The Committee has a new member Jazlyn Mitchel. Jazz joins Carrie Ottow, and Doug Parish as they research alternative ways to house those in our community who do not have access to shelters. They’ve looked at what other cities are doing and are in the process of having conversations with city/county staff and shelter providers.
Others on the committee continue to pursue what tools are available to encourage the development of workforce housing. Brigetta Olson provided a good overview of what the city can do to incentivise workforce housing – financial options are few.
Our committee has been having desultory conversations about expanding the work we are doing in the community. Much of our original focus was on urging the city to show more creativity and flexibility to developers and to monitor progress on the report of the Housing Task Force. State mandates around parking requirements, ADUs, cottage clusters, etc., are doing some of our work for us.
As we look to the future, we want to look into some of the societal implications caused by the lack of market-rate housing – these include trade-offs renters/ homeowners often make between paying rent/mortgage or getting healthcare, how the lack of stable housing affects children, etc.
We are also interested in ways to incentivize builders to consider ways to reduce energy cost, ways to reduce interior design costs, and more economical use of land. Some committee members have also expressed concern that most affordable housing developments are being built or planned for South Town. Will this result in a community that is socially and economically divided?
We continue to attend meetings of our local NAACP housing Committee.