The Community and Economic Development Committee met 01/24/2024. As an information item, they received the annual updates to the Housing Affordability Report and the Housing Fee Report. These are reports that, by law, the city has been required to create and update annually since 2018. The updates come a year after the fact, so the update the committee received was for 2022.
The purpose of the reports is to provide information on things such as the number of new residential plats that have been created, the number of building permits approved, the number of new residential dwelling units proposed, and a list of undeveloped parcels within the municipality that are zoned residential or suitable for residential construction even if not so zoned. The reports also keep track of various city imposed fees related to the development of residential properties.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
In 2022, the city approved 199 residential dwelling units which was lower than the 229 units approved in 2021, but higher than the numbers approved in 2018-2020. Principal Planner Jessica Titel thought the higher than average number of units approved in 2021 may have resulted from a multi-family development in the subdivisions.
In 2021, the city collected nearly $250,000 in fees related to residential development which was abnormally high. That amount dropped down to just shy of $125,000 in 2022 which was more in line with the fees collected in 2018-2020.
Back in April of 2023, the Community and Economic Development Committee had received an overview of the Appleton housing situation. During that meeting, it was reported that the city needed to add between 2,640-4,293 new dwelling units between 2020 and 2030 in order to keep up with demand. That worked out to roughly 300 new units a year.
Ms. Titel told the committee that they weren’t quite at that number, but the city did seem to generally be trending in the right direction. Based on what she had seen over the last year, Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6), suspected that when the 2023 numbers were reported next year that they would demonstrate an increase, but she obviously couldn’t say for certain.
Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) asked about pages 11 and 12 of the Housing Affordability Report which talk about “Reductions in time and Cost” measures. One of the things mentioned was reducing parking requirements, and he was interested in that.
Community and Economic Development Deputy Director David Kress responded that that section of the report was in response to a provision in the state statute which required the report to include “some narrative on how, as a community, we could perhaps reduce time and costs related to construction of housing or housing related projects.” In response to that requirement, the report listed a number of potential actions such as reducing various standards and requirements including parking requirements for developments; however “there’s always tradeoffs in doing that.”
He went on to say that the initial report had been developed in conjunction with several area communities and some of the language [presumably the language in that section of the report] was not particularly specific to Appleton. He thought they could review that section of the report in 2023 and see if they ought to make changes to it.
Although not specific to the report, Alderperson Fenton did remind everyone that the Housing Task Force was bringing stakeholders together to see how the city could encourage more development of housing across all income levels.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1144062&GUID=DCEC4E55-C16F-46F3-94F8-50BF47DDFB4B
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