Agenda Packet 12-10-18 Work Session

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December 10, 2018, Work Session – Item 2 • Identify housing issues through stakeholder engagement; • Identify potential tools, strategies and actions; and • Evaluate potential tools, strategies and actions. Staff contracted with two consultants to support the HTS project: a professional facilitator (Carrie Bennett of Learning Through Difference, LLC) to implement the stakeholder engagement process and an economics firm (Strategic Economics) to provide technical analysis of the tools and strategies that can address the affordability of housing in Eugene. Engagement Process The engagement process focused on assembling a Working Group of 36 stakeholders representing three broad categories: housing affordability, development barriers and community values. Carrie Bennett provided neutral facilitation of the process using an interest-based (collaborative) problem-solving cycle and a consensus model of decision-making. See Attachment B for a description of the Working Group’s selection process and its members. See Attachment C for a full report from the facilitator. The Working Group met four times for three hours each. The focus of each meeting was as follows: • September 12—Orientation to the purpose and process. Telling the “story” to understand the problem of housing affordability in Eugene. • October 4—Continuation of the story, identification of interests, brainstorming of options to address the challenge, and identification of areas where more data or information would be useful. • November 14—Prioritization of interests, data and information sharing, small group deliberation over the list of options, and straw poll for initial preferences. • November 28—Continued small group deliberation, additional data and information sharing, and final discussion and voting. Strategic Economics presented demographic and housing market data to the Working Group at the third meeting. They provided material at the fourth meeting that described development costs for five housing prototypes and the potential impact that changes to City-imposed fees and taxes have on the financial feasibility of those housing prototypes. See Attachment D for a summary of their research. A full report is forthcoming. The Working Group members agreed that the challenge of housing affordability in Eugene is indeed a problem and one that the City can and should act to address. The group agreed that the impacts of housing (un)affordability extend far beyond those experiencing the problem directly with negative impacts rippling throughout the community. In all, the working group discussed and evaluated 83 different options of ways that the City might increase the availability, affordability and diversity of housing in Eugene. The options fell into four broad categories: • Strategy 1: Remove Land Code Barriers • Strategy 2: Reduce the Time and Cost Burden for Development of Housing