Public-private partnerships lead Laramie’s latest push for affordable housing
These partnerships sweeten the deal for potential developers. City officials say it’s one more thing the local government can do to encourage affordable housing development.
As the city of Laramie wrestles with an ongoing housing shortage, public-private partnerships could play a significant role in increasing the available stock of affordable housing.
Public-private partnerships come in many forms, but typically involve a city “sweetening” the prospect of developing denser affordable housing.
The City of Laramie is looking to defray the costs of new development by discounting the sale of land or city services. Laramie Planning Manager Derek Teini said reducing those upfront costs can make a new project more attractive for a developer.
“Public-private partnerships really, from the city side of things, [are] how does a city, municipality, or the governing body play a role in being a partner within the private development process,” Teini said. “What we're talking about is how does the city go beyond just administering its codes and allowing someone to go through our process — to potentially aid development or to help them in development?”
Teini said the city is providing assistance to private developers by:
discounting sales of city-owned property for affordable housing projects;
bringing in state and federal grants for upgraded infrastructure that would benefit future developers; and
leveraging city staff time and capital planning to help developers complete applications.
Teini said the city is already starting to see some success with private developers, with some even attempting additional projects following those initial successes. The city helped one such developer, Legacy Group, with an affordable senior housing project, and that developer is now working with the city to develop even more housing, Teini said.
With several affordable housing projects being considered across Laramie, these projects can hinge on whether private developers are given a boost by the incentives or additional funding that come from public-private partnerships.
Laramie’s housing crisis is not unique. Nor is it new.
A 2015 housing study found that Laramie would need an additional 4,106 housing units of various sizes and types by 2030, given the shortage at the time and the projected population expansion.
Increasing the supply of affordable housing units has been a significant focus for the last and current city council. Since 2020, the city has rolled back some restrictive housing regulations in the hope of encouraging private developers to invest in affordable housing development.
That rollback included changes to building height limitations and the elimination of parking space requirements to allow for the construction of more units on any given lot. The city reduced dimensional standards to allow for denser housing in multi-family zones, and it legalized accessory dwelling units in single-family zones.
The city of Laramie also sought to boost the quality of low-income housing with the passage of the Rental Housing Code in early 2022. The code outlined basic health and safety standards for rental units within city limits. While landlords warned that such a code would hinder developers and lead to a decrease in available housing, Teini said that has not been the case.
“More housing is being added every year,” he said. “However, we are not making up much ground — as the housing construction side of the equation can only build so many housing units a year due to the supply of contractors and developers operating in our community. Gaining ground on housing will not come from single-family home development. More multi-family development concepts will be the only way more housing will help us ‘gain’ on the deficit in housing we currently have.”
From 2015 — the year the housing study set a goal of 4,100 additional units by 2030 — through 2020, Laramie issued 345 construction start permits for single-family dwellings and 8 construction start permits for multi-family housing (covering a planned 149 individual units.)
The city of Laramie is looking to grow, but Teini said it will take time for public-private partnerships and other city actions to impact the community’s housing crisis. Hopefully, he said, all these efforts will contribute to a “domino-like” effect.
“In five years, I'd like to be able to point to a few projects and be able to be like, ‘Yeah, they clearly took advantage of these private-public partnerships, height requirements, increased density for the lot sizes — it doesn't have to even be the whole project — but somebody taking advantage of that and real clearly saying that's what they intended to do, purposefully, because the code was changed,” Teini said.
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