The City of Bainbridge Island’s proposed Inclusive Affordable Housing Ordinance will be presented to the public at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 8 at city hall.

To many affordable-housing activists, a diverse local workforce is the bedrock of the Bainbridge community.

But finding a way to maintain that diversity is a challenge, especially when the price of living on the island deviates far from the median income for local labors.

One of the ways to safeguard and encourage diversity is through a comprehensive ordinance that regulates and encourages the amount of affordable housing that is built on Bainbridge Island.

“To me it boils down to social and economic diversity,” said Kat Gjovich, an affordable-housing advocate. “People who work here deserve to have the option of living here and being part of the community.”

Housing advocates and city staff have been working for years to come up with an ordinance that will address the issue of keeping the island’s workforce local.

Many advocates are now betting that a new draft ordinance being brought to the public on Jan. 8 is a good step toward that solution.

The mandatory ordinance would regulate most island developments of more than four units, setting aside a proportion for low-income residences. The goal is for the ordinance to offer incentives to garner support of both developers and low-income households to participate in the scheme.

However, increasing low-income housing comes at the price of density, allowing developers to breach the zoning regulations designed to limit growth around the island. The amount of residential units that can fit on a given lot will be increased under the ordinance to accommodate the new affordable units. There will also be an additional allowance for more market-rate units to entice developers under the program.

For every new development with more than five housing units, developers would be alloted an additional 30 percent growth bonus – 15 percent would be designated “affordable” and the other 15 would be market rate.

“In this system you would round up,” said city planner Libby Hudson. “So if you have 10 lots, you would get an additional two lots to build for affordable housing, then you would also get a density bonus of another two.”

The ordinance would not apply to short plats, any subdivision of four lots or less, and any building within the city’s defined “critical areas.”

If a developer cannot build the additional affordable and density-bonus housing for some reason, then they would either have to pay $10 per-square foot of new development into a fee-in-lieu program or they could choose to build the low-income units on parcels of land at another location.

The fee-in-lieu program was developed by Keyser Marston Associates and uses a complex formula to determine the impact of housing and population influxes on the economy. The idea being that market-rate development never outpaces the affordability for the workers who provide the everyday services demanded by those market-rate households.

The ordinance also establishes the framework for a Community Land Trust. The CLT would hold land titles on affordable lots and ensure potential low-income purchasers meet income and eligibility requirements under the ordinance’s provisions.

The CLT will also be able to line up potential buyers for low-income residential units, a major flaw in previous low-income ordinances.

Low-income housing prices would be based on what the median-income earner could afford if they spent 30 percent of all their earnings on rent. The median income is based on 51 to 80 percent of the wages that an average worker in Silverdale or Bremerton receives.

This won’t be the first time the city has been involved in affordable-housing ordinances.

The city’s previous affordable-housing ordinance was enacted in 1997 and was the first of its kind in the state to decree a percentage of all new developments be set aside for affordable housing.

However, widely acknowledged flaws in the ordinance led to its repeal in 2005.

In a final report compiled by the Community Housing Coalition (CHC), a retired city-supported, affordable-housing group, the issues of why the first ordinance failed are laid bare.

The report states that one of the main problems with the previous ordinance was its inability to sustain affordability. Houses created under the first ordinance reverted to market-rate after the first sale, and low-income families were disgruntled with the amount of control they had over the process and their property. The new ordinance keeps homes affordable via the CLT, and low-income families have the ability to sell their homes as well.

The previous ordinance also failed to keep potential buyers in the loop, and ensure those who were interested had a good credit rating or cash-in-hand to complete purchases, according to the CHC report. The CLT will keep active registers of homes and families to ensure the timely turnover of property.

Many developers also found the previous system onerous and choose to develop just below the 10-unit minimum so they would be exempt from the affordable housing regulations.

Since the first ordinance’s failure, inclusionary housing ordinances with different approaches have sprung up across the state. Three weeks ago the Seattle adopted an inclusionary-housing ordinance that will allow developers to breach height restrictions on new developments in exchange for a percentage of affordable units.

The draft housing ordinance was supposed to be presented to the public in December, but the weather caused the meeting to be rescheduled for this Thursday.

“I’m hoping there will be a good public turnout,” Gjovich said. “This is only one part to the (affordable housing) solution, but it’s been a long time coming.”