Belfast City Council, Planning Board outline housing priorities at joint workshop
Survey Results:
*Belfast City Council and Planning Board members ranked each category in order of priority, 1 being the most important, 5 being the least important.
A. City of Belfast Increased Housing Metric Goals
_3_ Total Number of Units
_1_ Total Number of Occupied Units
_4_ Total Number of Owned Homes
_2_ Total Number of Long-term Rentals
_4_ Long-term to Short-term Rental Ratio
B. Preferred Type of Increased Housing
_2_ Market-rate Rental Housing
_3_ Market-rate Home Ownership
_5_ Seasonal or Short-term Rental Housing
_1_ Long-term Rental Housing
_3_ Subsidized Housing
C. Preferred Location of Increased Housing within the City of Belfast
_3_ Downtown
_2_ Inside Bypass
_1_ Near Bypass
_4_ Outside Bypass
_5_ Eastside Belfast
D. City Policy Changes for Consideration to Increase Housing
_3_ Monitor Short Term Rentals
_5_ Lower Minimum Lot Size
_1_ Allow for the Expansion of Existing One-Family Homes
_2_ Pre-Approval Process for Multi-Family Housing Projects
_4_ Modify Parking Standards
E. City Provided Incentives Offered to Increase Housing Development
_2_ Credit Enhancement Agreements for Market-Rate Rental Units
_3_ Credit Enhancement Agreements for Subsidized Rental Units
_4_ Brownfields Cleanup of Sites Designated for Housing Development
_5_ City Purchases Site for Housing Development
_1_ City Commits to Infrastructure Investments for Housing Developments
F. City Structure to Support an Increase in Housing
_5_ Municipal Housing Authority
_4_ Partnered Municipal Housing Authority with a Non-Profit
_3_ Municipal Land Trust/ Land Bank
_2_ Partnered Municipal Land Trust / Land Bank with Non-Profit
_1_ City of Belfast Housing Committee
“The fact of the matter is, when we look at things, we also need to be thinking about the future of what housing looks like. We need to be looking at the future while we are looking at the present. PCHC is here, WCAP is here. Where they are built, how they are built, we have to plan for all of that. We all know that 70% of our households could not buy a new house here 2 years ago, let alone today. We need to be continuing to think about how to keep our mil rate down in these conversations.” — Mayor Eric Sanders
“I would encourage us to look more seriously at short term rentals, realize that we identified approximately 169 short term rentals in Belfast. If we could reduce that number by 25%, you could perhaps increase the number of long-term rental units by 40… Since long-term rentals are our highest priority, they need to be addressed more directly.” — Hugh Townsend, Planning Board Chair