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Board proposes workshop on incentives to spur workforce housing
Summary
Board and council members discussed fee reductions, impact‑fee deferrals and other incentives to stimulate workforce and affordable housing. Members proposed holding a workshop and urged staff to develop options for council consideration, including accountability measures to ensure incentives translate into affordable units.
Board members and the council guest discussed ways the city could incentivize workforce and affordable housing, including reducing or deferring impact fees and creating permit‑ready options. One council speaker framed fee reductions as a way to lower upfront development costs while recouping revenue later through taxes and utilities: “We can incentivize people to do workforce housing is to either forgive or reduce those impact fees within the city,” he said.
Members noted challenges beyond local fees — for example, state and federal financing rules that affect affordable housing developers and programmatic limits such as lottery‑based awards for some state funding. The board recommended a focused workshop to evaluate specific incentive options (fee forgiveness, deferrals, expedited permitting), identify accountability measures to ensure promised affordability levels, and estimate fiscal impacts so council could consider a targeted budget line for any pilot incentives.
