Agenda Packet 1-14-19 Work Session

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January 14, 2019, Work Session – Item 2 EUGENE CITY COUNCIL AGENDA ITEM SUMMARY Work Session: Housing Tools and Strategies – Construction Excise Tax Meeting Date: January 14, 2019 Agenda Item Number: 2 Department: Planning and Development Staff Contact: Denny Braud www.eugene-or.gov Contact Telephone Number: 541-682-8817 ISSUE STATEMENT Housing affordability and availability is a long-standing and growing problem in Eugene. In response to multiple work sessions on the topic, 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 broad stakeholder engagement in the process. Staff summarized the community engagement process, the outcomes from that process, and recommended next steps for council in early December 2018. This Housing Tools and Strategies process identified a number of options to increase the inventory of affordable housing, including establishing a Construction Excise Tax. Today’s work session is focused on the option of establishing a CET as a local source of funding for an Affordable Housing Fund. 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: 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, missing middle housing types, state laws that affect housing, and a construction excise tax. In these different work sessions, City Council asked for information that would provide actions to achieve specific outcomes: •Reduce the cost to build diverse housing types at various levels of affordability; •Establish a local funding source for affordable housing; and •Support the Envision Eugene pillars.