This item is for information only.  No formal action is required.

The City of Flagstaff adopted housing and carbon neutrality plans and updated its Regional Plan to establish a framework for the City's future. The Land Availability and Site Suitability and Code Analysis Project (LASS-CAP) reviewed the regulatory framework that will implement this vision and assessed barriers in the code to achieving the City's goals.

Two reports precede this one: the Code Diagnostic Report (June 2024), which identified specific code barriers through a comprehensive code audit, developer focus groups, and prototype modeling; and the Code Concepts Report (December 2024), which presented conceptual approaches to address those barriers. This Code Recommendations Report turns those concepts into specific code amendment recommendations with supporting cost and carbon analysis.

The document may be accessed here: 
https://www.flagstaff.az.gov/DocumentCenter/View/95235

The primary goal of this report is to improve the by-right base standards that apply to housing development in Flagstaff, while continuing to provide valuable incentives for projects that provide additional public benefit. By-right standards matter most because they affect every project, not just the ones that opt into incentives. A developer may choose not to participate in an incentive program for many reasons: the project is too small, the financing structure doesn’t accommodate affordability set-asides, or the incentive value doesn’t justify the compliance cost for that particular site. By-right standards reach all of these projects. Improving them is how the City increases housing supply, lowers per-unit costs, and makes sure all new development meets a sustainability standard.

Flagstaff faces rising construction costs, growing demand for housing at all income levels, and ambitious climate goals. The by-right standards proposed in this report respond to all three: higher densities spread costs across more units, reduced parking requirements for all by-right projects, and a required sustainability baseline means every new home contributes to the City’s carbon reduction goals. The incentive framework adds to the by-right base by offering further relief to projects that include affordable housing, better sustainability performance, or both.

Zoning reform is one tool in a larger toolbox. These code changes have potential to lower the cost of building housing, but they cannot eliminate the cost drivers that make construction in Flagstaff expensive. Closing the remaining gap between what it costs to build and what households can afford will require the City to deploy complementary tools such as financial incentives, land acquisition, and public investment in infrastructure.