Establishing goals to address housing needs in Grand Junction emerged as a top priority for the City Council as part of its housing strategy.
The council was discussing a draft housing strategy plan at it’s Monday work session, which identified more than a dozen strategies the city could employ. Root Policy Research Managing Director Mollie Fitzpatrick said, in conversations with stakeholder groups like the housing coalition, setting affordable housing goals would be a helpful start.
“We heard that this was a priority among stakeholders,” Fitzpatrick said. “We really felt like it was a useful priority, that it would help them target their efforts and help them understand where the city’s priorities lie.”
City Council Member Randall Reitz said it seemed like a high-impact and low-cost place to start. Other strategies discussed included land use code changes, formalizing a system to incentivize development of affordable housing, purchasing and donating property for affordable housing projects and supporting nonprofits and organizations serving the homeless and lower-income people.
Less favored options included Urban Renewal Areas and a volunteer rental registration that could provide landlords with information and incentives to rent to lower-income people. Council members agreed these were options to still consider, but not necessarily in the near term. They also were not in favor of a public outreach campaign to reduce opposition to affordable housing.
“It doesn’t strike me as being terribly effective to change attitudes,” Council Member Anna Stout said. “I think that’s easier taken on a case-by-case basis, on a development -by-development basis and working with neighbors. I think what we saw in this study is everybody agrees we need affordable or attainable housing.”
The council will also move up a discussion around inclusionary housing, which the draft plan saw as a long-term strategy. Such a program could require new developments to include affordable units, but could be structured in several different ways.
“I think the reason we pushed it in the further out (timeline) is that it tends to be challenging to pass,” Fitzpatrick said. “There is often opposition from developers. Citiessometimes have concerns that this would slow down potential development.”
While the discussion was largely respectful, when funding these priorities came up, it led to a contentious exchange.
Stout said she felt the funding discussion should follow the identification of the council’s priorities and work in conjunction with them. She said they needed a clear picture of where they were going first. Council Member Dennis Simpson said he saw it differently.
“I think it’s easy to have all these goals that cost an undefined amount of money and we sign up for them and we find out we don’t have the revenue stream, we don’t have a good source of financing all this,” Simpson said. “I guess I would be on the opposite end of the extreme, saying let’s put prices on this stuff, estimate prices, and talk about where the money is potentially going to come from.”
When Stout said she felt they actually were making similar points, Simpson interrupted to disagree. This led to a short, terse exchange with calls for respect from Stout, which was echoed back by Simpson.
Ultimately these plans and strategies will need funding, Council Member Abe Herman said. He said whatever priorities they make, beginning to look into financing options early made sense to him.
“I think the fact is that all of these things are going to cost money and regardless of whether we’ve identified how much any of them are going to cost I don’t think it’s premature to start thinking about ways we could potentially start to fund things,” Herman said.
The council will next discuss a further refined draft housing strategy plan in a September workshop.
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