It’s a quiet week this week with only a couple committee meetings, so I would like to go back to earlier this month to the 01/08/2025 City Plan Committee meeting. During that meeting the commission received an update on the current efforts to update the city’s Comprehensive Plan.
These ongoing efforts can be followed at the Plan Appleton website. Currently, for the next couple days through the end of January, there is a survey available for the public to provide feedback on how you would like areas of the city represented on the comprehensive plan. It was noted during the meeting that often neighbors will come to the Plan Commission and voice opposition to a specific development project, but as long as that development project is aligned with the comprehensive plan, the city has to approve it. So, realistically, the public has the most impact on future development in their neighborhood by helping to shape the comprehensive plan.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
The city is statutorily required to update its comprehensive plan every 10 years. Appleton hired a contractor called Smith Group for a total not to exceed $375,000 to carrying out this work. Director of Community Development Kara Homan told the commission that they had budgeted 2,600 staff hours within Smith Group for this project, and Mayor Woodford said, “I think just important for the commission to know that’s a significant amount of resource being dedicated to this project, but obviously not a level of resource that we can sustain on an ongoing basis as a city, which is part of the reason why we leverage consulting resources in a situation like this, to make sure that we have we have the staffing and the resources that we need to do the project, but that in the long run, you know, we do this once every 10 years, so we don’t necessarily need that level of resource every single day of every single year.”
Much of the presentation itself was reviewing the project timeline and the various outreach efforts that had been undertaken thus far and that were still planned.
Thus far, the feedback that had been received included:
- There needs to be a shared understanding of what “affordable” means for Appleton and community education about the options available to make housing options that are more affordable.
- Community members mentioned multiple times the need to create a culture of community involvement and community pride.
- There needs to be a change in public perception about having alternatives to single-family housing to meet the needs of all residents throughout their lifetimes.
- Resiliency and sustainability in future development is important, but there isn’t much interest from the AG in making it a requirement. Instead several mentioned removing restrictions, allowing it to be a choice, and educating about opportunities and incentives that already exist.
- The city should prioritize funding for street repairs and maintenance.
- The city is doing well with rail safety and noise and should continue/monitor progress.
- The city has strong partnerships with neighborhood watch groups and associations that should continue.
- People agree that there needs to be housing across incomes and lifestyle needs available in the city but are not aligned in how to get there. They also agree that redevelopment of blighted and vacant properties should be a priority, but aren’t aligned on if that should be a role for the city or developers.
- People agree that there are housing types missing that would be beneficial in neighborhoods.
- There were questions about what the role of government was in getting housing built.
- There were questions about what housing types were missing and where.
- There were questions about what the role of government was regarding parking.
They also specifically met with stakeholder groups representing “underrepresented” communities, housing, and faith communities. Those stakeholders expressed concerns about:
- Housing affordability and supply constraints
- Funding gaps and labor shortages
- Regulatory issues
Principal Planner Lindsey Smith also briefly went over the data on local household size, income, and housing costs.
The median household income in Appleton was $73,449 but the average income of a renter was only $51,001 versus $99,331 for an owner. The average household size for a renter was only 1.92 as compared to 2.61 for an owner. She asked but did not answer the question, “So how do we account for that when planning for households and housing development within the city?”
She said that 1 in 3 rental units in the city were considered “unaffordable” as were 1 in 10 owner-occupied units. She did not explain what it meant that a unit was unaffordable, and the PowerPoint slide does not explain it either.
There was a surplus of units in the city that were considered affordable for people with an income of between $15,000 and $35,000 but then for income ranges above $35,000 there were more households than dwelling units that were affordable. For reasons that I didn’t understand, this seemed to be a problem. Principal Planner Smith told the committee, “What causes this to happen? Why is this happening? And some of this is looking at are people in existing lease and they’re actually paying less than 30% of their income towards their housing, and they’re not looking to make that next step and saying, “I’m going to—I got a raise, but I’m going to stay in my lease that I have today,” or “I got a new job that I’m making $20,000 more, but I’m going to stay in my current lease, and now my ratio for my house my house expenses are down to 15%” So that’s something we need to dig into a little bit further to understand. How do we make that progress and have people move to that next level?”
Principal Planner Smith went on the say, “So, something to call out in looking at this is, as we progress, even on the high—I’m looking at 150,000 plus, we don’t have enough units, housing units, for those people to pay that 30% of their annual income at that price point. By increasing the amount of housing stock at that price point is going to free up additional housing downstream. So, providing additional housing supply is going to open up other opportunities at the other price points.”
[I didn’t understand why this is a problem or why the city would want to see people move to a swankier, more expensive place just because their income went up. The economy has been terrible for the last 4 years. Why would there be an expectation that people would spend more money than they needed to under those circumstances? And why is it necessary to make more housing units at higher price points so people will “make that next step up” versus just making more housing that is affordable at the $15,000-$35,000 income range because that seems to be where much of the demand is.]
Mayor Woodford noted that there were limitations in understanding housing affordability. There were factors beyond simply income and housing costs that determined if a housing unit was affordable to a specific household. The data on the chart did not take into consideration the total living expenses that households had. [I thought that was a relevant point. People can have things like debt, child-care costs, and child support/alimony payments that leave them with much less disposable income than it looks like they have.]
One of the commission members noted that there was a large number of housing units in the $15,000-$35,000 income affordability range that did not have mortgages. Principal Planner Smith said they were looking into that but suspected that that number included older people who owned their homes outright. The commission member pointed out that that would include a lot of people who were on Social Security so would have lower income levels on paper but may also have additional saved wealth.
[I wonder if the fact that the homes are paid off is a driver behind people not changing to a different house. Particularly given how bad the economy has been the last 4 years, why would people take on debt if they already have a house that’s paid off?]
During their community feedback events, the city asked the public about what sort of housing types and projects they would like to see in the city. The top three housing types people wanted to see in the city were:
- Temporary Supportive Housing
- Small Lot Single Unit Detached Homes
- 2-4 Unit Townhomes
People indicated that they wanted to see these units built within existing neighborhoods. Mayor Woodford commented on this saying, “there are some tensions in in some of the ideas that we’re hearing from the community. So this idea of prioritizing preservation and maintaining the character of the community while also seeing infill development within the community, there’s some tension between those ideas that we really have to navigate. Similarly with redevelopment and infill development, how do, how do communities navigate issues of affordability when you have infill development? Because that’s a that’s a familiar story. Property values increase with new development, and it can impact affordability within neighborhoods. And so those are some of the central tensions that we’re sort of raising as we go through the process.”
There was some discussion about wanting to receive more feedback from people in their 20s to mid-40s because a lot of the people who attended the public launch of this comprehensive plan update were older.
The progress of the Comprehensive Plan update can be followed at the Plan Appleton website, and, again, there is a community survey that will be available there for the next couple days until 01/31/2025.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1251486&GUID=9D7D5667-6E73-4B64-B9E3-676A8C33F960
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