Friends and neighbors,
I’m hoping that this weekend’s warm weather means that spring is finally here.
Here at the Capitol, I’m continuing to do the best I can to make life better for Minnesotans and make progress on the challenges we’re facing. In this update, I’m going to talk about a few of these proposals that have unfortunately stalled because you deserve to know about them and hear about the political barriers we’re facing.
Working to Make Housing More Affordable
A roof over your head shouldn’t break the bank, but too many Minnesotans are having to choose between rent and food, mortgage payments or health care payments, or property taxes and repair costs. We have so many bills to address all of these problems this session, and I’ll highlight a few here.
Getting Private Equity out of Housing: It’s the same concept as work we’re doing to address huge concert ticket resellers — they buy up all of the tickets, hike up the prices, and consumers suffer. Private equity firms like Blackrock are doing the same thing, profiting off of your need for housing and making the most money off of you, while doing worse in terms of upkeep and support than smaller landlords. It’s a system that just doesn’t make sense, which is why I’m shocked that this bill didn’t move forward in committee due to a lack of bipartisan support. The same policy just received 89/100 votes in the US Senate, and was mentioned in the State of the Union speech, so it boggles the mind to wonder why my GOP colleagues here are blocking a bill to lower housing costs.
Supporting Minnesotans in Manufactured Home Parks: Another bill that stalled in committee is a bill that simply allows residents of modular home parks a voice at the table when the park they call home is considering selling out to huge corporations. While manufactured home residents own their homes, they don’t own the land their homes sit on. It’s been a problem in Minnesota more than you know — huge corporations are buying tons of these parks, jacking up costs to triple profits for their executives, and pushing residents out of their homes. It’s another issue that just doesn’t make sense, and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle don’t have a good reason for opposing it.
Emergency Rental Assistance: At a time when Operation Metro Surge has hurt family budgets and hit our economy hard, this is about fairness. During last Monday’s House floor debate, we fought for a bill to support renters facing eviction in our state. It has been frustrating to see the other side say that Minnesotans are struggling because of choices they made. But this happened to Minnesotans through no fault of their own. This happened because federal agents were unlawfully and unconstitutionally racially profiling and detaining Minnesotans.
Minnesotans didn’t choose this. One thing we know about Minnesotans is we are hard working people. These Minnesotans wanted to be at work, earning a living for their families — but they couldn’t because of the reckless actions of federal agents.
Fixing Health Care for Educators
Health insurance is broken, and we need to pass common-sense measures on insurance and pharmaceutical companies to bring costs down (which we are working to do). But today in this newsletter, I want to highlight one proposal that just makes sense: moving our state’s educators into a statewide public health care pool.
Did you know that private insurance companies are taking advantage of our public systems? They’re charging more to our public school systems than they would to any other entity in the market. In 2023, we worked to reverse the decades of underfunding in public education, with the hope that it would help educators receive fair raises for the first time in years, while also being able to halt property tax increases to address school shortfalls. Instead, the private health insurance industry raised rates by more than 15 percent in some school settings, draining the budget needed to support our students and educators.
It’s just common-sense to address this issue with a low-cost proposal, and stop the private industry that is profiting off of public money. I was happy to meet with hundreds of educators this week at the Capitol to talk about this issue and others affecting students and the experts who support them. It’s harder than ever to be a teacher, and it shouldn’t be.
Stay in Touch!
While I’m highlighting political barriers we’re seeing, I also want to note that there’s still a lot of time in this legislative session, and we’re working to find common ground every day. A good majority of us show up to do good for the people of Minnesota every day, and I’m hoping to see colleagues put politics aside and support the measures I talked about above. Despite a lot of things, I always have hope when we work hard.
I greatly appreciate any time my constituents take out of their busy lives to share their thoughts and opinions with me. Please continue to reach out — it truly helps me represent you at the Legislature. You can email me at rep.zack.stephenson@house.mn.gov.
Sincerely,
Zack