Recourse can be out of reach for St. Paul renters

In a city where half of city households are renters, basic equity demands that city resources reflect this reality. Nearly half the population deserves a government that actively educates them about their rights and holds bad landlords accountable.

Instead, living in Section 42 housing —federally subsidized apartments for low and moderate-income families — I’ve discovered that the real challenge doesn’t stop after finding affordable housing, but learning how to exercise tenant rights in a system designed to make that nearly impossible for working people.

The reality is stark: More than 59% of St. Paul renter households — 33,800 families — earn less than 60% of the area median income. For those of us who secure housing, the city’s scattered resources and weak enforcement mechanisms make protecting our rights nearly impossible.

When housing problems arise, St. Paul forces renters to navigate multiple disconnected departments, each with different procedures and contact methods. The Department of Safety and Inspections (DSI) handles basic complaints at 651-266-8989, while the Rent Stabilization Division operates separately at 651-266-8553. Fair housing issues go to the Department of Planning and Economic Development, and appeals require navigating the Legislative Hearings Office.

Each department operates independently with different office hours, procedures, and timelines. For a renter facing multiple issues — perhaps a maintenance problem, a rent increase concern, and potential discrimination — getting help means becoming an expert in city bureaucracy rather than focusing on resolving housing problems.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis shows what’s possible when cities prioritize tenant empowerment. They maintain comprehensive public databases where tenants can research landlord ownership patterns and violation histories. Their new STOP Slumlords ordinance will remove the worst landlords from routine consent-agenda approval, requiring public City Council votes for license renewals. St. Paul offers only a basic Certificate of Occupancy Map that provides inspection grades but lacks the comprehensive information tenants need to protect themselves.

The city’s most fundamental failure lies in enforcement. St. Paul has created an elaborate system of tenant rights on paper while providing minimal resources to make them meaningful in practice.

Consider rent stabilization, which voters approved in 2021 to limit rent increases to 3% annually. Whether you agree or not, the city budgeted about $717,000 for rent stabilization in 2023, a modest amount for overseeing a program affecting nearly half the city. City officials acknowledge they have “limited resources” and say it’s “sometimes not worth diving deep” into violations.

The enforcement process typically begins with educational letters to non-compliant properties. DSI staff indicated they “would need a pretty significant case” to take a landlord to criminal court. Most violations result in little more than gentle warnings.

This creates an environment where even well-intentioned renters must calculate risk. In my building where management has been helpful, every maintenance request, every question about my lease, every concern requires careful consideration of whether seeking help might somehow jeopardize the home I’ve fought so hard to obtain. That calculation shouldn’t be necessary in a city that claims to protect tenant rights — but in St. Paul, it’s an essential survival skill when you’re living as a renter on eggshells.

In response to concerns like these, the city has passed additional tenant protections in 2025, including 30-day written notice requirements and prohibitions on new landlords raising rents during ownership transitions. My heart goes to the council members who fought for these protections.

However, protections without enforcement are merely suggestions. The same resource constraints that undermine existing rights will likely render these new protections equally ineffective. This goes especially for our neighbors of color. St. Paul sits within the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, which has the nation’s largest Black-white homeownership gap at 51 percentage points, with only 25% of Black households owning homes compared to 77% of white households. Failures in enforcement hit our most vulnerable, our neighbors of color, and everyone trying to simply get by in St. Paul while renting their home.

The dysfunction in St. Paul’s approach to renters became starkly evident this fall when city staff approved 28% increases for tenants on Ashland Avenue despite documented maintenance problems including water leaks, deteriorating foundations, wobbly staircases and mold. The tenants had to organize, hire lawyers, and spend months appealing to get the City Council to override staff and limit increases to 3%. As Council President Noecker noted, the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections failed to properly assess deterioration and code violations before approving massive rent hikes.

Even more troubling was the response from our other council members. Councilmember Molly Coleman argued that habitability questions should be determined through city inspections or housing court — seemingly missing that the city had already failed to conduct proper inspections before approving the rent hikes. Councilmember Anika Bowie worried about being “fair” to landlords who are “really breaking even,” apparently unconcerned that tenants were living with mold and water damage for years before they were faced with 28.5% rent increases. That problem properties like these litter both Ward 4 and Ward 1 (represented by Coleman and Bowie, respectively) should be concerning to anyone who rents and would seek their aid.

This is the fundamental problem: When the city fails to provide basic enforcement, some council members blame tenants for using the only avenue available to them. Bowie and Coleman essentially argued that tenants should accept massive rent hikes for substandard units because the city’s own inspection system had failed them. It’s a perfect circular trap — the city doesn’t enforce, and then criticizes tenants for seeking the only available remedy.

Meanwhile, our elected officials making housing policy — including our mayor and a city council composed entirely of homeowners — are personally insulated from these impacts. No homeowner would stand for a 28% increase to their monthly mortgage payment in these conditions, but a good portion of the city council seems to believe renters should settle for such increases in the name of naturally occurring affordable housing at all costs. Representation is important, and voters have seen the value of broad representation at City Hall. But what about the half of our city that rents? Who speaks for us when the city fails?

St. Paul must fundamentally restructure how it supports tenant rights. This means centralizing renter resources under a single department, creating comprehensive rental databases similar to Minneapolis’s system, and developing proactive inspection programs rather than relying on tenant complaints.