The city’s plan for future housing is still being built.
The Sedona City Council chose not to formally adopt the city’s Balanced Housing Strategy on Oct. 13. Instead, it directed staff to develop the plan’s individual programs, such as a land trust partnership and a down payment assistance program of up to $150,000 per buyer, and bring each back for approval.
Council last heard the plan during on Sept. 8 and, since then, the number of strategies was cut from 22 to 18 and the number of proposed actions from 46 to 3.
Council directed the Community Development Department to proceed with a request for proposals for housing on two city-owned parcels: Sunset Lofts at 220 Sunset Drive and 2411 W. State Route 89A. The step falls under Strategy 10: “Use public land and strategic land acquisition to facilitate new housing.”
At its meeting Jan. 28, 2025, council approved buying the 1.8-acre property at 2411 W. State Route 89A, next to Builders FirstSource in West Sedona, from the Dahya Revocable Family Trust of California for $1.99 million. The land is zoned commercial, which allows multifamily housing. Sunset Lofts has a longer history, as it was originally approved as a 46-unit project by the Planning and Zoning Commission on Sept. 6, 2022, but the developer did not break ground by April 1, 2024, and the parcel was deeded back to the city.
The Balanced Housing Strategy has a 10-year goal of 775 new housing units: 600 for working-age households and 175 for seniors. It counts 221 units in six projects already approved, in the design process or under construction toward that goal. However, only 30 are actually completed now that the Villas on Shelby is open. Staff wants a slight majority of the 775 units to be for ownership. Allender said placing about 300 units in a land trust “would be the goal,” a target Interim Mayor Holli Ploog called “daunting.”
However, Allender said that he is optimistic the city can achieve its targets without developing the Dells by Sedona’s Wastewater Treatment Plant, but added, “I think a lot of it is going to be based on the popularity of the down payment assistance program.”
The down payment program, which is in the very early stages of planning and would require final council approval, has no partner named to administer it, though Housing Solutions of Northern Arizona and the Verde Valley Community Land Trust have previously been mentioned.
It would offer up to $150,000 per buyer, with a major caveat: “What we would ask in return is that that become permanent affordable housing. It would go to a land trust,” Allender said. “So essentially, we pay one time for a unit that stays forever affordable for generations to come. [We are] seriously looking at down payment assistance as a way of creating affordable homeownership. This might be one of the few ways to do it. This works in the way that other cities work with deed restriction programs. We just can’t do deed restriction programs the way that other communities can outside of the state of Arizona.”
Community Development recommends discontinuing the Voluntary STR Deed Restriction program because of lack of interest, along with the Rent Local program, according to the council packet. Both programs have been used on 14 properties.
Councilman Derek Pfaff, who supported adopting the Balanced Housing plan, urged his colleagues not to keep sending the plan back for revision. “At some point we’ve got to make a decision and say, ‘OK, yes, we either do or we do not like this,’” he said. “Whether we call it a strategy or a framework or whatever outline, we’ve got to make some decisions.”
Council members spent much of the discussion debating what the document was, whether a strategy, a framework, or a list of projects, and whether adopting it would bind the city to programs whose details have yet to be worked out.
“I don’t want to adopt something that then staff, whether it’s you or your successor, because these last a long time, says, ‘Oh, the council adopted this. I have to — This is my north star, this is what I have to abide by,’” Ploog said.
