The Edina City Council hosted a meeting to share goals and review current programs surrounding the development of affordable housing in Edina on Oct. 8. The meeting was broadcast through Edina TV Cable and was hosted by the Affordable Housing Development Manager, Stephanie Hawkinson.
The meeting kicked off with the council’s goals for community housing. They shared details about an upcoming initiative entitled “The Heroes Program,” which provides financing for essential workers and helps to preserve existing homes. The program will be introduced to Edina in November.
“This program is for people who work in the city, serving the people of Edina. Whether it be nurses, teachers, or police, whether or not they plow our streets, we want them to have the opportunity to live closer to their jobs,” Hawkinson said.
Edina’s methods of maintaining affordable housing are threefold: by preserving existing smaller and less expensive lots, by diversifying housing stock through targeted redevelopment, and by strengthening protections for renters.
“[We want] to focus on ownership housing and what the city is doing to make homeownership possible for young households with children starting out, and to help seniors who may have called Edina their home be able to live in the community when they want to downsize,” Hawkinson said.
Affordability of housing has been a growing issue in Edina for decades. From 2022 to 2023, homes sold for over $1,000,000 in Edina increased by 5% while homes sold for prices ranging from $300,000 to $400,000 decreased by 5%.
After sharing this data, Hawkinson explained the programs already enacted by Edina in order to combat the affordable housing shortage.
The first was the Affordable Ownership Preservation Program, created in 2021. The AOPP fuels a community land trust (CLT). A CLT maintains existing affordable housing by buying the land with moderately-priced housing and selling the house separately from the land, owning the parcel itself for decades at a time.
Through partnering with organizations like Homes within Reach and Habitat for Humanity, the AOPP has been able to acquire $6,300,000 in funds for the restoration and purchasing of homes in Edina, having already purchased 22 homes since the program’s start.
The city council has also helped fund and manage the Home Rehab Program, which was revived in 2021. The program provides loans for essential home renovation, such as stairlifts for the elderly, and solving violations of updated city building codes, which determine the standard for the construction of houses. The loans are forgiven completely if the home is eventually sold to the Housing and Redevelopment Authority or one of its partners. Since the program’s inception, 58 Edina homeowners have taken out loans.
“Some challenges to these programs are the scarcity of financial resources. The AOPP and the Home Rehab program are funded out of our affordable housing trust fund. These are funds that developers pay in when they are building a market-rate apartment, and they choose not to include affordable units within those market-rate apartments. They pay the city fee,” Hawkinson said.
This comes in tandem with Local Affordable Housing Aid from the state, which is determined based on a fixed formula. In 2025, Edina will receive $875,382.
“There is a broad benefit to having housing in this community that is affordable to people who work here,” Hawkinson said.
