05/12/2024

Written By Guest User

Land Use

  • ONGOING: New materials available related to the HOME zoning reform on the MOA case tracking website. One of the complaints that has come up throughout the process has been whether or not the Assembly can change zoning directly, and what kinds of notification procedures it must follow if doing so. The municipal attorney speaks to some of this in one of the legal opinions now available:

“The Assembly does not need landowner permission to rezone parcels or rewrite zoning code restricting uses of land because these are legislative acts within the Assembly’s broad authority to pass laws and protect the public health, safety, welfare, and economic vitality. Landowners have the right to provide input during the legislative process, but their approval is not needed for new zoning laws to apply to their parcels.”

  • LAST WEEK: Assembly’s Legislative powers related to land use.  Related to the larger discussion of zoning reform, at the May 7, 2024 Assembly meeting the Assembly discussed AO 2024-45, which covers how the legislative body makes changes to code. At the May 3, 2024 work session on the item a few days before, legislative counsel mentioned a notable discovery (around 5:20):

“And the interesting thing we found in doing our research on this is that the language of the code actually says that a Title 21 text amendment can be initiated by the assembly or a decision making body, but it doesn’t provide the authority for the planning department to initiate a text amendment, which is odd, because it seems like that’s where the majority of our text amendments since 2015 have come from.”

For the regular meeting, general public comment on AO 2024-45 starts around 3:25:50. Regular viewers will not be surprised to see many of Anchorage’s most seasoned testifiers stepping up to the dais. A closing observation from assembly member Brawley. 

“In all of these calls for better public process, we’ve also observed–and I’ve personally observed for several years now in this community, even before joining this body– that there is a tendency or a pattern to manufacture fear and opposition through exaggeration, conflation of different policies and proposals so that they all sound like they are overwhelming amount of things and they’re all happening at once, heightened emotional language, and sometimes outright mischaracterization about what is or what is not proposed to change, what is written down in these ordinances. And I want to say that is not good public process, that is not good faith engagement in this process. And so I hope that in the next two weeks members of the public and all of the members of this body who are interested in this ordinance will take the time to read it thoroughly.  

AO 2024-45 will be on the agenda again at the 5/21/2024 Assembly meeting. 

  • NEW: Potential new Housing Development at St. Mary’s Church off of Tudor. It looks like St. Mary’s is interested in building a “proof of concept” for building workforce housing on their church property. At 32:07 in this video from earlier this year, the speaker cites a study which indicates Anchorage needs over 6,000 new housing units right now. Assuming it is the same project, this item is on the agenda for the upcoming Campbell Creek Community Council meeting.

  • NEW: Government Hill Community Council discussing road noise at their May 16, 2024 meeting. Resolution for discussion. North Star Community Council passed a resolution on road noise in 2021.

  • NEW: Subdivision and rezone downtown: Hints that Southcentral Foundation might have some plans for their property on Eagle Street. Subdivision case #S12780 indicates that the land manager is dividing the parcel into two lots and rezoning from PLI to B-2C (From the application: “This abbreviated plat needs to be completed first so that the rezone does not create a split-zoned parcel”). B-2C allows a much wider range of uses than PLI.

  • NEW: Midtown District Plan public meeting on May 14, 2024 from 5:00 to 7:00 pm at Natural Pantry. Interesting takeaways from a recent business improvement district study that seems to have been completed in advance of the plan project:

    • “The average interest for a Midtown BID rated by commercial property owners respondents was 30.8 out of 100. The average interest for a Midtown BID rated by business owners /operators respondents was 53.7 out of 100”

    • “Property owner respondents spend approximately $1,100 a month on private security or public safety while business owners spend around $3,000 a month”

    • “Respondents commented that Midtown lacks public safety, and safe streets for pedestrians and cyclists. Respondents also commented that snow removal and road maintenance need improvement”

  • NEW: 2024 Housing economics in Alaska in Trends Magazine from the Department of Labor and Workforce Development. The article “Home Market Continues to Cool” provides some data on housing prices over time, and also draws attention to the perennial contradiction between the desire to make housing affordable and the desire to keep housing valuable:

“For some existing homeowners, especially those who have owned their homes outright for many years, there has never been a better market. After a long period of modest price growth from 2007 to 2019, existing homeowners saw the value of one of their largest assets jump 30 percent in just a few years, from an average of $335,362 in 2019 to $436,407 in 2022.”

If only prices fell, they would have to decrease by 17%. A prospective homebuyer may root for a decline in prices, but it’s the last thing most homeowners would want. For housing to return to average affordability with stable wages and interest rates over the next few years, prices would have to drop about 17 percent. Not since the housing crash of the 1980s have prices fallen that hard; it would likely take a massive increase in home inventory amid a collapse in demand. However, inventory could increase less dramatically in two major ways: overbuilding or people leaving the state in large numbers. Overbuilding is less likely because the level of construction has been fairly consistent since 2008 with no indication of too many homes being built.”

The idea that homeowners consider and use zoning to be a type of insurance for home-equity value has been explored by Fischel et al since the early 2000s.

Transportation

Events

  • ONGOING: May is Bike Month and May 17th is Bike to Work Day.

  • UPCOMING: Protected Bike Lane Ribbon Cutting: May 30, 2024 from 4:45pm–5:30pm at PAC Plaza: W 6th Ave & F St. project page.

  • UPCOMING: City Nerd Nite: Transportation will be May 30, 2024 at Akela Space downtown. 6-8pm.

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