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HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-01-25 Public Comment - A. Lincke - 4-1-25 Public Comment on the GuthrieFrom:Anja Lincke To:Bozeman Public Comment Subject:[EXTERNAL][SENDER UNVERIFIED]4-1-25 Public Comment on the Guthrie Date:Tuesday, April 1, 2025 11:41:51 AM Attachments:4-1-25 PC (GUTHRIE).pdf 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. See PFD. Thank you! -- Anja Lincke She/They | Housing Campaign Manager o: (406) 542-8683c: (406) 638-1183e: anja@forwardmontana.orgw: forwardmontana.org created with MySignature.io April 1, 2025 Public Comment Anja Lincke, Forward Montana Good evening, My name is Anja Lincke, Bozeman Resident. Speaking on behalf of Forward Montana in support of The Guthrie. Our communities’ aordable housing needs are deep. While being far from perfect, The Guthrie will help deliver housing our community needs, and helps us limits the impact of housing on our environment. As of March 2025, the average studio apartment in Bozeman was $2,087. 1 While the Guthrie’s units are not “capital A” aordable, it will deliver below market rate units that will remain rent restricted for 30 years. The Guthrie will also contribute to our housing supply, which is an important ingredient to reducing rent hikes. The City estimates that we need an increase in housing supply of ~900 units/year for the next 10 years 2. Bozeman’s current vacancy rate suggests an oversupply3. Excitingly, some sources cite a drop in recent rental prices (-2.8% in the last year)4. With the rate of growth Bozeman is experiencing, the market will quickly absorb that oversupply, bringing us back into low vacancy rate conditions that raise the rents, like we saw in 2020-20225. Less housing availability forces tenants into bidding wars to secure homes, and we need to avoid that. Thus, keeping up with building the needed supply is important for a future of aordability. Infill projects like The Guthrie will help us minimize the impact of sprawl on our sensitive lands, wildlife corridors, and farmland. Building densely helps us be more water ecient, and reduce the costs on taxpayers of expanding our infrastructure. Building densely within walking distance to public transportation and job centers 5 https://legistarweb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/pdf/2596315/233073_Multifamily_ Market_Conditions_2-23-24.pdf 4 https://www.apartments.com/rent-market-trends/bozeman-mt/ 3 https://sterlingcreadvisors.com/big-changes-in-bozemans-housing-market/ 2https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bozeman.net/home/showpublisheddocument/13746/6384463 01551230000&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1743486418774504&usg=AOvVaw3TMUdTM1VRS9ZHWcEGM GfA 1 https://www.apartments.com/rent-market-trends/bozeman-mt/ allows us to move away from reliance on cars. Building housing supply across the spectrum of aordability will help protect our workforce from being priced out. Recognizing that there are facets of living in the Guthrie that will not suit all of our community's needs, I hope that the future of housing in Bozeman does not all look like The Guthrie. I hear many of my neighbors calling for incremental development in existing neighborhoods– and I agree. My hope is that we can see more middle-housing-type infill development to create more abundance, aordability, and choice. I see members of our community organizing to raise money to stop the Guthrie from being built, and I just can't help but to think: what if we raised money to finance the type of housing we would rather see instead? Our housing crisis is messy and dreadful. Right now, we exist in the world of imperfect interventions, resource restrictions, and limitations from our state. The Guthrie is imperfect, but it helps us move towards a future of good stewardship of our land, abundance and choice for our workforce, optimization of existing infrastructure, and a decreased reliance on cars. I urge the commission to approve the Guthrie. I support any of our communities eorts to leverage our time and resources to get more middle housing in neighborhood infill projects to reduce reliance on Guthrie-type developments for our housing needs in the future. Thank you for the time, eort, and energy this commission and our city sta are spending on addressing the housing needs of our community. Anja Lincke, Forward Montana Housing Campaign Manager