The Bellevue City Council took a hard look at what the city was doing for affordable housing at its public study session on Tuesday.

Following the results of a survey, members of Bellevue’s Planning and Community Development presented some study items to council about housing.

Dan Stroh, the city’s planning director, said the meeting was going to help guide the city’s direction in the matter.

“We are seeking council direction on a list of items to analyze,” Stroh said. “The decisions here will be to evaluate it further, not to adopt anything.”

A technical advisory group would analyze strategies and tools to see which were most effective before presenting them again to council before the end of the year.

Mike Kattermann, a senior planner for the city of Bellevue, said the tools and strategies could reasonably be divided into five categories: Preservation of existing affordable housing, direct and indirect public support, city regulations and incentives, legislative changes and “do not evaluate.”

Council members immediately had some questions and thoughts on potential redevelopment of surplus land or large sites like school district land or churches.

Councilmember Kevin Wallace was curious about what role Sound Transit would play in affordable housing. If Sound Transit 3 passes, the state Legislature mandated that 80 percent of the regional transit system’s surplus land must be affordable housing for people making 80 percent of area median income (for King County, that’s $65,800 for a family of four and $46,100 for a single person). It currently uses some of its property for affordable housing, but that would increase dramatically with the change.

“How many units do we expect Sound Transit to develop in a certain time frame,” Wallace asked.

Other tools to analyze included upzoning with affordable housing requirements or incentives for developers, a real estate excise tax, partnering with employers or existing agencies and financial support for smaller housing units.

Councilmember Vandana Slatter expressed an open mind toward the process and what the technical advisory group would look at.

“I don’t want any of these tools to be off the table,” she said. “Because I feel like we are already behind on this. We have changing needs and changing demographics and we have to prepare for that.”

In a similar vein, Councilmember Conrad Lee said he wanted the advisory group to look at all options.

“[A Regional Coalition for Housing] is doing a lot of stuff, I want to make sure what we are doing is new or a better way of doing it,” he said. “I want you to look at the cost-benefit of these actions.”

Other members of the council drew issues with the fairness of some of the tools.

Councilmember Jennifer Robertson was concerned about developers coming in with affordable housing “jumping the queue” in front of other developers who had permits processing might not be equitable and could lead to frustration for the other developers. She questioned the feasibility of no-parking units, which were under scrutiny by the advisory group as well.

Kattermann responded to this and to Councilmember Lynne Robinson’s thoughts on downsizing, somewhat obliquely.

“There are a lot of people staying in homes because they can’t go anywhere else,” he said. “They could sell their homes for a lot of money, but then couldn’t afford anything else in Bellevue.”

The technical advisory group would take council comments, analyze what tools and strategies would be effective for Bellevue and bring it back later this year.