If you’re a resident of King County, chances are you’ve experienced the housing crisis in deeply personal ways. Perhaps you’ve felt the strain of rising rents, the frustration of searching for an affordable home to purchase in a market with dwindling inventory, or even the despair of facing homelessness. In the day-to-day struggle to secure stable housing, it can be easy to overlook the broader forces of public policy shaping our experiences.
Yet, when we examine the numbers and the policy decisions, the reasons behind our housing woes become clearer.
Washington State currently holds the unenviable title of having the fewest number of housing units per capita in the entire nation. This is, in large part, because the zoning and land use codes of cities, towns, and counties across the state restrict the number and types of homes that can be built. Apartments and more modest multi-family homes are banned in many residential areas throughout the state. These bans create a housing scarcity that drives up competition for available units, leading to skyrocketing prices. As our state’s population and job market continue to grow, the gap between housing supply and demand widens, exacerbating the affordability crisis for countless individuals and families.
There is, however, a glimmer of hope. Across the state, there is a growing movement among advocates and policymakers pushing for a solution: building more housing of all types in more places. House Bill 1220, recently passed by the State Legislature, requires cities and counties to update their comprehensive plans to ensure they “plan for and accommodate housing affordable to all economic segments of the population.” The previous iteration of the Growth Management Act required that localities only “encourage the availability of affordable housing” rather than actively planning for and accommodating it. This is a crucial step in the right direction, forcing local governments to actively address our housing shortage.
But the State Legislature isn’t the only government taking action. Look to Spokane. In 2022, their city council made a bold move, eliminating single-family zoning and allowing the construction of modest multi-family homes throughout the city. The results have been remarkable. In the short period since the ordinance took effect, Spokane has seen a surge in housing permits. In 2023, the city allowed 225% more homes than it did in 2022, 218% more than in 2021, and 241% more than 2020. This is a powerful testament to the power of removing bureaucratic hurdles and letting the market respond to the clear demand for housing options.
This movement to build more homes inspired me to propose the King County Missing Middle Housing Motion in February of 2023. My legislation directed the King County Executive to complete a comprehensive study on ways to expand “missing middle” housing in unincorporated King County. “Missing middle” is a term used to describe modest multi-family homes that more than one household can live in, like duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, and townhouses.These types of homes bridge the gap between single-family homes and large apartment buildings, offering a wider range of options and greater affordability.
The code study that resulted from my legislation, delivered in June of 2023, outlined effective ways to significantly reduce barriers to building missing middle housing. Executive staff’s recommendations don’t just deal in numbers; they address the human need for diverse housing options. They represent a chance for families to put down roots, for young professionals to live near their jobs, and for seniors to age comfortably in place with access to essential services. Many of these great recommendations have been incorporated into the Executive’s proposed 2024 Comprehensive Plan Update, a document that sets the course for King County’s development for the next decade.
The Comprehensive Plan Update presents a unique opportunity for King County to lead the way on housing. The plan, currently under review by the County Council, has the potential to substantially increase housing supply by reducing zoning and regulatory barriers. Through the Local Services and Land Use Committee, the Council has taken the Executive’s recommended changes a step further, proposing to allow for more density and a wider variety of housing types in urban areas, all while streamlining or eliminating the often lengthy and expensive permitting processes.
It should be noted that King County’s land use and zoning jurisdiction extends primarily to rural areas and small urban unincorporated pockets like Skyway and White Center. Since the capacity for development in these urban pockets tends to be smaller than that of larger cities, and the Growth Management Act directs us to reduce development in rural areas, the County will not be able to close the housing gap on its own. But the inability to do it alone is true of every single jurisdiction in our state. It is only together that we can solve these problems and provide everyone an affordable place to live.
The urgency of this situation cannot be overstated. Up for Growth, a housing advocacy group, estimates a statewide shortage of 225,000 housing units. Washington State’s Department of Commerce estimates we will need more than one million homes in the next 20 years. In King County alone, we need thousands of new homes just to keep pace with population growth. This lack of supply isn’t just an economic burden–it’s a major factor contributing to our growing homelessness crisis. As a community, we cannot stand by while our neighbors face the devastating consequences of a broken housing market.
We need bold, coordinated action across every level of government, and our respective comprehensive plans offer us a roadmap to get there. Let’s learn from the success stories from the State Legislature to Spokane, embrace innovative solutions, work together across governments, and finally tackle the housing crisis head-on. Every jurisdiction in Washington State must take a hard look at their comprehensive plan and recognize its potential to address housing shortages.
I still question whether eliminating single family zoning will drastically improve housing affordability in a city like Seattle but open to giving it a shot (in the vein of not letting the perfect be the enemy of good).
That said, I also think it’s long overdue to address the damage short term rentals have done to housing availability (not to mention its impact on the commodification of housing). I really wish Girmay and his progressive compatriots would also address the harm of companies like Airbnb (like LA, NY, Palm Springs, etc.).
The problem is they’re tearing down single family homes (in the few areas they can…) to build million dollar duplexes, condos, and townhomes.
We need to use both carrots and sticks to promote construction of AFFORDABLE housing now, not just MORE housing in the hope that supply/demand will eventually trickle down and make some housing a bit more affordable someday.
Building more Ferraris will not make Hondas more affordable.
I fear that removing all SFH zoning will come down on the working class neighborhoods of Seattle (Rainier Valley, Delridge, etc) and accelerate gentrification, while neighborhoods along the water will remain as placid as they are today.
As Our Dear NoSpin points out, the housing needs to be affordable, not competitive. I don’t know that can be done about that. Also, how much of the existing housing stock is being bought up by hedge funds and turned into rentals? That’s a problem across the country.
@3 Define affordable. Because at any given moment in time depending upon the current interest rates, affordable to a worker employed by a non-RSU-awarding or organization can become unaffordable to them compared to a 3-5 year-tenured RSU-granting company (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Msft, Google, etc).
The state, cities, and counties need to impose bans on hedge funds/investment firms buying property in this state. I see no issues with individuals buying additional one or two additional properties but I do have an issue with hedge funds and investment firms buying up property.
I enjoyed this article & its incessant demands for more housing. But why is the photo that goes with it showing us the most soul-sucking, institutional blandness ever? It’s almost like someone asked all the pro-density haters what they dislike most about denser housing (and they’d likely say: no space, no privacy, no yards, no uniqueness…) then it all got made it into this picture.
How an
American Dream of
Housing Became a Reality in Sweden
The U.S. once looked to modular construction as an efficient way to build lots of housing at scale, but Sweden picked up the idea and put it into practice.
As an architect, Ivan Rupnik thinks the solution to America’s affordable housing shortage is obvious: Build more houses. Start today. But the way homes are built in the United States makes speed impossible.
Years ago, Rupnik’s Croatian grandmother, an architect herself, pointed him to an intriguing answer to this conundrum: modular housing projects built in Europe in the 1950s and ’60s.
Rupnik was awed. Sure, prefab complexes, and especially Soviet bloc housing, could be ugly and too homogenous, but the process created millions of housing units in a flash.
Hooked, Rupnik started researching modular housing for his doctoral dissertation. In the archives of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, he stumbled upon a reference in an old journal article that took him by surprise: an industrialized housing initiative called Operation Breakthrough that built nearly 3,000 units between 1971 and 1973 — in the United States. How had he never heard about it?
–Francesca Mari; photographs & video –Amir Hamja
June 8, 2024
oodles More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/08/headway/how-an-american-dream-of-housing-became-a-reality-in-sweden.html
build ‘em Elsewhere
put ‘em Up in
Seconds flat
on the Weekend
when no one’s
Looking.
make ‘em
Inflatable or
Print one out
Don’t underestimate the weight of a heavily entrenched bureaucracy of city and county employees supported by decades of legislation and policy. Statistically the number of regulators per capita is inverse to housing supply.
“Washington State currently holds the unenviable title of having the fewest number of housing units per capita in the entire nation.”
Folks, that is the simple reason rent is so high, only the rich can buy a house, and we have continually increasing homelessness. Not AirBnB, not our not building enough “affordable housing”. Places that allow enough housing to be built–not focusing on only “affordable housing” such as Austin (rents down 12% in the past year) and Minneapolis (rents only up 1% in past five years) see results. Building any kind of housing, even expensive new housing (which is the only thing that can be built in Washington’s restrictive regulatory environment), decreases the competition for older apartments, slowing the rise of rents and, when you build enough of it, lowering rent.
Simple supply and demand is true for housing just as much as for every other thing in the world. When there is not enough of something, prices go up; when there is abundance, prices go down. Let’s start having an abundance of housing.