The Alaska Legislature wants the state’s development agency to finance new apartment complexes and other multifamily housing.
House Bill 184 passed the Senate in a 17-3 vote Friday after clearing the House in February. It gives the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority explicit legal grounds to finance what the bill calls “workforce housing facilities of three or more units.”
Sen. Forrest Dunbar, an Anchorage Democrat, says it’s an effort to address a problem local governments and businesses have raised to lawmakers repeatedly: the high cost and short supply of housing in Alaska.
“There are relatively few levers that the state government can pull to spur housing construction and deal with housing affordability,” Dunbar told fellow senators. “This is one of those levers that's not in the hands of the local government, but in our hands.”
Builders and developers said during committee hearings that financing backed by AIDEA in partnership with local banks would fill an urgent need holding back new housing projects.
“Even if a project makes sense on paper, traditional lenders aren't always able to carry them, especially in smaller or constrained markets,” Victor Banaszak, the owner of a Juneau construction business and the president of a local construction trade group, told lawmakers at a hearing in April.
Officials with AIDEA, meanwhile, told lawmakers that the agency believed it already had the power to build workforce housing. And as of mid-April, the agency said it didn’t have any pending applications for multifamily housing projects. Another state housing agency, the Alaska Housing Finance Corp., also finances multifamily projects, which make up about 10% of its portfolio, the agency told lawmakers.
The bill passed with all present members of the House and Senate’s bipartisan majority coalitions in support, plus a handful of minority Republicans. Sen. Robert Yundt, a Wasilla Republican and a homebuilder, supported the bill.
“I think in the long run, whatever it takes to make housing more affordable for Alaskans, I'm going to support,” Yundt said.
Opponents in the House, where the bill passed 23-15, said they were concerned adding housing to AIDEA’s portfolio would divert resources from the agency’s other priorities, including resource development. The three Republicans who voted against the bill in the Senate did not explain their votes on the floor.
Changes in the Senate reduced the minimum size of an AIDEA-financed housing project from five units to three. The bill’s main sponsor, Juneau Democratic Rep. Andi Story, said Friday she expected the House to concur with the Senate’s changes and send the bill to the governor. The constitutional deadline for the end of this year’s regular legislative session is Wednesday.
