"If You Could Afford to Live Here, You'd Already Be Home!"

Coming Soon to a Suburb Near You?

There are signs that other communities and employers are looking for steppingstones, too. In 2001, Minnetonka—which has a median home price of $335,000—helped create the West Hennepin Affordable Housing Land Trust, which works on the same principles as the Chaska Community Land Trust.

Minnetonka Mayor Jan Callison says the struggle to find affordable housing is not healthy for the community. Some of the people who are being priced out of Minnetonka, “those younger families with children, bring vitality to the community,” Callison says. “And more housing options give our employers a wider base of employees to draw on. And getting more people off the road helps with congestion.”

At Cummins Power Generation, a Fridley company that manufactures and services power-generating systems, President Tom Linebarger is concerned about the long commutes many of his employees are making.

“This is a problem that has an increasing—not decreasing—effect,” Linebarger says. Employees who drive 30, 40, or 50 miles to work are not only prone to more turnover, but have higher absenteeism and are more likely to arrive late and arrive tired.

When Linebarger moved to the Twin Cities from Indiana in 2003, he says he quickly learned that the traditionally urban issue of affordable housing was seeping into the suburbs, and that people who made wages in the range of Cummins’ newer factory-floor workers ($10 to $12 per hour) probably couldn’t afford to live in Fridley.

“Cummins has a basic principle to improve the communities in which we operate,” Linebarger says. “As I visited a number of agencies that we support via the United Way, it became clear to me that affordable housing is an issue that could affect a significant portion of Cummins’ work force.”

Getting hard data to support that suspicion has proved more difficult than he thought because of privacy issues. But like Roehl, Linebarger believes this is an issue that more Twin Cities employers need to educate themselves about. In house, he’s asked his human resources department to develop a way to gauge employees’ difficulties with housing so the company can create support programs targeting those problems. Beyond that, Cummins is sponsoring a study by the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation that will measure the benefits of affordable housing from a business perspective.

“Everybody says it’s a good deal,” Linebarger says. “But if you can prove a financial return, that’ll give businesses extra incentive.”