Mayor LaFrance convened more than 100 residents for community conversation on housing

On Tuesday evening, Mayor Suzanne LaFrance hosted a community town hall about her 10,000 Homes in Ten Years initiative. More than 100 community members joined the mayor to learn about the progress the Municipality has made cutting red tape, streamlining municipal processes, incentivizing construction and repair, and remediating neglect. Residents also shared their ideas on how Anchorage can work to build more types of housing and brainstormed creative solutions to our community's housing shortage.

"I want to thank everyone who spent their evening sharing ideas and learning about the progress we are making to build more housing in the Municipality," said Mayor Suzanne LaFrance. "Not only are Anchorage residents interested in the work my team is doing, but it is clear people want to come together as a community to solve this problem. I was thrilled to be with so many residents committed to moving Anchorage forward."

Mayor LaFrance focused on the work the Municipality is doing that is already yielding results: rehabilitating existing housing, encouraging construction of more housing types, using land more efficiently, promoting local, small-scale development, and protecting renters.

"We're making progress today because our leaders have established a culture that recognizes housing affordability matters to the people of Anchorage and created an expectation that we will confront barriers and challenges head on," said Gabriel Layman, President and CEO of Cook Inlet Housing Authority. "We're not going to ignore them or work our way around them, and most importantly, there's an expectation that we, all of us here in this room and beyond, will continue to drive forward together in partnership."

Code changes and updated processes are essential work, but what matters most is seeing those tools deliver actual results. From tax abatement incentives to direct investment funds for rehabilitation and repair to permitting improvements, these changes are already translating into active construction sites across Anchorage.

Already in 2026, the Municipality has per​mitted more housing development than in all of 2025 or 2024. We are seeing developments like Debenham's Raspberry Townhomes, The Nest from Cook Inlet Housing Authority, and Touchmark Senior Living being built this year that would not have been possible without the new code changes and tax abatements implemented by the LaFrance administration.

Today, Mayor LaFrance is in Fairbanks for the Alaska Municipal League conference and Defense Forum to talk to leaders across Alaska about housing development and the anticipated growth from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson's "Fightertown" expansion.

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Contact: Emily Goodykoontz [email protected] 1 (907) 205-6683

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