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2 Study of Affordable Housing and its Availability in Falcon Heights, Lauderdale, Little Canada, Maplewood, Roseville League of Women Voters Roseville Area, March 2017 by Judy Berglund, Rebecca Bormann, Mindy Greiling and Bonnie Koch “I believe we’re headed into the greatest housing problem for poor people in our country since the early 1900s. Not since 2008. Not since World War II, but since the early 1900s. I think the convergence of market forces, social issues, policy and politics is going to present us with the greatest problem we’ve seen for many, many decades, so we need to pass these kinds of bills (capital investment) that didn’t get passed last year. We need to all pitch in and do our work.” --Alan Arthur, president Aeon October, 2016, at a celebration of new affordable housing built by his company Fact: There are more low-income people in the suburbs than there are in the central cities, and the need for affordable housing is as great. (Dr. Ed Goetz, CURA) Fact: So far this decade, 28 communities in the Twin Cities have added 4,584 new affordable rental units. That amounts to just one year’s worth of metro wide demand. More than half of those units were built in Minneapolis and St. Paul, according to the Met Council, though the two cities account for just one-fourth of the region’s population. (Star Tribune, Dec. 30, 2016) Fact: Three in 5 households earning less than $50,000 experience housing cost burden. (Minnesota Housing Partnership) Fact: Homelessness is down statewide since 2012, but in Ramsey County, it increased 14 percent. (Wilder Foundation) Fact: There are more homeless children in Minnesota today than there were homeless people in all of the state in 1991. (Wilder Foundation) Facts like these prompted the League of Women Voters of Roseville Area to take a serious look at the housing crisis, which, one agency says, is a “tsunami that is broad, complex and multifaceted.” The League has a long history of advocating for equality of rights. Social policy positions center on securing “equal rights and equal opportunity for all” and promoting “social and economic justice.” The demographics of first-ring suburban cities in the League of Women Voters Roseville Area, which includes Falcon Heights, Lauderdale, Little Canada, Maplewood and Roseville, are changing dramatically. The Minnesota Department of Education documents that in the last 10 years there has been a 125 percent increase in the percentage of students in