During their governance board meeting on Wednesday, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) voted for land zoning amendments to allow for more multi-family and affordable workforce housing.

The amendments change Tahoe's land use plan to allow for higher density buildings as tall as 65 feet in town centers, or about five stories.

Many community members at the meeting spoke against amending the zoning laws. One of their main complaints is that TRPA uses data from the 2012 regional Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

"TRPA is operating as if we're living in 2012. It's going to be 2024 very shortly. We have to have a realistic discussion about how these new land use amendments will impact our lake, our land, and the people," said Pamela Tsigdinos.

"It's about certain sites and locations and what we call land use mitigation, making sure that we've analyzed for the amount of people, for the amount of cars, and what that does to the air quality, the water quality, the viewshed, have we looked at wildfire evacuations?" said Mountain Area Preservation (MAP's) Executive Director Alexis Ollar. 

While TRPA acknowledges they last made an environmental impact statement in 2012, they have been doing environmental analyses every four years.

"These are stepped down, only in town centers and then a little bit lower heights from outside into the multi-family zones, and we know from environmental analyses that we're not going to hurt water quality, we're not going to hurt scenic resources, that's really what we're designed to protect, said TRPA Public Information Officer Jeff Cowen.

Another point of contention is affordability. 

"We haven't created codes that say enforcements, provisions, penalties, that make it very clear to a developer that if you get these advantages, you don't get to rent high-income ski leases; these are units for our workforce," said Ollar.

TRPA's Public Information Officer (PIO) Jeff Cowen explained that deed restrictions add new housing or preserve existing housing stock at several rates, including affordable, moderate, or achievable. 

"These aren't going to become big block high rises, and they will not become any type of high-end residence; they will only really go for local workers because of the compliance program we're building in. The fact that these are deed-restricted units. There's a title running with the property forever that says it has to be for local workers," said Cowen.

It took three motions for the TRPA to complete the amendments, with Nevada's Secretary of State, Cisco Aguilar, being the only nay vote.