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It's been too cold to campaignin frozen North Dakota. But as spring has crept across the state, an unusual ballot initiative is starting to emerge: One that would more than double the minimum wage, from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2021.

"The places we can gather signatures the best are at the parades and the waiting lines at the outhouses," says Scott Nodland, a citizen activist leading the effort. "We expect that now that the snow just melted and temperatures hit the high 50s, we can begin to do something."

It's an unusual platform for the deep red state, which voted 63% for President Trump in 2016.

But support for higher minimum wages has transcended partisan politics before. A wave of purple states - including Colorado, Arizona, and Maine - voted in wage hikes last election cycle.

Raising the minimum wage has been hotly debated in cities and states for years. Supporters argue that it's a remedy for widening wage inequality and will boost consumer spending, while opponents counter that it could reduce opportunities for employment, particularly for teenagers and others looking for entry level or low-skilled jobs.

Related: The US needs to do a better job training its workers. Here's how

Now, another batch of proposed wage hikes is headed for ballots in 2018, with initiatives underway in Massachusetts, Missouri, Michigan, Washington, and Washington D.C. And this time, as research on earlier minimum wage hikes piles up, the impact on workers is starting to become more clear.

The outlook? While some jobs could be lost as a consequence of more ambitious jumps in the minimum wage, the vast majority of workers who remain employed will enjoy higher pay and the economy overall isn't expected to suffer as a result.

For example, one study released last month by economists at the University of California, San Diego and the American Enterprise Institute estimated that minimum wage hikes of more than a dollar implemented between 2013 and 2016 - such as those in California, Washington, and New York - reduced employment among low-skilled workers byjust under 1.5%. The impact on jobs in states with smaller wage increases was more variable, and occasionally there was a positive outcome, possibly because more people were drawn back into the labor market by the better pay.

However, research has also generally found that minimum wage hikes put more money in workers' pockets overall. Another study out last month from two Census Bureau economists found that, based on previous minimum wage increases, a 10% hike would raise income growth for workers in the bottom quarter of wage earners by about 10% - even including any possible reduction in hours.

Considering this new evidence, progressives have shifted from arguing that minimum wage hikes don't lead to job loss to arguing that even if they do, most workers are still better off.

A recent paper from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute points out that people often switch jobs in low-wage industries, so even a 3% loss in jobs could just mean that all workers end up with 3% fewer total hours - but if they were paid 10% more for those hours, everybody comes out ahead.

Related: The gender pay gap isn't just about what you make

Another strand of research from economists at the University of California, Irvine and the London School of Economicsfinds that higher minimum wages push employers to automate low-wage work - think ordering kiosks in fast-food restaurants - which opponents have used to slam minimum wage measures.

But here's another way of looking at it: America has seen low-productivity growth for the past decade, so investments in labor-saving technology should be welcome. A slew of reports, including one released this month by the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that displaced workers should then be trained for higher-value, better-paid jobs that robots have yet to learn how to do.

That's not the only way in which higher minimum wage could make the economy more efficient. As the market for low-wage labor has gotten more concentrated, some economists have theorized that large employers haven't needed to bargain as hard for workers, so they've kept pay artificially depressed.

"Employers have the power to set wages," says Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. "And when it's not completely determined by perfect competition, they are going to set wages too low, and they will always complain that they can't find enough workers at the going wage."

Scott Nodland sees that phenomenon at play in North Dakota, which has an ultra low 2.6% unemployment rate and hourly wages that have fallen behind the national average, despite the abundance of highly paid oil and gas work.

Related: For gig economy workers in these states, rights are at risk

"On the North Dakota job service site, there are 14,400 jobs available," Nodland, who has worked in many fields and refers to himself as an "entrepreneur," says. "And last year, there was a net loss of population in North Dakota. Obviously something is out of balance, and I'm suggesting it's wages."

It's not just North Dakota. Activists pushing minimum wage increases all over the country are doing so out of a sense that poor people haven't shared in what otherwise looks like a booming economy. Although wage growth did accelerate for lower income workers in 2015 and 2016, it hasn't been enough to make up decades of lost ground.

A national group called the Fairness Project, funded by a California healthcare union, is taking that message to several states this cycle with minimum wage campaigns as well as ballot initiatives that would expand Medicaid and require employers to offer paid sick leave. They've calculated, based on data assembled by EPI, that wage increases implemented since the beginning of 2017 have put an extra $4 billion in workers' pockets.

"While unemployment is low, we're seeing pretty stagnant wages," says Fairness Project director Jonathan Scheifer. "And the only places we've seen wage increases is where there's been an increase in the minimum wage."

CNNMoney (New York) First published April 27, 2018: 7:25 AM ET

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The case for raising the minimum wage keeps getting stronger

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"The places we can gather signatures the best are at the parades and the waiting lines at the outhouses," says Scott Nodland, a citizen activist leading the effort. "We expect that now that the snow just melted and temperatures hit the high 50s, we can begin to do something."

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This shows the generalizations that Barbara Ehrenreich makes in her book.

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Ehrenreich’s journey to Maine showed an evident sentiment for how demographics has an effect on class in society. She begins by remarking about how she “chose Maine for its whiteness” (52) which for her meant safety. Throughout the book Barbara Ehrenreich has commented on the poor classes makeup. For her, Maine offered security and anonymity for her research, but it did not make it the most model state. Her visit to a church social also brings up a new conversation. The harsh tone makes the reader question how biased the text is. She looks for race to be able to analyze religions relation to race but she brings it up casually adding that she “count [s] three or four people of color” (67). Ehrenreich herself does not witness a great relationship with race, but even so it clear that she has decided that people of color are more likely to be in poverty or to be in need of welfare. When Barbara Ehrenreich goes to a new job she notes the age and gender of the people she is working with, often using words like “average” (71) to generalize her information and form a conclusion. Sometimes, the reader is left confused by her comments as they are controversial and it is hard to pick up on her tone and sarcasm. However, often rhetorical questions will guide the readers to figure out her message, such as saying “How poor are they” (78) as a way to introduce a new demographic to the seen. Obviously, Ehrenreich’s commentary on poverty’s relationship with the minimum wage is evident but other classifications are viewed and discussed to enhance author's tone and imply that different demographics face different struggles that make it difficult for people to survive on minimum wage.

As the chapter progresses, Ehrenreich's opinions become much more powerful. She often comments on her conditions and speak of them despicably. Her distaste for her place of poverty only grows through the chapter. The back breaking labor of cleaning is continuously in ways such as asking if homeowners realize “The misery that goes into rendering their homes model-perfect?” (89). Even her word choice changes, words such as “sadistic” (89) increase in her vocabulary. No doubt, these words are used to comment on the horrible conditions and work that maids have to endure. However, Barbara Ehrenreich also becomes slightly demeaning. After Holly falls ill the author remarks that she finally has “purpose more compelling” than just cleaning and polishing (97). This is insulting to maids, however maids are probably not her target audience anyway and she probably realizes that.

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In Nickel and Dimed, author Barbara Ehrenreich writes about the struggles of surviving off of minimum wage in Twin Cities, Minnesota. She uses rhetorical strategies to parallel her outlook on the situation and showcase the repetition that comes with working in a low-paying job. In the beginning of her experiment in Minnesota, Ehrenreich uses imagery to reflect her feelings on the last leg of her experiment. She writes,  “The blue of the lakes merging with the blue of the sky, neatly sculpted clouds passed here and there, strips of farmland in alternating chartreuse and emerald—a lush, gentle landscape, seemingly penetrable from any angle,” (Ehrenreich 121). A detailed description of the beautiful setting she drives through also sets the tone for the beginning of her trip to Twin Cities. Ehrenreich still has some hope left for trying to live off of minimum wage in a big city. Not long after though, she discovers that there are next to no available places for her to live that she can even barely afford. She is forced to settle for a motel, which she describes as forming “a toilet-seat shape around the parking lot,” (Ehrenreich 152). It is through comparing her motel with the shape of a toilet seat does the reader make the connection that she is not happy to be staying there. She quickly goes from a positive and hopeful tone to one of disappointment to show that she has already lost all hope and sense of excitement about staying in Minnesota.

Ehrenreich also uses repetition in her sentence structure to reflect the repetitive nature of her daily life in Minnesota. With her new job at walmart comes a back pain that cannot heal on its own. She writes, “Go to bed with a backache, wake up with a backache,” (Ehrenreich 132). Her repeating the statement shows how relentless her pain is and how tired she is of her life in Minnesota. Later in the section, Ehrenreich uses the same strategy the demonstrate her frustration with her sleeplessness in the motel. She writes, “I sleep and wake up, sleep and wake up again,” (Ehrenreich 152). This sentence conveys her tiredness of the situation and the drove of daily life there. Through her repetition the reader can conclude that Barbara is not happy in her situation and barely scraping by, much like the many others surviving solely off of minimum wage.

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The chart shows a growing divide in the diet of high income families vs. low income families. Many low income families cannot afford healthier foods, so they rely on junk food and soda because it's cheaper than healthy meals. Barbara encounters this problem when she can only afford to eat wendy's every day.

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In “Serving in Florida” Ehrenreich uses rhetorical strategies to prove her purpose that low income Americans have limited options to get by. Ehrenreich uses imagery to describe what conditions she must live in, ¨gleaming white floor and a firm mattress… few resident bugs” (12-13). The purpose of including this description is to prove to the audience that in order to be able to pay for a home, sacrifices must be made. In this case Ehrenreich makes the sacrifice of cleanliness and describes this to the audience using imagery. Ehrenreich goes on to include facts about jobs like, ¨… Winn-Dixie is offering- $6 and a couple of dimes...¨(14) and further discusses how hard it is to survive off of such minimal pay. Facts help the reader truly see how difficult it is to live as a low income worker because money and numbers do not lie. Once Ehrenreich acquires her first job as a waitress she uses idioms like, ¨… you´re going to face the 6:00 P.M. dinner rush defenseless and probably go down in flames¨(17). Of course she will not actually go down in flames, but the use of this rhetorical strategy in the intense situation that the author finds herself in helps exemplify how tough low income jobs can be. When Ehrenreich realizes that she needs another job, she uses descriptions to help readers vision where she looked. One place that she applied to was, ¨so creepy that the front-desk clerk greets you from behind bullet-proof glass and sells pints of liquor over the counter” (29). Describing the scene proves the author´s purpose that job choices are limited. This is proven by including the information that she had to apply to such a dangerous place. Ehrenreich´s safety was put at risk to earn money. Ehrenreich makes the audience aware that she would much rather not apply to places like this, but no other job options are available to her.

Later in ¨Serving in Florida¨ Ehrenreich uses more rhetorical strategies to further prove her purpose that low income Americans do not have many choices to make ends meet. Ehrenreich uses metaphors, ¨The kitchen is a cavern, a stomach leading to the lower intestine that is the garbage...¨ (29) like this to describe the terrible conditions of the restaurant where she waitresses. In such grotesque description, this puts the audience in a sickened state of mind. A worker with options would not choose to work in such a gross working environment. The author also uses her new point of view to show how her life before had so many options. Ehrenreich explains her point of view now, ¨...phone messages addressed to myself come from a distant race of people with exotic concerns and far too much time on their hands¨ (34) contrasting her life from before this experiment elaborately helps support Ehrenreich’s purpose that low income workers are limited. Ehrenreich points out that she took little things for granted, because now she does not have any extra time. Another metaphor used to prove her purpose is when Ehrenreich has become a cleaner at a hotel too and is ¨forced to pay for our presence with backaches and perpetual thirst” (43). The use of a metaphor helps truly show the readers that working low income jobs are not only are attached with a paycheck, but also injuries. The people who must work these jobs are trapped with these ¨backaches¨ because of the limited options they find themselves with. Ehrenreich's purpose is clear because she would not chose this job with the backaches and thirst, but desperate times call for desperate measures. One day when Ehrenreich is waitressing a restaurant becomes very hectic. Most of the day is “lost in the fog of war” (47) because of the high demand of orders, and not enough staff. The author’s purpose in including stories like this are to help readers visualize and feel how tough working for such little money can be. Ehrenreich was not actually in war, but says the day is like war, to prove it is horrible and draining.

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Infographic explaining how people who try to live off of just the minimum wage cannot make all ends meet. Ehrenreich is trying to prove this throughout her book.

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ABOUT | BOARD LOGIN | PROGRAM DIRECTORY | CAREERS | PRIVACY POLICY | CONTACT US

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This article explains how low- income workers usually say no to health insurance due to the cost. Ehrenreich also explained how Gail was not on the health plan so, ¨she spends $9 a pop for pills¨ 27 instead.

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An employee at Golden Corral taking clean cups from the kitchen. Some Golden Corral restaurants began offering health insurance to employees, but few have opted in. Credit Credit Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. - When Billy Sewell began offering health insurance this year to 600 service workers at the Golden Corral restaurants that he owns, he wondered nervously how many would buy it. Adding hundreds of employees to his plan would cost him more than $1 million - a hit he wasn't sure his low-margin business could afford.

His actual costs, though, turned out to be far smaller than he had feared. So far, only two people have signed up.

"We offered, and they didn't take it," he said.

Evidence is growing that his experience is not unusual. The Affordable Care Act's employer mandate, which requires employers with more than 50 full-time workers to offer most of their employees insurance or face financial penalties, was one of the law's most controversial provisions. Business owners and industry groups fiercely protested the change, and some companies cut workers' hours to reduce the number of employees who would be eligible.

But 10 months after the first phase of the mandate took effect, covering companies with 100 or more workers, many business owners say they are finding very few employees willing to buy the health insurance that they are now compelled to offer. The trend is especially pronounced among smaller and midsize businesses in fields filled with low-wage hourly workers, like restaurants, retailing and hospitality. (Companies with 50 to 99 workers are not required to comply with the mandate until next year.)

"Based on what we've seen in the marketplace, we're advising some of our clients to expect single-digit take rates," said Michael A. Bodack, an insurance broker in Harrison, N.Y. "One to 2 percent isn't unusual."

Nationwide, the Affordable Care Act has significantly reduced the number of Americans without health insurance. Around 10.7 percent of the country's under-65 population was uninsured in the first three months of this year, down from 17.5 percent five years earlier, according to the National Health Interview Survey, a long-running federal study. Some 14 million previously uninsured adults have gained coverage in the last two years, the Obama administration estimates.

Most of those gains, though, have come from a vast expansion of Medicaid and from the subsidies that help lower-income people buy insurance through federal and state exchanges. Workers who are offered affordable individual coverage through their employers - a group that the employer mandate was intended to expand - are not eligible for government-subsidized insurance through the exchanges, even if their income would otherwise have qualified them.

But for those trying to get by on near-minimum wages, a plan that qualifies as "affordable" can still seem far out of reach.

That is the case for many of Mr. Sewell's workers. He employs 1,800 people at the 26 Golden Corral franchises he owns in six Southern and Midwestern states, and previously offered insurance only to his salaried management staff. In January, when the employer mandate took effect, he made the same insurance plan, with a bigger employer contribution, available to all employees working an average of 30 or more hours a week.

Running the math on his plan - a typical one for the restaurant industry - illustrates why a number of low-wage workers are falling through gaps in the Affordable Care Act.

The annual premium for individual coverage through the Golden Corral Blue Cross Blue Shield plan is $4,800. Mr. Sewell pays 65 percent for service workers, leaving them with a monthly cost of $140.

The health care law defines affordable employer-sponsored insurance as that priced at 9.5 percent or less of an employee's annual household income for individual coverage. (Because employers do not know how much money their workers' relatives make, there are several "safe harbors" they can use for compliance, including basing their calculation on only their own employees' wages.) Mr. Sewell's insurance meets the test, but $65 per biweekly paycheck is more than most of his workers are willing - or able - to pay for insurance that still carries steep out-of-pocket costs, including a $2,500 deductible.

Clarissa Morris, 47, has been a server at the Golden Corral here for five years, earning $2.13 an hour plus tips. On a typical day, she leaves the restaurant with about $70 in tips. Her husband makes $9 an hour at Walmart but has been offered only a part-time schedule there, without benefits. Their combined paychecks barely cover their rent and daily essentials.

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Billy Sewell, owner of several Golden Corral restaurants. Credit Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times

"It's either buy insurance or put food in the house," she said. On the rare occasions that she gets sick, she visits a local clinic with sliding-scale fees. It costs her $25 for a visit, and $4 to fill prescriptions at Walmart.

Brad Mete, the managing partner of Affinity Resources, a staffing agency in Dania Beach, Fla., began offering insurance this year to most of his workers only because the law required it. He said the alternative, paying a penalty of about $2,000 per full-time employee, was unthinkable, "That would put us out of business, in one swoop."

Trying to persuade his hourly workers to buy the insurance is "like pulling teeth," he said. His company's plan costs $120 a month, but workers making about $300 a week are reluctant to spend $30 of it on insurance.

The employer mandate has not yet had any noticeable effect on the number of workers enrolled in employer-sponsored health plans, according to a survey by Mercer, a human resources consulting firm. Most of the newly eligible appear to be obtaining coverage elsewhere, such as through the plan of a parent or spouse, or are continuing to go without, said Tracy Watts, a Mercer consultant.

A study by ADP, the payroll processing giant, found an income tipping point at which most employees who are eligible for health insurance will buy it: $45,000 a year.

Workers making $15,000 to $20,000 a year buy employer-sponsored individual insurance when it is offered only 37 percent of the time. That rate rises at every income increment ADP studied until $45,000, when it reaches 82 percent and levels off. Further income gains have virtually no effect on the rate, ADP found.

The study was conducted in 2013, before many of the Affordable Care Act's provisions took effect, but ADP's recent figures do not indicate significant changes in that pattern, according to Christopher Ryan, an ADP research executive.

Low participation can pose problems for employers, especially smaller ones. Insurers are reluctant to sell policies to companies with low enrollment, because they fear that only the sickest employees will buy coverage.

Until this year, most insurers would not cover groups that fell short of their minimum participation requirements. The Affordable Care Act struck down that policy - a sea change for the industry - by prohibiting minimum participation rules from being used to deny coverage to any employer with 100 or more workers. But there is a big loophole: Insurers are required to issue the policies, but they are not required to renew them.

Mario K. Castillo, a lawyer in Houston who has extensively studied the new law, said it was poorly understood in the industry, and a bureaucratic nightmare.

"They have to issue you a policy, but dropping it after one year is perfectly legal," he said. "If you're in this space, you essentially have to shop for insurance every year."

For employees, forgoing coverage can mean facing tax penalties. Ms. Morris said she was surprised by the $95 fee she had to pay this year for being uninsured in 2014. "I had kind of heard about it, but I didn't think it was going to kick in until later," she said.

Around 7.5 million taxpayers paid the fine, according to a preliminary report by the Internal Revenue Service. That is significantly more than the three million to six million the government had forecast.

Low-income, full-time workers like Ms. Morris may prove to be some of the hardest people to bring into the ranks of the insured, said Gary Claxton, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which conducts an annual study on employer health benefits.

"This is one of the outcomes of trying to keep employer-based coverage in place," Mr. Claxton said. "These are folks that didn't have coverage before, and they're not being given much help to get coverage now."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Insurance Out of Reach for Many, Despite Law. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Many Low-Income Workers Say 'No' to Health Insurance

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JACKSONVILLE, N.C. - When Billy Sewell began offering health insurance this year to 600 service workers at the Golden Corral restaurants that he owns, he wondered nervously how many would buy it. Adding hundreds of employees to his plan would cost him more than $1 million - a hit he wasn't sure his low-margin business could afford.

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This article talks about how the housing crisis in Twin Cities, Minnesota is still going on today, 18 years after Barbara Ehrenreich was having trouble finding a suitable place to live in Nickel and Dimed

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Jim Mone/AP

Outside the Twin Cities, housing advocates are fighting with local governments, reluctant neighbors-and, occasionally, each other.

In late April, some residents of Normandale Lake Estates, an apartment complex in Bloomington, Minnesota, just outside of Minneapolis, received a letter informing them that their leases were being terminated and they'd have to move out by June 1. New owners had recently bought the building and planned to upgrade the units. Existing tenants were told they could prequalify to return, but many suspect the new rents will be higher than they can afford. In the meantime, they're scrambling to find new places to live.

For some of the displaced Bloomington renters, this isn't the first time they've been forced out of their homes. A little over two years ago, in the nearby suburb of Richfield, new owners purchased an apartment complex called Crossroads at Penn. They renamed it Concierge, renovated the units, and priced out hundreds of families. Some of those Crossroads tenants, like Lisa Jones, who relies on a federal housing voucher for herself and her two grandchildren, and Linda Soderstrom, also on federal housing subsidy, moved from Richfield to the Normandale Lake Estates. Now they've been pushed out once more.

"The lack of humanity is deep," Soderstrom told The Star-Tribune. "It's really deep."

After the Crossroads takeover in late 2015, housing activists and community groups across the metropolitan region began meeting regularly to strategize how they could confront the challenges of rising rents and displacement. Soon the Suburban Hennepin Housing Coalition was born-comprised of nearly two dozen community and faith-based groups. Their mission centered on the "the three P's"-preservation of affordable housing, production of affordable housing, and protection of tenants.

Much of the attention around affordable housing in the U.S. has tended to focus on cities like New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle-densely built urban areas where land for new housing is in short supply. But most Americans live in suburbs, many of which are seeing rapidly increasing poverty and racial diversity. Here, the need for affordable housing can be just as acute, but the dynamics of the issue are distinct from the urban version-and, often, more complex.

On the outskirts of the Twin Cities, the housing crisis includes some familiar ingredients-anxieties about race and poverty, debates about density and "neighborhood character." But here there are also deep divisions between various pro-housing advocacy organizations, as well as big differences between suburbs, depending on their relative affluence.

Hope Melton, a retired urban planner, has lived in the wealthy suburb of Edina for nearly 40 years. Last fall, she invited some neighbors to meet in her living room, to kickstart a conversation about steep local housing prices. They've been meeting and growing their group ever since.

"Fifteen or twenty years ago, the affordable housing crisis was mainly hitting poor people," Melton told CityLab. "Now it's affecting a much wider swath of people. We've really been attracting a lot of seniors in Edina, the older generation is really stepping up."

Although the Twin Cities have historically been one of the nation's most affordable places to live, the region has a markedly low rental vacancy rate, meaning there's high demand for new units and steady pressure on rents. Activists fear that "flipping" affordable units into luxury market-rate apartments will become increasingly common prospects for investors, especially those from out-of-state.

Anne Mavity, the executive director of the Minnesota Housing Partnership, says the region is not building new affordable units at the rate at which presently affordable units are disappearing. Market-rate units that were constructed 35 years ago are generally reasonably priced today simply because they're and older and not fancy. The term-of-art for these types of units is "NOAH" or "naturally-occurring affordable housing."

"We're losing NOAH at a rapid pace," Mavity said. "And every time a sale happens, the price of the unit is going to go up, the rents will go up. We are increasingly attractive to national investors, and that is not good for our residents."

To combat some of these trends, the Suburban Hennepin Housing Coalition has been organizing around several key policy areas, namely to add new affordable housing stock, and help tenants fight displacement. In March, for example, the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park passed a first-of-its-kind ordinance requiring new property owners to give low-income tenants 90 days notice to find a new place to live if they're being priced out, and to pay for tenants' moving expenses. A similar rule was just introduced to the Bloomington City Council this month, according to the city's program manager, Bryan Hartman.

Nelima Sitati-Munene, executive director of the African Career Education & Resource, Inc. (ACER), a group focused on organizing the African immigrant community in Minnesota and a member of the Suburban Hennepin Housing Coalition, says they've been pushing municipal leaders to no longer "view the landlord as the only stakeholder" in their cities. In her suburb of Brooklyn Park, activists recently succeeded in getting rental affordability requirements included in new multi-family housing developments.

Sitati-Munene says organizing around suburban governments has been both a challenge and opportunity. "The reality is this affordable housing crisis is a new phenomenon for a lot of people," she said. "And a lot of suburban city councilmembers are part-time. A lot of leaders have been really surprised to learn what's going on, to hear people's personal stories."

Still, the fundamental tensions associated with affordable housing debates in other parts of the country persist here: Many suburbanites are vehemently opposed to changes in local development patterns, especially when the word "density" comes up.

"That's a very polarizing issue," said Ricardo Perez, a community developer at the Community Action Partnership of Hennepin County, when I asked him about increasing housing density as a strategy to boost affordability. "I personally leave it to the policy experts to have those conversations amongst themselves. My main focus is on community and to serve those families who are being affected directly by these issues."

Aaron Berc, a housing organizer with Jewish Community Action and another Suburban Hennepin Housing Coalition leader, was similarly noncommittal on the question of density. "We're not going to support a project because it's dense. We'll support a dense project because it's affordable," he said. "Certainly we need more housing-our city needs to go grow. But I would say we need housing that is affordable for the community more than we need more housing."

These questions around development and density are hardly theoretical abstractions. In March, the city of Minneapolis released a draft comprehensive plan which included a new proposal to upzone neighborhoods so that single-family-homes could be more easily converted into fourplexes, an idea with the strong backing of Minneapolis's new mayor, Jacob Frey. "Affordable housing is a right," he tweeted in March. "Addressing our supply-and shortage-is going to be a key part of realizing that right."

Some groups, like the Defend Glendale Public Housing Coalition, have already come out in strong opposition to the fourplex idea; they argue that relying on market-based solutions will inevitably make things worse for low-income people and increase displacement. The city is accepting public comment on the draft proposal through the end of July.

In Edina, efforts to add more housing have also met stiff resistance. The City Council recently rejected a proposal for a new seven-story building, which would have included 20 percent of its 135 units as affordable. In October the Edina City Council rejected another proposed high-rise condo building, this one of 173 new units, with twenty percent of them designated as affordable.

" There's no doubt that height and density are the two issues that have focused people's minds as we address development, redevelopment and affordable housing," says Melton. "How would I characterize the conversation? Chaotic, emotional, uninformed."

The dynamics get more complicated, Melton says, as residents wrestle with complex issues of race and class through the politics of Midwestern cultural norms. "'Minnesota Nice' plays into this very much," she said. "People don't raise their voice, nobody wants to talk about race, nobody wants to talk about their responsibility historically for what's happened to people that they don't want to have in their community."

Instead, Melton says, her neighbors will "say they don't want 'urban' things, that they don't want all the noise and diversity and crowding and traffic and all that," she says. "Those things they regard as negative, and they moved to Edina to escape it."

Bruce McCarthy, the president of the Lake Cornelia Neighborhood Association in Edina, has said he is "very pro-development" but that "we just want to see it a certain kind of way." He's urged his city council to focus on its new comprehensive plan before it approves any new project that requires amending building size requirements.

Yet even among housing activists who might otherwise be on the same side, the issue of racial integration and fair housing can be charged. In 2014, two of the Twin City's most racially diverse suburbs, Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park, filed a federal fair housing complaint against the state, alleging that policymakers had illegally concentrated subsidized housing and poverty in their cities, in defiance of a state law that requires affluent communities to provide their "fair share" of affordable housing. The re-adoption of a "fair system" is a way of ensuring that more subsidized units end up in higher-income areas. The Metropolitan Interfaith Council on Affordable Housing (MICAH), a faith-based housing organization, partnered with the cities on the complaint.

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Sue Watlov Phillips, executive director of MICAH, says the Metropolitan Council, a regional government agency charged with enforcing the "fair share" law (among many other municipal duties) has been resistant to their complaint, though HUD is continuing to investigate their grievances.

"We're not saying anyone needs to move or be forced to move, but we're saying we want to make sure if you want to move out to another place, you should have affordable housing and opportunity in every community," she said. "We went from being one of the most integrated metros in the country to one of the most segregated, and a lot of it was because we have designated our resources and policies so housing could only be developed in certain areas."

But Sitati-Munene of Brooklyn Park's ACER opposes the fair housing complaint: Her group insists that the working-class suburbs of Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center need much more subsidized housing construction, not less.

Despite disagreements over strategy, placement, and scale, the fact that groups in in the Twin Cities metro are even wrestling with these issues puts them ahead of the curve nationally when it comes to organizing the suburbs. And activists acknowledge that the housing issues they're confronting are not unique to their region.

"After the foreclosure crisis people lost their homes and more people have started to rent," says Sitati-Munene. "Rental markets are flooded, and prices are going up. If other suburbs aren't dealing with affordable housing issues now, it's coming."

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In the Suburbs of the Twin Cities, a Struggle Over Density Heats Up

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Outside the Twin Cities, housing advocates are fighting with local governments, reluctant neighbors-and, occasionally, each other. In late April, some residents of Normandale Lake Estates, an apartment complex in Bloomington, Minnesota, just outside of Minneapolis, received a letter informing them that their leases were being terminated and they'd have to move out by June 1.