‘Pretty damn good.’ Boise City Council backs changes that could reshape neighborhoods

Sweeping changes to Boise’s cityscape could reconfigure neighborhoods and commercial districts for generations to come.

Boise could enter a new era of growth in the coming months, marked Thursday by the unanimous City Council approval of an expansive zoning law intended to spur denser, more urban development accompanied by more affordability.

The new regulations, which have been years in the making, will change what is allowed to be built on properties throughout the city. They will allow triplexes and fourplexes in residential neighborhoods, where previously only duplexes usually could be built. They will make small apartment buildings easier to build in residential areas and allow fewer required parking spaces for single-family homes and small apartment buildings. More protected bicycle parking will be required in apartment buildings, and city laws will favor more urban, pedestrian-oriented and multistory buildings with apartments along transit corridors that are now commercial districts.

The law will also tie some higher-density allowances to affordability or sustainability incentives, allowing developers to go higher and larger by requiring them to build units for renters making 80% of the area median income or less.

“This will be certainly the greatest privilege I ever have to be able to vote in favor of this,” Council Member Patrick Bageant said before casting his vote.

If the market follows the new regulations, that could mean more apartments in neighborhoods, some of which would have to be rented at $1,249 or less for a one-bedroom, or $1,426 for a two-bedroom, according to this year’s income metrics. It would also allow neighborhood cafes and markets.

The new law creates mixed-use zones along transit corridors and in high-activity areas, which city officials hope will mean surface parking lots and single-story commercial businesses along State Street and Vista Avenue get replaced with multistory retail and apartment buildings. Those corridors, along with Fairview Avenue, are where the city has focused its public transit, in the hopes that some people who live in those areas could go without a car.

Along with these changes are also efforts to streamline the application process, with the aim of making it easier for developers to get projects through the city’s pipelines. That means some applications — those that are more in line with the kinds of development city officials want to see — could go forward without a public hearing, unless a neighbor pays a fee to file an appeal. The plans also change noticing requirements, and require less or different notifications for many development projects.

On Thursday, City Council members made a number of alterations to the proposed law, including decoupling the affordability and sustainability incentives and cutting back affordable deed restrictions from a 50-year requirement to a 20-year requirement. The new law is scheduled to take effect Dec. 1.

The citywide changes have come with significant controversy, with some residents arguing that the shifts will push up property values, cause too much change too quickly, or alter neighborhood “character.”

More than 150 people testified at two nights of public hearings, with vigorous opposition from some quarters amid largely supportive testimony.

A group opposed to the changes, called “Reject Boise Upzone,” organized against the code, held a rally at City Hall earlier this month and distributed neighborhood signs. Mayor Lauren McLean’s leading opponent for the November election, Mike Masterson, has opposed the changes, and some City Council candidates have said they oppose the new laws.

During testimony, some members of the public asked the council to wait until after the November election, in part because two of the six-member council were appointed by McLean.

But the council decided unanimously Thursday to pass the new law in an emotional vote that two council members said had been the most important they have yet cast.

“I think it’s as good as it gets,” Planning Director Tim Keane told the Idaho Statesman of the new law as it compares to zoning reforms in other cities. Keane came to Boise last year from Atlanta, where he led the Georgia city’s planning department. He said the changes should provide a set of solutions to a variety of housing affordability and development problems and incorporated many changes from public input.

“The variety of approaches that are included in this is not typical,” he said. “And the degree to which we shaped this thing around the city physically … that’s the most important thing and usually that doesn’t happen.”

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Why did the council pass the new law?

In emotional testimony that brought McLean and Council Member Colin Nash close to tears, Boise’s elected leaders described their personal backgrounds, struggles to find housing they could afford and transitions from living in rented duplexes or accessory dwelling units as they went to school, raised their families or moved to the Treasure Valley.

Council Member Luci Willits, the council’s only Republican and an energetic proponent of parking, said she has issues with some of the new provisions but empathizes with people who have struggled to afford a home, noting that she grew up in a double-wide trailer and could not afford to buy a home in Boise’s core when she moved here.

“We need lots of different types of housing,” she said. “I don’t want urban sprawl in other parts of the valley because we’re too tight here in Boise.”

Nash said he bought a home and flipped it to pay for graduate school just before home prices soared several years ago, and now rents in the Winstead Park neighborhood as he raises his young children.

“There are a lot of people that are in my situation that maybe never even owned a home that feel like they missed a lottery ticket because they weren’t in the market in the last five years,” he said. “We need to do something about it. … What’s come out of this, pardon my language, it’s just pretty damn good.”

Before voting, two council members — Jimmy Hallyburton and Latonia Haney Keith — disagreed with their colleagues over the reduction of the affordability incentives from 50 to 20 years.

“I do look back on the housing policies that have been in place across the country since the 1930s, and think about the lack of inter-generational wealth that is plaguing many sectors of our society,” Haney Keith said. “And the ability to have affordable housing is not an issue that is going to go away anytime soon, even within the next 50 years.”

Hallyburton and Haney Keith said they largely supported the zoning rewrite, and still cast their votes in favor of it.

Council President Holli Woodings — who pushed to drop the incentive to 20 years — said she was in favor of revisiting the code in a year’s time, and that if many developers are using the incentives, she said she would be in favor of the city making the time frame longer.

Readings of the new zoning ordinance are scheduled to begin later this month, after which the law is set to be adopted. City planning staff members are also expected to bring minor modifications forward in November, and to bring the new regulations back a year after they become law to evaluate their effectiveness.

Did the council make changes?

After the two nights of public hearing, Keane recommended a number of changes to the code, some of which were in response to testimony. Notably, the affordability and sustainability incentives were decoupled, meaning that developers can choose to pursue one or the other.

Previously, developers could have built extra units on standard residential lots — up to three or four units — if one of three or two of four of the units were rented affordably and met sustainability requirements like all-electric appliances, clean energy heating and other conservation measures. Now, developers will be able to pursue a single incentive after council members expressed concerns that requiring both would make it too difficult to take advantage of the incentives.

Other similar incentives applied to larger apartment buildings or condominiums in residential areas — up to 12 units — and have also been decoupled.

Other changes the council made include: changing conditional use permit language to require a “public benefit” clause to accompany the mitigation of negative impacts a project has on a neighborhood; increasing long-term bicycle parking requirements in apartments by tying them to the number of bedrooms; softening the transition between all neighborhood areas and mixed-use districts; providing notice to adjacent properties when the types of projects city officials prefer are approved; increasing the time neighborhood associations have to testify from five minutes to 10; requiring neighborhood improvements — like trail connections — that are tied to conditional use permits to be built within one year of occupancy; allowing developers to request to go below parking minimums; and removing parking and owner-occupancy requirements for accessory dwelling units.

What has the public said?

The more than 150 testifiers included a former county commissioner, a former mayor, representatives from utility companies, longtime Boise residents and newcomers.

Diana Lachiondo, a former Ada County commissioner, said the new zoning laws would help Boise avoid sprawl. Brent Coles, a former Boise mayor, said he was in favor of the changes but advised the council to make sure the city has the data that shows the new density will create more affordability.

Idaho Power, the region’s electric utility, asked for small changes it said would help the company deliver electricity to residents. Intermountain Gas, a gas utility, tried to get the city to curtail its sustainability incentives, which require electric-only appliances and heating.

“Our lives are richer for living in the diverse neighborhood the code envisions,” Denise Caruzzi, a resident, said. “I understand the code doesn’t solve everything about housing scarcity, but it is one tool.”

Lori Dicaire, a specialist at the Intermountain Fair Housing Council, expressed concerns about new criteria for conditional use permits that would allow for impacts so long as a project is in the “public good.”

“It is usually poor people that take that sacrifice for the public good,” Dicaire said, adding that she wants the city to protect existing affordable housing.

Some developers said they supported the code, arguing that Boise needs more housing supply.

“This represents a really effective step in the right direction,” said Reuben Teague, a housing investor. He added that “upzoning can relieve pressure on housing prices.”

An architect who was on the city’s advisory committee for the zoning rewrite, Byron Folwell, said he has spent years “watching the unaffordability crisis coming and feeling powerless to really do anything about it, because the current code had made so many of those solutions illegal.”

But some don’t think the incentives will work.

“By requiring a developer to have one unit be affordable in a triplex and two units be affordable in a fourplex, I think you’re shooting yourself in the foot,” one resident who said he works in real estate said. “The math doesn’t work.”

During his presentation Thursday, Keane, the planning director, said the new code is not a solution to everything, adding that some of the city’s aims will have to be fleshed out more to be effective.

“We know we’ve got some things to do next,” he said.