Anchorage Assembly votes 11-0 to steer city land sales toward multifamily housing

The Anchorage Assembly voted 11-0 Tuesday to adopt nonbinding policy guidance urging the city to weigh housing production and density, not just sale price, when it disposes of municipal land.

The resolution asks the administration to weigh dwelling units per acre, multifamily and compact housing types, long-term affordability and energy efficiency in land disposals. It also sends Anchorage School District property declared excess to the Heritage Land Bank inventory before disposal, unless the Assembly waives that step.

The measure carries no money and no implementation deadline. It does put the strategy on the Community and Economic Development Committee's Oct. 1 agenda for discussion of matching municipal parcels to housing needs. Sponsors Erin Baldwin Day and Chair Anna Brawley called it a strongly worded suggestion, not a directive.

The vote follows Mayor Suzanne LaFrance's report that Anchorage now needs closer to 12,000 homes rather than 10,000. She cited the coming Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Fightertown expansion and about 2,500 more homes needed for JBER over five years. The Assembly adopted its Housing Action Plan in December 2023 and has since eased triplex and fourplex rules and paused multifamily design standards. Advocates behind that plan want denser development and fewer barriers to infill construction.

Administration officials said the criteria could slow property transfers and would be hard to apply where part of a parcel may be better suited to commercial use. "Opportunities arise at a certain time where a particular developer and a particular plan and finances align with a particular property," one official said. "And if you miss that window, you may wait a substantial amount of time before another opportunity presents itself."

A motion to postpone the vote to Sept. 15 for a work session failed 4-7. "I also don't see a whole lot of risk of unintended consequences coming from a, a policy position resolution as opposed to an ordinance," Vice Chair Daniel Volland said. He warned against watering down the resolution's multifamily focus.

A floor amendment from George Martinez to add life cycle municipal costs, infrastructure maintenance obligations and hazard resilience characteristics died for lack of a second.

The Chugiak-Eagle River advisory board and several community councils have opposed density increases that lack protections for local planning authority and infrastructure funding.