The Hailey Planning and Zoning Commission Tuesday night endorsed an ordinance designed to promote affordable housing in the city and forwarded it to the City Council.
The special meeting Tuesday turned into a somewhat raucous event as several community members expressed grave concerns with the potential effects the housing ordinance.
The majority of those attending the meeting who spoke out against the proposed ordinance identified themselves as developers. They said the ordinance's requirements would make it nearly impossible to ensure developments are profitable.
Hailey resident and developer John Campbell attended the meeting to speak out against what he later said is an old model of affordable housing.
"It's a pain in the ass to developers, quite frankly," he said.
Campbell referred to a new model of affordable housing being used nationwide in places like the resort city of Telluride, Colo. There, new cottage-style developments cluster small one- and two-bedroom units together around a common community center, he said.
One benefit of that style of development, Campbell said, is that increased density requires less land and therefore homes cost less. They also contribute to more of a community feel, he said.
"They can be very inexpensive to build," Campbell said. "My plan is to build a bunch of these."
Clustering allows more homes per acre than do traditional development strategies, he said.
"Having more density is the key to solving this issue," Campbell said.
Meanwhile, the city of Hailey continues to press on in an effort to complete an "inclusionary zoning" ordinance as soon as possible.
Hailey city employees, P&Z commissioners and the City Council are in a race against the clock in an effort to have the ordinance in place before the city's moratorium on new subdivisions ends Dec. 31. The July 1-initiated moratorium was put in place to give city planners time to draft an affordable housing ordinance.
Hailey City Attorney Ned Williamson has told the P&Z and City Council that they'd be better off completing the ordinance during the current moratorium rather than trying to extend it.
Under Hailey's proposed ordinance, all developments with five or more units would be required to make 20 percent of the units deed-restricted affordable housing.
Under the draft version of the ordinance brought to Tuesday's meeting, developers would receive a 20 percent density bonus as long as they met certain conditions. A density bonus basically allows developers to place more homes on a particular parcel of land, thereby offsetting the lower price of the affordable housing units.
After Tuesday night's public testimony, some members of the P&Z expressed reluctance with certain aspects of the draft ordinance. The most specific of their concerns had to do with the size of the density bonus.
Commissioner Nancy Linscott was chief among those with concerns.
"It's really coming to light that this is not humming along," Linscott said.
Without changes to the draft ordinance, Linscott said she might be forced to vote against forwarding it to the council.
Not all of the commissioners shared Linscott's concerns, though.
While indicating there may be some fundamental issues of the ordinance that need looking at, P&Z Commissioner Trent Jones said the overall draft version met with his approval.
Jones suggested the City Council might be in more of an appropriate position to address those issues.
"I'm reluctant to derail. I'm generally comfortable with the way it is written," he said.
In the end, Hailey P&Z commissioners voted 3-1 to forward the draft version of the ordinance to the council with a recommendation to increase the 20 percent density bonus to 30 percent.
