The City of St. Paul will vote on a ballot measure regarding rent stabilization Nov. 2; the measure would place a 3% cap on the amount that a landlord can raise rent per year and would be one of the strictest in the country if passed.

The effort to put this on the ballot was led by Housing Equity Now St. Paul (HENS), a collective of organizations dedicated to social justice and the general welfare of St. Paul communities and neighborhoods.

B. Rosas, an Advocacy Manager at the HENS-affiliated Minnesota Youth Collective, said that the ballot measure is vital.

“It’s not going to do anything out of the ordinary, it’s just providing some sort of regulation,” Rosas said. “It’s not stopping rents from going up at all, it’s going to provide people more predictability and sustainability.”

If passed, the ballot measure would limit landlords from raising rent by more than 3% annually, but Rosas said that the measure is aimed more at corporate landlords, rather than local ones.

“When we see the raise in rent more than 3%, that comes from the corporate landlords who aren’t in the community,” Rosas said. “They don’t really have a sense of what it’s like to be in St. Paul, they don’t really have a sense of what our market looks like, and what our economy looks like.”

Rosas said that landlords who are disconnected from local communities can be dangerous for renters by imposing frequent rent spikes.

“What we’re trying to do is really make sure that those types of discriminatory practices are kind of regulated and at least slowed down so that people can actually stay in these homes a lot longer,” Rosas said.

The ballot measure is not without opposition, however. The Midway Chamber of Commerce, an organization of businesses and non-profits from the Midway area, released a statement in opposition of the measure.

“We don’t take stances very often,” said Chad Kulas, the executive director of the Midway Chamber of Commerce. “With this one, we felt it was important because, in the way that the ordinance is written, it would be a very strict rent control ordinance that would be adopted, and one that we feel is actually going to hurt the very people it’s intended to help, and that’s renters.”

Kulas said that implementing a rent stabilization measure would drive future investors and developers away from building in the city, as well as disincentivize landlords to upkeep their properties.

“If you have a landlord that is potentially not getting as much revenue through the door because they are capped at what they can do, then what could happen is if they have less resources available,” Kulas continued, “(then) there’s probably less money left over for them where they can allocate it to making repairs.”

This measure would also affect students who rent in the City of St. Paul. While it would prevent rent hikes, Kulas said that in other places where rent stabilization has been implemented, houses and properties are not being maintained for student housing.

For Rosas, however, the measure would provide a sense of stability that would benefit all renters – students included.

“The last thing someone needs to worry about, on top of school and working and also trying to make it by, is their housing. What we typically see a lot of the time, especially with student housing, are these landlords who don’t really take care of their properties,” Rosas said.

It becomes a cycle when both rent and student turnover is high from year to year, and the problem keeps getting worse, Rosas said; they believe this ballot measure will not only incentivize students to stay in one place for longer because the rent will be more stable, but it will also provide additional security against rent discrimination.

“It’ll provide people with a bit more security to be like ‘okay, you know what, I don’t like how my housing situation is like or my living situation, I’m going to speak up and say something about it’ and they won’t face any backlash in the form of a rent hike,” Rosas said.

Residents of St. Paul can vote for or against the rent stabilization measure on Tuesday, Nov. 2.

Owen Larson can be reached at lars6521@stthomas.edu.