St. Paul Chapter - February Report

The St. Paul Chapter met February 20 to debrief the very successful legislative breakfast, receive and review the legislative binder for this year, and plan for the coming months.

On March 19, we will hold an advocacy training for the chapter, with Matt Traynor, MN Homeless Coalition. Members will be inviting others from their congregations to attend. The training will cover city council and the state legislature and focus on tenant rights and the Lead Safe Home bill. Freedom From the Streets members will also join us for the training.

In April, we will refine our goals for the year.

Three goals have emerged as top priority:

1. Deepen relationships with communities of color, faith and otherwise.
2. Bring in more members.
3. Provide training on Housing 101.

We will also plan out our calendar, including the bus tour in the fall and next year’s legislative breakfast.

Fair Housing Report – Research Meetings with City Council members.

The City of St. Paul is proposing a set of ordinances regarding fair housing and renter’s rights this year. We have also developed a Fair Housing agenda that includes some things that the City is doing and some things they are currently not doing.

Two months ago, we decided to focus on four main points:

1. Inclusive renter screening (limit the ways that landlords can refuse to rent)
2. Just Cause eviction – prevent landlords from not leasing to people unless they give a written, just cause,
3. “Real Talk” renter’s rights – providing renters with easy to understand copies of their rights from all landlords
4. Inclusionary Zoning – requiring that all apartments built in the cities have at least 20% of the units be affordable.

We are planning to set up “research visits” with each of the council members and the Mayor. These visits, which may be happening before the actual ordinance language is out, are intended to start a relationship with the politician and find out what motivates them.

We have already had meetings with Jane Prince, the ward 7 councilwoman, and Mitra Jalali, the ward 4 councilwoman. We had four members from the wards at each of these, and both council members said that they support our agenda. Both Prince and Jalali have supported affordable housing in their recent election campaigns, and they are considered to be some of the strongest advocates for housing.

We are working to schedule meetings with council members Rebecca Noeker (ward 2), Dai Thao (ward 1) and Nelsie Yang (ward 6) next.