(Above) Photo courtesy of Ken Klotzbach and Carly Danek for MPR News, 2026.
On Wednesday, KARE 11 held a housing conversation with Gubernatorial candidates Amy Klobuchar and Liza Demuth at the state fair. The event was sponsored by The Family Housing Fund, Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, and Housing First, organizations that have supported the Starter Homes bill. Each candidate was interviewed individually but asked a similar list of questions about housing.
During the discussion, Amy Klobuchar made it clear that she thought elements of the Road to Housing bill, which recently passed Congress, would deliver new federal housing resources and positively impact Minnesota's housing supply and affordability. She is thinking about ways the state can capitalize on this recently passed legislation to tackle the state's housing challenges. Her administration would focus on building 100,000 additional units of housing and shared a number of ways she would facilitate that goal, including:
- Modular and manufactured housing production, as it is quicker and cheaper to build
- Reducing red tape – which includes speeding up housing permitting
- She shared support for the State Housing Tax Credit and the importance of making the program permanent.
When asked about the Starter Homes Act (which was the zoning and land use preemption bill), she shared her support for elements of the Act, including the components of the bill that speed up housing construction, and she likes the idea of incentives to build additional housing.
During Lisa Demuth's discussion, she shared her housing priorities, which were focused on the regulations that she sees pushing up the costs of housing – things like the energy codes, mandates, and regulations. She stressed the importance of ensuring that housing is safe, but believes that too many mandates on the cost of doing business are being transferred to the cost of housing construction. She would like to roll back some of those mandates, including things like Paid Leave. She is also focused on property tax relief, similar to the property tax relief that passed in 2026.
When asked specifically about the Starter Home Act, Demuth called out the challenges with a statewide zoning reform bill but also offered some support for elements. She cited infrastructure challenges and the need for flexibility while offering support for portions of the bill that could find bipartisan agreement and shared her support for speeding up permitting and reforming overburdensome regulations.
It's clear from both of these conversations that housing continues to be a top issue that lawmakers will be working on in 2027. It's also clear that the Starter Home Act is not going away, and we will need to continue to engage with lawmakers and Gubernatorial candidates/the new Governor on this issue in this coming legislative session.
