St. Cloud needs more housing, and the city is looking at all options to spur more residential construction. The Central Minnesota Builders Association (CMBA) Government Affairs Committee hosted a discussion with St. Cloud community development director, Matt Glaesman, for its July meeting.

“We are running very low on single-family lot supply,” said Glaesman, who noted St. Cloud needs 100-150 lots per year. “One year of supply of buildable lots is questionable. Two, three and four years are at the point where we simply will run out of lots for single-family home construction.”

Glaesman said it is time for new approaches. The city of St. Cloud recently passed a new ordinance allowing the building of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) on single-family lots and is also considering reducing minimum lot sizes, allowing increased density (including duplexes and triplexes on single-family lots), changing setback requirements and reducing the number of off-street parking spaces required for each residential unit.

Some of these measures were also part of a major housing bill that CMBA and Housing First Minnesota supported earlier this year at the Minnesota Legislature. The bill gained significant momentum toward making changes to address a growing statewide housing shortage of more than 100,000 units. CMBA members and St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis testified in support of major portions of the bill.