OPINION: Anchorage needs more housing and less hyperbole

In January, three Rogers Park residents authored an op-ed stating that Anchorage’s single-family neighborhoods faced an existential threat from an ordinance, then in front of the Assembly, that would loosen restrictions on accessory dwelling units (ADUs). The article, operatically titled “The demise of Anchorage’s single-family residential neighborhoods,” encouraged readers to drive by a neighbor’s home to gawk at an “egregious” ADU that had been built recently. The ADU, they wrote, was a stark warning of more things to come should the Assembly approve the ordinance.

I thought it was a little cheeky of the authors to encourage nearly 300,000 Anchorage residents to show up uninvited to criticize their neighbor’s home, but as a part-time writer interested in housing issues, I decided a discreet drive-by wouldn’t be too intrusive.

I ended up driving in circles through the neighborhood, but could not for the life of me identify the offending ADU. I could only find it after calling someone familiar with the brouhaha.

The ADU was no taller or larger than numerous other homes in the neighborhood. It was tastefully built, unobtrusive, and immaculately landscaped. Far from being an eyesore, it fit the neighborhood — which I grew up in — perfectly. In short, it was exactly the kind of residence that I would be happy to live next to.

“If this is what adding housing to Anchorage looks like,” I thought, “Let’s get going!”

This experience has been on my mind while watching the reaction to AO 2023-66, an ordinance currently before the Assembly. AO 2023-66, jointly introduced by liberal Assembly member Meg Zaletel and conservative Assembly member Kevin Cross, would streamline residential zoning and remove impediments to building much-needed housing in Anchorage. Unfortunately, critics of this sensible effort have resorted to the same over-the-top catastrophizing and hyperbole that marred the debate over the earlier ADU ordinance.

In a July 21 commentary in this paper, conservative commentator Paul Jenkins stated that current zoning rules are the “only thing that keeps your neighbor from opening a junkyard next store,” implying that AO 2023-66 would affect industrial zoning (it would not). Jenkins concluded with an absurd and unsupported claim that the AO would result in “instant slums.” Former Assembly member John Weddleton opined that AO 2023-66 would create not slums but “homogenous neighborhoods,” an eyebrow-raising critique in a city full of arbitrary building stipulations that demand — rather than discourage — homogeneity.

In an interview, Weddleton described the AO as “throwing a bomb at the nature of our neighborhoods,” employing language fitting for a terrorist attack to describe an ordinance that would, in reality, simply allow Anchorage property owners to voluntarily build a modest amount of new housing for members of our community. As someone who has long admired Weddleton’s public service, it is disappointing to see the construction of multi-family housing described like an act of violence.

Opponents of efforts to increase housing often gin up a cast of convenient villains: greedy developers, greedy contractors, greedy builders and so on. Obviously, people in these fields are needed for new building (who, after all, do these opponents believe built most of their own homes?). But critics almost always fail to mention the primary beneficiaries of reform: those who are increasingly being priced out of lives in Anchorage.

The facts on this front are both clear and distressing. Over the past few decades, housing prices in Anchorage have risen dramatically compared with incomes. In 2022, the average home in Anchorage listed for an eye-popping new high of $456,000. Moreover, this year, the number of units listed on the market hit record lows.

For most, the attainable starter homes with green shag carpeting and funky wood paneling are long gone. Those who could have afforded a fixer-upper a decade or two ago now log onto Zillow only to be offered ruined Quonset huts that look less like starter homes and more like unremediated Superfund sites.

Meanwhile, Anchorage has adopted an exceptionally complicated, erratic, and restrictive patchwork of building requirements that have demonstrably stifled building. New home construction has steadily declined over the last decade, despite rising demand. As of 2021, Anchorage built a paltry 1.3 new housing units per thousand residents, while the Mat-Su built seven (the state average was 2.4). Our rental market has an extremely low vacancy rate of only 3.2%, far below the national average. If you could hear numbers, these ones would sound like emergency sirens.

The effects of our housing crisis are serious. Younger people can no longer afford to move to (or move back to) Anchorage and build stable and productive lives here. Even working professionals in high-paid fields cannot find rentals or afford homes in Anchorage anymore, which prevents businesses from attracting or retaining workers and threatens the long-term economic and social health of the city.

In some cases, those with the means to do so are giving up and moving away. Those who cannot afford to move can find themselves homeless. The relationship between high housing costs and homelessness, with all its attendant human misery and increased costs to taxpayers, is firmly established.

Policymakers, primarily including the Assembly and mayor, should work quickly to remove self-imposed barriers to building new housing in Anchorage. Our current approach is not working and has created a crisis, and the longer we wait the harder it will be to fix.

If implemented well, building and zoning reform would elevate rather than harm the quality of our neighborhoods. New construction tends to be nicer than average in any given area, and for simple economic reasons it tends to occur on the most blighted or underutilized properties. Reform would not create drastic changes overnight. Rather, it would enable a process that gradually improves neighborhoods while also removing needless restrictions on what people can do with their own properties, incentivizing well-paying building jobs, creating more housing for our community, preventing homelessness and making Anchorage a more economically competitive city.

This would be a win-win-win-win-win situation with bipartisan appeal. And best of all, it costs us almost nothing. We just need to get out of our own way.

Oh, about that ADU ordinance that the three Rogers Park writers were so afraid of earlier this year? It passed. Needless to say, no Anchorage neighborhoods have met their “demise” since then. Nor will they. The greatest threat to our city is not upscale ADUs or a few more attractive duplexes in nice neighborhoods, but that we give in to unjustified fear and hyperbole and fail to confront the very real housing crisis in front of us.

Paxson Woelber is a born-and-raised Alaskan, business owner and co-owner of the Alaska Landmine. He lives in Anchorage.

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