Hilltop resident urges consistent definition of 'affordable housing,' questions tax-exemption benefits

Hilltop resident Kit Burns used the March 26 public comment period to urge the Community Vitality and Safety Committee to adopt a consistent definition of "affordable housing," saying current documents use different benchmarks and the inconsistency confuses residents and reviewers.

"I just wanna make a comment on something that I would like the city council to take action on... and that's to actually get some consistency in terms of what is affordable," Burns said. She noted the Tacoma Housing Authority has a specific definition and said the city’s figures for what qualifies as "affordable" have shifted over time (she described past uses of 80% of area median income and more recently 70%).

Burns also criticized prior tax exemption packages that, she said, provided far larger benefits to developers than to residents. As examples she referenced a past project where developer tax benefits were about $12 million versus roughly $3 million returned in public benefit, and said a more recent proposal showed roughly comparable developer and resident benefits in the low hundreds of thousands. Burns raised Viridian Grove Apartments as an example, saying the city website notes a $200 benefit there while other funding pots show additional millions; she asked the committee to clarify how multiple funding sources are counted.

Her remarks were presented as citizen comment; no committee action or response changing policy definitions was recorded during the meeting.

The committee moved on to scheduled agenda items after the public comment period closed.