The Anchorage mayor’s office has released the latest draft of a controversial housing plan.
Officials say the proposal, now in its fifth iteration, is meant to make it easier to build in a city that desperately needs more affordable housing. But the proposal has sparked a lot of debate. Some supporters say, of course, rules should be simplified so Anchorage can have more housing. But some critics argue that the proposal is too much, too fast or changing too quickly to keep up.
Graham Downey, who works on housing at the mayor’s office, said the idea was always to tweak the proposal based on public comment.
“It seems like folks are really, really engaged,” he said. “We're getting lots of really useful feedback on the ordinance, so that's been really positive.”
Two months, five versions
The proposal is called TSDO, short for Transit-Supportive Development Overlay. Downey said the goal is to address a big problem: With the current rules, it really only pencils out for developers to build big luxury houses on the edges of Anchorage — smaller, more affordable homes aren’t worth it. And in much of the city, it’s not even legal to build apartments or other multifamily housing without a long, expensive rezoning process.
“We do know that the current rules are making it really hard to build very small, like three-story, six-apartment buildings, making it really hard to build starter homes,” Downey said. “And so we do know we need to create flexibility to allow that type of housing.”
The TSDO proposal is sponsored by Assembly members Erin Baldwin Day and George Martinez and would only impact certain parts of the city. The municipal planning department introduced the first version in July. Just over two months later and after a lot of public comment, the city released the fifth version on Monday.
A lot has changed. For instance, the original version allowed buildings up to six stories in the TSDO zone. That has since been scrapped. And the original version would have allowed businesses and other non-residential uses in some residential neighborhoods. That part of the proposal was eventually split into a separate ordinance. Now, it will likely be pushed back until the spring, Downey said, to give more time for public discussion.
So what would version five do?
Downey said the idea still is to simplify the city’s 1,000-page zoning code for many parts of town. Right now, different types of housing – like townhomes, single-family homes, mobile homes and apartment buildings – are all regulated differently. That’s an issue, Downey said, because the more detailed the rules are, the more likely those rules will prevent things from being built.
“The goal of TSDO is to increase the flexibility in the zoning code in the core of the city so that we can build more, and more types of housing,” he said.
The proposal wouldn’t affect all of Anchorage. The “core of the city” Downey described covers much of the area north of Tudor Road, including parts of Turnagain, South Addition, Rogers Park, Spenard, Airport Heights and Muldoon.
Within those neighborhoods, the changes would apply to lands near Anchorage’s most active bus routes. Downey said that’s by design, in order to increase density where the city has infrastructure to support it. (That’s where the “Transit-Supported” comes from in the proposal’s title.)
Here are just four of the many ways the TSDO proposal would change zoning in those areas:
- It would allow all kinds of housing, including single family homes, apartment buildings, multiple tiny homes, duplexes and triplexes.
- Housing lots could be smaller. There would be no minimum, so a piece of land could be subdivided into smaller lots with a building on each, making for smaller, cheaper lots, and, in theory, more housing.
- Residential buildings would be allowed to cover a much bigger portion of a plot of land. Right now, buildings often can’t cover more than 30 or 40 percent – basically requiring empty space whether that’s lawn, gardens or parking. The TSDO proposal would increase that to 80%, making it possible to fit bigger, multifamily buildings onto smaller lots.
- Buildings could also be taller under the proposal, up to 40 feet (three stories) instead of the 30 feet allowed in some of the city.
There’s more, but that’s the basic idea behind the fifth version, which may or may not be the final version.
A flurry of debate
People are still commenting on the proposal. Jon Isaacs is one of them. He’s on the community council in Turnagain, a neighborhood that would be affected by the plan. He said he would have liked to see more public outreach by the municipality.
“They have no legal requirement, but as a neighbor and a resident, I think they could do more to let people know that this is out there.” he said.
The municipality has links to the Planning Department’s outreach on its website.
Isaacs said he’s also concerned about unintended consequences. He worries that new buildings may be built that aren’t compatible with existing neighborhoods. And he worries that increased housing density could increase neighborhood traffic and create a lack of parking spots in some places.
“I really appreciate the changes they're making, and they've addressed some of the problems,” he said. “I think more dialogue is necessary.”
But not everyone is happy with the changes.
Jason Norris lives in a part of town that wouldn’t be impacted by the proposal, but said his love for Anchorage motivated him to speak out anyway. He’s part of a group of housing advocates, along with Graham Downey and Assembly member Baldwin Day, called the Housing Club that originally drafted the plan. According to the group, the broad idea didn’t come out of the blue. It’s in the city’s 2040 Land Use Plan and 2020 Comprehensive Plan, documents that outline future development and land use in the Anchorage Bowl. The club, however, drafted the new specifics and then the city planning department spent a year refining them. The current map of impacted areas is from the 2040 plan.
Norris said he’s still in favor of the latest version of the proposal overall, but he’s afraid it has become so watered-down that it won’t actually change anything.
He said the feedback the municipality has gotten isn’t representative, and it’s because they’re going about it wrong.
“The only rooms you're walking into are those opposed,” he said. “You're not going out to places where just everyday working people are trying to live their lives who could benefit from this – you're not going out and asking them. You’ve made no effort.”
It's not that he wants Anchorage to transform into Lower Manhattan, he said. He just wants more neighborhoods where people are prioritized over traffic and cars.
“We're not fighting this fight for ourselves,” he said. “We're not fighting to protect our precious little corner of Anchorage. We're doing this for the next generation because they're leaving. Our future is leaving, and that's really what we're trying to address.”
Whatever makes it into the final version, the municipality is quick to point out that building in Anchorage is a slow and incremental process.
There is still time left to weigh-in on the proposal. According to the municipality, there will be a chance for public questions and comments at an open house sometime in October. The date and time have not yet been set.
The proposal is scheduled to go before the Planning and Zoning Commission on Oct. 6, with another opportunity for public comment. It will then head to the Anchorage Assembly, likely in November, where it will also have public hearings before the body decides whether to approve it.
