06/30/2024

Land Use

• PASSED: The Assembly passed the S-1 version of the HOME zoning reform with a 7-5 vote. The reform allows duplexes throughout the Bowl, including detached. The substantial positive testimony is worth watching from 1:51 onwards. Around 1:55, one of Anchorage’s local builders explains: “We don’t really build a home unless someone wants that home” Overview in Alaska Public Media. As zoning reform is likely to remain a topic of discussion in the community, here’s additional commentary on the subject: 

• From The Alaska Memo:

“This anxiety over anything that isn’t single-family housing overlooks that people are stuck renting homes in a market increasingly squeezing them for all they’re worth. You don’t have to look far to find stories of rent that has increased by as much as 100% overnight, with little justification…I have friends looking at this city’s housing market and not seeing a future.”

• From the editors of the Landmine:

“Let’s get real: there is nothing “progressive” about manipulating the law in order to create housing scarcity…Progressives should abhor attempts to use code to threaten the ability of lower and middle-income residents to afford homes in our community, and should applaud efforts to undo the severe and generational harm done by misguided anti-housing policies masquerading as progressivism.”

• From a UAA professor of Economics:

“In the 1990s, I was in elementary school. I am now a full professor with three kids and a mortgage. I was certainly not invited to the community meetings in the 1990s, they certainly do not reflect my values or preferences, and I do not think 1990s progressive values should dictate what I am allowed to do with my property today or the ability of the currently elected city government to change policy...

Claims that new housing cannot help run contrary to the plethora of empirical evidence that restrictive land use raises the price of housing, while new housing lowers rents and housing prices.”

• And from representatives of a number of Alaska civil society organizations:

“Fixing Anchorage’s zoning code to encourage compact development is one of the most effective ways our city can meet the goals laid out in its 2020 Climate Action Plan…HOME takes a modest step toward pro-climate zoning by allowing duplexes in all neighborhoods in the Anchorage Bowl. Allowing fourplexes or even more units would have an even greater positive impact and we hope the city eventually does so.”

• NEW: Confronting exclusionary land use policy in Anchorage: Coming out of the HOME debates, an opinion piece published by non-resident Charles Wohlforth several days ago claimed that “past racism isn’t a reason to change Anchorage zoning laws”: 

“There’s no question that white leaders of the past used community planning to promote segregation, generating inequality that persists today. Just not much in Anchorage…Progressive ideas led the discussion, including debating how to slow growth and limit the population of the city to preserve its quality of life”. 

The president and CEO of the Alaska Black Caucus responded a few days later:

“What Wohlforth did not fully acknowledge are the myriad ways in which racist and restrictive covenants, urban renewal, highway construction and neighborhood disinvestment have undermined the ability of Anchorage’s most historically marginalized people, namely Native residents and those of African descent to build, maintain, and pass along generational wealth. Furthermore, Wohlforth minimized the extent of housing segregation with a rather glib statement conceding: ‘Some plats in the oldest parts of the city have racist covenants’. In fact, nearly every neighborhood north of Tudor Road had racist covenants.”

As others have noted elsewhere, the Charles Wohlforth that wrote the opinion piece was once an Anchorage Assembly member who also seems to have been on the steering committee that produced AO 97-101, an ordinance which downzoned a high-access area of Government Hill, restricted density to 6 dwelling units per acre and required 60% be single family homes, and mandated 2 car garages for the properties (Search here for "AIM 1996-14”). 

• PASSED: Comprehensive Plan updates: AO 2024-44 substituted by AR 2024-201 at the June 25, 2024 assembly meeting. The substituted AR requests a targeted plan review of the 2020 Comprehensive Plan and 2040 Land Use Plan. Instructive language from Assembly Member Brawley during the meeting: “We want to be clear that the ten year review in the code is not referring to it taking 10 years, it is the frequency of review…” The original AO 2024-44 proposed changes can be found here. Assembly memo here. 

• NEW: Anchorage was not awarded funding for the HUD Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing (PRO) grant. Nearly $85 million was awarded nationwide. The Municipality’s application requested $3,450,000, with $2,000,000 of that proposed for evaluating and acquiring “land use permitting & tracking software for use by MOA Development Services and Planning Department”.

• ONGOING: Anchorage public restroom survey.

• ONGOING: Propose your project ideas that could be funded by an Anchorage sales tax: The Project Anchorage website has a form for submissions. Goals of the program:

• “Lower property taxes

• Ensure visitors contribute

• Build new projects to improve our quality of life

• Grow our economy”

Transportation

• NEW: Update on the Seward to Glenn Freeway Expansion Project: The project team sent around an email last week providing some news on the project: 

“Here are a few things we’ve learned: 

-Comments showed a range of opinions across all categories, with the strongest emphasis on the effects to local neighborhoods with mentions in 24% of total submissions.

-Most project alternatives received comments in favor and opposed, with the most approval for the 2050 MTP alternative.

-A significant number of people and organizations question whether a highway is an appropriate solution to meeting the study’s purpose and need.”

The 2050 MTP alternative has also been referred to as the “no highway” alternative.  Disappointingly, the link the DOT project team has provided to access the data is not in fact public and requires an HDR login.

• NEW: The July 11, 2024 AMATS technical advisory meeting is canceled.