[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Affordable Housing resources

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Burton, Jan

The national shortage of affordable housing has gotten the attention of President Obama and his administration with the recent release a “Housing Development Toolkit”. http://bit.ly/2daTO5v


>From the introduction: “Locally-constructed barriers to new housing development include beneficial environmental protections, but also laws plainly designed to exclude multifamily or affordable housing. Local policies acting as barriers to housing supply include land use restrictions that make developable land much more costly than it is inherently, zoning restrictions, off-street parking requirements, arbitrary or antiquated preservation regulations, residential conversion restrictions, and unnecessarily slow permitting processes.”

This toolkit highlights actions that states and local jurisdictions have taken to promote healthy, responsive, affordable, high-opportunity housing markets, including:

·  Establishing by-right development

·  Taxing vacant land or donate it to non-profit developers

·  Streamlining or shortening permitting processes and timelines

·  Eliminate off-street parking requirements

·  Allowing accessory dwelling units

·  Establishing density bonuses

·  Enacting high-density and multifamily zoning

·  Employing inclusionary zoning

·  Establishing development tax or value capture incentives

·  Using property tax abatements

OK, I will admit the Federal government hasn’t exactly been leaders in this topic, but I feel like their ideas merit consideration for Boulder.
In addition, I recently read (twice) the book titled Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-use Regulation by Sonia Hirt. It's an eye-opening view into the history of zoning in the U.S. This book has really made me think about the ramifications on our housing affordability, environment, and social aspects and how cultural our zoning policies have become. I would highly recommend it.
Here is a book review I found:

http://www.planetizen.com/node/74628/book-review-zoned-usa

The world is different today than when our zoning policies were created. America is no longer the “Leave it to Beaver” family. Boulder’s demographics include 47% single people and only 20% families with kids. Where is the housing for young singles, workers, and older adults who would like to downsize and stay in their neighborhoods? Millennials have a different value system, preferring to live in smaller houses with less stuff, or in an intentional community living environment. Since they already represent 30% of the voters, shouldn’t we be considering their needs? Where do they go to find small house zoning, cooperative housing, or co-housing? And what about inclusiveness for young families who can’t afford to live here at all?

The other looming issue is environmental. 21% of our greenhouse gas emissions comes from residential homes and 28% comes from transportation. Single family neighborhoods require cars, roads, and parking. Building smaller dwellings, more densely around transportation corridors, is one solution for us to avoid catastrophic environmental damage. We’re willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on municipalizing our electric supply, but won’t we look differently at our built environment?

Of course, we must get our community on board with the idea of change and thinking differently, and that is easier said than done.

The White House report has called out things cities can do which won’t cost money. Neighboring towns have already implemented creative solutions such as streamlined and shortened permitting processes, waiving of excise taxes and fees, more open zoning, and incentives for affordable housing. I hope we can look to some of the same programs that won’t cost the city but will encourage building of affordable units.

Jan Burton
Member of City Council