Council hears staff plan to rework zoning incentives into a menu to spur affordable, sustainable housing

Boise City staff told the City Council that most of the incentives in the city's modern zoning code are not financially feasible and proposed a menu-style approach that would give developers flexible options to earn zoning benefits in exchange for sustainability or affordability commitments.

Kyle Patterson, director of the Department of Organizational Effectiveness, briefed the council on a financial feasibility analysis used to test current incentives and new options. He said the city surveyed and interviewed code users ("about 70 surveys to date and 16 interviews") and hired two outside consultants to run pro formas and compare incentive value to the cost of requirements. "In almost all cases, these incentives are not financially feasible to get used," Patterson told the council, while noting one narrow exception: a parking-reduction incentive paired with sustainability requirements on podium-style apartments showed positive value in the consultants' models.

The finding that incentives often do not…