Duluth is experiencing a housing crisis. The waitlist for public housing is over 3,600, and the emergency warming center saw over 600 unique visitors last winter. At the same time, there are many vacant buildings, like the former Nettleton Elementary School, along with the vacant properties left after the Essentia expansion. There are also funds available, including COVID relief funds and upcoming funding from state and federal levels geared towards affordable housing. Currently several projects are underway to add more units to our city, but many of these projects are not guaranteed to be affordable.

We demand that the City and County:
1. Adopt a Housing First approach to addressing homelessness.
2. Designate remaining COVID-19 relief funding towards creating housing that is truly affordable.
3. Require all projects receiving TIF (or other City or County financial support) to accept housing vouchers in all new units.
4. Investigate social housing models, such as the Housing Opportunities Commission in Maryland and the Social Housing Program in Massachusetts.