HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-28-25 Public Comment - C. Anders - Affordable Housing OrdinanceFrom:Chase Anders
To:Bozeman Public Comment
Subject:[EXTERNAL]Affordable Housing Ordinance
Date:Tuesday, January 28, 2025 6:08:12 AM
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My Name is Chase Anders and Im a Bozeman taxpaying resident at 1543 Ryun Sun Way. As
a Montana Native, Father of two, and husband, im writing you commissioners to please repealthe AHO. What is needed are communities and subdivisions with single-family homes.
Families seriously do not want to raise their kids in high rise apartments. They wantplaces their kids can ride bikes, play in the green spaces, and have a HOME to call their own.
Current rental vacancy rates in Bozeman are estimated anywhere between 12% to over 15%
depending on the source, compared to the national average of 7%. Additionally, there are another
1,005 housing units either in review or under construction.
A quick look at the rental market shows that most multi-family apartment developments are offering
some pretty steep move-in incentives like two months of free rent, a $1,500 gift card, referral
bonuses, and waived application fees. In other words, they’re looking for renters. Because of how
these developments are financed, it behooves them with their creditors to offer these incentives
instead of lowering the rent in the lease, but the net effect is the same: rents are going down and will
continue to go down as more supply gets added.
I encourage you commissioners to SLOW DOWN a little bit here. We as bozeman residents andmembers of the community do not need you to continue to approve high density developments. Youall can take a deep breath and take your time to develop a plan here. Talk to the community, or listento the residents and what they are saying and needing.
We understand that for the last 5 years you were under pressure to build build build... but it really
does create more problems than it answers. Just a few of these include:
The affordability term is being increased to 50 years. This creates a number of questions about
how a developer will be able to afford the proper maintenance of the units in the long-term and
will shift the cost burden of such repairs to increased rents for the market-rate units, which
risks making those units unaffordable. The State of Montana does not follow the International
Property Maintenance Code, so there is no real standard for how units are to be maintained.
Reducing and / or eliminating parking requirements does not adequately address the reality of
how people use their cars. The ideas of reduced or no parking surrounding the AHO are built
around ideals of expanded public transit (which will cost taxpayers a LOT of money) and
walkable neighborhoods, which ignores the reality that people in Bozeman use their vehicles
to get to work and to recreational activities. We need to create our city around what IS with
some aspirational goals of what we want it to be, but these goals should be determined
collectively by residents and should be achieved incrementally over time.
Radically increased height and density and mass and scale in existing neighborhoods is not
what residents want.
It is not the place of the city commission and staff to determine the moral priorities of a
community by encouraging and incentivizing undesired development patterns and deciding on
behalf of the residents which tradeoffs should be made to achieve the goal of housing for all, a
goal that has never been achieved by anyone, anywhere.
The community deserves to know how qualifications for the affordable units will be monitored.
One might question what the plan is when someone starts to make enough money that allows
them to qualify for a more expensive unit. Will they move out on their own volition or choose to
stay in a home that allows them to save or spend their money in other ways? How will
roommates be monitored?
Serious considerations need to be made for how responsible the city needs to be to provide
housing for the growth of the MSU student population.
The city cannot quantify the impact on the quality of life and mental health issues they might
impose on residents of neighborhoods that are forced to absorb the developments that the
AHO will create. How does one measure the mental stress of a plummeting home value? Or
the decline in quality of life when your home is overshadowed by a five-story tall compound
across the street?
The incentives offered by the AHO apply across an entire development, so the reduced or no
parking requirements apply to all units, multiplying the impact to neighborhoods and local
streets.
The ADA requirements for handicap-accessible parking spaces are dependent on the number
of required parking spaces as a whole, so if zero parking is required, zero accessible spaces
will be required.
The impacts to city streets should be measured. It would seem that increasing the number of
cars parked continually on the roads would hasten deterioration (and the subsequent costs to
taxpayers for repairs) and create further issues with snow plowing.
This list of issues is not comprehensive, and each closer look creates an even longer list of items to
consider.
Let’s just all collectively take a breath and think about a common sense way to plan for our city’s
future. That starts by repealing the current AHO and focusing on the update to the Community Plan.
Everyone is paying attention now, and let’s not keep experimenting with the future of our city. Repeal
it. Don’t replace it.
Best Regards,
Chase Anders