We, as a community, are talking a lot these days about increasing housing density in Fort Collins. What is it and why is it happening? Over the 15 years that I have lived in Fort Collins, I have seen many new housing developments and more recently many new multi-family housing developments as the city’s population continues to increase year over year. Anyone who has lived here longer than I knows this is a much longer-term trend. Over the next 20-25 years the city will reach full build-out of the Growth Management Area (GMA) with an expected population increase of 50,000 to 75,000 from today’s population. Housing will need to be added to accommodate these new neighbors. While there is still some remaining undeveloped land and some re-developable land within the GMA, the size of the GMA itself is not expected to increase so higher housing density at the GMA level will have to happen within the Fort Collins GMA. Given this projection, the challenge facing us is how we as a community accommodate this growth. City Council has been working on this issue with mixed community reception to some of the considered partial solutions. Much more open dialogue and community engagement is needed, and the palette of possible solutions needs to be much broader than what has been considered already. Possible Affordable Housing Solutions could include some form of: •Inclusionary Zoning •Housing Trust Funds •Density Bonuses & Expedited Permitting •Housing Vouchers and Tax Credits •Adaptive Reuse and Affordable Green Building •Zoning Reform and Legalization of Diverse Housing Types •Homeownership Assistance Programs •Fee-in-lieu and Linkage Fees •Streamlining Development Processes and Relaxing Parking Requirements The lack of available housing, either single-family or multi-family, within Fort Collins has increased the value of existing housing within Fort Collins. According to the latest Fort Collins Community Dashboard, a family earning the Area Median Income ($83,200 for a family of 1) that qualified for a mortgage on a house in Fort Collins selling at the median price of all homes on the market in Fort Collins (approx. $570,000) would spend 46% of their gross household income on that mortgage payment assuming the family was able to put down 10% (almost $60,000) at the time of the purchase. A household is considered “housing burdened” if that household spends more than 30% of its income on housing costs (a mortgage or rent payment and utilities), or “severely housing burdened” if they spend more than 50% on housing costs. Clearly, we have an affordability issue when half of our community’s residents could not afford a house without being so burdened. Fort Collins is not in a unique situation when it comes to housing affordability and increased density. We have already adopted some of the public and privately funded solutions to our community, but we still have a significant housing gap to address. While I did not work directly on this challenge when I worked at the city, I did work on a related challenge with increasing system development fees which adversely impacted housing development. I look forward to leveraging that experience as we work together as a community to find what solutions work for Fort Collins. For many of us, our house is our most valuable asset but too many of our neighbors have been unable to participate in this market. As a Councilmember I will favor housing solutions that change this inequity in building household wealth.