The following was sent to Principal Planner Ambika Adhikari and Community Development Manager Ryan Levesque, with city council and council staff copied, in response to the proposal in this presentation. Tempe YIMBY is highly supportive of this proposal, which would allow developers to trade adding some affordable units to their projects in exchange for height and density increases.
Hello Ryan and Ambika,
This is Nolan Williams with Tempe YIMBY. We have read the slides for the new Development Bonus Program and we are thrilled this concept is making a comeback. We love that city-wide implementation is being considered, and we love the administrative aspect of it.
We have some suggestions and concerns, however, based on our priority of living in a city with abundant housing options.
1st: We think that many units of affordable housing, spread thinly among a large number of projects and complexes, is the ideal makeup of deed restricted affordable housing in a city.
2nd: We believe that overly ambitious affordability requirement numbers, while attractive on paper, may actively restrict the number of applications from cautious developers.
3rd: We love the current pace of home construction in the city. We are concerned that the DBP, while optional, may be released concurrent with a slowdown of discretionary PAD approvals. That scenario would then appear to be a backdoor implementation of inclusionary zoning, which could not only lead to Tempe losing all state funding from a legislative challenge, but also lead to a slowdown in the construction of much needed housing supply.
To address both the immense dual needs of deed restricted affordable housing and market rate housing, we suggest pairing modest affordability targets with large density and height bonuses, and making the process as simple and straightforward as possible.
Our members and supporters would much rather see 20 projects with 3-4 units each than one big project with 25 units and a splashy “10% affordable units” headline. To us, the total number of affordable homes is much more important than the percentage concentration of affordable units in any specific project.
We would like every project to look at this proposal and see it as a slam dunk, best-case-scenario, so that every project moves forward with more homes for all.
Thank you for your hard work on this proposal, and we hope to see this proposal succeed.
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