The City Council has reaffirmed a November decision to raise, by about 25 percent, the per-square-foot fee on commercial developers that helps pay for the creation and preservation of affordable housing in Boulder.
At the time the council made that vote, President Donald Trump had just been elected, and the city staff, outside consultants and elected officials had spent months strategizing on whether to increase the existing $9.53-per-square-foot affordable housing linkage fee, and by how much.
Staff had recommended a $15 linkage fee, but the Boulder Chamber and Boulder Housing Partners, the city’s housing authority, swooped in with a late proposal of $12, which won the council’s favor by a 6-3 vote.
Some feel $15, much less $12, is not close to appropriate to mitigate the impacts of commercial developers on housing costs and supply. At the November meeting, council members Lisa Morzel and Mary Young both proposed rates at $30 or above, but neither could get colleagues to support.
In public comments over multiple council meetings, meanwhile, some residents suggested going with a fee up to about $70.
But for all the research and consideration behind the fee setting, the council discussion leading up to the vote in November was, toward the end, a flurry of motions and semi-arbitrary proposals that all lost out to what was recommended by a coalition of business interests and affordable housing developers.
Before Tuesday’s meeting, Councilman Sam Weaver made a push for a reconsideration of the $15 fee, which he said Trump’s election demanded, because of the expected loss or cutting down of some affordable housing funding sources.
“We have clearly seen the direction this administration is going, and it’s not going to be beneficial for affordable housing,” Weaver said.
“We get one crack at this every five to seven years, basically,” he added, of the chance to change the fee. “We have to pay consultants a lot of money, take a lot of time. … This is our opportunity to use the information we’ve received from there to think about the best way to use this tool.”
The fee is often referred to by council members as one small mechanism by which the city tries to encourage affordable housing development; linkage fees account for about 5 percent of funding for such projects, city staff reported.
Weaver’s argument, though, was that despite the fact that the tool is one of many, there is a significant difference in opportunity between a $12 and $15 fee; the latter, he calculated, would create close to 1,000 households over 25 years — 250 more than the former would.
Mayor Suzanne Jones voted for the $12 fee as she did last time around, but made several comments indicating support for Weaver’s general line of thought.
“If you look at the numbers, although there’s not a magic number,” she said, “I think higher is right-er. I think the staff recommendation made a lot of sense, and it was very modest, frankly.”
“We have a community that is so out of balance between housing and jobs,” Morzel said, adding that the $15 fee “is one way to get that balance back” and force more of a “social impact conscience” on commercial developers.
Morzel, Young and Weaver were the only council members who did not vote in favor of adopting the $12 fee on Tuesday.
Councilman Aaron Brockett said his decision to support the $12 level was informed partially by a desire not to overly burden smaller businesses, for whom a much higher linkage fee would be more prohibitive than for, say, Google.
“If you raise costs, you’ll find that only the businesses with the deepest pockets are the ones that are able to come here,” Brockett said.
Councilwoman Jan Burton said that she does not think adding fees would necessarily help developers pay for their impacts by lowering the cost of living in Boulder.
“I think it’ll cost them to go up,” Burton said, noting that a $12 fee equals $2-per-square-foot, for the first five years, in rent increase.
“They will certainly pass the costs to the consumer,” she said. “This won’t hit the developer’s profit. They’ll pass it on to whoever rents from them and then that’ll get passed along to (residents).”
Alex Burness: 303-473-1389, burnessa@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/alex_burness
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