With two significant community housing projects slated for completion in the not-to-distant future, Hailey city officials are trying to find their way through the complex maze of issues facing the entire Wood River Valley of how to develop and manage affordable homes.
Among those is a proposal for an alternative to traditional deed restrictions.
At a community housing workshop on Friday, Sept. 21, City Attorney Ned Williamson offered a number of suggestions to the City Council in hopes of expediting the process. His suggestions included the adoption of Hailey-specific housing guidelines, renegotiations of the city's contract for services with the Blaine County Housing Authority, and adoption of a proposed alternative deed restriction.
While discussions regarding community housing have become notorious for their seemingly interminable nature, these three related recommendations cannot be decided on soon enough, as 65 affordable housing units are slated for development with the Old Cutters and Sweetwater subdivisions.
In an interview, Williamson said the city needs to approve any alternative deed restriction before the final plats of the developments can be recorded and, subsequently, any lots can be sold.
At the workshop, Williamson proposed his own alternative deed restriction, similar to the county's proposed Workforce Market Deed Restriction, which would define prospective buyers as full-time residents who either work in Blaine County or are qualified retirees, and who don't own another home. Unlike a traditional income-based restriction, such as the one currently used by Blaine County, the Workforce Market Deed Restriction would not limit the amount of appreciation on a property if a buyer chooses to sell in the future.
However, unlike the Housing Authority's deed restriction, Williamson proposed that the city of Hailey, rather than the authority, should be on the title, meaning that the city would not be a legal owner, and it would have a say in how a property is managed.
In addition, Williamson recommended renegotiating the contract with the Housing Authority that has been in place since 2002, primarily to eliminate a 3 percent fee to the authority and replace it with a fee to cover the costs of verifying compliance with deed restrictions.
"We need to keep units as affordable as possible," Williamson said. "We need to make more units available and find the best way to get more people into these units."
He said he is hoping to have the alternative deed restriction in front of the council for decision on Monday, Oct. 8.
"We don't want to get stuck in the mud," Williamson said of his hope to get the deed restriction in front of the council as soon as possible. "Will it be perfect? Probably not, but we will do the best job we can."
Williamson also reiterated a recommendation by former Housing Authority Executive Director and community housing consultant Gates Kellet Dunaway to establish affordable housing guidelines specific to the city, rather than relying on those of the Housing Authority, in order to make the process less complicated. These new guidelines were not specified at the workshop, and Williamson said the focus should be on the alternative deed restriction first.
"Do we need to provide affordable housing for the entire valley?" Mayor Susan McBryant asked when explaining that the city has to figure out the housing needs for its own workforce.
This suggestion led to impassioned debate. Housing Authority board member Michael Roos said that this was an "isolationist strategy," causing McBryant to retort that city officials simply want to do everything they possibly can on the administrative end of the housing process.
"This shouldn't be a political issue," Williamson said in a later interview. "This should be an administrative issue only. How do we manage affordable housing in the most efficient and economical way, regardless of who is in charge of it."
