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HomeMy WebLinkAbout08-13-24 Public Comment - N. Nakamura - Reconsidering the Affordable Housing OrdinanceFrom:Natsuki Nakamura To:Bozeman Public Comment Subject:[EXTERNAL]Reconsidering the Affordable Housing Ordinance Date:Monday, August 12, 2024 11:51:56 AM Attachments:8th Harrison before.png 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. To the Community Development Board & the City Commission: First of all, thank you again to the City Commission for denying the Guthrie and for elevatingthe need to re-evaluate the City's Affordable Housing Ordinance. Countless hours and energy of City staff, Commissioners, and residents went into thinking about the Guthrie, and theresult is 0 affordable units, so I appreciate the time being set aside for work sessions to think deeply about how to better reach our housing goals and to avoid a repeat of a situation like theGuthrie. At this moment, I believe it is better to repeal the Affordable Housing Ordinance than to simply tweak it. Several of the tweaks recommended by City Staff are helpful (eg. loweringAMI and building in regular reassessments of affordability; defining efficiency units and standards for a kitchen; defining maximum rent levels lower than the maximum incomeallowed so that tenants aren't obligated to be rent-burdened in order to qualify for income limits, etc.). However, core to the current Affordable Housing Ordinance is the idea thatdensity will get us affordable housing, and this limits our scope of thinking about incentives and public good. Density. I do not believe density is inherently a public good. It is good when it buildscommunity, promotes walkability, or prevents sprawl, but these benefits don't automatically come just by adding density to an area. If a new high-rise sits empty or is primarily for out-of-state visitors, or if constant construction in the neighborhood results in long-time residents to move or sell, we are losing community. If workers or small businesses are priced out of centralneighborhoods, people will commute from further out, and we have seen the sprawl around Bozeman continue despite the many new projects in downtown and midtown. Density doesnot even guarantee more affordability if land value simply increases with upzoning. Instead of gifting density across the board and hoping for affordability, we need to be intentionalwhenever we add density to ensure there is any benefit to the public. Parking. I agree with the sentiment that I want housing built for people, not for cars. However, fully removing any parking requirement for developers shifts the cost of parkingand transportation completely to the residents. A tenant might have to choose to pay more to have a guaranteed spot if they need a car; others might be limited with where they can work orlive if they don't have reliable transportation. Meanwhile, lack of parking provided by a new development will impact the existing street parking available to neighbors. Instead of fullyremoving parking requirements, perhaps an option of "cash-in-lieu of parking spots" could be offered. For a new development that would rather design more spacious units or have greenspace instead of a parking lot, they could pay into a pot of money that could be put towards public transit infrastructure or a community parking lot structure. One development aloneprobably can't afford a pricey parking structure that would be more space efficient, but perhaps if the City collected money to put towards this or public transit, we could reduceindividual parking requirements while working meaningfully towards infrastructure that reduces our car dependence for commuting. The goal with less parking requirements should beto decrease the need for parking lots (not just increase the bottom line for developers), but that again doesn't happen automatically, without big improvements to our infrastructure. Sustainability. When thinking about what we want to incentivize, we should take a long-termvision with housing. We want housing that is built to last for generations, not housing that is hastily constructed with the cheapest labor and materials that will need to be replaced. Wewant residents to be able to invest in solar panels without fear of a new development blocking their energy source. Existing established trees should be valued more than future trees thatmay be planted to replace them. And the cost to demolish existing affordable housing should be appropriately expensive, so that people are incentivized towards infill or adaptive reuseinstead of putting existing housing in the dump. The City should consider a demolition ordinance that requires that all reusable materials are salvaged if a building must come down.Any Affordable Housing Ordinance should be discussed and adopted alongside with the UDC update so that we have a full picture of what housing we are incentivizing in our City. Community input. There has been fruitful discussion about the Fowler connection projectthat allowed for community input to be considered and incorporated. Deputy Mayor Morrison astutely pointed out that we typically don't get to have that kind of discussion for housingprojects because the City is not the developer of housing like it is with the Fowler connection. I believe this is why a Public Housing Authority or some other office of public development ofhousing should be deeply considered because that would allow us much more control of development of the housing most needed in our community, rather than trying to structureincentives to try to lead to a perfect project (or safely avoid another problematic project). A big thank you again to the City staff, Commission, and advisory boards for taking the time to think critically about the Affordable Housing Ordinance, and for including the communityin the discussion. I believe some key assumptions must be questioned in order to successfully incentivize the housing we want and need in our community. Thank you for your time,Natsuki Nakamura P.S. This house at 8th & Harrison was existing affordable housing for many years for college students. (photo from google maps, may 2024) This summer, within a week, the whole house - trees, driveway, furniture and appliances inside, etc - was trucked off to the dump. Though not explicitly, we are currently incentivizingdemolition.