Policy Update: How does supporting the Our Future Starts at Home campaign build on the success of Bring it Home, Minnesota?
For the last five years, Beacon has led the Bring it Home, Minnesota Campaign. This audacious multi-year campaign, in partnership with over forty organizations, sought to achieve universal rental assistance in Minnesota. Beacon and partner organizations have not given up on the vision, but you will not see Bring it Home as a distinct campaign this legislative session.
That’s because Beacon and our partner organizations have agreed to join forces and work within the Our Future Starts at Home campaign. Backing the Our Future Starts at Home campaign will help us increase our odds of securing more state rental assistance vouchers. This strategic realignment offers the most viable way for us to keep working toward our vision of universal vouchers.
Understanding the success and strategic challenges of the Bring it Home, Minnesota campaign
When Beacon and its partner agencies started the Bring it Home, Minnesota campaign, we sought to provide rental assistance vouchers for everyone who qualified in Minnesota. This would mean over 200,000 households, costing around $2 billion annually. Our strategy focused on galvanizing state legislators around a practical, proven, and effective housing solution to address housing insecurity.
Through careful coalition building, planning, and the work of many volunteers, agency partners, and state legislators, our community helped create Minnesota’s first-ever rental assistance program. Between 2021 and 2023, we succeeded in winning a majority of DFL legislators over to the idea of increased rental assistance, which created the political will to pass the rental assistance vouchers program.
Thanks to the enormous surplus in the 2023 state budget, we did not have to develop a funding mechanism for this new program. Instead, we could immediately ask for the first stage of the program to be funded.
During the middle of the 2023 legislative session, it became clear that the surplus alone could not fund a rental assistance program. With this realization in mind, our legislative champions pivoted and passed a metro area sales tax to help pay for rental vouchers in the Twin Cities metro.
The implementation of this tax resulted in the establishment of a new state rental assistance program named after our campaign, Bring it Home, Minnesota. This campaign will distribute around 5,000 new state rental assistance vouchers to help keep families and individuals safely housed and off the streets.
Highlighting the challenges of 2024 and exploring the new outlook
As we embarked on the 2024 legislative session, our coalition felt encouraged by the momentum we generated during the previous legislative season. However, the new budget outlook for the state cast a shadow.
As of late 2024, we forecast that the next few years may see only modest surpluses. If our state spends the surplus, it could risk more significant deficits in the future. Faced with this reality, it became clear that it was no longer feasible to demand substantial funding for rental assistance vouchers without a viable, ongoing payment plan.
Although we successfully built the political will for the solution, the time has come to align each subsequent step with a sustainable, ongoing funding source for future rental assistance vouchers.
Highlighting the opportunity to create and sustain vouchers by backing the Our Future Starts at Home campaign
In 2023, the Minnesota Housing Partnership (MPH) launched the “Our Future Starts at Home” campaign to create an ongoing funding source for housing. To create this ongoing funding source, state legislators will need to pass a constitutional amendment that would result in a new state-wide sales tax.
This tax revenue would help support housing across the state by:
Supporting homeownership (25%)
Increasing community and household stability (25%))
Increasing access to rental opportunities (50%)
When it comes to the 50% for increasing rental opportunities, half of that would go towards Bring it Home rental assistance vouchers. Of the total $440 million raised through this designated funding source, $110 million will go towards Bring it Home, equaling around 8,000 rental vouchers.
To sum it all up, Our Future Starts at Home offers a direct pathway to more than double the number of rental vouchers created by Bring it Home. Given the state’s current fiscal and political outlook, this constitutional amendment offers the only clear path toward expanding and sustaining the statewide rental assistance program that the Bring it Home campaign participants fought so hard to help create.
So, what’s Beacon’s strategic direction moving forward in 2025?
To expand long-term access to rental assistance, Beacon and partner organizations will put all our energy into the Our Future Starts at Home campaign.
During the 2025 legislative session, our policy experts and partners will work from within the Our Future Starts at Home campaign framework to achieve our goal of sustained access to rental assistance.
Summing up the advantages of the new direction
Supporting Our Future Starts at Home offers a clear, straightforward path toward doubling the number of state rental vouchers, representing a significant step toward universal vouchers.
This strategic realignment helps consolidate the power and muscle of housing advocates and directs that strength toward a statewide transformational campaign.
Along with presenting a unified front, Our Future Starts at Home simplifies the ask and provides clarity for lawmakers and funders by having one message and campaign. Simple wins.
Our Future Starts at Home will need to win the hearts and minds of state legislative representatives and everyday voters. If the amendment makes its way onto the ballot, it will take an “all hands on deck for housing” moment to win a statewide ballot initiative. If that initiative fails, it will set back all housing advocacy for many years.
For these reasons, we need every willing organization and housing advocate to put their muscle behind Our Future Starts at Home. We proved with Bring it Home that a small coalition of devoted advocates can create historic change when they work together. An even bigger coalition behind Our Future can accomplish even more.
To quote an old coal miner’s union song, “And by union what we will can be accomplished still.” Those words still ring true. Together, as a unified front with a clear, singular purpose, we will prevail.