CONTACT: Martina Pansze, Sightline Institute, martina@sightline.org
ARTICLE: Three Ways Anchorage Leaders Could Unlock More Homes
ANCHORAGE, AK – Anchorage is in the midst of an acute housing shortage that has intensified in recent years, driving up the average home price by 23 percent since 2020.
Nonpartisan think tank Sightline Institute reviewed three new ordinances the Anchorage Assembly will soon consider that could unlock more homebuilding in the city. Specifically, these measures would upgrade the zoning code, Title 21:
- Allow more flexibility for homes and businesses to mix in urban areas. Level the playing field and reduce strictures for residential construction in the already mixed-use-designated B-3 zone with ordinance AO 2024-102.
- Ditch “special limitations” constraints. The Assembly will reconsider an obscure process that has locked up land on a parcel-by-parcel basis for decades: “special limitations.” In effect, this law means that the city can prohibit certain structure types or uses, require extra design standards, mandate an extra site plan or other review, or impose other development requirements.
- Pause design requirements that disadvantage multifamily homes. Anchorage requires multifamily homes to meet a set of onerous standards that do not apply to single-detached houses, office buildings, or hotels. Plus, it’s subjective—and rarely do the mandated design requirements actually make buildings more attractive.
The Anchorage Assembly, the mayor’s office, and the city’s planning department appear to be largely in sync about the need to build more homes. City leaders have made steps to ease the shortage in recent years by abolishing parking mandates in 2022, making it easier to build accessory dwelling units—a.k.a. “bonus homes” or “backyard cottages”— in 2023, and removing some regulatory barriers to building triplexes and fourplexes and allowed duplexes on all lots in the Anchorage Bowl in 2024.
“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,” writes Jeannette Lee, Alaska-based fellow with Sightline Institute. “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.”
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ARTICLE: Three Ways Anchorage Leaders Could Unlock More Homes
Related:
- Anchorage Removes Barriers to Small Multifamily Homes | City leaders take another step toward allowing more new homes, in more sizes and varying price points, in Alaska’s largest city.
- Vancouver Shows Just How Much It Costs to Ban Apartments | Driving problems from inequality to sprawl to pollution, restrictions against anything but single-detached houses have to go.
- Let There Be Housing in Downtown Anchorage | Anchorage’s new mayor has the chance to make lasting and historic improvements to the heart of Alaska’s largest city.
- Anchorage Adopts Model ADU Reforms | Alaska’s largest city just deregulated bonus homes in a big way, a step to right-sizing its housing options to locals’ changing needs.
- Recent Reforms Could Make a Real Neighborhood of Downtown Anchorage | A vibrant downtown needs residents. And residents need housing. Convenience stores wouldn’t hurt either.
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Jeannette Lee is Sightline Institute’s Alaska Research Director, where she focuses on democracy and housing issues. She is based in Anchorage. Find her latest research here.
Sightline Institute is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank providing leading original analysis of housing, democracy, forests, and energy policy in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, British Columbia, and beyond.
