On March 15, 2021, then-state Rep. Joe Mitchell voted no on three separate amendments that would have exempted veterans' housing vouchers, disability vouchers and foster-care family vouchers from a bill letting landlords refuse them. Then he voted for the bill.
Hinson backed S.F. 488 in 2017 and voted to double its set-aside in 2019. In 2021 her husband Matthew Arenholz co-founded BAM Development with two fellow Iowa legislators. In 2023 BAM was awarded $1 million in credits S.F. 488 made possible.
In 2021, then-state Rep. Joe Mitchell voted to expand Iowa's Workforce Housing Tax Credit. Two development firms he later partnered in took $2,559,880 from that program across three projects. He calls the federal version 'too much paperwork.'
His campaign says de-regulating homebuilding will fix housing costs. Iowa already ran that experiment — a law capping what cities can require for stormwater runoff, in a state with worsening floods. Meanwhile the real housing bill sits unsigned.
Mitchell's campaign promises to represent Iowans 'left behind by a broken political system that works for insiders and lobbyists.' He founded and presides over a real estate trade group that spent nearly $75,000 lobbying the Iowa Legislature.
In March 2022, a check from Summit's Bruce Rastetter landed in Joe Mitchell's campaign account. Eight days later he cast the lone Republican vote against protecting Iowa landowners from the CO2 pipeline's eminent domain.