Campaign mailing address: P.O. Box 19041 Minneapolis, MN 55419
Office Sought: Minneapolis City Council – Ward 11
Are you an Incumbent or Challenger: Challenger (open seat)
City of Residence: Minneapolis
How long have you lived in your community?
I grew up in Ward 11, only leaving Minneapolis for higher education. In sum, I’ve lived in Minneapolis for over 30 years.
Are you a Homeowner or Renter?
Both–my current residence is a rental, and I own my previous home, which I am currently in the process of selling.
Do you own other real property (e.g. Business, Cabin, Investment, or Rental Property)? If so, which?
See above
Describe your civic and/or community engagement.
I have dedicated my professional and personal career to bettering this city, but the one thing that keeps me sane at the end of the day is that I get to coach football for both our men’s and women’s teams at Washburn High School (my alma mater)! I have been coaching at Washburn for five seasons, and there is nothing better than being a part of helping craft exceptional young women and men. In addition to my coaching, I have sat on the Minneapolis Commission on Civil Rights, sat on the Minneapolis Public Schools Title IX commission, sit on the Washburn Center for Children Board of Trustees, and work for the Minneapolis City Attorney’s Office as a police reform attorney working on implementing the DOJ Consent Decree and MDHR Settlement Agreement.
What are the most important housing challenges facing your community?
Our campaign has knocked around 3,000 doors so far this election, which, paired with my own experience as a lifelong Southsider, gives me a fairly strong read on what Ward 11 residents are thinking about when it comes to housing. Around 90% of people who live in Ward 11 own their own homes, and, like most homeowners, they’re concerned about rising property taxes, which are already an increasing burden in Minneapolis. Seniors and residents on a fixed income in particular, are struggling to stay in their homes. These concerns dovetail with worries about our aging infrastructure surrounding water lines, sewer lines, and other municipal infrastructure programs and whether the associated costs of necessary repairs and upgrades will be passed onto them, further straining pocketbooks. Ward 11 also shares the city’s broader concern around the housing shortage, which they view as a barrier to entry for their children into the housing market and a contributor to making the city less affordable. Finally, the houselessness issues in Minneapolis are a public health and safety emergency for those living in and around encampments, and remain a point of frustration and moral outrage for many of my neighbors. Difficult as these problems may seem, the good news is: we know the solutions that work. As a council member, I will work alongside the experts and community leaders who are tackling these issues every day, and I will push to make sure the City is supporting the strategies that have been proven to keep people housed, create new housing, and address houselessness with dignity and urgency.
The Twin Cities Metro is facing a housing shortage unlike any we have experienced in recent history. What will you do to increase the number of homes available to residents of your community?
Most Minneapolis stakeholders acknowledge that the housing shortage is the core of our housing crisis, and the main solution is to build more housing; that includes market-rate, missing middle, affordable, and deeply affordable housing (under 30% area median income), the latter of which will require partnerships and investments from city, private, and nonprofit stakeholders. I have had conversations with private developers, affordable housing providers, and community development organizations, and the most common feedback I hear is a desire to see consistent and reliable policy across the Minneapolis housing development spectrum. The need for reasonable certainty for development stakeholders to begin building is partially why strict rent control policies, such as was passed in Saint Paul in 2021, don’t work–they disincentivize the building of new housing in the short term while contributing to a climate of uncertainty that disincentivizes investment in the long term (even if the policies are reversed). Something the City can do right now is streamline the development approval process. For example, some cities like South Bend, Indiana, have developed a set of pre-approved, residential project plans to help lower the cost of construction by reducing design fees and speed up approval times. These initiatives involve working with architects and engineers to develop a set of plans for one to six-unit homes that are permitted throughout the city. Relatively low-cost, pro-housing initiatives like that encourage development for the missing middle housing we need, while making it easier and cheaper to build, should be explored. Bottom line: if we want to see more housing built in Minneapolis, we need to make sure Minneapolis is a place where builders, nonprofit developers, and community partners can count on clear, consistent rules, where approval processes are efficient and predictable, and where city policies actively encourage the creation of homes at every price point.
Minnesota has one of the largest homeownership gaps between Whites and Blacks, Indigenous, and People of Color. This is one of MAR’s primary concerns. What would you propose at the local level to close this home ownership gap?
At the risk of being repetitive, the primary answer I am hearing from affordable housing groups and experts who work in this space is the same: build more housing. We need to build significantly more housing across the entire housing affordability spectrum, especially in the neighborhoods that are historically excluded and intentionally disinvested, but not exclusively. Affordable, and deeply affordable housing of all types in all neighborhoods reduces that harm incurred in our most impacted communities. This work can’t be done top-down. The city must be seen as a partner with those who have been fighting for housing justice and reparative development for decades, and those that develop homes in an equitable way. Our goal, for the City, is to be a steward of the work of community based, culturally specific organizations and developers that know the most effective and restorative approaches to best serve their residents
How do you think your city can best balance the rights of tenants and property owners to effectively manage rental housing?
Minneapolis, on the whole, has strong tenant protections, where we struggle is proper enforcement of those protections. Properly enforcing existing statutes both protects renters and rewards conscientious property owners who are following the law in a competitive rental market. On another note, property owners have the right to remove bad tenants, but we also need to move beyond a narrow framework of “evict vs. don’t evict” and focus on preventing evictions before they become inevitable. That starts with expanding access to emergency rental assistance and tenant support services, so that unexpected hardship, a lost job, a medical bill, doesn’t spiral into housing loss. When rents aren’t paid, there are downstream consequences that often go unnoticed by the public. Several affordable housing providers in Minneapolis have shared that they’re still struggling to recover from the financial impacts of the pandemic, when rent collections dropped dramatically. While eviction moratoriums may have been necessary at the time, the aftershocks have put serious pressure on nonprofits that operate some of the last remaining stable housing options for low-income Minneapolitans. If those organizations falter, those deeply affordable units could disappear with them. The long-term solution to reducing evictions is ensuring renters can afford their housing through preserving and expanding affordable housing stock across the city.
What are your views on property tax rates in your community? Do you have concerns related to your city’s property tax rate? If so, how would you address those concerns once elected?
Property taxes in the city of Minneapolis are too high, and they’re especially burdensome on working families. Rising property taxes in Minneapolis make it more difficult for seniors to age in place and for our younger generation to settle down in the same neighborhoods where they were raised. At least part of the solution is that the city needs to adapt to the shifting economic and social trends to shore up downtown. The precipitous decline in the value of Minneapolis’s downtown real estate comes with a steep decline in the amount of taxes those buildings generate, leaving a massive hole in our budget. Our city is in a budget crisis, and we need to be honest with Minneapolitans about it. If we want to prevent a decline in our city services, we are going to have to figure out how to do more with less in Minneapolis by focusing on the core functions of municipal governance
Please provide links to all social media accounts connected to you or your campaign.
Twitter: @jamisonwhiting
BlueSky: @jamisonwhiting.bsky.social
Instagram: jmo1232
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamison.whiting
Please list any notable endorsements for your campaign.
North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO LiUNA Minnesota Council 5 AFSCME Attorney General Keith Ellison State Rep. Emma Greenman Henn. County Commissioner Angela Conley Ward 11 Council Member Emily Koski Fmr Ward 11 City Council Member Steve Cramer Fmr Ward 11 City Council Member Scott Benson Fmr Ward 11 City Council Member John Quincy Minneapolis School Board Director Greta Callahan Minneapolis School Board Member Lori Norvell President and CEO of Minneapolis Downtown Council Adam Duininck MN 2024 Teacher of the Year, Tracy Byrd
