The housing crisis is at the doorstep of every American town and city, big or small. Alaska and the Municipality of Anchorage are no exception. People who a decade or two could have purchased homes now find homeownership far out of reach. Here in Girdwood, the crisis is especially severe. Hundreds of people who work at our businesses, including many who work at the resort, have zero options for housing within the community. Some are sleeping in tents, couch surfing, or living in their vehicles.

So why, then, is the Municipality and their partner, CY investments, racing forward with a plan to take one of Girdwood’s last pieces of prime developable land and turn it into another “Urban Sprawl Development” that consists largely of expensive, wasteful, single-family units and luxury homes? The 400+ acre “Holtan Hills” tract is owned by the public Heritage Land Bank, so the Municipality has discretion about how the land should be developed. Yet the Holtan Hills proposal only includes a minimal number of multifamily homes, and these include a paltry number of units. These ”multifamily” units included in this proposal are an attempt to placate critics, but will do nothing whatsoever to make housing more affordable in Girdwood. The Holtan Hills plan, as proposed, is almost entirely more of the sprawling, exclusive, unaffordable housing that got us into this crisis in the first place.

Girdwood is hemmed in by mountains on two sides and the ocean on the other. Land here is very limited. We will not have a second chance to get this right.

Some claim that creating housing of any type will ease prices for everyone. This may be true in big cities where a relatively fixed number of people are looking for a home, and those who “trade up” to higher-end housing leave vacant housing supply behind them. But in a resort community like Girdwood, there is an effectively unlimited number of wealthy people who can and will purchase luxury properties like those in the current Holtan Hills proposal. We need efficient, lower-cost multifamily units—the type of units that would be of little interest to a multimillionaire doctor but can be life-changing for a ski instructor, maintenance worker, teacher, or restaurant employee.

In addition to doing nothing to make housing more affordable, the Holtan Hills development is simply an awful financial deal for the Municipality. The Municipality agreed to be on the hook for many millions of dollars that it will cost to develop this land. Their chosen development partner, CY Investments, has effectively outsourced the financial risk to the taxpayers of Anchorage—all to build unaffordable housing that is not in the public interest. It is unclear whether the Municpality will even receive a cent from the development of this public land. The plan should have been scrapped because of this fact alone.

Girdwood has held at least fifteen meetings to discuss the Holtan Hills project and the overwhelming consensus is that this is the wrong plan, the wrong developer, and the wrong time for this 1960s-1980s type of development. The current Holtan Hills plan is simply a gross misuse of public land. We want SmartGrowth models of housing, more density in developed areas, and prioritization of walkability and transportation connectivity. If a smarter model were used, much more of the rain forest and historic trails slated to be destroyed in the current plan could be preserved, too.

Girdwood does not want to go down the same path as other ski towns in America, where workers cannot find housing and sleep in vehicles next to giant, empty fourth homes owned by the wealthy absentee owners. Our community wants to provide safe, affordable, inclusive housing for those who live and work here. For these reasons, we ask that you join us in opposing the current Holtan Hills development. The Municipality should go back to the drawing board, and work to develop a plan centered around the idea that “public lands = public benefits.”

The housing crisis did not simply happen overnight. It was a result of plans like the current Holtan Hills proposal that prioritize the desires of the wealthy over those of ordinary people. We cannot do more of the same and expect different results. The Girdwood community asks the Assembly to reject the Holtan Hills plan on December 6^th and replace it with an inclusive development plan that serves the community.

Grace Pleasants is a lifelong Alaskan and Girdwood resident. She works as a historical real estate developer in the Pacific Northwest.