Monday, May 23, 2016

Workforce Housing Planning at Council Workshop

The City Council is holding a workshop to provide direction to city staff tomorrow, May 24. The objectives identified are as follows:

Develop a program through which workforce housing developers can receive incentives to provide new units.

Determine suitable multifamily zoning locations with sufficient services and land use compatibility for an appropriate mix of housing types within the city.

The staff is proposing the following three work elements:

Revise Housing Tax Credit resolution process – Establish deadline for the Competitive applications – Require public/neighborhood outreach – Application criteria: 

Update Housing Element – New demographic information – Calculate updated housing deficit – Update Workforce Multifamily Locations Study – Public input

Feasibility of Housing Tools – Provide analysis on strategies already in use nationally and in Texas. – Timeline: • Spring 2017 start, study complete Fall 2017 13
 • Examples:
 • Housing Trust Fund
 • Community Land Trust
 • Local bond issue
 • Requirements for workforce housing with special development approvals (i.e. MUDs, PIDs, PUDs, TIRZ).

Citizens of Georgetown need to be involved by participating in all opportunities for public input during the planning process.  It is too late to change the specific location and/or other characteristics of a project at the time construction is slated to begin. The policy and planning needs to be impacted in the early stages before people and organizations have made significant investments of time and resources.

Among the products produced by the city staff are maps showing where they recommended workforce housing be constructed. Landowners, citizens and business owners need to be cognizant of these maps and recommendations before the city council approves them in order to effect any changes.

3 comments:

  1. "Workforce Housing" sounds very much like class discrimination.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think it is the new buzz word to replace "low income" housing! We really don't want people to know what is going on, just change the terminology.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Workforce Housing" is very much class discrimination, but, that is OK in our current environment!

    It is also wealth distribution from those with more wealth to those with less wealth using the power of government. For example look at the use of tax incentives which all taxpayers get to pay to subsidize "workforce housing". A land owner may have value taken from his land due to a requirement to provide mixed use housing types. And so it goes!

    ReplyDelete