A major Minnesota real estate developer says U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s plan to lower housing costs will not address Minnesota’s housing needs.
“Making life more affordable starts with making housing more affordable,” Klobuchar wrote in a recent social media post. “My housing plan will reduce barriers to building more homes, lower costs, and create opportunity across Minnesota.”
“This is a false statement,” Dale Wills responded. “As one of the largest privately held home builders in the State of Minnesota, I reviewed your plan thoroughly. Based on the details of your plan you clearly have not engaged anybody that actually knows what’s driving housing cost[s] currently. Love to see this solved and it won’t happen with your proposal.”
Klobuchar’s housing plan is one of the centerpieces of her current campaign for governor of Minnesota. Unveiled earlier this month, Klobuchar’s plan says Minnesota is facing a housing shortage of 100,000 homes and offers proposals to build those homes.
Among the plan’s specifics, Klobuchar wants to work with cities “to set consistent deadlines for housing permit applications, so each application gets a decision quickly instead of sitting for months, or even years, without a decision.”
Klobuchar also wants to work with cities to remove “redundant requirements that raise construction costs,” convert vacant state-owned and commercial property into housing, make manufactured homes more affordable, and streamline housing assistance applications.
Wills, the founder and owner of Centra Homes, took issue with Klobuchar’s assertion that permitting can take months or years.
“We pull hundreds of permits a year for housing,” Wills said in another social media post. “Rarely does it take more than two weeks. Occasionally, if a city gets a significant backlog, it could take up to six weeks, which is fairly rare. That is one example of problems [that] don’t exist that [Klobuchar’s] trying to fix.”
Alpha News contacted Wills with questions for this story. However, he did not respond to a media inquiry.
Wills founded Centra Homes in 2011 and has grown the organization into a major Minnesota real estate company. According to its website, Centra Homes “is one of the largest residential property developers in Minnesota. We’ve built dozens of communities throughout the North Metro, giving thousands of people a beautiful place to call home.”
A LinkedIn profile belonging to Wills says Centra Homes builds “value-driven single-family home communities” and has built over 2,000 homes since 2011.
Alpha News contacted Klobuchar’s campaign about Wills’ criticism. The campaign did not respond prior to a publication deadline.
Klobuchar is a DFL candidate for governor of Minnesota. She launched her campaign in January of this year and faces Kobey Layne, a transgender former Republican, in the August DFL primary for governor. Klobuchar is expected to win easily.
Meanwhile, Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, and former business executive Kendall Qualls are running for the Republican nomination for governor. Qualls won the GOP endorsement for governor last month.
A previous version of the story contained a misspelling of Dale Wills’ name.
Luke Sprinkel
Luke Sprinkel previously worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Minnesota House of Representatives. He grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK) living in England, Thailand, Tanzania, and the Middle East. Luke graduated from Regent University in 2018.
