The Juneau Planning Commission took the first step toward fixing Juneau’s decades-old housing problem at its Tuesday night meeting.
With little discussion, the commission voted unanimously to pass the city’s Housing Action Plan on to the Assembly for consideration. [Read the housing action in full here: http://juneauempire.com/local/2015-11-04/city-housing-incentive-nearly-ready]
Early last year, the city hired czb LLC, a Virginia-based planning firm, to help Juneau fix its dire housing situation. The result was the Housing Action Plan, a guiding document that, if implemented, czb says should help unstick the city’s housing market.
According to the plan, Juneau’s “housing pipes are clogged.” It explains that the city’s housing problem runs deeper than its lack of affordable housing. The plan says that many people in the private sector view housing development as risky. Because they aren’t investing in the market at the rate the city needs, the supply of housing “in general and at specific points on the housing ladder” is greatly restricted, the plan states. The housing squeeze may be tightest for the people seeking affordable and entry-level housing, but the market is tight for everybody, and fixing it will require the city to depart drastically from business as usual, according to Community Development Department Director Rob Steedle.
“It was a come-to-Jesus call, really,” Steedle told the Empire Wednesday morning. “I think the plan has galvanized us into action.”
Though the plan hasn’t yet been adopted, the city has already started implementing some of its recommended solutions. In mid-February, the city hired Scott Ciambor as chief housing officer, a housing czar of sorts who was tasked with facilitating housing development in Juneau. This was one of the plan’s recommendations.
[City names chief housing officer]
On Tuesday night, the Planning Commission did its part to implement another recommended solution: formally adopting the plan into the city’s existing Comprehensive Plan, referred to as the Comp Plan.
The commission and the CDD are recommending that the Assembly fold the Housing Action Plan into the Comp Plan, a move that city Planning Manager Beth McKibben said would give czb’s housing plan “more teeth or more traction.”
The city’s Comp Plan is an overarching document that provides direction for all city government operations, from energy production to waterfront planning. If the Housing Action Plan is rolled into the Comp Plan, McKibben said that it would provide a consistent set of housing-related directives for the entirety of city government.
“This plan gives a whole suite of tools to look at and to work with,” she said in a phone interview Wednesday morning. “It doesn’t necessarily mean we will use all of them to implement our goals, but we have them.”
McKibben said she is happy that the Housing Action Plan has moved through the Planning Commission. Regardless of whether the Assembly ultimately decides to incorporate it into the Comp Plan, McKibben thinks it will go a long way toward lowering the city’s high cost of housing.
“I think adopting the housing plan in any form is a big deal for housing in Juneau,” she said.
• Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.
Related links:
Pot biz block stopped (Housing Action Plan section)
