$524,000. That’s the average price of a home built for one family in Anchorage today. The average cost of new single-detached house is even steeper: $683,000. These prices, astronomical for Anchorage, have risen by 23 percent since 2020.
In that same period, the city took steps to make its zoning code, Title 21, more conducive to building homes. In 2022, Anchorage abolished parking mandates, giving homebuilders more flexibility to decide how much square footage to give over to cars versus the interiors of homes and businesses. In 2023, the city made it easier to build accessory dwelling units—a.k.a. “bonus homes” or “backyard cottages”—and opened up downtown to more businesses that support locals. In 2024, Anchorage removed some regulatory barriers to building triplexes and fourplexes and allowed duplexes on all lots in the Anchorage Bowl, where most of the city’s residents live.
While Anchorage can’t completely control the housing market, the city continues to make changes where it can. Title 21, which determines how Anchorage uses its land, still contains countless impediments to building the homes that people in Alaska’s largest city badly need.
New ordinances coming up in the Anchorage Assembly could help alleviate the shortage by lifting arcane rules that in effect bar developers from building more homes, in all shapes and sizes—not just your basic nuclear family model. More apartments for singles and downsizing seniors. More modest-sized homes for young or divorced families. More accessory dwelling units for aging relatives. More multigenerational homes for grandparents, grown kids, and extended family. In short, more options for the wide range of people who call Anchorage home.
More flexibility for homes and businesses to mix in urban zones
Anchorage assigns different rules to different parcels of land. Each set of rules defines what’s known as a zone. There are 15 zones across the city, all with rules restricting what kinds of buildings can go on a particular property, such as homes, schools, shops, and restaurants. Zoning rules also set out the maximum heights of buildings, the minimum sizes of lots, the width of the margin between buildings and streets, and how many homes developers can build on each lot. Some zones only allow commercial development. Others allow only residential or only industrial.
One zone, called “B-3,” is more flexible than most. B-3 is a mixed-use zone, meaning its rules allow housing and businesses to coexist on a lot. Think an ice cream shop, bookstore, and dental practice on the first floor, with housing above. This flexibility makes it popular with developers of multifamily homes, primarily Cook Inlet Housing Authority. The parcels tend to be located in more urbanized parts of Anchorage, giving residents relatively convenient access to schools, workplaces, parks, and amenities.
The Anchorage Assembly is considering an ordinance, AO 2024-102, aimed at lowering the cost of homebuilding in B-3. Currently, residential developments face more stringent limitations in the B-3 zone than businesses. For example, building garden apartments would face more code barriers, like lower height limits and mandatory architectural elements, than a motel with the exact same dimensions and number of units. The ordinance essentially would put residential developments in B-3 on the same regulatory footing as commercial ones.
The ordinance would also do away with mandated private open space, like dedicated yards or balconies for each apartment. While private open space sounds like a great idea on paper, making such space mandatory can limit the number of possible units and the viability of projects, while not necessarily improving the quality of the development. Dropping the private open space requirement is similar to the city’s decision to get rid of parking mandates. As for parking, so too for private open space: developers will most likely still choose to build it to remain competitive in the market, but the changes would ensure requirements don’t prevent projects from happening in the first place. The changes would give builders flexibility to include gardening and play spaces in ways that make sense for the project.
Ditching arbitrary “special limitations” constraints
The second change the Assembly will consider concerns an obscure process that for decades has locked up land on a parcel-by-parcel basis: “special limitations” have demonstrably reduced the number of homes built on lots all over the city.
Say a lot is zoned to allow up to four homes. The city could agree to impose a special limitation that says, well, regardless of the rules that apply to other parcels in this zone, on this particular lot, developers can build just two units.
“Land use is supposed to be predictable and consistent, because otherwise, what’s the point of having zoning code?” –Anchorage Assembly Member Anna Brawley
Special limitations take other forms as well. They can prohibit certain structure types or uses, require extra design standards, mandate an extra site plan or other review, require the construction of off-site infrastructure, and impose time limits for development actions. Below are some examples of special limitations:
- “Residential development shall be a minimum of 2.0 dwelling units per acre and a maximum of 3.0 dwelling units per acre.”
- “Residential uses and structures are limited to single-family or duplex dwellings.”
- “The uses shall be limited to parking and one 3,000-square-foot accessory structure.”
- “The maximum number of dwelling units per acre across the tract is 30.” and “Commercial uses and manufactured home communities are prohibited.”
Only a full rezone process can remove special limitations. Most of the nearly 400 Anchorage parcels with special limitations are on land zoned as the above-discussed B-3. Special limitations apply to fully 317 B-3 parcels. Predictably, the parcels without special limitations have more homes than those where they apply. Across the Anchorage Bowl, living units per acre on B-3 parcels without special limitations average 1.7. On B3 parcels with special limitations, the units per acre average 1.3.
Special limitations have restricted or prevented housing production on multiple parcels, and they’ve “made multi-family housing, and housing development in zones that allow higher density, less feasible,” according to Assembly sponsors in a memo from October 22.
Anchorage appears to be unusual among American cities in its use of special limitations.
“We should not be doing things that are not standard zoning practice,” said Assembly Member Anna Brawley, who is an urban planner in the private sector. “Land use is supposed to be predictable and consistent, because otherwise, what’s the point of having zoning code? In general, governments are not supposed to be arbitrary and capricious. You have to treat similar properties similarly.”
As the Assembly considers setting aside its power to impose special limitations on future developments, it’s also grappling with the question of how to handle existing special limitations. Many have been in effect for four decades or more. A preliminary estimate by the municipal planning department found that since the late 1970s, special limitations may have reduced the number of homes built in Anchorage by about 3,700. Doing away with them may not be a dramatic game-changer but may help small numbers of new homes crop up across the city.
Pausing design requirements that disadvantage multifamily homes
Housing built during the boom years of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline went up fast out of necessity, with developers skipping over some design elements that make homes visually appealing. In the four decades since, city officials, the planning department, and community councils have allowed their distaste for pipeline-era housing to guide land use decisions. One way they’ve done this is to require multifamily homes to meet a set of onerous design requirements that do not apply to single-detached houses. Office buildings and hotels are also exempt.
The city’s labyrinthine menus of design standards read as perfectly reasonable—desirable even. What could be wrong with requiring a developer to include nice landscaping, interesting architectural elements, or good sidewalks?
But here’s a recent example of the insidious nature of design standards: Cook Inlet Housing Authority recently built a row of homes on the west end of 36th Avenue. Design standards mandated that a certain percentage of the street-facing exterior have windows. To meet the standards, CIHA had to cut windows into the bathrooms, which were located just off the front door of each unit. For obvious reasons, these windows are unusable and only serve to lower the heating efficiency of the units. Were it not for design standards, residents could have had more privacy and lower heating costs. And Cook Inlet Housing would not have had to bear the extra construction costs of building non-functional windows in the most private part of a home.
Ironically, design standards have likely slowed the replacement of existing, aging multifamily homes from the 1980s by raising the cost of new multifamily home construction enough to make an unknown number of projects unviable.
“Design standards are concerned with soothing the aesthetic sensibilities of neighbors and passersby, but because they are highly subjective, there’s no guarantee of even that happening.”
And rarely do they achieve what they promise. City-mandated landscaping is expensive to put in and then doesn’t get maintained. Sidewalks to nowhere don’t help pedestrians navigate beyond the property line. Design standards don’t take into account the livability of a structure from the resident’s point of view or the overall functionality of the streetscape. They’re concerned with soothing the aesthetic sensibilities of neighbors and passersby, but because they are highly subjective, there’s no guarantee of even that happening.
Multifamily design standards, however well meant, are part of the reason new homes in Anchorage target the upper reaches of the housing market. And, while there will be a range of opinions on this, there’s scant evidence they’ve actually improved the look and feel of our city’s neighborhoods. What they have done, without a doubt, is ensure fewer people can afford to live here.
To bring down the cost of homebuilding, the Anchorage Assembly has proposed a moratorium on design standards for multifamily homes. The pause would apply to development applications submitted between February 1, 2025, and January 31, 2027, excepting projects in Girdwood and downtown. During that period, the planning department would have to provide the Assembly with reports each year on the moratorium’s effect in encouraging multifamily development.
Commonsense changes to help anyone looking for a place in Anchorage
The Anchorage Assembly, the mayor’s office, and the city’s planning department appear to be largely in sync on the need to build more housing in Anchorage. If successful, they will help make housing more affordable for anyone living in or aspiring to live in Anchorage and help relieve the economic pressures that cause homelessness.
The changes can’t come soon enough. The number of people moving to Alaska is dwindling, driven by an array of forces that include lack of housing in price ranges affordable to younger families and people on fixed incomes. These upcoming ordinances offer a suite of important changes to loosen the grip of excessive regulation on building the range of homes these Alaskans want and need.
