Anita Miller wanted to come back to her hometown. But she couldn’t find a place in Lake Elmo.
Miller needed an alternative to living alone, but Lake Elmo only allowed single-family homes.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” said Miller, a 90-year-old widow.
Just in time, Lake Elmo lifted its effective ban on non-single family housing. The city built its first senior facility in 2017, and now welcomes Miller and others who aren’t interested in single-family homes.
47% OF NEW HOUSING STARTS
It’s a sign of an ongoing change for suburban housing — which had focused largely on the single-family home in the past. Alternatives to single-family homes in Minnesota grew last year to nearly half of new housing starts, including apartments, townhomes, housing for seniors, and even rentals.
It’s like a dam has burst — with multi-family housing flooding into places where it wasn’t previously allowed.
Statewide, 47 percent of new housing starts in Minnesota in 2020 were for multi-family, according to the advocacy nonprofit Housing First Minnesota. The change is most dramatic in the suburbs, which until recently allowed only a trickle of multi-family housing starts per year.
Typical is Cottage Grove.
Until 2015, the city had almost no annual multi-family housing starts. But by last year, they shot up to 46 percent of the city’s housing options.
“This is definitely a new trend for us,” said community development director Ben Boike.
The city’s first apartment complex in more than 25 years is underway — Grove80. Another one is planned, a 171-unit project by the Oppidan Investment Co.
The wave of apartments includes 324 units for seniors in the Legends at Cottage Grove and the Norris Square projects, built since 2016.
Townhome starts, too, are accelerating. With only a sprinkling of townhomes in the past decade, they went to 109 last year.
Boike said the city is responding to what consumers want — housing that is less expensive, greener and smaller. “It’s all market trends,” he said.
WOODBURY A LEADER
Woodbury has been a leader in single-family alternatives. Since 2000, more than half of all housing starts have been for multi-family units, according to community development coordinator Karl Batalden.
The city had added at least one apartment building every year since 2014. Developers are now working on four projects, which will bring the total apartment units in the city’s Northeast Area to more than 1,000.
It’s not market forces that drive the change, said Batalden, but the city’s long-term planning for a variety of housing. For decades, the city has permitted high-density apartments.
NEW CONCEPT FOR LAKE ELMO
But that’s a relatively new concept in Lake Elmo. The city has only allowed single-family homes for most of its existence — no apartments, senior centers, townhomes.
The single-family monopoly began to crack in 2013, when the city started work on its first sewer system. The sewer system allowed large-scale projects, such as apartment buildings, to be built.
City administrator Kristina Handt said consumers today want alternatives to single-family homes.
“That’s where the market is now,” Handt said.
The city’s apartments will be ideal for young professionals who are waiting to buy a house, or older people who want to downsize.
“We are fortunate to have a location 10 minutes from the airport and near both downtowns,” she said. “You can’t find a lot of land that close.”
The city — finally — has a place for Miller, the 90-year-old Arbor Glen resident.
On a recent afternoon walk, she said Lake Elmo feels like home to her. It’s where her church is, where her friends live and where she lived for 22 years in the split-level home her husband built.
“All I wanted,” she said, navigating her walker over a curb, “was a place where I felt I could live.”