Building Standards Updates
Minnesota Housing establishes minimum design standards to meet Minnesotans' needs for decent, safe, and sustainable affordable housing. These standards assist architects and contractors in understanding their role within Minnesota Housing's development process and associated requirements with their services.
The information below is intended to assist development teams planning to submit a 2025 Multifamily Consolidated Request for Proposals (RFP)/ 2026 Housing Tax Credits (HTC) Round 1 application.
Healthier Material Selection Training Opportunity
In the 2025-2026 MN Overlay, a new Criteria 1.8 Education on Actionable Solutions for Healthier Material Selection was added. Four optional points are available if the architect for a project team attends in-person training, live online training, or recorded online training by Habitable. Please go to the Habitable website to register for an in-person training planned for June 24 in Minneapolis and in Duluth on June 26. A live online training is planned for June 30.
Building Standards Documents
Minnesota Housing staff have created a 2025-2026 Building Standards Documents Summary of Changes document, which provides a brief overview of updates to the April 2025 version of the Multifamily Rental Housing Design/Construction Standards (RHD/CS), the Minnesota Overlay to the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria (MN Overlay), and the Contractor’s Guide. It also introduces the Environmental Standards document. This summary of changes is only a quick-reference overview; please reference the actual revised RHD/CS, MN Overlay, Contractor’s Guide, and Environmental Standards for full understanding of changes and requirements. These documents can be found on Minnesota Housing’s Building Standards webpage.
Minnesota Housing document revision is now on a two-year schedule. This change aligns document revisions with our Housing Tax Credits Qualification Plan (QAP). The documents released in April of 2025 will be applicable to 2025-2026 Consolidated RFP funded projects and 2026-2027 Housing Tax Credit allocations.
Questions?
Contact Mike Thomas, Minnesota Housing Staff Architect, at mike.thomas@state.mn.us.
About Minnesota Housing
Minnesota Housing, the state’s housing finance agency, works to provide access to safe, stable and accessible housing Minnesotans can afford in a community of their choice. In 2024, the Agency distributed $1.96 billion in resources and served 73,650 households. Visit our website to learn more.
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