HomeMy WebLinkAbout05-09-24 Public Comment - N. Nakamura - Reassessing Affordable Housing OrdinancesFrom:Natsuki Nakamura
To:Bozeman Public Comment
Subject:[EXTERNAL]Reassessing Affordable Housing Ordinances
Date:Tuesday, May 7, 2024 1:21:35 PM
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To the City Commission, Economic Vitality Board, and Community Development Board:
I encourage the City to reassess the affordable housing ordinances, both the shallow and deepincentives. The 80% AMI metric used to determine the affordable price for a one-bedroom is
an annual salary of $67k, while the starting salary for most teachers at the Bozeman SchoolDistrict is around $46k a year.
With shallow incentives (being utilized by many of the projects mentioned in the Community
Housing update) we are only getting 5% of the units guaranteed at this price point. As a renterwho currently has a salary comparable with a Bozeman teacher, this doesn't give me a lot of
confidence that I would be able to afford the affordable units, let alone the remaining 95% ofthose units.
With deep incentives, developers are able to maintain their profits by having an extra story and
not providing parking, while costs are transferred to the public. This cost is hard to put a dollaramount on - the cost of increased congestion and traffic in the streets as people circle around
trying to find a parking spot, or the cost of a community member moving away because theystill can't afford one of those new units.
I worry that the units in the pipeline that are supposed to be affordable are not actually
providing anything more affordable than what we already have. For example, with the Guthrieproject as it was proposed, the “affordable” 1-bedroom units that are less than 400 sqft would
cost $1684 a month (more expensive than a 4-person household at 60% AMI can affordwithout being rent burdened). This comes out to be $4.21 per sqft. In comparison, Creekside
Luxury Apartments have 2-bedroom units available now that are around 1000 sqft for $1800,coming out to $1.87 per sqft. BlackOlive has 1100 sqft 2-bedroom units for around $2250, or
around $2 per sqft.
There has been a lot of discussion about how we can make the biggest impact on housing witha relatively small amount of money. The elegance of the Montgomery County model is that
the County was able to use revenue bonds to create a $100M revolving fund to create housingwith a net cost to the County of less than $2M a year (even with the increases in interest rates
we have seen recently) . I urge the City to consult bond counsel to investigate what we wouldneed to do to be able to set up a similar Housing Production Fund here.
Thank you for your consideration.Natsuki Nakamura
