Agenda - Council - 12/14/2010 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Land Supply Available land for development will have a large impact on housing supply and demand within Ramsey. "Available Land" can be defined in a variety of ways. By examining the larger parcels in Ramsey, we can determine the areas that may be under development pressure. Also, by examining building permit and subdivision trends, we can estimate how many more housing units will be built in the next few years. In 2006, there were over 4,000 acres of parcels that are at least 10 acres in size and zoned residential. This provides a significant opportunity for residential development in the future. Of the 4,000 acres of large parcels currently in Ramsey, over 800 acres (20 %) were subdivided OR began the subdivision process in 2005 and 50 acres (1.3 %) in 2006. Recently, there has been a general slowdown of requests for subdivisions. In addition, many of the recent development inquiries include land for new rental housing. In 2005, the City of Ramsey approved approximately 500 new residential lots through the subdivision process and in 2006 there was approval for 100 units. There are an additional 1,200 units that are in some stage of the approval process. This is an unprecedented amount of growth for the City, and compares to cities like Woodbury and Maple Grove in the amount of new residential lots. Based upon household growth projections provided by the Metropolitan Council through 2030, Ramsey would need an additional 998 acres available for new housing which is 32% of the total acres available for subdivision. However, the 998 acres assumed that 67% is for low- density development and 33% is for median to high density development with the majority of the development occurring between 2010 -2020. This translates into a total of 6,085 units of which 2,000 would be low density single family units and 4,085 would be medium to high density multifamily housing units. Metropolitan Council Livable Communities Act: Affordability Goals In May of 2010, the Metropolitan Council released goals for the production of new affordable housing in the metropolitan region for the years 2011 - 2020. Affordable housing is defined as additional /new housing opportunities created in a community that are affordable to households with an income at 60% or less of the area median income. The LCA goals are expressed as a range where the minimum is a number equal to the portion of the community's share of the total regional need for affordable housing units that can be expected to be funded based on the resources available in the region to create new affordable housing opportunities. The maximum is the community's share of the total regional need for new affordable housing units as identified by the Metropolitan Council and acknowledged by the community in its 2030 Comprehensive Plan update. The proposed LCA Affordable Housing Goals for 2011 -2020 for the City is 434 to 669. The City's 2030 Comprehensive Plan indicates the City can accommodate a goal of 669 affordable housing units. The goals of the LHIA are to help create and preserve affordable rental and ownership housing throughout the region for low- and moderate- income households at all of life's stages, and to support residential reinvestment and redevelopment to achieve economically healthy and livable communities.