Consultant urges affordable housing

Coeur d’Alene must give developers incentives to include affordable housing in their projects, a housing consultant told the City Council on Tuesday.

There’s a variety of ways for the city to encourage people to build houses, condos and rentals that working people can afford – everything from waiving impact fees and reducing parking requirements to allowing developers to build more homes per acre if they include reasonably priced homes.

Based on interviews and workshops with locals, Heidi Aggeler, of BBC Research and Consulting of Denver, said most Coeur d’Alene residents appreciate the need for affordable housing.

“That’s a big step some communities can’t get past,” Aggeler told the council at a noon workshop where she presented recommendations based on her firm’s recently completed housing study.

Aggeler repeated the presentation during the council’s evening meeting.

The city also needs to focus on housing for low-income residents, especially senior citizens, and encourage developers to build highly-subsidized rentals. There is a shortage of 861 rental units for people making less than $15,000 per year, the report said.

In addition, Coeur d’Alene needs programs to help people on fixed incomes maintain and repair their homes, which will preserve affordable housing, Aggeler said.

Coeur d’Alene, its urban renewal agency and the Idaho Housing and Finance Commission paid for the $45,000 study – the first local effort to compare housing prices with what local workers can afford to buy or rent.

The council plans to absorb the 163-page report and recommendations and then begin implementing policies to entice the private sector to help build affordable housing.

The city’s urban renewal agency also will look at ways to assist developers as the city tries to avoid a Sun Valley-type housing situation, where service workers end up commuting from distant corners of the county because they can’t afford to live in town.

“We have grave concerns,” Councilwoman Deanna Goodlander said after the workshop attended by about 70 people. “It’s a huge issue.”

The study, which was released Dec. 1, shows that families earning less than $50,000 a year – about half the city’s population – have difficulty finding a home they can afford.

Renters also face rising housing costs. Last year, 60 percent of the city’s renters could afford the median rent of $540 per month, the study indicated. But within five years, workers in three of the city’s 10 fast-growing jobs – food preparation, health care support and building/maintenance occupations – will have difficultly affording rents, the study projected.

Affordable housing is no longer an issue just for those with low income. It now concerns middle-income earners such as teachers and firefighters. Aggeler said Coeur d’Alene needs a variety of housing prices to maintain a viable economy.

Tom Messina, a builder who serves on the city Planning Commission, said he and other developers would like to incorporate affordable housing into their projects.

“I don’t think there’s a developer in town that isn’t willing,” Messina said. “It just comes down to dollars and cents.”

He said that it is difficult to build affordable homes because of the skyrocketing price of land.

Aggeler said the city should inventory publicly owned land and buildings that could be turned into work-force housing developments. She herself lives in a Denver development where a former Air Force base was converted into a mix of housing – everything from transitional housing for the homeless to $3 million mansions. Private owners should also inventory land that is ideal for affordable housing or mixed-use projects, she said.

Local businesses should be encouraged to help acquire land for work-force housing, she said.

Councilman Mike Kennedy said the city should avoid “warehousing,” or creating affordable housing in only one area of the city.

Aggeler agreed and said projects are more successful and generally more accepted by the public when they include a mix of housing prices.

Aggeler said Coeur d’Alene should immediately apply for a federal Community Development Block Grant – money that will help the city implement some of the study’s recommendations.

Then the city should decide what type of incentives to offer developers, she said.

Councilwoman Dixie Reid told Aggeler that the city already has approved several items that will help, including voting last month to allow builders to cluster houses on smaller lots in town’s most urban areas.

“We are very committed to implementing whatever we can to make it work,” Reid said.