When an injunction temporarily blocked the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan in September 2023 injunction, more than 30 developments with more than 500 housing units were halted. 

That number did not include projects that hypothetically could have been developed, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said this week. The piece of the plan the lawsuit blocked was specifically about the ability for developers to build duplexes and triplexes in the city – an effort to increase housing density. 

“It halted work, it halted progress, it halted results,” the mayor said during an interview with MinnPost. 

Last week, a judge dismissed the lawsuit brought by Smart Growth Minneapolis and Minnesota Citizens for the Protection of Migratory Birds that led to the injunction. 

So what does this mean for the city? 

“We can now continue the work,” Frey said. “A big part of this (comprehensive plan) was to have a diversity of housing options, and therefore a diversity of people in every neighborhood, socioeconomically diverse, racially diverse, age demographically diverse.” 

How this impacts future housing affordability

Two major components affect a city’s ability to provide affordable housing, Frey said. 

One is a subsidy. In order to provide deeply affordable housing (housing for those making under 30% of the area’s median income), subsidies from various levels of local government are required “because nobody is going to build a building and then lose money on it,” Frey said. 

Second is supply. Like any product on the market, supply and demand directly impact housing prices. When supply is low, prices skyrocket. Think California or New York City. 

The comprehensive plan in simple terms made it possible for large swaths of the city to not only have single-family homes, but also duplexes and triplexes along corridors. Developers can build taller buildings with density in mind, Frey noted.

How this impacts neighborhood diversity 

Old maps of the city designate North Minneapolis as a slum for the city’s Black and Jewish communities. 

When the Civil Rights Act passed, it became illegal to explicitly implement redlining and restrictive covenants. However, Frey said cities across the country — including Minneapolis — found ways to maintain this kind of segregation implicitly through zoning codes. 

“We set it up so that unless you could own really big homes on really big parcels, you can’t live in huge swaths of the city,” Frey said. “If you look at the map, even today, the tale of that zoning policy has continued.”

This is what drove the city’s efforts to create the 2040 Comprehensive Plan back in 2019. 

“While technically speaking, we have allowed for affordable housing in middle- and upper-income neighborhoods, practically speaking, it was impossible to do because: why would you buy a gigantic, super expensive parcel only to put one family in it? If you’re trying to provide affordable housing, you want to put many families in it,” Frey said. “A lot of this stuff was set up very intentionally going back 100 years.” 

What was developed and what was blocked? 

Minneapolis Public Housing used to have scattered single-family home sites across the city — often deteriorating and in need of maintenance. In its place the city was able to put up multiple units in the place of those deteriorating single-family dwellings. 

But when the judge’s ruling and injunction came in 2023, projects like this were put on pause. 

For example, a project to develop 20 “microhomes: for people who are or have been homeless led by Envision Community was set to go before a city planning board when the injunction ordered the city to drop its plan. Because half the project planned on city land at 21st and Penn avenues in north Minneapolis would be possible only under 2040 zoning codes, the group had to reassess the project. 

What the plaintiffs in the case have to say 

Last year, when the Minnesota Legislature passed the law that led to the dismissal of the case, Jack Perry, the attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, believed it wouldn’t be dismissed because he claimed the law was not explicitly retroactive. 

The language that ended the lawsuit could be found in a couple of paragraphs within the 1,400-page bill passed during last year’s legislative session and later signed by Gov. Tim Walz. One paragraph states that comprehensive plans adopted in “the most recent decennial review” and for “subsequent reviews” by cities are not subject to legal challenges under the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act, or MERA, which allows Minnesotans to sue on behalf of the land and water.

Taft Law, the law firm representing the plaintiffs, sent MinnPost the following statement on the lawsuit’s dismissal: “Using the State’s oldest environmental law (MERA), the Smart Growth plaintiffs had two incredible accomplishments. First, they persuaded the Minnesota Supreme Court to expand MERA to cover the significantly impactful comprehensive plans, even well-intended ones like Minneapolis’ 2040 Plan. Second, they then persuaded the Minnesota Court of Appeals to affirm its MERA judgment against Minneapolis’ 2040 Plan.”

Ultimately, the firm wrote, it lost the case due to a “legislative bailout.”

Winter Keefer

Winter Keefer is MinnPost’s Metro reporter. Follow her on Twitter or email her at [email protected].

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