Two new housing proposals from the Mayor

The Muni just announced two new proposals aimed at reducing housing barriers. The first gives a 10 year property tax break (for the building value) to first time home buyers who buy new construction at a price below the average single family home price. The second offers a similar 10 year property tax break to buyers who buy primary homes in an existing commercial building that has been rehabilitated to add 4 or more residential units. That sounds pretty good, and like it could result in condos being developed in multi-use buildings (the most sustainable type of dense urban housing). But I have questions.

The first is: will it work? New construction isn’t cheap. It’s really hard to build below the cost of existing homes, especially in this economy and when Anchorage has a plethora of homes that were built during our boom times and haven’t been fixed up much. So how do you build cheaper? One way is build crappier- let’s hope that doesn’t happen! The MOA Planning Division has committed to ensuring that new buildings will last, so that’s one reassurance. You can also build up for some efficiencies, though to a limited degree. But as most new developments in Anchorage have shown us, new equals more expensive.

The second question is will Anchorage voters be supportive of such tax changes? As the Mayor has stated many times, the city doesn’t have big bags of money to give out. Will Anchorage residents reject the idea of the city directly supporting home purchases with tax breaks?

Looking forward to hearing the community conversations on this one!

See the announcement here: https://www.muni.org/Departments/Mayor/PressReleases/Pages/Mayor-LaFrance-proposes-two-ordinances-to-encourage-housing-development.aspx