Anchorage work session considers temporary pause to multifamily design standards to speed housing projects

An Anchorage Assembly work session on a proposed ordinance, AO 2024-104S, opened with sponsors describing a temporary pause to selected multifamily residential design standards in Anchorage Municipal Code Title 21 to reduce costs and speed housing development.

The ordinance would suspend specific sections of the Title 21 residential design standards that apply to buildings of five or more dwelling units. Sponsor Anna Brawley said the pause is intended as a three-year window to “get out of our own way for a period of time, collect data on what works, what doesn't work, and then have an ongoing conversation about what residential design standards should be in place.” The sponsors clarified the proposal would not change Title 23 health-and-safety requirements or separate landscaping, screening and fence rules that exist elsewhere in code.

Why it matters: Assembly members and administration staff framed the proposal as a tool to increase feasible multifamily housing production in a market the planning and development community has repeatedly described as unable to deliver mid-rise and larger multifamily housing without subsidy. The ordinance would also require the planning department to provide annual reports on utilization and impacts, and sponsors said they plan a floor amendment to extend the pause deadline from January 2028 to May 2028 and to convene a working group to study outcomes.

Cook Inlet Housing Authority and private developers described concrete impacts they attribute to the current standards. Tyler…