HomeMy WebLinkAbout08-20-24 Public Comment - J. Hancock - Affordable Housing OrdinanceFrom:Joseph Hancock
To:Bozeman Public Comment
Subject:[EXTERNAL]Affordable Housing Ordinance
Date:Tuesday, August 20, 2024 12:34:58 PM
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Commissioners,
During the meeting of 9 July 2024, you, the City Commission, voted 3-2 to deny permissionfor the Guthrie project to move forward, because you determined that the affordable housingordinance did not give sufficient consideration to the needs of the surrounding community. Asa result, you are holding another meeting to evaluate this section of the city code and establishrules that better adhere to the demands of homeowners in Bozeman.
While I hold to my belief that denying HomeBase’s application for the Guthrie was a mistakethat will only serve as a delay, the ultimate outcome of that project is most likely going to bedecided in the judicial realm and needn’t be further addressed with you or local residents.
I have spent what is probably an irresponsible amount of time thinking about how firms couldbe compelled to build affordable housing. We have seen that regulations will not work, so Iopenly dismiss them as a solution. They only serve as a soft cap on the size of developments,and with a deregulatory state legislature, any new local requirement would be pruned by theend of the next session in Helena.
Knowing that regulation does not provide a solution to this crisis and generations of evidencethat market forces are woefully deficient to meeting the housing needs of the working class,our toolbox is left with an assortment of incentives that can make projects that includeaffordable housing competitively profitable in our present market.
My thoughts on how to make this work are inspired by discussions during the last meeting onthe Guthrie. While listening to your questions, I came to realize that the existing incentivestructure does not provide adequate definitions for the spaces that are intended to be built. Youshould start by establishing what a door is and work up from there.
A critical standard that must be set is the square footage that individuals, couples, and familiesactually require to live in reasonable comfort. I know that the city has the resources to researchand determine baseline criteria for these spaces, and it is up to you to determine the underlyingparameters that are followed. This needs to be the foundation of any discussion on how“dignified” an accommodation is.
Moving on to parking, I believe that the deep incentive that allows the total exclusion of spacefor residents’ vehicles is a meaningful aspiration for the coming decades, but the communityat present cannot support that level of stress on the existing road infrastructure. The Guthriecame close to something that might work, but something around half of the shallow incentivelevel would be more practical in the near term.
The most meaningful consideration you must ultimately make in seeking a true solution to ouraffordable housing crisis is what income calculation is used to determine affordability. As asingle individual who is paid fairly well, I can still only afford roughly $1400 per monthwithout being cost burdened. I fail to understand how the current AMI metric places a studiopriced at $1800 as an “affordable” unit. We all need to stop assuming that cohabitation is thenorm and implement a graduated system based on realistic expectations of who will beoccupying the spaces.
While I know that I have thrown a lot of thinking into my comments today, I can honestly tell
you that I have kept this quite brief. I accept that you have been and will continue to bebombarded by others who believe themselves to be the arbiters of truth and justice — as is thepurpose of this forum — and I hope you have the time and resources to meaningfully considermy submission.
Regards,
Joe Hancock