The Governor’s Task Force on Housing recently released an action plan to deal with the shortage of affordable housing in Minnesota.

The 28-member task force released 30 recommendations for improving access to affordable housing, including building 300,000 new homes in Minnesota by 2030.

But the task force’s focus on the need for affordable housing does not completely address the current housing shortage in Austin.

“We’ve been focused more on addressing market rate housing,” said City Administrator Craig Clark. “We’ve done the Fox Pointe Townhome project, which was an affordable, federal tax credit project. There have been needs at all levels in Austin, but trying to get that top end moving so that there is an upward mobility of housing choices is really what we’ve been more focused on than strictly affordable housing.”

Clark said that affordable housing has played a part in the city’s housing plans.

“There has been a definitive need for affordable housing in Austin, but by definition in a lot of respects, Austin does have affordable housing,” he said. “We just don’t have enough (housing) and therein lies the problem to being able to grow the community. A healthy housing market has market rate production and we really need to get that moving in order to free that continuum up.”

Despite this, Clark said the city does agree with the task force in some aspects.

“We’ve had different housing discussions, of which the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency (MHFA) has been a part, and those were fruitful discussions,” he said. “We certainly agree about the reasoning housing is important. Families thrive in a home. It’s not simply a house, it’s an investment. Having suitable housing in the community allows them to plug into the community. If they’re not calling Austin home, it makes it difficult for the dollars to get spent locally.”

“MHFA is in an admittedly difficult spot,” he added. “They have demands that far exceed their resources to be able to tackle the problem. Each community has an equation of socio-economic-demographic incomes. Each community has different challenges, and when developing a statewide plan that accommodates everything from Minneapolis to Ely, it’s a daunting task. Each community is unique.”

To read the Task Force on Housing’s complete recommendations, visit http://mn.gov/gov-stat/pdf/2018_08_21_Task_Force_on_Housing_final_goals_recommendations.pdf.