Ward 5 NPA

Neighborhood Planning Assembly Draft Minutes NPA: ​ Ward (choose one) 5 Date of Assembly : 10/16/2025 Start Time: (Commence): 7:00 Location: DPW Finish Time: (Adjourn): 8:25 Note taker: Jason Van Driesche Steering Committee Members in Attendance:​ Jak Tiano, Cathy Foley, Primrose von Wolevear, Jason Van Driesche, FaRied Munarsyah Actions Taken / Decisions Made Discussion Topics ●​ Immediately following Agenda Item ●​ These can be copied from agenda ●​ Generally includes: electing a new steering committee member, items voting as a body to send a formal communication to the City, ●​ Content of discussion not required decisions to spend money. Agenda Items and Actions: Please Remember to Enter Adjournment Time! ​ Jak Tiano gave an overview of background issues related to housing needs in Burlington, then summarized a video about a creative housing-related initiative in Seattle. Prompt questions for discussion: ●​ What needs to be true for Burlington to reduce its dependency on (uncertain) federal dollars? ●​ How can we frame competing housing needs and challenges as a “Yes, and” scenario? How might we reframe our current situation as an opportunity? ●​ What common assumptions might be holding us back from pursuing bolder ideas? Discussion ensued: ●​ How are Airbnbs regulated in Burlington? Are they having an impact? ○​ The City estimates that there are 400 Airbnbs total in Burlington, based on data scraping from Airbnb listings. ○​ Burlington passed a regulation a few years ago to prohibit Airbnbs other than in private homes – meaning, a whole unit can’t be dedicated to Airbnb. ○​ However, success depends on enforcement, so people should report Airbnbs that violate this rule. ○​ There is also an additional tax on Airbnb rentals that goes into the Housing Trust Fund. ●​ Has there been any analysis of how many residences are vacant much of the year? ○​ City doesn’t have a direct way of assessing this. Looked at properties that are not homesteads AND are not on the rental registry. About 1200 units met this definition. ●​ Why did government stop building housing? Can we do that again? ○​ Public housing was funded by direct federal appropriations. This went away in the 80s, in part because there were a lot of public housing failures. This was replaced by the affordable housing tax credit. This is far and away the biggest source of funding for affordable housing. But this depends on the tax credits continuing to be seen as advantageous by investors. ○​ Federal government has not yet cut tax incentives for affordable housing. ○​ One thing that is interesting about the Seattle model is that they provide property tax relief for affordable units. ●​ What can we do about abandoned buildings in Burlington? ○​ Only a dozen or so abandoned buildings in the city (i.e., falling apart). ○​ Temporarily vacant units are around 3.5% countywide, which is a bit higher than it’s been – but a healthy rate is about 6-7%. ●​ Can we change our property tax structure to tax second homes more aggressively? ○​ Need to do some work to better classify second homes. The state used to only classify properties as “homestead” and “non-homestead” (which includes commercial. We now have a classification of “non-homestead residential” that will roll out in the next tax year. ○​ Neighborhood Code has really increased the density that we can build. Now we need to actually start building. ●​ Has there been an inventory of opportunities for increasing density city-wide, on a parcel-by-parcel basis? ○​ Some analysis has been done, but it’s difficult because there is so much variation from one property to the next. ○​