Two St. Paul City Council members and a handful of city staffers sat in a rec center in the Midway neighborhood Thursday evening, answering pointed questions from residents and activists about rent control.

How, exactly, will weakening rent control make St. Paul more affordable?

Why are so many landlords already getting exemptions?

Aren't there other factors that make new apartments expensive to build?

Council Member Matt Privratsky said he sympathized with residents, but he also believes the city has to try something as rents keep rising: "All our housing needs are in the hands of the markets."

The session capped a hectic month of meetings across all seven city wards, two public hearings at City Hall, and a flood of emails and phone calls, as St. Paul hurtles toward two key votes on May 7: one on new tenant protections and another exempting all apartments built since 2005 from the city's rent control, which limits most rent increases to 3%.

In the run-up, council members said they have been trying to hear from as many residents and other stakeholders as they can.

"We have the power to be able to shape policies to come for decades," said Council Member Cheniqua Johnson, who also attended the meeting. "I want to hear from people."

Rent control and tenants' rights have been significant forces in the last half-decade of St. Paul politics.

A majority of St. Paulites rent their homes, and as the city's tenant population has grown over the last generation, the council has been trying to shape policies to help renters find stability — even as housing costs keep rising.

Dashed hopes

The story started in 2020, when the St. Paul City Council passed laws meant to give tenants a leg up in dealing with landlords in preparation for a wave of evictions after the pandemic. The laws capped security deposits at one month's rent and limited how much landlords could consider renters' eviction history, credit score and arrest records in apartment applications.

But a group of landlords sued the city, and a 2021 court order stopped St. Paul from ever enforcing those rules.

Privratsky, who represents Ward 4, said that ruling galvanized activists to push to put a referendum on rent control on the ballot in fall 2021.

"People underestimate how brutally deep that wound was, of just fully repealing tenant protections," he said.

If St. Paul now opts to exempt more buildings from rent stabilization, he said, adding back tenant protections is a must.

There's reason to hope tenant protections won't be blocked in court this time, council members say.

Though the proposed rules are very close to the ones scuttled in 2021, new state laws have changed the legal landscape, said Council President Rebecca Noecker, especially with state laws passed in 2023 and 2024.

Noecker said she hoped the new ordinances will not mean big changes in practice for most property owners, who use reasonable screening criteria and don't charge outlandish fees and security deposits.

"Most landlords are trying to do the right thing," she said.

Build and enforce

The proposed change to rent control would give landlords who own buildings built since 2005 the power to raise rents by any amount, forever exempting them from the 3% annual increase limit in the existing rent stabilization ordinance.

Mayor Melvin Carter is pitching the change as a means to "unleash" new construction, with the hopes more apartments will give renters more choices, and the ability to demand lower rent. Developers have also cheered the change, arguing they have struggled to get loans to build buildings that will eventually be subject to rent control.

On the City Council, even those members who have been the most vocal about rolling back rent control are a little more circumspect.

"I'm not going to say rent stabilization is the only reason this has been challenging," Ward 3 Council Member Saura Jost said.

"I'm under no illusions that rent stabilization is the only factor affecting the construction slowdown," Noecker said. But, she said, "I think it's clear that rent stabilization is not helping."

Council members are also floating amendments to the rent control ordinances, with proposals including a 30-year exemption instead of a permanent exemption for new buildings, and a requirement that buildings exempt from rent control are built with labor paid the prevailing union wage.

Johnson, the Ward 7 council member, said she hopes that if the council exempts more buildings from rent control, the conversation can shift to making rent control work better.

Right now, Johnson said, a renter trying to fight a rent increase of more than 3% has to wait months for an appeal process to wind its way through city bureaucracy. In one recent case, Johnson said, the process took 11 months — and the tenant who won rent control protections had long moved out.

"We're going to have a lot of buildings that still are stabilized, even if the new construction exemption is passed," she said.