$850 to $2,000 a Month — And Nothing Changed But the Price: Why Minnesota’s Housing Crisis Is a Leadership Crisis

By Tyler Bass| Bass for Congress | Vote August 11th — Primary Election

I want to tell you a story. It starts in 2013 when a young personal trainer packed up his life in Rochester, Minnesota, and moved to the Twin Cities to build something. No safety net, no trust fund — just a dream, a work ethic, and about $3,000 coming in per month from building a fitness business from the ground up.

When I got to the Twin Cities, I found an apartment in Crystal that checked every box a young professional could want. Spacious. Fully updated. Granite countertops, modern appliances, a community pool, an on-site gym, and a beautiful park right across the street. It was the kind of place that made you feel like you were doing something right — like the work was paying off, like the American dream was actually within reach.

I paid $850 a month for that apartment.

That wasn’t a dump. That wasn’t subsidized housing. That was a quality, amenity-rich one-bedroom in a good neighborhood — and it was affordable on an honest income.

Fast forward to 2026. That same apartment — same unit, same building, no meaningful upgrades, no new amenities, no new construction — now rents for $2,000 a month.

That is a 111% increase in thirteen years.

And here’s the part that should make every Minnesotan’s blood boil: our wages didn’t come close to keeping up. Over that same thirteen-year stretch, wages in Minnesota grew by roughly 42%. You don’t need a calculator to see the problem. You just need to look at your bank account at the end of the month and ask yourself where the money went.

This is not an abstract policy debate. This is the lived reality of hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans — and it’s the reason I’m running for Congress as a Republican in the August 11th primary.

The Numbers Don’t Lie — But Politicians Pretend They Don’t Exist

Let me be very direct about the math, because politicians in this state have spent two decades hoping you won’t do it yourself.

In 2013, a single person making $3,000 a month and paying $850 in rent was spending about 28% of their gross income on housing. That’s within the range financial advisors generally consider healthy — the long-standing guideline being that housing should consume no more than 30% of your income.

Today, that same apartment at $2,000 a month would consume 67% of that same $3,000 income. No one can survive that. You cannot eat, drive a car, pay student loans, save for retirement, or build any kind of life while two-thirds of your money disappears into rent before you’ve bought a single grocery.

But wait — wages went up 42%, right? So let’s be generous. Let’s say your income grew proportionally from $3,000 to $4,260 a month over those thirteen years. Now that $2,000 apartment is eating 47% of your check. Still nearly double the healthy threshold. Still mathematically unsustainable.

A 2024 report from the Minnesota Housing Partnership found that nearly half of Minnesota renters are stretching their wallets to cover housing costs, and that Minnesota households now need to earn nearly six figures a year to afford the median-priced home. One housing expert quoted in the report put it bluntly: “You will need almost three full-time jobs to be able to afford a home.”

Three full-time jobs. To live in Minnesota. The same state where, not long ago, a personal trainer just starting out could find a granite apartment for $850 and have enough left over to build a business.

Something went deeply, fundamentally wrong — and it didn’t happen by accident.

The Buying Power Problem: Where Did Our Wages Go?

Here is something I want every working Minnesotan to sit with for a moment.

If we want workers today to have the same real purchasing power that Baby Boomers had in their prime earning years — the ability to buy a home, raise a family, save for the future, and still go out to dinner on Friday night without stress — economists estimate wages would need to be approximately $66 per hour.

Read that again. Sixty-six dollars an hour.

The average hourly wage in Minnesota right now is around $37. That’s not bad by national standards — the Bureau of Labor Statistics found the average Minnesota worker earned $37.58 per hour in 2024, the 8th highest in the country. But it is nowhere close to the purchasing power our parents and grandparents had when they were buying their first homes, raising kids, and building middle-class lives.

The Baby Boomers didn’t have two incomes just to cover rent. They didn’t agonize over whether they could afford eggs and milk at the same time. They bought homes in their twenties. They took vacations. They retired with dignity. That wasn’t luck — it was a functional economy where wages and costs moved together instead of in opposite directions at full sprint.

Minnesota’s own Department of Employment and Economic Development confirmed the problem plainly: “Because inflation was consistently higher than wage growth between mid-2021 to early 2023, the cumulative effect over three years is that inflation is still surpassing wage growth.” Workers were falling behind not because they weren’t working hard enough, but because the system was rigged against them by bad policy.

Today, people are afraid to buy eggs. They are skipping medications. They are choosing between car insurance and groceries. They are living in their parents’ basements at 30 not because they’re lazy but because the math simply does not work.

That is not the Minnesota I moved to. That is not the Minnesota any of us deserve. And it is absolutely, 100% a direct result of the leadership — or lack thereof — in this state and in Washington.

Twenty Years of One-Party Rule: What Do We Have to Show For It?

Minnesota has been controlled by Democrats for the better part of two decades. And I say this not as a partisan attack — I say it as a statement of fact that every Minnesotan should hold up against what they see in their own lives.

In twenty years of Democrat leadership at the state level:

Rent went up 111%. Wages went up 42%. Property taxes have increased dramatically year over year — Minnesota counties and cities are raising property taxes due to rising costs and budget cuts, with those increases stemming directly from state policies, mandates, and cost shifts that leave cities no choice but to pass the burden onto homeowners and businesses.

In one real Minnesota story, a man named Harlan Olson saw the assessed value of his property jump $50,000 in a single year — his property had gone from a purchase price of about $30,000 to a county valuation of over $238,000 in just five years — with no renovations and no changes. His property tax bill went up $1,000 in a single year. That’s not a fluke — that’s a pattern playing out in every county in this state.

A Minnesota Chamber of Commerce report showed the state slipping in national economic rankings — ranking 33rd in GDP growth, 39th in job growth, 40th in labor force growth, and 46th in median household income growth between 2019 and 2024. Nearly 48,000 residents left the state between 2020 and 2024.

And who’s leaving? Not just retirees heading to Florida for the sunshine. Since 2019, Minnesota has lost a net 47,865 residents to other parts of the United States — and the state loses around 8,000 more 18- to 24-year-olds each year than it gains. Between 2006 and 2021, Minnesota had a net loss of 156,000 people in the prime 18-to-24 age range.

Our young people are leaving. The people who should be buying homes, starting businesses, building communities — they’re going to Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Arizona. States where the cost of living is lower, the regulatory burden is lighter, and your paycheck actually stretches into something resembling a life.

IRS migration data shows that Minnesota lost residents in every income category above $25,000 annually. The state is gaining lower-income residents while hemorrhaging its middle and upper-middle class — the very taxpayers who fund the services everyone depends on.

I’ve talked to Minnesotans all across the metro who say the same thing: “If we don’t get new leadership in this state, we’re going to move.” They’re not complaining. They’re describing rational economic decision-making. When your rent consumes half your paycheck and your wages haven’t kept pace and your property taxes go up every year regardless of what you do — at some point, you vote with your feet.

The Democrats have had their chance. Twenty years. And the result is a state where ordinary working people can barely afford to stay.

The Federal Reserve, Property Taxes, and the Hidden Tax on the American Dream

Let me tell you something that most people don’t fully understand — and that the political establishment in both parties would rather you not think too hard about.

The Federal Reserve’s decisions on interest rates don’t just affect Wall Street. They don’t just affect big banks and hedge funds. They flow directly into your monthly rent, your property tax assessment, and your ability to buy a home.

Here’s how it works: when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, mortgage rates go up. When mortgage rates go up, fewer people can qualify to buy homes. When fewer people buy homes, demand for rentals increases. When rental demand increases, landlords raise rents. And when property values get reassessed in a distorted market driven by Fed policy rather than real local economic conditions, your property tax bill goes up too — regardless of whether you renovated a single thing or whether your actual income changed at all.

This is not a conspiracy. This is basic cause and effect — and it’s why I believe we need to fundamentally rethink the relationship between federal monetary policy and local housing costs.

Consider what happened in real time over the last decade. During President Trump’s first term, interest rates were competitive and manageable. By the third quarter of 2020, with mortgage rates dropping to 3.01%, there was a record number of first-time homebuyers — 2.55 million on an annualized basis, the fastest pace ever recorded. People were buying homes. Young families were getting their first piece of the American dream. The market was moving.

Then the Biden administration took office, and the dynamic reversed almost immediately. Inflation exploded. The Federal Reserve, responding to years of excessive spending and money printing, began raising interest rates aggressively. By 2024, the share of homes purchased by first-time buyers had dropped to 21% — an all-time low in data going back to 1981. It was 33% six years earlier. The median age of a first-time homebuyer climbed to 40, up from 33 in 2019.

Think about that. In six years, the typical first-time homebuyer went from 33 years old to 40 years old. An entire decade of wealth-building — gone. An entire generation of Americans delayed from the single most powerful wealth-creation tool available to ordinary people: owning their home.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s policy. That’s what happens when the federal government prints money without discipline, drives inflation, then jacks up rates to fight the inflation it created — and leaves regular working Americans to absorb every bit of the pain.

Now that President Trump is back in the White House, we’re beginning to see rates inch back down. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate is currently near 6%, among the lowest in recent years, driven in part by the administration’s efforts to support mortgage bond markets. That’s progress. But it’s not enough, and it’s not permanent enough, as long as the structural relationship between federal monetary policy and local housing costs remains unchanged.

I want to go further. I want to remove the federal hand from the equation as it relates to local property taxes. Minnesotans should not be paying higher property taxes because of decisions made in Washington boardrooms and Federal Reserve meetings. The value of your home in Crystal or Brooklyn Park or Shakopee should be determined by your local market and your community — not by the Fed’s rate decisions and the ripple effects that flow down to your tax assessment.

Right now, when the Fed raises rates and the housing market tightens, local governments still need their revenue — so they raise property tax rates and reassess values upward to compensate. The homeowner, who had nothing to do with any of those federal decisions, ends up paying more. Every year. With no end in sight.

That has to stop. And I intend to fight for it.

Our Kids Are Being Priced Out of the Future

I want to talk about something that doesn’t get enough attention in this debate: what this housing crisis means for the next generation.

If you are 22 years old in Minnesota today, here is your reality. You’re entering a job market where wages have grown 42% over thirteen years — but the cost of a decent apartment has grown 111%. You likely have student loan debt. The median age of a first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. That means, statistically, you are looking at nearly two decades of renting — and two decades of your rent money building someone else’s equity instead of your own.

If you do manage to save for a down payment, the median home price in Minnesota is now around $316,000. With an average property tax rate of 1.05% of assessed value, you’re looking at well over $3,000 per year in property taxes alone on a median home — before you’ve paid a dollar of your mortgage, insurance, or maintenance.

And the home prices keep climbing. The property taxes keep climbing. The wages are not climbing fast enough to meet them.

At the current pace, buying a home and paying it off in full will be a lifelong goal for today’s young adults — not a milestone in their late twenties or early thirties like it was for their parents and grandparents. Some will never achieve it at all. And that matters not just for their individual financial security, but for the entire fabric of communities.

Homeowners are invested in their neighborhoods. They fix things up. They show up to school board meetings. They plant gardens. They know their neighbors. When homeownership becomes inaccessible to a whole generation, you don’t just lose an economic statistic — you lose the community bonds that hold towns and cities together.

Minnesota’s state demographer has warned that if current trends hold, within 20 years the state will have more residents dying each year than are born, and that the state is losing around 8,000 more young adults aged 18 to 24 annually than it gains.

That is a demographic and economic catastrophe in slow motion. And it is being driven, at least in part, by a housing market that prices young people out before they ever get a chance to plant roots.

The Democrats’ answer to this is more government programs. More subsidized housing. More bureaucratic intervention. More of the same policies that created this problem in the first place, just with different acronyms and press releases.

I reject that. Completely.

The answer is not more government. The answer is getting government out of the way. Reduce the regulatory burden that inflates the cost of new construction. Restructure the relationship between federal monetary policy and local property taxes. Create conditions where wages can actually rise to meet the cost of living — not by mandate, but by growing an economy where workers have real options and real leverage.

That is how Baby Boomers built wealth. Not through government programs. Through a functional market where their hard work translated into real economic power.

What I Believe — And What I Will Fight For

I came to the Twin Cities in 2013 with three thousand dollars a month, a personal training certification, and the conviction that if I worked hard enough, Minnesota would reward me. And for a while, it did. I built a company. I built a life. I watched this state and this metro area change in ways that make me proud — and in ways that make me genuinely worried about what we’re leaving for the people who come after us.

I am a job creator. I am a general contractor. I am a small business owner who has watched the cost of doing business in this state climb and climb while the returns get harder to find. I am a Republican because I believe in the power of free markets, personal responsibility, and limited government to create more opportunity for more people than any government program ever has or ever will.

I am running for Congress because the people I work with — the tradespeople, the young families, the renters, the homeowners getting crushed by property tax assessments — deserve a voice in Washington that actually understands what their lives look like.

Here is what I will fight for:

Removing federal interference from local property tax structures. Your property tax bill should reflect the value of your home in your community — not the downstream effects of Fed rate decisions and Washington spending binges.

Making homeownership accessible to the next generation. That means pushing for policies that bring mortgage rates down, increase housing supply, reduce the regulatory burden on construction, and give young Minnesotans a realistic path to owning their first home before they turn 40.

Tying economic policy to real wage growth. We should not be in a situation where the headline unemployment numbers look fine while workers can’t afford eggs and milk. Real prosperity means wages that keep up with costs — not just for the top earners, but for the personal trainers, the roofers, the restaurant workers, the factory workers, and the teachers.

Holding the line against socialism. Every time the Democrats propose a new government housing program, a new rental subsidy, a new bureaucratic fix — ask yourself: how has that worked for the last twenty years? Your rent is $2,000. Your wages went up 42%. The answer is it hasn’t worked. It won’t work. The only thing that makes housing affordable in the long run is more supply, less regulation, and an economy where workers actually have power.

Minnesota deserves better than what it’s gotten. The people who built this state — the immigrants who came here to work, the farmers who broke the soil, the union trades who built our skylines, the small business owners who opened doors before anyone else showed up — they came here because opportunity was real and the work paid off.

That contract has been broken. And I intend to fight like hell to restore it.

Vote August 11th — Republican Primary

This is not just a campaign. It is a statement that Minnesotans are done accepting less than they deserve. That we are done watching our kids move to other states. That we are done paying $2,000 a month for the same apartment we paid $850 for thirteen years ago. That we are done watching our wages fall further and further behind while the political class in St. Paul congratulates itself.

I started with nothing and built something, right here in the Twin Cities. I know what it takes to make this state work for regular people, because I am one.

On August 11th, vote for real change.

Vote to make Minnesota affordable again.

Vote Bass for Congress.