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<br />December 10, 2018, Work Session – Item 2 <br />EUGENE CITY COUNCIL <br />AGENDA ITEM SUMMARY <br /> <br /> Work Session: Housing Tools and Strategies Meeting Date: December 10, 2018 Agenda Item Number: 2 Department: Planning and Development Staff Contact: Anne Fifield <br />www.eugene-or.gov Contact Telephone Number: 541-682-5451 <br /> <br />ISSUE STATEMENT Housing affordability and availability is a long-standing and growing problem in Eugene. In response to multiple work sessions on the topic, City Council directed staff to implement a six-month process to identify potential tools and strategies available to the City to address housing affordability, availability and diversity for all income levels. A key tenet of the direction was to include public engagement in the process. Staff will summarize the community engagement process, the outcomes from that process, and recommended next steps. <br />BACKGROUND The community and City Council have clearly stated, in a variety of public engagement processes and policy documents, that an adequate supply of housing is a high-priority goal. One of the seven Envision Eugene Pillars is: <br />Provide housing affordable to all income levels. The City has many programs and tools that aim to increase the supply of housing across the income spectrum. The problem, however, continues to grow. In the first half of 2018, council had multiple work sessions that focused on housing supply issues, covering accessory dwelling units, a construction excise tax, missing middle housing types, and state laws that affect housing. In these different work sessions, City Council asked for information that would provide actions to achieve specific outcomes: <br />• Reduce the cost to build diverse housing types at various levels of affordability; <br />• Establish a local funding source for affordable housing; and <br />• Support the Envision Eugene pillars. At the end of May, council directed staff to implement a process that would tie together the many overlapping initiatives and proposals that address housing issues (see Attachment A). The goal of the process was to provide council with an objective, fact-based work product informed by stakeholder perspectives and to guide future policy decisions to achieve the above outcomes. Staff implemented the Housing Tools and Strategies project to meet this council directive. The HTS project has had three basic elements: