Dakota County residents continue to rate the overall quality of life in the county highly, while citing affordable housing as the most serious issue, according to a new survey from Polco.
Erin Caldwell, Survey Research Principal at Polco/National Research Center, presented the results of the survey at the June 24 Board of County Commissioners.
The nearly 200 pages of results showcases residents’ feelings on safety, county services, health concerns, library programs and beyond.
Caldwell laid out four key findings of the survey:
1. Quality of life ratings for Dakota County residents remain high
2. Evaluations of county services and county government remain positive
3. Residents are increasingly concerned about affordable housing and taxes which have replaced safety issues as the most serious concerns in Dakota County
4. Concerns about the quality of drinking water have increased since 2022.
Dakota County continues to be rated by its residents as having a high overall quality of life, scoring 78 out of 100. That number hasn’t changed from the 2022 survey and remains lower than the peak rating of 80 in 2019.
Other metrics for quality of life in Dakota County as a place to live and Dakota County as a place to raise a family, scoring 78 and 77 out of 100 respectively, were both higher than other metro counties and national benchmarks.
Residents scored the overall quality of county services 69 out of 100, the same as 2022 and a point above 2019. That number has remained “pretty stable for the last nine years,” said Caldwell.
The highest rated county services were parks and recreation and libraries, both scoring 86 out of 100, with Dakota County libraries’ score much higher than the national benchmark.
In the survey, affordable housing was cited as the most serious problem facing Dakota County. Nearly half of respondents, 49% said that their community needed more affordable family housing, a number that is up 5% since 2022, and 11% since 2019.
Affordable housing replaced crime as the most serious issue in the county from 2022 to 2025, despite residents’ opinions on affordable housing not dramatically changing in that three-year period.
Rather, residents’ concern over crime spiked in 2022, what Caldwell called an “anomaly” for the county, citing protests around the murder of George Floyd.
Only 8% of respondents felt crime was the most serious issue in Dakota County in 2025, less than half of the 19% that said so in 2022. Thirteen percent of respondents said affordable housing was the most serious issue in Dakota County in both 2022 and 2025.
This falling concern over crime follows the falling crime rate in Dakota County in that time period.
Crime rates in Dakota County have dropped since 2022, down to a crime rate of 30 per 1,000 residents in 2025 from 37 per 1,000 in 2022, according to Group A crime rates from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Aprehension.
Finally, residents’ concerns over drinking water spiked since 2022, with residents scoring quality of drinking water as an environmental concern 51 in 2025, up from 39 in 2022. Unsurprisingly, respondents in District One, which includes Hastings, had the most concerns about this issue, according to Caldwell.
The survey was undertaken from January to March with mailings sent to 7,000 Dakota County households. Of those mailings, 786 responded for a 12% response rate.
Caldwell discussed then weighing those results to better reflect the population of Dakota County. For example, older citizens are more likely to respond and be overrepresented, while those from multifamily homes are less likely to respond and therefore be underrepresented.
The survey was undertaken in partnership with Olmstead, Scott, St. Louis, and Washington counties that asked some of the same questions across county lines which allows for better comparisons.
Data from the survey was then able to be compared to 45 other counties across the country so that Dakota County could both be compared to its own previous data as well as other parts of the United States.
The full results of the survey can be found at Dakota County’s website on the June 24 Board of Commissioners Agenda Packet.