Saint Paul rent increase 2026 Chapter 193A is a flat 3% statutory cap — with regulator-gated 8% and 15% paths and a post-2004 building exemption.

The 2026 cap is 3%, and it is not CPI-indexed

Saint Paul Legislative Code §193A.04(a) caps annual rent increases at 3% per rolling 12-month period. The 3% number does not move with CPI, MSA-level inflation, or any external benchmark. It was the rate adopted by the November 2021 ballot initiative, modified by the September 2022 amendment effective January 1, 2023, and preserved without numeric change in the May 2025 amendment effective June 13, 2025. Unless the City Council amends Chapter 193A or another voter initiative passes, the 2026 cap is the same 3% the ordinance has imposed since its first enforcement year — which makes Saint Paul the only RentCeiling-modeled jurisdiction whose number does not need to be re-checked against a CPI release each January.

That stability cuts both ways. Landlords cannot ride a CPI surge up the way Oregon's SB 611 9.5% cap moves with the West Region CPI-U, or the way DC's 4.1% RY 2026 cap moves with CPI-W for the DC-VA-MD-WV MSA. But landlords also do not need to re-paper their notices each January when the cap is published — the standard 3% cap is durable, predictable, and does not require repeated litigation over the controlling reference period. The whole CPI-indexing risk surface (wrong reference period, wrong index, wrong rounding) does not exist in Saint Paul.

Three lawful increase paths: 3%, 3-8%, 8-15%

Above 3%, the ordinance creates two regulator-gated upside paths before any hearing examiner becomes involved. Each path has its own filing, evidence, and timing requirements:

1. Standard 3% path (§193A.04(a)). No filing, no evidence, no hearing. Serve the §504B.135 notice with the new rent, the effective date 30 days after service for a month-to-month tenancy, and the standard cap citation. This is the path 90%+ of Saint Paul rent increases use.
2. Self-Certification path (3%-8%, §193A.05). File a Notice of Self-Certification with the Department of Safety and Inspections (DSI) before serving the tenant. No hearing. DSI keeps a public record. The landlord asserts that the increase is justified by operating-cost or capital-expense increases beyond the 3%-cap-and-CPI envelope. No upfront proof is required, but DSI may audit at any time and roll the rent back if the assertion is not substantiated. Audit risk is on the landlord, on the back end.
3. Staff-Determination path (8%-15%, §193A.06). File a Staff-Determination Petition with DSI with documented operating-cost and capital-improvement justification. DSI staff reviews the petition and issues a determination authorizing some specific percentage between 8% and 15%. The determination must arrive before the tenant notice is served, not after. Typical processing time is 30-60 days, so a landlord planning a Staff-Determination increase needs to file the petition ~3 months before the target effective date.

Above 15% requires a separate hearing-examiner determination under §193A.07. The 15% ceiling is hard absent that determination — DSI cannot grant a Staff-Determination above 15% even with overwhelming operating-cost evidence. The hearing-examiner path adds a contested evidentiary proceeding, tenant notice, opportunity to be heard, and a written determination. Realistically, the hearing-examiner path is used for buildings emerging from substantial rehabilitation or for properties where Section 8 conversion math has shifted operating costs out of the 15% envelope. For garden-variety operating-cost increases, the 8-15% Staff-Determination path is the practical ceiling.

Who is covered, who is exempt

Saint Paul's coverage rule, as amended in May 2025, is unusually broad. Chapter 193A reaches every Saint Paul residential rental unit whose building first Certificate of Occupancy was issued on or before December 31, 2004, with three exemptions:

• Post-2004 new construction (§193A.03(b)). Buildings whose first Certificate of Occupancy was issued after December 31, 2004 are permanently exempt. Before the May 2025 amendment, the exemption was a rolling 20-year window measured from each unit's first CoC. The amendment fixed the cutoff at 2004, which simplifies the coverage check (one date, two outcomes) at the cost of locking in the boundary against future development cycles.
• Owner-occupied 4-or-fewer-unit buildings (§193A.03(c)). If the owner lives in the building and the building has 4 or fewer rental units, the entire building is exempt. The owner-occupancy must be genuine and the unit count is at the building level, not the parcel level. A 5-unit owner-occupied building loses the exemption entirely — there is no per-unit graduated coverage.
• Affordable-housing regulatory-agreement units (§193A.03(d)). Section 8 project-based, LIHTC, HUD-202, HUD-811, and locally-financed affordable units operating under a regulatory agreement that fixes the rent are exempt. The regulatory-agreement rent-fixing must be currently in force; an expired LIHTC compliance period reverts the unit to Chapter 193A coverage on the first rent setting after expiration.

Single-family rentals are covered. This is the single most surprising feature of Chapter 193A relative to the rest of the RentCeiling catalogue. AB 1482 carves SFRs out under §1947.12(d)(5)(A) when the owner is a natural person; ORS §90.323 has the §90.323(2)(c) primary-residence carve-out; D.C. Code §42-3502.05 exempts buildings with 4 or fewer rental units owned by a natural person; Mont. Co. Code §29-53 exempts owner-occupied ADUs. None of those carve-outs exist in Chapter 193A. A pre-2004 single-family rental owned by a non-resident landlord is squarely covered.

The notice rule is Minnesota Statutes §504B.135

Saint Paul does not impose a city-specific notice-period rule. The controlling statute is Minnesota Statutes §504B.135(a): written notice equal to one rent-payment interval. For typical month-to-month tenancies, that is 30 days. The 30 days runs from delivery; mailed notices effectively get an additional 3 days under the standard mailbox-rule presumption used in Minnesota district courts, though the statute does not codify a §90.155-style mailing-add. Cross-jurisdictional treatment of notice-period rules is covered in detail at our 30-or-90-day notice deep-dive.

No city-prescribed form. The notice must contain the current rent, the new rent, the effective date, the unit address, and the landlord's signature. For a Self-Certification or Staff-Determination increase, best practice is to attach the DSI filing receipt to the notice — the ordinance does not require it, but tenants who challenge the increase will demand it during DSI's complaint-intake process and an attached copy short-circuits that round of correspondence.

The notice must be served before the rent-due date of the month containing day 30 of the notice period. A landlord who wants the new rent to attach on the September 1, 2026 rent payment must serve the notice no later than July 31, 2026. Practical buffer: serve 5-7 days early to absorb mailing delay, address-update surprises, and the occasional post-and-mail sub-service step under Minn. Stat. §504B.331(d).

12-month frequency rule and partial vacancy decontrol

Section 193A.04(a) bars more than one rent increase per unit in any rolling 12-month period. The 12 months runs from the effective date of the most recent prior increase, not the service date. A lease-renewal increase served June 1, 2025 with effective date August 1, 2025 cannot be followed by another increase until August 1, 2026 — and the next increase must use 2026's standard 3% (or a fresh DSI filing for an above-3% path).

The May 2025 amendment added one narrow exception at §193A.04(c): partial vacancy decontrol after a just-cause vacancy. When a Saint Paul tenancy ends for a "just cause" reason, the landlord may set the new tenant's rent at the prior rent plus up to 8% plus the 12-month CPI-U change for the Minneapolis-St. Paul MSA. The CPI-U-for-Minneapolis-St-Paul reference period is the 12 months ending the prior March, published by BLS in April. The just-cause categories are tracked at §193A.04(c)(1)-(4):

1. Voluntary move-out at the tenant's own initiative.
2. Lease expiration without tenant renewal request.
3. Material breach of the lease, including nonpayment.
4. Owner move-in (with the §193A.04(c)(4) anti-displacement filing).

No-fault, retaliatory, harassment-driven, and constructive evictions do not trigger §193A.04(c). Those vacancies are still capped at the standard 3% on the next tenancy. The 8%-plus-CPI partial vacancy decontrol is the only mechanism in Chapter 193A that lets a landlord exceed the 3% standard cap without a DSI filing — but it is gated by the just-cause vacancy classification, which DSI can revisit if a tenant complains.

What happens if you overshoot Chapter 193A

The penalty regime under §193A.08 has three layers:

• Rent rollback and refund. DSI orders the rent rolled back to the lawful 12-month-prior-cap-compliant figure and orders the landlord to refund overcharges already collected. Refund interest accrues at the Minnesota statutory judgment rate.
• Civil penalties. §193A.08 authorizes civil penalties payable to the City of Saint Paul. Penalty amounts escalate for repeated violations; multi-unit pattern violations can trigger a building-wide audit.
• Rental-license consequences. A landlord who operates without complying with the §193A rent-cap rules is, by definition, operating without a Chapter 40-compliant rental license. DSI may suspend or revoke the rental license for violations of any city rental ordinance, and Saint Paul rental operations without a license expose the landlord to per-day penalties and to immediate tenant defenses in any nonpayment-based eviction.

Tenants can also raise the overcharge as an affirmative defense in eviction proceedings under Minnesota Statutes §504B.331. A credible Chapter 193A defense typically blocks the eviction outright because the tenant is, by definition, not in default on the lawful rent — the unlawful overcharge cannot trigger a default. This is the sharpest practical consequence of getting Chapter 193A wrong: a defective cap calculation breaks the eviction posture, and the landlord must restart the process from a corrected rent figure.

How RentCeiling enforces 193A for you

The free Saint Paul calculator takes (current rent, proposed new rent, last-increase date, building first Certificate of Occupancy date, owner-occupancy status) and returns either the lawful 3% cap, the Self-Certification path with the DSI filing checklist, or the Staff-Determination path with the file-then-wait timeline. The Saint Paul notice generator emits a printable notice with the §193A citation, the §504B.135 30-day math, and the right text for whichever path you've chosen. The /compare hub shows how Saint Paul's flat 3% stacks against the nine other jurisdictions modeled here — only Berkeley's CY 2026 1.0% is lower in the catalogue this year. Open rule-set at /rules/index.json; the Saint Paul-specific rule-set is at /rules/saint-paul.json.

Run the Saint Paul Chapter 193A calculator (free)

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