What are density bonuses good for?
Are we making developers pay enough?
There's an interesting report from the city Planning Dept about the city's density bonus programs. A density bonus offers developers increased entitlements (e.g. more units, more height, etc.) if they agree to set aside a certain number of units for people at certain income levels.
The city has implemented a number of density bonuses over the past 20 years, with mixed results. In some cases the city demanded too much in return for what it was offering, which resulted in developers simply not participating. Whether the growth-skeptic Council members who insisted on these unrealistic requirements were doing so out of naïveté or because they simply wanted the programs to fail is a perennial debate.
The good news is that the current pro-housing Council has created the DB90 density bonus, which I believe will be much more successful in producing affordable homes because it was designed entirely by policymakers who actually want to see housing built.
A dense report on density bonuses
Over the past 20 years, projects built through a density bonus have generated 46,000 total housing units, 13,000 of which are income-restricted.
But "affordable" doesn't mean the same thing across all programs.
