NORTH PORT – After being presented with a combination menu of options to ease the affordable housing crunch, North Port city commissioners directed staff to bring back more information on everything – basically ordering a sample platter of the entire menu.

Related:North Port commission to discuss tiny homes and homes made from shipping containers

Options include everything from allowing for tiny homes and container homes within the limits, to establishing inclusionary zoning in the city’s land development code as well as a list of incentives to prompt developers to build affordable, instead of market rate, homes.

The next step for City Manager Jerome Fletcher will be a June 22 roundtable discussion with area developers ranging from Mattamy Homes in Wellen Park to Pat Neal of Neal Communities, to gauge their appetite for building affordable housing – specifically the type of incentives that would prompt them to use density bonuses provided through inclusionary zoning.

Fletcher will be joined by Vice Mayor Barbara Langdon, though she would be relaying the consensus of thought from the City Commission and not her personal views.

An opening presentation on the need to foster the development of affordable workforce housing by Jon Thaxton, Gulf Coast Community Foundation’s senior vice president for community investment,  dovetailed with one made by city Neighborhood Development Services Director Alaina Ray, who covered a  57-page staff report.

Thaxton stressed that “the priority needs to be for low-income affordable stock,” and later added that the commissioners must think about affordable housing as it does roads, bridges and parks. 

Given that North Port covers 105 square miles, Commissioner Jill Luke was only half joking when she said she favored trying all options, but not in any one place.

While the City Commission could not make formal decisions in the workshop, here’s what you need to know about the board’s thoughts on some of the various solutions.

Ray noted that the typical 12,000-square-foot city lot could easily be broken up into three 4,000-square-foot home sites that could accommodate a tiny house. Tiny homes anchored to a foundation on a lot would allow homeowners to build equity and access financing like conventional home ownership. She then cautioned that those same homes on wheels would not help owners build equity and would actually depreciate.

Commissioners Jill Luke and Debbie McDowell noted that they could get behind locating tiny homes in single-family lots or in appropriately zoned communities.

Mayor Langdon said she favored exploring a development where cottages are clustered around communal open space – just as the Family Promise of South Sarasota County established for its Pathways Home program, when it purchased the 10-unit Parkside Cottages development in Venice.

Container homes, which start at 160 square feet and can increase in size based on the number and type of containers used, offer similar plusses to tiny homes. Emrich voiced concerns about the safety of container homes during hurricane season.

The prospect of allowing accessory dwelling units of about 650-square feet on a single-family lot garnered considerable support, in part because Sarasota County and the city of Sarasota have adopted codes to foster development of those units. Currently North Port allows for the construction of guest houses on a single-family lot 20,000 square foot in size or larger but those cannot be rented out by the primary homeowner. As an incentive for construction of accessory dwelling units, the city could consider novel approaches such as omitting the value of those units on the tax rolls – when the accessory unit is rented out at an affordable rate.

Board members are interested in pursuing inclusionary zoning – where developers would receive additional density to build that would be rented or sold at an affordable price to someone whose income could be anywhere from 60% of the area median income and up.

The sticking point could be in finding incentives that would make sense to developers.

McDowell voiced the general mood of the board when she said she was not fond of giving back potential revenue streams.

That stance would reduce fee reductions though it does leave the door open for expedited permitting for affordable homes.

Earle Kimel primarily covers south Sarasota County for the Herald-Tribune and can be reached at earle.kimel@heraldtribune.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription to the Herald-Tribune.