HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-28-25 Public Comment - W. Swearingen - Affordable Housing Ordinance (AHO)From:Will Swearingen
To:Bozeman Public Comment
Subject:[EXTERNAL]Affordable Housing Ordinance (AHO)
Date:Sunday, January 26, 2025 12:45:04 PM
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Mayor Cunningham and Commissioners,
I'm writing to provide comments on the Affordable Housing Ordinance. These comments have
been developed following attendance at several forums on the AHO and participation viaZoom in City Commission meetings.
Under the AHO, the City is giving up far too much for far too little. The AHO has
resulted in a negligible yield of truly affordable housing. In fact, in the case of the BlockB development, it is actually resulting in a substantial net loss of affordable housing.
The primary result of the AHO has been to make luxury housing projects hugely moreprofitable for developers by reducing parking requirements and height restrictions,
unfortunately leading to reduced quality of life for existing neighborhoods.The City Commission's justification seems to be that the Legislature has "tied our
hands" and that developers would proceed with their projects without the incentives, sothe City should at least try to glean what little affordable housing it can from these
projects. This is faulty reasoning: many of these projects would not proceed withoutAHO incentives. This is confirmed by the great effort that developers expend trying to
get parking relaxations and extra building height allowances. The City is in a muchstronger bargaining position than it thinks.
It is unfair to the City staff to make the AHO decisions a "check box" process. Grantingparking relaxations and increased height allowances are important public policy
considerations involving valuable public resources and greatly affecting quality of lifein Bozeman. The publicly elected City Commission officials need to be the ones making
these decisions.The AHO has resulted in a highly time-consuming, contentious, and unproductive "let's
make a deal" bargaining process with developers that has yielded little actualaffordable housing. It needs to be eliminated or substantially amended.
If retained, the AHO should be restricted to use in greenfield development projects.In Bozeman's existing neighborhoods, the City should instead focus on promoting and
incentivizing "invisible" infill that protects neighborhood character, quality of life, andexisting affordable housing.
Sincerely,Will Swearingen