Tempe City Council candidates talk budget and taxes
The Arizona Republic hosts a Jan. 14, 2026, forum where Tempe City Council candidates talk on cutting costs in the budget and whether to raise taxes.
- Tempe is proposing a new program to increase affordable housing by offering developers incentives like more density and height.
- The program would speed up approvals by allowing city staff to approve qualifying projects, bypassing public hearings.
- Developers and housing advocates support the plan, but many residents are concerned about the lack of public input.
Tempe is proposing what some called a “creative” approach to increase the affordable housing stock and speed up approvals by skipping public hearings for applicants who qualify.
The affordable housing bonus program would allow developers to build more units city-wide − through allowing more density, increasing height limits or reducing parking requirements − in exchange for a percentage of those units being affordable. Those additions would typically be approved through a public process, ultimately landing in the hands of the City Council.
Developers and affordable housing advocates alike applauded Tempe’s proposal, saying that it’s a step in the right direction.
“We’re in such a deficit right now. We’re tens of thousands of homes short of keeping up with just current demand,” said Austin VanDerHeyden, the government relations manager at Dominium, an affordable housing developer. “That might be able to actually make an infeasible project feasible now.”
But residents weren’t persuaded the incentive was a good thing. In a public survey, about 70% of the 66 verified respondents said they support affordable housing in Tempe but 40% said they do not support the program.
What is Tempe proposing?
In exchange for a certain number of affordable housing units, the city is offering a handful of incentives, like more density or height, and would approve them administratively if the project meets the criteria.
On properties designated for commercial or industrial use or multi-family developments, the program would “encourage” developers to add income-restricted units through:
- Reducing parking requirements for the project,
- Exceeding height limits of the underlying zoning; or,
- Exceeding density limits of the underlying zoning.
The developer would then set aside a portion of the additional units provided because of the extra space. For example, if the underlying zoning only allows for 25 units but the bonus results in 45 units, then some of those extra 20 units would be affordable.
The city requires the units to be affordable for at least 30 years.
The voluntary program would also be restricted to areas where density projections outpace the density allowed by the underlying zoning. It would not apply to areas zoned for single-family developments or properties designated as historic.
‘One step at a time’
Tempe’s proposed program is a first step in the right direction, according to Terry Benelli, the senior executive director of LISC Phoenix, an organization that supports community development.
“Any kind of incentives that the cities can offer to support affordable housing for developers is a good thing in the LISC book,” she said.
According to Senior City Planner Jacob Payne and Deputy Community Development Director Ryan Levesque, the program would help incentivize affordable housing in developments that were likely to happen and be rezoned anyway − the program just guarantees a percentage of that project being affordable.
VanDerHeyden agreed, saying that while he is excited about the program, it would likely be more impactful in market-rate housing projects.
“If you can add affordable elements to either already existing or already feasible deals, that’s a positive,” he said.
Both VanDerHeyden and Benelli said in the long run, the program has the ability to increase the affordable housing stock overall. But Benelli said the program could go even further, something echoed by residents in the public survey.
“Of course, if it came with some financial incentive, that would be wildly beneficial,” she said. “But, you know, one step at a time.”
But respondents also pointed out that making the process “administrative” cuts out the public input process.
Typically, when a developer requests physical additions beyond what is allowed by the underlying zoning, there’s at least two bodies that have to hold a public hearing on the additions: the Development Review Committee and the City Council. People can speak at these meetings, as well as send emails or provide written comments. It often takes months to get the development in front of the council.
The affordable housing bonus program skirts the public approval process, allowing city staff to decide whether a project qualifies for the bonuses behind closed doors.
Levesque argued that the program is intended to “remove the uncertainties of the rezoning process” and added that residents can find out about projects when the active development project website is updated.
“The reality is that it takes a lot of time to get these developments across the finish line and a lot of hands are kind of involved in making that happen,” VanDerHeyden said. “And so any time that you can expedite a certain portion of that process, that just means more people are going to get housed at a quicker rate.”
How does Tempe’s plan compare to others?
California and cities like Austin offer density or other zoning bonuses for projects that offer a percentage of affordable housing.
Phoenix, too, has a program that allows additional density in exchange for affordable housing. That program limits the number of extra units to 10% of the underlying zoning.
But the programs in California and Austin also go a few steps further.
The California law also required local governments to grant qualifying projects incentives or concessions that provide cost reductions, waivers of development standards and reductions in parking requirements.
Austin provides 15 different bonus programs for specific areas of the city. It also runs another program that waives fees for developments that meet certain green building and accessibility standards, among other requirements, as well as provide affordable housing.
Adding other requirements isn’t a route Tempe is willing to take, Levesque and Payne said. Instead, the focus is solely on increasing affordable housing stock as quickly as possible. But they said they were open to incorporating a fee waiver, eliminating parking requirements entirely or adding another incentive.
Levesque added the program is not finalized and likely won’t be until, at earliest, the summer.
“The biggest bang for our buck is to get affordable housing units now, not save up money for the city to build a project, not give us more to do our own affordable housing,” Levesque said. “This gives us the opportunity to … guarantee some assured units for affordability.”
Lauren De Young covers transportation and the cities of Tempe and Chandler for The Arizona Republic. Reach her at [email protected].
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