The Laramie City Council approved an ordinance Tuesday shrinking the dimensional standards for residential units in some areas of the city. Council’s stated goal is to increase affordable housing.
There are several members of Laramie City Council who, reflexively and without consideration of the actual facts, will vote for any proposal that is CLAIMED (without any proof!) to make housing affordable. But the "professionals" who lobbied for the ordinance are interested only in profit. Not housing affordability; not Laramie's quality of life; not the character of our neighborhoods. This ordinance will do nothing to make housing more affordable (the overpriced small dwellings it allows will be snatched up by parents of UW students, seeking to avoid paying for the new "luxury" dorms, at premium prices that will still cost them less than the new dorm rooms). And it will do nothing for families that need more square footage at reasonable prices, because the cost per square foot will be HIGHER than for existing properties. There are viable approaches to making housing affordable - most especially, raising wages to keep up with the costs of building materials and other inputs to housing, because NO ONE will furnish housing below cost - but this isn't one of them. The current City Council is ill-informed and does not think critically or consider the actual consequences of its actions. We clearly need to elect some new, more thoughtful members to it - ones who are more representative of our community's needs and aspirations, resistant to harmful creeping bureaucracy, and better stewards of our city government.
There are several members of Laramie City Council who, reflexively and without consideration of the actual facts, will vote for any proposal that is CLAIMED (without any proof!) to make housing affordable. But the "professionals" who lobbied for the ordinance are interested only in profit. Not housing affordability; not Laramie's quality of life; not the character of our neighborhoods. This ordinance will do nothing to make housing more affordable (the overpriced small dwellings it allows will be snatched up by parents of UW students, seeking to avoid paying for the new "luxury" dorms, at premium prices that will still cost them less than the new dorm rooms). And it will do nothing for families that need more square footage at reasonable prices, because the cost per square foot will be HIGHER than for existing properties. There are viable approaches to making housing affordable - most especially, raising wages to keep up with the costs of building materials and other inputs to housing, because NO ONE will furnish housing below cost - but this isn't one of them. The current City Council is ill-informed and does not think critically or consider the actual consequences of its actions. We clearly need to elect some new, more thoughtful members to it - ones who are more representative of our community's needs and aspirations, resistant to harmful creeping bureaucracy, and better stewards of our city government.