Anchorage weighs selling city land for housing by units built, not just the highest bid

Anchorage would stop automatically selling city-owned land to the highest bidder when the land is meant for housing, favoring instead whoever will build the most homes — and the most affordable ones — even if they offer less money, under a resolution before the Assembly for a first reading Sept. 1.

The measure tells the Municipality to rank proposals for city land by how many housing units they would produce per acre, within the limits of zoning, infrastructure and existing plans. It favors denser housing — multifamily, attached and compact homes — over low-density detached houses, and puts affordable and "attainable" projects ahead of purely market-rate ones. Proposals that keep housing affordable for the long term, through community land trusts, nonprofits or shared-ownership arrangements, would rank highest. The city could also lease land or use shared-ownership deals instead of selling it outright.

The resolution stops short of a mandate in places. It only urges, rather than requires, that these priorities be written into future requests for proposals, and it appropriates no money. But disposal proposals would still have to show how they line up with the Comprehensive Plan and the new priorities.

It would also route surplus Anchorage School District land into the city's Heritage Land Bank before any sale, once the Municipality takes over managing it, unless the Assembly votes to waive that step.

The case for the change is partly financial and partly about what the market isn't building. The city can't afford to subsidize housing directly, the resolution says, but it can use land to encourage the kinds of housing the market won't produce on its own. It points to a 2012 city housing analysis that found market-rate multi-unit housing wasn't feasible without subsidy, and projected that Anchorage would fall short of demand in every housing category except low-density single-family homes through 2030. Since 2020, average home prices are up 23 percent, and rental occupancy sits at an estimated 97 percent — a market with almost nothing left open.

Assembly Chair Anna Brawley and member Erin Baldwin Day submitted the resolution. "The goal is more housing at more price points for more people, for more of our neighbors," Baldwin Day said.

It follows a July resolution steering sidewalks, drainage and lighting toward neighborhoods marked for housing growth, and a July ordinance that sold a fire-damaged Teshlar Drive parcel to Cook Inlet Housing Authority for $10,500, below market value. Both build on the HOME Initiative, which the Assembly passed 7-5 in June 2024 with a target of 10,000 homes in 10 years.