At Olympia's Land Use and Environment Committee meeting on Thursday, October 26, consultants recommended a comprehensive strategy to address the city's affordable housing challenges, emphasizing the need for an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to advance affordable homeownership in the area.
In July, Olympia commissioned KnoxWorks consulting and its partner, Northwest Cooperative Development Center (NWCDC), to research and evaluate options the city might pursue to support access to homeownership for low to moderate-income households (LMI).
Consultant Paul Knox of KnoxWorks began Thursday’s briefing to the committee by identifying the overall goals of the study, including measures to increase access to ownership for LMI households to overcome inequities.
Knox also highlighted the importance of increasing the supply and diversity of housing beyond single-family homes, saying options like cottages, townhomes, and accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are needed to reflect current affordability and cost realities. He also cited the importance of engaging all sectors in the project, including private, public, and nonprofit organizations.
Knox briefly discussed the firm’s research process, including interviews conducted with over 20 leaders and experts at the state, local, and national levels. Consultants read and studied reports, articles, and other resources to identify best practices for cities and LMI in achieving affordable homeownership.
"It has been an iterative process, especially in the last month,” said Knox, “where we started to put together a list of policy strategies and actions the city could take and share them with different groups."
According to Knox, a prevailing theme that emerged in the study was the importance of aligning affordable housing strategies with missing middle development policies. He also stressed the need for a coordinated, "all hands on deck" approach across multiple affordable homeownership strategies.
Knox’s consultants identified 27 strategies for the Olympia homeownership project. At the presentation, Knox discussed some items that consultants tentatively recommend as priority actions:
While recognizing the potential challenges of establishing new advisory bodies, Knox suggested creating a multisector advisory group to engage diverse partners such as builders of multi-unit rentals, townhomes and ownership projects, cooperatives, and condominiums. He also recommended outreach to large employers such as the school district and collaboration with initiatives connected to housing parks and land development opportunities.
Knox suggested waiving or reducing development fees charged by the city, such as development charges, utility construction fees, and frontage improvement costs for projects dedicating units to affordable homeownership.
Committee member Jim Cooper talked of modeling an actual cooperative housing project as an example. He suggested that consultants might work with the local housing authority to develop a hypothetical conversion of an existing property, like a vacant state office building, into a cooperative housing project.
According to Cooper, this would allow the committee to demonstrate in concrete terms what such a project might look like, the challenges involved, and what types of support may be needed from the city to make a cooperative model feasible.
Consultant Sam Green of NWCDC responded that his group is willing to make an example project to illustrate concepts like cooperative housing models.
"If you wanted to share numbers and talk a little bit about the type of construction, the costs, we could plug all of that in and model how it would look as a coop,” Green said.
Olympia City Manager Jay Burney informed the committee that the city has been exploring some properties, some of them former state office buildings, for conversion to housing.
"We are looking at some possibilities that might have some real options that we can look at and model that could come to fruition here in Olympia,” the city manager commented.
Committee member Clark Gilman expressed interest in predevelopment funding through a zero-interest revolving loan fund or other mechanisms to help nonprofits with early planning and feasibility work. He also looked at combining limited equity agreements for homeowners with permanent affordability secured through long-term land trusts or land ownership models.
Gilman requested examples or data showing that "missing middle" housing types, like cottages and townhomes, have successfully facilitated affordable homeownership, as there are concerns that this category of dwelling may rapidly appreciate in the future.
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BobJacobs
The last comment here is very important. Housing that starts out inexpensive can rapidly become far more expensive thru the normal workings of the market.
Also, we need to be aware that some of these ideas will take significant public funding, and sometimes this funding is in the form of "hidden taxes".
Bob Jacobs
Saturday, October 28, 2023 Report this
Bobwubbena
This article has important information and an offer that should be accepted. The findings includes a list of common sense suggestions that need to be incorporated into the "Olympia Urban Area Housing Strategy --2024 to 2029". The City should accept Sam Green's offer to assemble an "example/model" of how the program could work and then be revised as the "Work Plan for the City and its distribution of funds, staff support and Council assignment to change existing policies and codes to support the program. The third key message from Paul Knox is that the City and the community needs to "have all hands on the SAME DECK". Housing for the LMI can also provide a spot for the "high" income so that the Olympia Urban Area Housing Strategy accommodates all citizens of the Urban Area---including the long list of "homeless, unhoused, mental illness and the long list of profit and not for profit organizations that are independently asking for funding support from area taxpayers. Let's have one Urban Area Plan that incorporates the suggestion from this article, then the model of how to do it, and then a multi stakeholder Board listed in the article to guide the decision making. Asking a sitting Council Person to become a banker, granter and expert on housing and homeless has proven to not work. Let's try something more inclusive with the end plan and objective being well defined.
Saturday, October 28, 2023 Report this
Somney
I have been searching for a townhome for what I consider a reasonable price in Thurston County. The prices are not much cheaper than a single family house and those are in a price range not very affordable for a single adult.
Sunday, October 29, 2023 Report this
JW
Olympia focuses on transients and affordable housing while Lacey focuses on businesses and warehouses.
One sucks up tax revenue and one generates it.
Olympia 9 million in the hole next year. Maybe Olympia needs to stop acting like the welfare city of the county.
Sunday, October 29, 2023 Report this
Southsoundguy
I’ll be impressed when the City commissions a study to see what lane prices would be if zoning was abolished and people were incentivized to treat the land as a monetary asset. What’s the true utility value without “the American Dream” artificially driving up prices?
Monday, October 30, 2023 Report this
Southsoundguy
Edit: were not incentivized*
Monday, October 30, 2023 Report this