Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Affordable Housing topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
City presents housing data and options: large rental gaps at low incomes, multiple ownership tools under way
Summary
City staff summarized home-price trends, Dr. COG'identified 10-year housing gaps, and local programs (inclusionary housing, local housing fund, H2O down-payment loans, scattered-site acquisitions, Boulder Mod) were discussed; council asked for follow-up materials on cash-in-lieu economics and city land inventory.
City staff briefed the Boulder City Council on March 5 on the state of the local housing market, program activity and next steps to address both rental and ownership shortages.
Housing and Human Services Director Kurt Fernhau and staff framed the market mismatch as a divergence between stagnating area median income (AMI) and sharply rising home prices. Using Dr. COG's 10-year needs assessment, staff said the city faces a shortage of both middle-income ownership units (the report identified an ownership gap in the 80'120% AMI range) and a much larger deficit of rental units affordable to households at or below 50% AMI.
Kurt and Holly Hendendrickson highlighted the city's tools and recent outputs: local investments of roughly $142 million into affordable housing over the past decade; an inclusionary-housing yield that staff calculated at 37 permanently affordable homes for every 100 new units (exceeding the standard 25% requirement); 4,300 permanently affordable homes in Boulder (about 8.9% of housing stock); and nonprofit partners (notably Boulder Housing Partners) developing and managing a majority of affordable rentals.
Staff described a set of demand-side programs: the H2O down-payment assistance program (a shared-appreciation loan program that has served 94 households with about $3.2 million in loans since 2000) and a middle-income down-payment pilot that has seen little uptake. They also described a scattered-site acquisition program that has purchased 20 homes to re-sell as permanently affordable ownership units (average subsidy range roughly $90,000'$185,000), and Boulder Mod, a modular-home partnership expected to add 25'30 affordable ownership units per year.
Council members probed priorities and cost effectiveness. Several asked whether staff should prioritize deeper subsidies for 0'50% AMI renters (where Dr. COG shows the largest rental shortage) versus middle-income ownership tools. Staff replied that partner nonprofits and federal/credit-tax financing often lead on deeper rental subsidies while local funds and city programs have been focused on ownership tools; staff stressed the higher per-unit subsidy needed to produce permanently affordable ownership housing.
Council asked for follow-up materials including the slide comparing Boulder's affordable-production share with peer cities, an inventory of city-owned parcels that might be available for housing or land-banking, and more detail on the economics of cash-in-lieu versus on-site unit production used by the inclusionary program.
Next steps: staff said they will provide the requested slides and inventory where feasible, continue regional coordination, and pursue zoning, funding and program adjustments to pursue a mix of deeper subsidies for low-income renters and targeted ownership opportunities.
(Reporting note: program figures and quotes are taken from staff presentation and council Q&A on March 5.)
