Richfield City Leaders To Review Housing Policy At Work Session

RICHFIELD, MN —In 2018, Richfield city leaders adopted an Inclusionary Housing Policy (IHP) to help meet the goal of increasing affordable housing choices in the community. Next week, a group that includes the City Council and the Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA) will continue its discussion of these policies at a work session.

The session will take place at 5:45 p.m. on Tues. Feb. 16, and a replay will be available online the following day.

On its website, the City of Richfield identified several questions leaders continue to ask in order to update the housing policy, ensuring it achieves its stated goals. Among those questions are:

• How do we encourage projects with housing units that are affordable to people with low incomes?
• How do we get more units for people with disabilities?
• How do we encourage developers to build larger affordable units?
• Do developers give enough to the city's Housing and Redevelopment Fund (HRF)?
• At what point does the cost of the requirements make new housing construction financially impossible?
• What changes (if any) should we make given the economic uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic?

This past September, city leaders discussed many of these same questions at another housing policy work session. A video of that discussion is available on YouTube.

In order to help leaders shape housing policy, residents are being asked to take a brief survey to communicate their priorities.

In 2017, the Richfield City Council adopted four goals to help strengthen Richfield apartment communities. They were:

• To preserve and improve affordable rental housing.
• To increase housing choices.
• To strengthen tenant protections.
• To support tenants and apartment communities.

The IHP was adopted in 2018. It required all new housing projects to include some affordable housing or give money to the city's HRF.