Board takes second crack at home program
After delaying a decision last month on the city’s proposed Legacy Homes Program, the Whitefish Planning Board is set to tackle the issue again during its meeting Thursday, April 18.
The Planning Board meets at 6 p.m. at City Hall. Topping a full agenda is the affordable housing program.
The Legacy Homes Program seeks to create permanently affordable housing in the city through inclusionary zoning, which is a housing tool that links the production of affordable housing to the production of market-rate housing.
The city is proposing under its program to require that 20 percent of all new residential development be set aside for affordable housing, while at the same time creating incentives for developers designed to offset the cost of creating such housing.
In addition, developers could use the option to pay a in-lieu-fee instead of creating the housing units.
The Legacy Homes Program would apply to residential conditional use permits, planned unit developments and subdivisions requiring such developments to provide affordable housing units. Residential units allowed by right would be exempt.
During last month’s meeting, the planning board heard from several members of the public who raised concerns about specifics of the program.
In a report to the planing board, city planning staff looked at the comments made and provided responses to the main topics of concern.
Staff provided information on the housing situation since the Housing Needs Assessment in 2016 indicated a need to had 980 housing units — 400 ownership and 580 rentals — by 2020 in the city.
Between 2016 to 2019, there have been 340 ownership lots created which is 85 percent of the total identified by the housing assessment. Of those 58 lots expected to be created are deed-restricted affordable units or 24 percent of what is called for in the assessment.
Multi-family or rental units created from 2016 to 2019, total 333 or 57 percent of the target in the assessment. Of those 86 are set as deed restricted — or 24 percent of the goal — though they have not been constructed yet.
Staff notes that it is difficult to know how housing development will occur if the program is implemented. However, if it had been in place since 2016 there would have been an additional 106 units of ownership created and an additional 60 multi-family units created as deed restricted for affordable housing.
Staff notes that the program will be updated annually including to review the number of and type of deed restricted units that are needed to ensure that the program is “responsive to the market and the community needs.”
One of the concerns raised was the need to preserve neighborhood character and whether the program should be applied equally throughout the city.
Planing staff notes that the city’s Strategic Housing Plan calls for affordable housing to be interspersed equally throughout the community and not just located in specific neighborhoods.
“Determining which neighborhoods are appropriate or creating zoning overlays where it only applies in certain neighborhoods or is stigmatized, is contrary to that ideal,” staff notes.
In addition, staff notes that in traditional residential neighborhoods such as those adjacent to Whitefish High School, no multi-family developments are allowed as the zoning is WR-2, which limits development to single family and duplex units.
Developers have raised concerns that incentives contained in the program are not useful.
Planning staff notes that incentives have been included because the housing consultants working with the city have noted that all communities with successful affordable housing programs use some form of incentives.
“We had considerable discussion about a menu of options, who gets to decide what options are used, and how the public weighs in on these incentives,” the memo says. “In the final recommendation, a limited list of options permitted outright strikes the best balance between offering predictability for a project with small incentives with limited impacts.”
Planing staff says that by including smaller incentives as part of the Legacy Homes Program, it will still encourage the use of Planned Unit Development tool for any deviations from the development standards that go beyond that.
Concerns about the impact of deed restricted units on the value of market rate homes in the same neighborhood have been raised.
In a letter to the city, housing consultants Melanie Rees and Wendy Sullivan addressed that concern. They say that the perception that inclusionary units will decrease market values is very common, but they have never found any evidence of this in housing market studies for cities such as Santa Fe, New Mexico, Boulder, Colorado, Jackson, Wyoming and others.
“In our work with communities that are comparable to Whitefish, we have not found any examples where inclusionary housing has negatively impacted the values of nearby market homes or community-wide real estate prices,” they said. “You only need to look to high-cost mountain communities that have had inclusionary policies in place for a long time ... to see that market prices continue strong whether homes are in neighborhoods with inclusionary units or not.”
In addition to considering the Legacy Homes Program, the planning board will consider a list of changes to zoning code that are part of implementing the program.
Some of those changes include, allowing deed restricted housing by right in the WB-1 and WB-2 with free market housing as a conditional use or with a PUD, change the parking requirements based on bedroom size and reduce standards, creating a fast-track process to expedite deed restricted housing projects, reducing the threshold for when a CUP is required in zones that allow multi-family housing, and creating an administrative CUP for smaller discretionary multi-family projects.
The planning board packet with supporting documents is available on the city’s website at http://www.cityofwhitefish.org/