St. Paul HRA previews 2025 priorities: downtown strategy, new programs, loan servicing changes

Director Newton told the St. Paul Housing and Redevelopment Authority that staff will focus in 2025 on launching several budgeted programs and on downtown and housing strategies intended to accelerate development and support small businesses.

Newton outlined new and continuing initiatives the HRA expects to pursue this year, including a commercial corridors program, a West Side edition of an emergency rental assistance and eviction-prevention program, Healthy Homes/Power of Home work, and a downtown investment strategy. On timing, Newton said staff aimed to bring program guidelines and applications in February and “hopefully launch in March.”

On downtown planning and investment, Newton urged coordinated support for legislation to enable office-to-housing conversions and said renovation of the downtown arena is “critical” and time-sensitive. Newton described work with the Saint Paul Downtown Alliance and an alliance-hired consultant, Dave Higgins, who will help developers evaluate building portfolios and pro formas.

Newton also described a planned dashboard with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis to provide clearer, regularly updated housing stock and income-level information for St. Paul. “We will work with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis,” Newton said, explaining the dashboard will help the HRA and the public understand housing availability by income level rather than relying on misleading single-point statistics.

Other items Newton previewed included updating the downtown/neighborhood plan (including Fitzgerald Park), advancing United Village infrastructure and vertical development, releasing an ADU toolkit and exploring preapproved ADU plans, completing a T-district zoning study, issuing an RFP for HRA-owned parking ramp operators, reexamining the district council funding formula, preparing the qualified allocation plan (QAP) that informs 9% Low-Income Housing Tax Credit awards, and supporting financing for projects such as The Heights and the Hamps Brewery Project.

Commissioners asked clarifying questions and offered guidance. Commissioner Jolley warned against “study creep” and urged that consultant work produce focused recommendations: “I wanna make sure that we get, really deep specific recommendations on a narrower band of things rather than a lot of generalities,” Jolley said. Newton responded that the consultant would note deficiencies in related city processes (for example, permitting or infrastructure) where those deficits affect economic development, but that the study should not attempt to fix every issue across departments.

Commissioner Yang asked about the HRA’s approach to managing an existing, labor-intensive loan portfolio. Newton and HRA staff said the agency is evaluating loan servicing options, including outsourcing loan servicing and upgrading its legacy loan software (Nortridge). Deputy Green was identified as leading operational improvements and budget reporting work to provide quarterly financial updates to the board.

Newton said staff will return with more detailed guidelines, RFPs and schedules as programs are finalized and that the HRA will schedule presentations during the year to keep commissioners informed. The board canceled its next week’s meeting because the planned property-disposition presentation was postponed and will meet instead on the board’s next regular meeting date.

The presentation was informational; the board did not take formal votes on the programs during this meeting.