Subsidized and/or Affordable Housing

[Anondson]

The key to any patterns is watching how the city allows affordable housing to be developed in other districts where it could reasonably happen outside of Southdale. 50th and France, 44th and France, Grandview, Wooddale and Valley View, and the large industrial areas around 100 and 494.

Except for the 100 and 494 swaths there is fierce pushback against density and thus affordability.

The school district weirdness in the northwest of Edina is a separate issue with lots of drama over the Parkwood Knolls residents deeply angry they bought homes by mistake outside the Edina School District border, making them go through the motions of open enrolling.

[Anondson]

Council adopts new affordable housing policy unanimously, says Scott Neal, city manager.

https://twitter.com/edinacityman/status ... 8446771200

"Council unanimously adopts new affordable housing policy. Goes into effect November 1."

[WHS]

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of the policy as adopted?

[seanrichardryan]

Agenda here: http://edina.novusagenda.com/agendapubl ... ype=Agenda

PDF AGENDA (huge file) Begins on page 391. http://edina.novusagenda.com/agendapubl ... eetingID=5

Minutes should be up here in a week or two. http://edinamn.gov/index.php?section=20 ... il_meeting

[Anondson]

Scott Neal blogged about the new policy. New, as in, there want one before. Now Edina has one.

http://blogs.edinamn.gov/edinas-afforda ... ng-policy/

[RailBaronYarr]

So am I reading this right?

If you want to develop a new multi-family residential development of 20 or more units, and your proposal requires a re-zoning to Planned Unit Development (PUD) or a Comprehensive Plan amendment, you will need to comply with our new policy. - See more at: http://blogs.edinamn.gov/edinas-afforda ... Bt4DR.dpuf

So it's Inclusionary Zoning, which has a spotty record for actually producing affordable units, but only on developments that require a re-zoning or Comp Plan amendment. Does that include variances or CUPs? If not, when will this actually come into play?

[WHS]

So wait, did the adopted plan include the fee-in-lieu provision? It's certainly not mentioned in the mayor's statement.

[twincitizen]

RBY - it seems like every big development coming thru the Southdale area has needed a Comp Plan amendment due to Edina having low density/acre thresholds. Certain areas of Edina have always been home to some pretty "dense" development by suburban standards, but often in the past that development was on larger sites that included lots of open land or surface parking. These modern 6-story boxes are being built on much tighter sites with near 100% underground parking, in a more "urban" style, are sort of breaking Edina's outdated code in terms of a straight Units/Acre calculation. On top of that, Edina really likes PUDs (just look at their zoning map).

It's a fair assumption that most large-scale multi-family projects in Edina will be PUDs, need a Comp Plan amendment, or both.

[seanrichardryan]

Minneapolis looks at inclusionary zoning
By: Karlee Weinmann December 15, 2015 1:52 pm 0

Minneapolis is poised to join other nearby cities in integrating affordable housing mandates aimed at diversifying its housing stock and boosting equity amid demand for lower rents.
City Council Member Lisa Bender on Friday introduced an effort to tie inclusionary zoning into Minneapolis’ housing policy. Such a plan would mirror other cities’ efforts to require developers to set lower rents for a portion of units in their multifamily properties.

Read more: http://finance-commerce.com/2015/12/min ... z3uQNsrqfj

[trigonalmayhem]

As much as I love new ways to add affordable housing, that's a dangerous game to play with no accompanying subsidy. It will almost certainly drive up the market rate rents and/or discourage developments that would have been priced at the lower end of market prices. So it basically squeezes out the middle ground of new construction. If you aren't poor or rich there's nothing for you.

[FISHMANPET]

I think we'll just have to wait until we have some actual text to read. If it requires affordable housing in all projects, that's bad, but I think Lisa knows enough to understand why that won't work. If it requires affordable housing as a condition to getting a zoning bonus or something, that could be better.

But we're in the unfortunate situation of construction being expensive and rent being comparatively cheap, such that there isn't really a lot of wiggle room to include affordable units while still having projects pencil out. So I guess we'll see.

[trigonalmayhem]

I'd be all for it being tied to concessions that allow the builder to balance the cost out somehow, but aside from allowing better economies of scale I don't really see how you can decrease the costs of a project by that much via relaxing zoning minutiae. It still messes with the basic economics of the project it's included in. With section 42 they get tax credits to offset the cost of charging reduced rent, but here what do they really get? Permission to maybe stretch their base cost of the structure to a few more units? They're still going to have to raise the rents on the remaining units to get whatever return the rest of the market is currently demanding for this kind of investment or it won't be competitive and might get passed over for another market. Affordable housing is always a dollars and cents issue and you can't just force it without either making up the difference or having a completely level playing field for investment.

[FISHMANPET]

Yeah whenever I think about housing it comes down to "it costs too damn much to build." Maybe allow an automatic upzoning for some affordable units? I'd bet there are some larger lots R3 or R4 where the land is cheap enough that you could make substantially more money building an R6 building. If you make that upzoning "easy" and "cheap" maybe that could help?

You could do a parking minimum reduction, but I doubt anybody would actually want to build substantially less parking right now.

What if 2320 Colfax/Motiv was a six story building instead of a 4 story building, with literally no other changes (including no additional parking). I wonder if that could pencil out to make some portion of those new units affordable?

Looking forward to attending a public meeting that will be decried as secret about this and talking with Lisa and policy aides about it.

[mattaudio]

My understanding is that Mpls still provides density bonuses for *either* additional/district parking OR affordable units. Seems like we should take away the parking density bonus and double down on the affordable unit density bonus.

Allowing developers to develop more units - by right - so long as a certain number of units are affordable seems like a win all around.

[FISHMANPET]

I believe the parking bonus is if you locate the parking underground. Most buildings are going to do that anyway, so it's not really a sacrifice on their part. Removing the underground bonus would be a good start.

[clf]

This does not seem very affordable to me...

Definitions
Rental Housing
Either 10% of all rentable area is both rent restricted and occupied by persons whose income is 50% or less of area median gross income,Or 20% of all rentable area is both rent restricted and occupied by persons whose income is 60% or less of area median gross income.

Both incomes (adjusted for family size) and rental rates (adjusted for bedroom count and including utilities) are updated annually by the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency (MHFA) and published at www.mnhousing.gov. 2015 income and rental limits are as follows:

Gross Incomes Gross Rents
60% 50% 60% 50%
1 Person $36,420 $30,350 Studio $910 $758
2 Persons $41,580 $34,650 1 Bedroom $975 $812
3 Persons $46,800 $39,000 2 Bedroom $1,170 $975
4 Persons $51,960 $43,300 3 Bedroom $1,351 $1,125
5 Persons $56,160 $46,800 4 Bedroom $1,507 $1,256
6 Persons $60,300 $50,250
- See more at: http://edinamn.gov/index.php?section=pl ... Xo3fy.dpuf

[Sara Bergen]

Article about encouraging state HFA's (housing finance agencies) to add points for passive house construction to their scoring for awarding LIHTCs (low income housing tax credits). So far several HFAs have signed on. Tim has approached MHFA with this but my understanding is that MHFA feels they adequately incentivize energy efficiency in affordable multifamily rental developments via their (MHFA's) scoring process.

http://www.planetizen.com/node/83204/do ... le-housing

[Sara Bergen]

Didn't find a Seward Tower-specific thread so posting this here. It took several small miracles to get this closed.

http://www.startribune.com/seward-tower ... 366154161/

[Tiller]

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/ ... ative.html
Any opinions on the community land trust model for affordable housing?

[beige_box]

It's not pretty, but yes the utility is there.

Sorry, what's the utility again?