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HomeMy WebLinkAbout09-16-23 Public Comment - R. Horne - Robert Horne TestimonyFrom:Brin Purdy To:Agenda Subject:[EXTERNAL]Robert Horne Testimony Date:Friday, September 15, 2023 4:00:33 PM Attachments:Testimony to the Bozeman CDB and CC 091523.pdf CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Good afternoon, The testimony of Robert Horne is attached. Thank you. Brin Purdy Legal Intern Goetz, Geddes & Gardner, P.C.35 North Grand | P.O. Box 6580Bozeman, MT 59771-6580 T: (406) 587.0618 | F: (406) 587.5144 NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission may contain confidential or Attorney-Client privileged communications. It is not intended for transmission to, or receipt by, any unauthorized persons. If you have received this electronic mail transmission in error, please delete it from your system without copying it and notify the sender by reply e- mail. Robert Horne, Jr. 151 Wedgewood Lane Whitefish, MT 59937 (406) 250-6632 rhorne@appcom.net City of Bozeman Community Development Board September 15, 2023 and Honorable Members of Council 121 N. Rouse Ave. Bozeman, MT 59715 Via e-mail Re: Testimony regarding public review draft of the Bozeman UDC Dear Community Development Board and members of Council: My name is Robert Horne, Jr. and I reside in Whitefish. I hold a masters degree in community planning, and I was a practicing professional planner for over 40 years. I have held professional planning positions, some as director, in six states, but most of my work has been in Montana. Although I am now retired, I try to stay current in the profession through volunteer work and taking on a project from time to time. I have been asked by a group of Bozeman homeowners to assess any impacts that the revised UDC may have on their neighborhoods, and I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to offer written comment on their behalf. From my quick study of this 530-page code, it seems clear that one of the major drivers of the revised code is the need for affordable and attainable workforce housing. And apparently, the City of Bozeman has concluded that the best way to increase the supply of affordable housing at this time is to change local land development regulations so that more potentially affordable housing types (apartments, townhomes, accessory units, and “missing middle” housing like 4 to 8-family units, etc.) can be constructed in more places throughout the community. I think that is a worthy objective, but I have to question the manner in which you propose to go about it. For example, I understand that your proposed R-A district is a compilation of current R-1, R-2, and R-3 districts, except that under R-A, townhomes, rowhouses, triplexes, fourplexes, and multi-family buildings with up to eight units will be allowed. The structural massing at those densities will be totally out of scale and character with at least the current R-1 and R-2 districts, with no guarantee that the resulting units will be “affordable”. Without controlling the initial and subsequent sale/rental pricing, and allowing sales and rents to float at market, you are highly unlikely to gain any truly affordable housing at all. Many Bozeman residents and business people, past and present, have worked very hard over several decades to make Bozeman the great community that it is, and there are certainly ways to get affordable/workforce housing without destroying a vital part of what Bozeman has achieved. A better solution might be to leave the iconic R-1 and R-2 neighborhoods as they are, and perhaps even place them in a “neighborhood conservation zone”. Allow the mix of unit types and densities proposed in the R- A district to be constructed in R-3 areas as proposed. Then, identify additional areas that would actually benefit from the types and densities in R-A, such as areas in need of revitalization, and zone those areas R-A in conjunction with adopting the revised UDC. Taking a great, livable community like Bozeman, and sacrificing its character and qualities in the hope that you will get affordable housing in return, is exactly what the Frontier Institute has been promoting since its inception in 2020. For over 2 ½ years now, the Institute has been attempting to influence land use, housing, and other controversial civic and social issues in Montana. The Institute defines itself as a “market-based think tank”, and express in their mission statement that they believe “in solving problems with more freedom not more government (emphasis not added). Their web site contains writings and commentary on a variety of issues including “education freedom”, forest management, healthcare, housing, privacy, and more. Their priorities for the 2023-2025 biennium are: • Securing fundamental rights to enable economic dynamism • Regulatory reforms to empower innovators and entrepreneurs • Encouraging crypto and blockchain innovation • Eliminating policy barriers to energy abundance • Developing pro-innovation environmental policy The Frontier Institute spreads its influence through its website, and through reports, articles, and op eds. I have reason to believe they also compose op eds for ultra-conservative legislators to sign, and that they actually draft legislation acting as the ALEC of Montana, but I have no concrete proof of this. And while the Institute describes itself as a “free-market think tank”, others use different terms. The Montana Free Press describes them as a “Republican-aligned Montana think tank”, and Montana Public Radio has described them as a “right-leaning think tank”. Regardless, even a quick glance at their web site will reveal where their politics lie. The Frontier Institute web site states that they are a 501(c)(3) and that all donations to the organization are tax deductible. Given their agenda and who they communicate with and provide services to, it is difficult for me to believe that tax status is accurate. Their donation page contains a link to further information regarding their tax status, but when I followed the link, the resulting page read: Error 404, Page Not Found, This page not available. The Institute’s actual donors have not been disclosed to the public or the media. The informational and educational materials produced by the Institute often contain disinformation, cherry-picked data, inaccurate interpretation of data, unsubstantiated generalizations and conclusions, and a notable lack of fact-checking and ground truthing. Examples of these will be provided later in this testimony. It is unclear what, if any, role the Frontier Institute may have had in promoting or influencing the City of Bozeman’s revised Unified Development Code (UDC), but again, some of the concepts set forth in the revised code are consistent with what the Institute advocates, and the proposed R-A district is a prime example. If the UDC were to be adopted in its current form, there would be no zoning district remaining in the city to protect the scale and character of one and two-family neighborhoods. It should be pointed out that nothing in this testimony is intended to disqualify the Frontier Institute as a source of information on the revised UDC. However, I strongly encourage anyone who does make use of their information and/or analyses to investigate it thoroughly for accuracy and completeness. The following are some of my own findings from Frontier Institute’s work: Loaded language- Many reports use what is often referred to as loaded language; words or phrases which are intended to produce an emotional response in the reader. In their report The Montana Zoning Atlas, Frontier uses the term “Exclusionary Single-Family” to describe zoning districts where the primary permitted use is single-family homes. But the term “exclusionary” invokes zoning codes of the past that were used to keep people of color and/or low and moderate income levels out of neighborhoods or entire communities. This type of zoning began being struck down by courts in the 1950s and 1960s, and is not a part of ethical planning practice today. The Montana Zoning Atlas describes any single-family zoning district as “Exclusive Single- Family”, but such a label is incorrect for just about every zoning code in Montana. For example, Whitefish’s WR-1 single-family zone allows home occupations, manufactured home subdivisions, accessory residential units (ARUs), and daycare facilities for up to 15 children. With a conditional use permit (CUP), some of which are administrative requiring no public hearing unless appealed, WR-1 allows bed and breakfasts, churches, larger day care centers, “dwelling groups or clusters”, and certain types of “community residential facilities” such as group homes for the developmentally disabled. Clearly, it takes more than single-family homes to make a livable community, and most R-1 districts allow some of those vital community components. Most R-1 districts throughout the state, and especially the WR-1 in Whitefish, are not “Exclusionary Single-Family” districts by anyone’s definition. In addition, most R-1 type districts allow townhome and multi-family units through planned unit developments (PUDs), and that will be discussed later in this testimony. “California-style zoning” is yet another example of the Frontier Institute’s use of a loaded term. This particular term is incendiary to some Montanans who feel offended by the significant numbers of Californians who choose to relocate to Montana during and shortly after the Covid pandemic. I practiced planning professionally for 44 years and had never heard the term, but the Institute seems to use it to describe any type of zoning that requires large lots and low densities, that in turn cause urban sprawl and grossly inefficient use of infrastructure. But, that phenomena is not unique to California. I contacted an official from the California Chapter of the American Planning Association to ask if “California-style zoning” is a term of art, and/or does it hold any meaning to professional planners in California. The official replied as follows: Thanks for reaching out to us. I have no idea what “California-style zoning” means. The article seems to suggest that large-lot zoning for large homes is somehow uniquely Californian. But looking around the country, I have seen this kind of zoning in nearly all higher-income suburbs or exurbs. Perhaps intended to provoke an emotional response using the anti-California sentiment you described. Another loaded term often found in the Institute’s work is “penalized”. The claim is that multi- family housing is often penalized in other residential zones. The reality is that multi-family housing can be developed in most one and two-family zones through a PUD or CUP. These types of permits most often require public hearings, and development plans that do not meet the stated approval criteria in the zoning code can be denied. However, these discretionary reviews are not a “penalty” at all, but are actually a bonus. Without tools like the PUD and CUP, multi- family housing would not be allowed one and two-family districts at all, and would be restricted to special purpose multi-family zoning districts. Lack of fact-checking and ground truthing- In April, 2022, I wrote an op ed in response to claims made in the Montana Zoning Atlas that was published in some newspapers around the state including the Kalispell Daily Interlake, Bozeman Daily Chronical, and the Missoulian. Gutting local zoning codes won’t fix the housing crisis | Daily Inter Lake In investigating the various claims made in the Zoning Atlas, I found it apparent that the Frontier Institute staff had not consulted the actual zoning codes in the cities that they criticized for instituting “barriers” to affordable multi-family housing. As stated previously in this testimony, most R-1 type zones allow so many more land uses than just single-family residential, and one only has to open the local zoning code to see what those additional uses are. To ignore the applicable local codes constitutes a fatal lack of fact-checking. The Montana Zoning Atlas includes a set of interactive maps that the authors claim demonstrates how certain communities exclude multi-family housing. For the most part, the authors simply mapped the R-1 areas in each community, and calculated a percentage of total land within each community where multi-family units are supposedly prohibited. But again, as stated previously, many multi-family developments are built on land zoned R-1 through the PUD or similar tools. In fact, in Whitefish there are many multi-family units that were constructed through the PUD on land zoned WR-1 and WR-2. This could have been discovered easily by simply comparing an image from Google Earth with the Official Whitefish City Zoning Map. Failure to do this has resulted inaccurate conclusions being drawn by the authors through a lack of ground truthing. Cherry-picking of data- The authors of the Montana Zoning Atlas examined land in the communities of Whitefish, Bozeman, Missoula, Kalispell and Helena. However, they only considered land zoned residential, and therefore overlooked the fact that significant numbers of multi-family units are developed in commercial zones. For example, Missoula’s code allows multi-family buildings by right in all six of their commercial zones, Neighborhood Business all the way up through the Central Business District. Whitefish allows multi-family buildings in their WB-2 Secondary Business zone, and currently has hundreds of multi-family units in this zoning district on the city’s south side. In addition, many more can be found in the WR-1 Single-Family district, having been approved through the PUD. In the Frontier Institute report, the WR- 1 is labeled “Exclusionary Single-Family” zoning. These are real-world, actual units on the ground (a few are still under construction), but because they were properly approved and legally developed on land zoned something other than multi-family, their mere mention apparently did not meet the Frontier Institute’s purpose or message. Condo units in WR-1 zone through the PUD in south Whitefish. Attached single- family homes are just across the street to the east and north also in WR-1. Townhome lofts on land zoned WB-2 Secondary Business in south Whitefish. Pre-drawn conclusion that local regulations are primarily to blame for Montana’s current housing crisis- In most every report or article that the Frontier Institute produces, the villain in the lack of affordable housing is always local zoning regulations. Other factors such as the cost of building materials, land costs, supply chain issues, labor shortages, transportation and other infrastructure needs, and return on investment, are rarely if ever mentioned. Another key factor often ignored is the unprecedented in-migration of people from out of state during and shortly following the Covid pandemic. These people have cashed out of expensive housing markets in California, Washington state, and elsewhere, and are eager to invest in Montana. Many of them are retired, others have jobs that can be performed remotely. Regardless, they are all looking for the quality of life and live-work-play lifestyle that Montana still offers. Thank you for your consideration of this testimony. Respectfully submitted, Robert Horne, Jr.