Public Housing Again, Really? Yes, Really.

The city hasn’t been totally remade by the new reality of the 2040 plan, but the progress has been substantial. 5,692 permits were issued for 10,638 units in 2023, down from the previous four years, and slightly higher but still behind in 2024, with 2,330 multifamily permits issued. The city is still behind on its goal of creating 18,000 new units per year. Many of the new constructions are mid-rises along major transportation corridors, but throughout the city, duplexes and triplexes are also filling a gap that advocates call “missing middle housing,” which allows up to three families to live on a lot that formerly housed one, often in buildings that don’t seem out of place among the lower-profile, older single-family homes in residential neighborhoods. The new apartments helped slow rent growth to only about 1 percent in the city in 2024, compared to 14 percent in the state as a whole, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. “Land use takes a long time,” McMahon said. “It took us 100 years to develop the community we have today. It’s going to take 100 years to reshape.”

However, that growth has already slowed—through May 2025, multifamily permit issues were down by half from the previous year. In part, this happened because the costs of construction have gone up, a trend likely to continue as the reality of tariffs under the Trump administration settles in. But another problem is the simple existence of the profit motive: Developers build to make money, and making money requires that rents rise and stay high enough for them to make a profit. They’re not concerned with affordability, and they won’t build if their investments don’t pay off.

And this is precisely the rock upon which reforms like Minneapolis’s often crash. Affordability describes the limit to the kind of YIMBY reforms cities have made and want to make. The goal of zoning reforms and other changes, like removing red tape and limiting permitting requirements and environmental reviews, may entice more developers to build more housing, but it won’t ensure affordability on its own, particularly for low- and middle-income families. “I am a supply skeptic in the sense that I don’t think just building more will automatically bring prices down, especially in certain markets like Boston or New York or San Francisco,” Schindler said. “Prices follow what people can pay, so if incomes are so high in these places, and people are willing to pay absurd amounts for an apartment, that’s what the market is going to charge.”