How does St. Paul's 'right to repair' ordinance work?

St. Paul voters overwhelmingly approve the right to repair ballot measure 79% to 21%. Wow, St. Paulites really approved that measure. The measure allows residential renters to make certain repairs themselves if their landlord fails to address the issue within 14 days of receiving notice. Fred Mello works over there at the Pioneer Press and he covers all things St. Paul. He knows way more about this one than me. Hi, Fred. Hi, how are you? Can you hear me all right? I can hear you just fine. All right, so let's just first break down what this law is. What is right to repair? So basically, they're amending city ordinances or city laws to say that if a tenant complains to their landlord, says, look, my faucet's not working, I can't lock my front door, you know, some everyday, you know, it might sound kind of minor repair, but something that really needs to get done. If the landlord doesn't respond within 14 days, the tenant can do that repair themselves, or they can hire someone to do it, and then reimburse themselves from the payment. It can't be more than half your rent or $500, whichever is greater. So if you pay about $1,000 for rent, you could put up to $500 for fixing that toilet or that faucet. So these are kind of everyday repairs that St. Paul's a big renter city, up to 44% to 50% of people here rent. This is basically kind of a stopgap to help with some of those home improvements. Yeah, incredible. 44 to 55% of the population there in St. Paul is renters. Thank you. Thank you. Landlords, though, they do not like this new law or what will soon be law. Why? Well, talking to groups like the Minnesota Multi-Housing Association, which is basically the lobbying firm for landlords, they say, well, people are going to misunderstand the law. They're going to withhold their rent without the due notice. The 14 days is important. It gives the landlord time to make the repair themselves or to order a city inspection if they don't feel that the repair is really warranted. What if the tenant doesn't get that? Do you really want a tenant going in there and messing with electrical wiring? The tenant is not the property owner. Or do they even have a legal right to pull a building permit and make an improvement? Obviously the counter argument is fixing a faucet, fixing a toilet that doesn't even require a building permit. So that might be moot for the smaller stuff. But if it does get to the point where you can put half your rent towards the bigger stuff, that could get legally complicated. Okay, so this measure faced significant legal challenges before it even got on the ballot. Not to mention the Saint Paul City Council initially voted 5-2 against putting it on the ballot. So how did we get to this point? If the Saint Paul City Council originally said, nope, we're not putting it on the ballot, how do we get here? Sure, so in order to get a ballot referendum before voters, you need a certain number of signatures. It was about roughly 5,000 signatures. The Safe Home St. Paul campaign, which is very much a couple of labor unions, the Twin Cities, Democratic Socialists, some other groups, they got some signatures, didn't have quite enough, got some more, and finally had enough. And the city attorney's office basically came in at the last moment and said, this ordinance is unconstitutional. Even though they have enough signatures, you don't have to put something before voters that's unenforceable, that would be in conflict with the state law. So the city council, some people who had endorsed the right to repair, actually switched sides, voted it down, did not allow it to move forward to the ballot. Safe Home immediately took that to Ramsey County District Court. It's like, we've done, We've played by the rules, we did everything right, we got the signatures, but the voters A Ramsey County District Court judge said, sure, and approved the ordinance to go to ballot. The city attorney's office immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court said, go to the Court of Appeals. That hearing happened at the beginning of October, and then a decision came out Monday saying, yeah, let's vote. And on Tuesday, voters did. Do we know if any other cities or states around the nation have a similar law? Yeah, there's definitely a few. The only one in Minnesota is in Duluth. And about a year ago, almost word for word, same situation, the Duluth City Council blocked it from going to the ballot. And then the voters overwhelmingly, I think it was 70% or more, approved this. And I talked to voters at the ballot on Tuesday and they said, hey, I'm a homeowner, this doesn't affect me, but this is Minnesota common sense. If your landlord's not getting to it, you should be able to get it. You shouldn't have to live with a toilet that's not working or a faucet that's not working. So there wasn't really organized opposition against this one. You didn't see lawn signs or TV ads. We're all kind of drowning in these obnoxious ads, many of them from outside of Minnesota at this point. You don't really see a ton of that. You saw some lawn signs for right to repair, but the landlords, property owners, they didn't really wage a campaign the way we saw during the rent control fight. Which was another big mandate foisted on landlords that they did not like. So I'm just curious, we don't have a ton more time, but I am curious how this all came to be. Because I mean, were there slumlords who weren't repairing things in apartments? Or I know that there was a safe homes, which was a campaign that led this effort. But was it individual stories and bad situations, bad landlords that prompted this? Yeah, I think we've always had some of that in Saint Paul just because there's so much rental housing here. There's also just a very well organized and increasingly vocal Twin Cities DSA, the Democratic Socialists, were really leading this fight behind the scenes. You know, They've been active in Minneapolis, they've been active in Saint Paul, and they've certainly gotten some energy behind them since some of the rent control stuff moved forward in Saint Paul. So I think there were some palpable examples. A lot of people who own property in Saint Paul who are homeowners now used to be renters. So I think there's a lot of sympathy for the renters. It is so interesting. I so appreciate you filling us in. Fred Mello from the Pioneer Press. Thanks for coming on the show.