Via CM Shaffer:
This was a busy week for City Council with our Committee of the Whole meeting on Tuesday lasting all day and needing to be adjourned to the next day to finish our business. Then there was the council meeting on Thursday. The most substantive issue we took up was whether to temporarily extend the pre-eviction notice period from 30 to 60 days.
After hearing nearly six hours of public comments and a lengthy debate amongst the council, this measure passed 7-5 and now it’s up to the mayor to decide whether he will sign or veto it.
Ultimately, I was not able to support this measure.
I want to begin by acknowledging what I heard during public commentary and in many other venues: the extraordinary outpouring of mutual aid we have seen across Minneapolis. Neighbors are raising money and sharing food to support families living with uncertainty. That solidarity is something our city should be proud of.
I take the argument from our residents seriously: that if ordinary people are stepping up, then government should at least do the “bare minimum” to help. But our responsibility as policymakers isn’t just to pass a policy that feels like the bare minimum—it is to pass policies that actually work.
When we heard from the people who provide affordable housing whether this proposal would stabilize tenants, their answer was a warning: this proposal is counterproductive.
This past Tuesday, we heard from a coalition of nonprofit housing providers—including Aeon, Agate, CommonBond, Catholic Charities, and Project for Pride in Living—who collectively house thousands of our neighbors. These are the partners we fund through our Affordable Housing Trust Fund. What they told us is that extending the notice period from 30 to 60 days will produce worse outcomes through larger balances and higher rates of eviction.
When they speak with a united voice, we have a responsibility to listen.
Consider the math they shared:
- Under the current 30-day timeline, residents typically reach court two to three months behind on rent.
- A 60-day notice period will result in an accrual of three to four months of rent.
- At that level, the debt becomes insurmountable for most households, even with rental assistance.
This is where what looks like “mercy” can actually become a trap. Giving someone more time sounds like compassion, but time without money is just a longer runway toward a deeper crisis. If we allow rent balances to keep rising while help is delayed, we aren’t providing “breathing room”—we are creating a debt trap that residents cannot escape.
Furthermore, these providers explained that the eviction notice is actually when outreach begins. That is the moment staff connect tenants with rental assistance and negotiate payment plans. By delaying that notice, we are delaying the help. We are letting a manageable crisis grow while balances are still surmountable.
Finally, we must consider the long-term damage. A massive outstanding balance on a housing record makes it nearly impossible to qualify for a new home in the future. What looks like “mercy” today becomes a permanent barrier to housing stability tomorrow.
The experts were clear: the most effective tool for preventing eviction is rental assistance, not longer timelines. That is why this Council has already approved:
- $1 million in rental assistance
- $500,000 for immigrant legal services
- $7 million for small business support
We are continuing to lobby the state through our Intergovernmental Relations staff for the substantial funding our housing providers say actually keeps people housed.
This vote is not about whether we care—it is about whether this policy achieves the outcome we all want. When the organizations that house our most vulnerable residents warn us that a proposal will increase housing instability, we have a responsibility to trust the experts.
Related: The 60-Day Dead End: Why Mayor Frey Should Veto the Pre-Eviction Ordinance
Governance failed here, full stop. Not just the governor. Not just the Minneapolis City Council. Not just one agency, one office, or one vote. The failure was systemic and unilateral.
When the ICE surge began disrupting income, court attendance, work stability, and family safety, every relevant layer of government should have recognized the same thing. This was not a normal housing environment, and normal process was no longer an adequate response. Instead, state and local leaders allowed the crisis to mature downstream until the only options left were narrow, reactive, and politically defensible rather than structurally sufficient.
By the time officials were arguing over whether 30 days or 60 days was the better notice period, the policy failure had already occurred. By the time nonprofit providers were debating arrears math, mutual aid was already functioning as emergency infrastructure. By the time advocates were begging for interventions, families were already carrying the cost of delayed governance in the form of fear, displacement risk, debt accumulation, and instability. A functioning system would have acted upstream: pause the filings, automate the aid, route support through the landlord layer, and prevent arrears from snowballing in the first place. That did not happen.
So this is not a story about one bad ordinance or one missed executive action. It is a story about a governing structure that responded too slowly, too narrowly, and too cautiously to conditions that were obviously destabilizing in real time. When public officials fail to intervene early enough, broadly enough, and automatically enough, they don’t get to reframe the downstream damage as proof that stronger intervention was unrealistic. They are looking at the consequences of their own delay. And the people paying for that delay are the same people government was supposed to protect.
Council Member Shaffer’s argument is coherent only if you start the story too late. By the time a tenant reaches the notice stage, the policy failure has already happened. The real issue is not whether 30 days or 60 days is the perfect timeline in a vacuum. It is that the state failed to intervene early enough, broadly enough, and automatically enough after the ICE surge disrupted income at scale. MPR reported that HOME Line’s financial-assistance calls were up 76% and that eviction filings in the first two months of 2026 were still tracking with 2025, which was already the highest year they had seen at more than 25,000 filings. That is not evidence of stability. It is evidence that mutual aid is functioning as emergency load-bearing infrastructure while government lags behind.
If policymakers truly believe “time without money” is a debt trap, then the answer was never to do less time and call it realism. The answer was to act sooner and route aid through the landlord layer automatically, the way broad emergency intervention worked during COVID, instead of pushing desperate tenants into a fragmented application maze after they are already behind. Even Shaffer’s own account admits the city is relying on only $1 million in rental assistance while providers and advocates are describing a much larger shock. A later, narrower intervention does not prove the earlier, stronger intervention was wrong; it proves it was never seriously attempted.
Very good analysis and conclusion Elizabeth. I would also add to your comments how important it is to encourage affordable housing in the city of MInnepolis. It is difficult enough to own and cash flow on such properties. This ordinace will make it even more difficult. And thus encourage possible landlords to make their investments in communities outside of Minneapolis.
A well reasoned analysis by a thoughtful policy maker. Too bad the non- profit housing providers who bravely testified against this ordinance were not only ignored by the majority, but criticized as being uncaring by the housing advocates who quickly attacked them and their motives.
Good for you, Councilmember. You thought the issue through instead of experiencing the standard knee jerk. This reminds me of the wonderful quote from that prescient curmudgeon, H. L. Mencken, “For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, plausible, and wrong”. Share that with your DSA colleagues.
Thank you for this detailed explanation, and in explaining why our housing orgs, the folks much closer to all of the issues, have taken the position that they have. I am sure none of this is easy for them, but they want to do the right thing, at this critical time in Mpls, related to the actions taken by OUR Federal Government, now under the Trump Admin.
Excerpt…
“This past Tuesday, we heard from a coalition of nonprofit housing providers—including Aeon, Agate, CommonBond, Catholic Charities, People Serving People and Project for Pride in Living—who collectively house thousands of our neighbors. “