-based hospitals provide services in more rural areas for residents or their taxes will increase dramatically. It's all about the money, so make it financially necessary for these companies to comply with the service-provisions of their getting tax deferments for their buildings and land.

7: Over 188,000 Minnesota renter households between the ages of 25 and 44 are income-qualified to purchase a home but continue to rent, including 64,000 households of color. What steps will you take to increase opportunities for renters to purchase homes, condos, or cooperative ownership models, if they choose?

First, find out how many of those individuals want to live in/own a single-family home. Not everyone wants to rent, and not everyone wants to own. Finding out that information will be the necessary first step. The entire market for housing, as with many other markets, needs to have the monetary inequities equalized. Housing in a city simply costs too much for people to reasonably afford. Lower the price of rent/buying of homes/apartments. The government will have to step in and provide the necessary legal action in order to flatten the cost curve of dwellings by altering the prices for raw materials, labor, utilities, land, and all other connected things. Just as I replied to a previous question, the entire system of our existence is integrated with all other parts; you cannot simply try to fix or implement solutions to one thing without providing fixes for all the other things that are attached to it because those things need their own fixes in order to make the whole equation an actual equation and not an inequality. Also, as mentioned earlier, ensuring that those people whose needs are greatest are met first is always going to be a priority regardless of the program or policy that is being implemented.

8: Including community recommendations when developing policies and programs is a best practice for effective and lasting solutions. How will you include those impacted by housing needs in developing and implementing housing solutions?

Well, this seems to be to be an obvious solution: Include them in the planning, meetings, and implementation of the programs and policies. I work at Walmart, and have for coming on 19 years. The company is notorious for coming up with 'solutions' and 'new things' that didn't need to be implemented in the first place, and even when sometimes a new way of doing things was actually needed, no one came to the stores to ask questions, to find out from the workers themselves who deal with the programs and issues every day, what exactly needs to be fixed or changed -- the people at the top simply come up with 'things' out of whole cloth and then send them to the stores saying 'Do These New Things Without Question'. That just ends up messing things up and pissing people off. Getting the input from those impacted by any proposed changes is absolutely necessary in order to keep problems to a minimum. Virtually no plan or program that is implemented will be perfect the first time, but not investigating the source material first is a huge and unacceptable mistake that only ends up causing strife and more problems down the line. It's easier to fix the small problems that may remain instead of having to completely re-invent the wheel every time just because someone who gets paid a hell of a lot more than (you) decides to magically come up with some new thing or policy or procedure or program.

Jordan Fontenello (DFL)

Policy

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