Committee hears support and concerns for Sacred Settlements bill amendment; amendment adopted and bill laid over

House Operations Committee members on March 12 took testimony on House File 1051, an update to the 2023 Sacred Settlements law that recognizes tiny-home "sacred settlements" operated by faith communities and sets standards for their safety and municipal oversight. The committee adopted an A3 amendment from the bill's author and laid the measure over for further drafting.

The bill's author said the A3 amendment "reflects my intentions" to preserve religious communities' ability to host tiny-home settlements while adding "guardrails" to address safety and municipal concerns. The author told the committee the amendment requires some level of electrical utility service to each micro-unit and seeks to limit how cities can impose licensing requirements.

The change is intended to be permissive: it would allow cities that already operate rental licensing programs to apply those licensing standards to settlements in order to address life-safety complaints, but the author and advocates said they are still negotiating the precise limits of any municipal license.

Heidi Nelson, city administrator for Maple Grove, told the committee that current state law provides "no state, county, or local licensing oversight" specifically for sacred settlements and that the city relies on its rental licensing process to address life-safety problems such as broken smoke detectors, unsafe…