The post Sunday Video: Is Mass Timber Revolutionizing Midrise and Highrise Design? first appeared on The Urbanist.

Clark/Barnes architects are working with the owners of the Doyle Building, a four-story landmarked building dating from 1920, and are looking to give the building a big upgrade that addresses the realities of high vacancy levels in downtown offices. Their proposal would take advantage of a suite of newly approved state and city policies approved with the express purpose of making it easier to build housing.

Architects propose retaining the facade of the existing structure and adding 12 additional floors of new construction on top. That new addition would consist of mass timber, allowing a smaller foundation and less weight on the historic building below.

If executed, the project would represent a remarkable confluence of housing reforms across multiple levels of government from recent years. Located downtown, it’s exempt from both design review requirements and review under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). By converting office use to residential, it would be eligible to take advantage of new sales and use tax exemptions recently implemented at the city level, following a change in state law.

Finally, it could be one of the first projects in the state to take advantage of newly approved House Bill 1183, which prohibits cities from requiring upper-level setbacks when mass timber construction is involved, allowing the project to maximize the number of units built — though it’s notable that as smaller tower in downtown, setbacks and facade modulation wouldn’t normally be required for this project.

But the city’s landmarks preservation board still needs to sign off on major changes to the Doyle building. At an initial briefing Wednesday, board members were open to a new chapter for the building, even as they wanted to see more details on how this change would be implemented. Most of the opposition to the project came from members of the public, including a large faction of condo owners from 1521 Second Avenue, right next door.

“[T]he proposal is advanced in bad faith, lacking the transparency and good intentions expected in matters of historic preservation. It is aesthetically inconsistent with the purposes of Seattle’s preservation laws, which aim to maintain the architectural integrity and historical character of our city’s landmarks,” neighbors Timothy and Joanie Kosnoff wrote the board. “Approving this project would set a terrible precedent for other historic preservation building owners and prospective owners, potentially encouraging similar disregard for preservation standards.”

Another recurring theme in the early public comment on this project is that downtown doesn’t need more housing — at least not market-rate housing.

“Building more-of-the-same is not the answer for an economic chain reaction caused by overbuilding. This proposal is for market rate housing,” Ruth Danner, President of Savethemarketentrance.org, which was created to block a proposal to build a new hotel nearby at First Avenue and Pike Street, wrote in a letter to the board. “Seattle does not need more market rate housing. This proposal just knocks over another domino that will force another and another to fall. This proposal disregards the ability of the neighborhood to absorb its mass.”

As proposed, converting the Doyle Building to residential use would generate nearly $2 million in funding for subsidized affordable housing, via the city’s Mandatory Housing Affordability program. Apart from the benefits that come from more residences downtown — including more eyes on the street to deter crime and foot traffic — more homes downtown reduce pressures on existing housing stock in the neighborhood and the broader city.

Historic Seattle, one of the city’s most influential historic preservation advocacy organizations, opposed the proposal in a letter earlier this week that veered considerably from its core mission of preservation, citing impacts on the nearby vegetable garden.

“While they are proposing to repair, restore, or replace in-kind character-defining features on the two primary facades (east and north), they are ignoring the fact that a 12-story addition would have an adverse impact to the landmark,” Eugenia Woo, Historic Seattle’s Director of Preservation Services, wrote the board. “The addition is out-of-scale and incompatible with the landmark building. It treats the landmark building as a four-story base for the new tower, completely upending the original and historic proportions of the landmark.”

There’s plenty of precedent in Seattle for landmark structures being supplemented with new structures, including nearby in downtown with a seven-story addition to the 1913 Federal Reserve Bank building completed in 2020.

None of the interior spaces in the Doyle building are landmarked, so the big question is whether the new addition conforms with the original intent to landmark the exterior. While certainly open to the proposal, the primary concerns raised by landmarks board members related to the scale of the addition versus the original building.

“For me, what it comes down to is: it does, as some people have noted already, does seem to overwhelm the landmark,” board member Matt Inpanbutr said.

“I think that’s the primary issue, so that it doesn’t dominate the building below,” board member Katie Randall said. “I think it really comes down to: is it going to feel top-heavy in a way that it’s floating above the existing building below.”

“I’m intrigued by how this structurally interacts with the building, the historic property […] I’m still always uncomfortable with large towers really being attached to the top of historic buildings,” board chair Ian Macleod said. “I’d love to hear more about how this develops, but I think what I would like more, perhaps, is alternate proposals for this.”

Design review boards of all stripes do usually see multiple options to decide which is more palatable, but the architects presenting here were clear that the constraints that come from constructing the addition of mass timber mean that this really is the only configuration that makes financial sense for the site.

“To be perfectly frank, if we are forced to set the addition back, that will basically mean that we can’t do the project, simply because it will not be suitable for residential use and also would not be financially viable,” Scott Clark of Clark/Barnes told the board. In other words, if the landmarks board and the architects reach an impasse, there may not be a direct path forward.

The project remains in early stages, but it’s clear that the fight over the Doyle Building could shape up to be one of the most contentious fights over a housing project downtown in many years, joining the ranks of the Escala tower-spacing debate or the fight over 2616 Western Avenue.

The post Downtown Mass-Timber Tower Project Meets Resistance at Seattle Landmark Board first appeared on The Urbanist.

“LIHI is excited about the prospect of working with mass timber framing, a more environmentally sustainable way of building,” said LIHI director Sharon Lee. “We are studying the costs and weighing the advantages of mass timber as we work to balance innovation in design with cost effectiveness.”

The project will be built at NE 45th Street and Roosevelt Way, two blocks from the Link light rail station, on land that Sound Transit owns but has designated as surplus. The property, which was used by Sound Transit for construction offices and parking during construction of U District Station, was made available to LIHI through a bidding process as part of the transit agency’s mandate to make at least 80% of its surplus property available for affordable housing at low or no cost.

Sound Transit and the Seattle Office of Housing selected LIHI’s plan after a competitive process in 2023. The proposed project, which is being designed by local architecture firm Hewitt and the Oakland-based firm Pyatok, will offer a range of affordable housing options, including units for people earning 30%, 50% and 80% of AMI. One third of the units will be two- and three-bedroom apartments suitable for families. LIHI hopes to start construction in 2026.

The Office of Housing has committed $15 million to the project. LIHI says the remainder of costs will be covered by private debt, tax-exempt bonds, low-income housing tax credits, and charitable grants.

“The housing will prioritize people in the U District and other neighborhoods who are experiencing unaffordable rents and displacement,” Lee said in a press release announcing the project.

The site is currently home to Rosie’s Tiny Home Village, a collection of 36 small, furnished homes managed by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and operated by LIHI. Since 2021, Sound Transit has made the property available rent-free to establish the tiny house village, which can serve up to 65 people who would otherwise be without shelter. Lee said LIHI has begun the process of finding a new site for Rosie’s Village, which is one of six LIHI sites in the University District. “We wish to thank the U District community for its wonderful support for Rosie’s Village,” Lee said.

The 45th and Roosevelt project will also serve as a new permanent home for the neighborhood’s Urban Rest Stop, which closed in 2020 after the lease expired. Each Urban Rest Stop (with locations in downtown and Ballard as well) offers laundry, showers, and other hygiene services to those who are homeless.

“For years, the community has identified affordable housing and public restrooms as top priorities for the neighborhood,” said Don Blakeney, Executive Director of The U District Partnership. “This project will deliver both, in addition to an Urban Rest Stop, which will meet many of the needs of our unhoused population in northeast Seattle.”

Sound Transit’s mandate to use surplus land for affordable housing

Following a major rezone of the U District in 2017, the neighborhood has rapidly grown and increased housing density. Tim Bates, a project manager for Sound Transit, said that the relatively small property allows Sound Transit to add needed affordable housing to its transit-oriented development mix in a neighborhood with 40,000 residents.

“We conducted community engagement starting in 2021,” said Bates. “In that community, we saw strong support for the site to become affordable housing.”

Because the relatively small, 18,000-square-foot property was bisected by an alleyway, Sound Transit sought and received conditional approval from the Seattle City Council in 2023 to remove the alley. LIHI and Sound Transit are working with University Heights Center to conduct public outreach on vacating the alley prior to construction.

Though Sound Transit’s surplus property is a small fraction of the land surrounding each Link station, Bates says the agency’s mandate to develop the majority of it for affordable housing makes a significant impact. “We’re seeing that increased access to regional transit – especially high capacity stuff – can boost people’s desire to live and work near those stations,” Bates said. “And that can increase land values. Part of our goal is to ensure that there remain long-term affordable units near our stations so that access can be provided to a wider set of community, not just one at the higher end of the income spectrum.”

A 2015 state law requiring 80% of Sound Transit’s surplus land be made available to create housing for people making 80% of AMI or lower, prompted the agency to create a transit-oriented development (TOD) program that has created more than 2,600 affordable homes, with many projects receiving the land for free. 

A project similar to the 45th and Roosevelt development is Cedar Crossing, a 254-unit affordable housing building near Roosevelt Station, created in partnership with Bellwether Housing and Mercy Housing NW, which opened in 2022. Other affordable TOD projects in the pipeline include a six-acre parcel near the upcoming Federal Way Station, two apartment buildings with 167 affordable units near the future Lynnwood City Center Station, developed by Housing Hope, and a 130-unit affordable housing apartment building that Mercy Housing NW will develop near Angle Lake Station.

Mara D’Angelo, deputy director of Sound Transit’s TOD program, says the Sound Transit Board is moving forward on surplus property at the future Marymoor Park station in Redmond, noting “We just went to our board around the Marymoor TOD site in Redmond to declare that property surplus so that we could start the process of planning community engagement around that site,” D’Angelo said. “We have things going on in all directions.”

Mass timber taking off in Seattle

According to Cody Lodi, a design principal at Weber Thompson and co-chair of AIA Seattle’s Mass Timber Committee, mass timber projects can be between 25% and 40% more carbon efficient on average than conventional concrete buildings – though each project can vary immensely.

Alex Zink, who’s also a co-chair of the Mass Timber Committee, and an architect at Miller Hull, notes that while each building is different, using mass timber can result in a much more climate-friendly development, especially when architects are careful in making choices that can determine a project’s overall climate impact. “Concrete is really bad for carbon in the environment,” Zink said. “So, if you’ve got a really big underground parking garage, that’s a ton of concrete. If you’re not building that, regardless of what’s above ground, it helps save on carbon.”

The Pacific Northwest is a hotspot for mass timber development, but Seattle has been eclipsed in recent years by projects in Vancouver, British Columbia and Portland. Still, Zink says Seattle is quickly catching up. 

Zink and Lodi declined to comment on the 45th and Roosevelt project because of their role within AIA Seattle and their interest in not commenting on a work in progress by other architecture firms. 

But in general, they say many mass timber projects are coming online in Seattle. Most technologies in mass timber aren’t particularly new, but offer a fire-resistant, climate-friendly alternative to concrete or steel. The majority of projects incorporate cross-laminated timber (CLT), nail-laminated timber (NLT), dowel-laminated timber (DLT), glue-laminated timber (glulam or GLT), or some types of structural composite lumber (SCL).

“Most [mass timber] is actually not really new technology,” Lodi said. “Most wooden buildings that you’ve seen in the last 20 years. . . use glue laminated conventional lumber that’s glued and pressed into larger beams.”

While mass timber can be more expensive than a conventional building, savings can be found in labor and scheduling costs, Zink said, because many building components are pre-manufactured in a factory, and quickly assembled on site. “The labor crews are much smaller,” he noted. “It can be like three to five times smaller, as opposed to a concrete building.”

One notable project that Lodi worked on in Seattle that opened recently is Northlake Commons in Wallingford, a five-story office building incorporating a Dunn Lumber retail warehouse on the first floor. Changes to Seattle’s building code in 2021 allow for more exposure of timber beams and panels – creating a more natural, open feel.

It also allows for taller buildings employing mass timber Lodi pointed to the new Heartwood Workforce Housing project on Capitol Hill, an 8-story 126-unit affordable housing project developed by Community Roots Housing as an example of the new building code driving taller buildings incorporating mass timber. Statewide code changes enacted in 2018 allow mass timber buildings as high as 18 stories; when using exposed wood, however, the limit is 12 stories. 

“Some building code changes adopted in the 2021 building cycle are allowing for more exposure of the mass timber and taller buildings,” Lodi said. “That’s what’s going to lead to more of these 12-story timber buildings, which can benefit by showing the wood off and its natural warmth. Heartwood was one of the first to make use of some of these new code options.”

Heartwood is not far from the Bullitt Center, Seattle’s first tall office building utilizing mass timber construction, which last year celebrated its tenth anniversary.

The new code allowing for more exposed wood (which formerly had to be covered with gypsum or other materials to meet fire codes) also helps reduce costs and make it a more attractive option. Zink noted that architects, as they design more and more mass timber buildings, are learning ways to use timber more efficiently in their designs.

“The cost is slightly higher, on average, but there are workarounds,” Zink said. “Wood is a material that’s expensive. You want to limit the amount of what you use. So particularly in your floor thickness, if you can make your floor as thin as possible but that still works structurally, then you’re saving money.”

One added benefit of mass timber is that it’s a much more emotionally resonant material. Lodi notes that whether it’s in an affordable apartment or an office space, people are generally happier in those spaces – when they incorporate elements from the natural world, what Lodi refers to as the biophilic response whether it’s wood, stone, or natural light 

“Biophilia is basically human beings’ innate connection to nature,” Lodi said. “Several studies have shown that our internal response to those types of spaces reduces anxiety and stress. It has a calming effect. 

“When you’re thinking about an affordable housing project, you get those benefits from the space in which you live,” he said. “You don’t get that from looking at a concrete ceiling.”

The post Affordable U District Tower Will Be Seattle’s Tallest Mass Timber Building first appeared on The Urbanist.

The tech giant’s development concept is rapidly growing Kirkland’s most ambitious proposal

To close out The Urbanist’s series on Kirkland’s recent and ongoing developments, we saved the biggest development planned for the city for last. So far, with articles on Totem Lake, Downtown Kirkland and Rose Hill, and the smaller development nodes, we’ve documented over 8,100 housing units, over 2 million square feet of commercial and institution space, and over 15,000 parking stalls that have been constructed since 2019, are under construction, or in permitting/planning. Google’s Kirkland Urban campus has already been a major component of this parking and commercial square feet, but if developed to its greatest extent, Google’s next campus project is set to increase the amount of new commercial space in Kirkland by over 60%.

A map of all the developments, planned and constructed, in Kirkland since 2019. (Map by Author)

Within a few minutes of walking from the future NE 85th Street Stride bus rapid transit (BRT) station, Google is planning its third Kirkland campus. According to a pre-submittal meeting application from September 13th, the tech giant is planning approximately 1.25 million square feet of commercial space. At around 11845 NE 85th Street, an ensemble of Lee Johnson Auto company parcels will form the roughly 9.5-acre site that Google plans to buy and develop.

Currently, a development agreement between the City of Kirkland and Google is being hammered out to ensure the goals of the station area plan will be met in Google’s future development and gives Google certainty on the development standards that they will be operating around.

Reviewing the campus plan

On July 11th, Kirkland and Google representatives held a public hearing on the development agreement. In the meeting, Google presented a detailed and early concept for the new campus. There will be four office towers with ground floor retail, active plazas and open space, and a bike and pedestrian trail. It would support 7,000 employees, 6,000 of which would be Googlers. The plan is for five phases with estimated dates of completion between 2027 and 2032.

The current concept has phase one constructing a podium with a shared garage for the future northern towers. Phase two constructs the northernmost tower and its concept neighboring open space. Phase three constructs the concept tower just south of the phase two tower and the concept green space between those two towers. Phase four and five complete the campus with one more tower each and the final open spaces. Each phase improves the pedestrian and bike infrastructure of the surrounding area.

A major theme Google is incorporating into their planning is sustainability. One way this is currently playing out is the plan for the towers to be made out of Commercial Mass Timber (CMT), the most sustainable material currently available to Google. This material could change if Google finds a more sustainable alternative. In the meantime, this choice locks in a height limit of 180 feet, as it’s the current height limit for mass timber buildings in Washington State.

Four main open spaces are envisioned in this early concept. Supporting the sustainability theme, their purpose would be for greening, activation with retail and gathering spaces, sports facilities, safe connections for bikes and pedestrians, and emergency vehicle access. In their presentation, Google representatives mentioned the desire to work with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to connect their concept spaces with WSDOT land that’s not being paved over for the highway interchange.

Scrutinizing the concept and development agreement

The 180-foot height limit for mass timber buildings suggests that Google won’t be building to the 250-foot height limit passed in the NE 85th Street Station Area Plan, potentially leaving a fair amount of development capacity on the table. As they would have the extra 70 feet of height to play with, Google did mention the consideration of natural ventilation, solar panels, and green rooftop features. Perhaps a large vertical-axis wind turbine could be considered too. .

As a part of their sustainability theme, Google is aiming to contain private vehicle use of its employees to just 25% of the 6,000 potential Googlers. Transportation management is where wrinkles appear in Google’s plans, the 25% doesn’t include users of all the open spaces, customers and employees for the retail space, and loading and other needs for logistics. Plus, 25% of 6,000 potential employees is a lot, similar projects in Bellevue have well over 1,700 parking stalls.

Per the development agreement, the first two towers must provide required parking per the city’s zoning code. The code adopted when the station area plan passed requires two stalls per 1,000 square feet of commercial use. If Kirkland agrees to reduced parking requirements for the rest of the phases, then the ratio drops to one stall per 1,000 square feet of commercial use. If the first two towers are half of the planned 1.25 million square feet, then at least 1,875 parking stalls would be required for the whole project. A maximum of 2,500 parking stalls could be required for this project if the city deems it appropriate.

Additionally, a curb cut is proposed to remain on NE 85th Street. NE 85th Street will be the main pedestrian, bike, and transit portal to the BRT station along I-405 — it’s even clearly outlined as a major thoroughfare in the NE 85th Street Station Area Plan. Google seems to want this curb cut for its mobility hub, which should theoretically restrict access to rideshare and Google’s buses for this curb cut. Emergency access would also use the curb cut.

An additional vehicle access point on NE 85th Street, especially one this close to the BRT station, runs counter to the transportation goals of the station area plan. It would add another point of conflict that endangers all using the NE 85th Street right-of-way. Pedestrians and bicyclists would be the most impacted. This curb cut should be consolidated with the two proposed curb cuts on 120th Avenue NE.

Putting it all together

If Google builds to the current planned maximum of 1.25 million square feet of commercial space for their third campus, this bumps up our documented figures to 8,100 housing units, over 3.25 million square feet of commercial and institution space, and over 17,000 parking stalls that have been constructed since 2019, are under construction, or in permitting/planning in the City of Kirkland. A fair amount of that housing will be affordable due to fully affordable projects and the 10% inclusionary zoning required of developments in Kirkland, which puts the planned and constructed affordable housing units to 1,500. Plus, Google currently has a $12.46 million contribution to affordable housing in their draft development agreement for campus three.

Google’s third Kirkland campus is the first project to take advantage of the June upzone via the NE 85th Street Station Area Plan. Expect more developments to trickle and then flood in with the new development capacity, phase two of the subarea plan, and Comprehensive Plan update implementation in the next few years. Kirkland, like the rest of the region, is set to grow quickly. How this growth impacts Kirkland residents’ safety, sustainability, and quality of life will be at the whim of the city’s plans and implementation thereof.

The post Google Planned New Sustainable High-Rise Campus in Kirkland first appeared on The Urbanist.

100 years ago, the land use code was as thick as a children’s book. It was simple enough that out-of-town developers like John Wallingford, L.H. Griffith & E. Blewitt, James Moore, and many others moved to the city to build anything from kit craftsmen bungalows to mid-rise apartments without thick packets seeking the city’s approval. This allowed for speedy housing delivery to match the city’s robust job and population growth.

But today, Seattle’s official land use code is 1,400 pages long. To read it cover to cover is the same as reading the Holy Bible from Genesis to Revelations, while tacking on another 200 pages just to call it even. Charles Darwin explained how all life on Earth came to be in just 502 pages, yet we can’t even describe a desired building in Seattle’s land use code with a book three times as thick. It has become a lesson in urban micromanagement, a lesson that ends with housing shortages, soaring costs, segregation, and unequal development practices that often pick on the poor and disadvantaged. 

Seattle’s land use code makes ugly buildings

Design is subjective and, in my estimation, pointless to argue about in a housing crisis, but for those architectural critics out there, the land use code is what makes buildings look weird and wonky. Too many requirements for setbacks, modulations, and floor area limitations dictate what all our structures look like.

The zoning code is so micromanaged it blankets every lot like a straight jacket outlining what a building can be. In the thousands of pages and years of revisions, planners have calculated how much area matches the height of a zone and then added ticky-tacky setbacks and modulation requirements to get developers to “commit” to more expensive buildings. A commitment that trickles down to higher rents and home prices.

If this is what we want our buildings to look like, then great, the planners have mastered it. But something tells me this is a bluff. Planners set the stage for the wonkiest shape possible and force applicants to ask for code changes. This comes with an adversarial tone from the city’s Design Review Boards, who ask for development tradeoffs or are skeptical of the request which just puts all our vital multifamily housing and the Mandatory Housing Affordability funding contributions they come with on trial.

Streamlining for sustainability

Seattle’s desire for carbon neutrality and sustainability is well documented. Seattle City Light offers 100% clean energy, and with the city mandating bicycle commuter facilities, switching to electric vehicles, and expanding the robust energy code to reduce the impact on new construction, this shows Seattle’s commitment to sustainability. Architects have been pushing for mass timber construction to replace the embodied carbon that comes from building with concrete and steel.

It’s a no brainer since wood sequesters carbon and concrete or steel exhaust it in production. But wood buildings have limitations and Seattle’s land use code makes it next to impossible to choose anything over concrete or steel. Developments seeking timber die on the drawing boards because of Seattle’s land use restrictions.

Timber buildings prefer to be simple and beautiful. With wonky setbacks, modulations, and floor area limitations, a simple box is not possible to build. Every step is another column and another reason to switch to concrete. If the city is serious about its goals, it’s time to get real on what that land use code is doing to add embodied carbon emissions every time something is built.

Passive House construction is a method of building that reduces energy use and makes buildings healthier and occupants happier. But like timber, passive house construction prefers simplicity. The fewer ins and outs, the better. Every step back is another surface, another chance for air or heat leakage. Like timber, many goals for passive house construction die during feasibility or design when the land use code just makes it next to impossible to achieve.

What kind of city makes you commit to embodied carbon? To do away with this we must rethink the whole code from the lens of sustainability. Eleven years ago Brussels updated their code so that all new buildings met passive house standards.

Speeding up housing

Another problem with thickening the land use code into an encyclopedia is long review cycles. Even the simplest building proposals seeking no variances must document their compliance in a thick set of plans before they can pursue a construction permit. Planning departments are stacked to the brim with mountains of other problems ranging from displacement protections, zoning changes, transportation plans, and other building permit applications.  

Spending time reviewing a building from the lens of self-imposed land use micromanagement seems like a misallocation of time. And, since every building is now an affordable housing project through the city’s Mandatory Housing Affordability program, we don’t have time to waste. Holding up homes and millions of dollars to build affordable homes seems like a step backwards for what this city needs and what City Hall is striving for.

Oh, did I mention that timber buildings also go up faster than concrete and steel ones?

The new code we need

The solutions we need today are more in line with the solutions we had in the past. From the day the Empire State Building’s land was acquired until the doors first opened only took 600 days. This included fifteen redesigns, permitting and construction timelines. Today, it takes over 800 days in Seattle just to get to construction and have shovels hit the ground. 500 days of that is stuck in land use review. This should not come as a surprise considering there are hundreds of pages to thumb through just to make sure a building complies. This problem is self-inflicted.

The city’s planning department should be taking hundreds of pages out of the land use code every year. Start with the lowest hanging fruit, things like parking requirements, loading berths, and other wonky silliness. Then move to bigger things like setbacks, modulations, transparency requirements, and streamline the whole thing down.

We want beautiful buildings, right? Then legalize them again. Eliminate all the silly nonsense about setbacks, modulations, ground floor standards, and upper floor limits. Then just define what a building height shall be and how much area you can build. Simple boxes are beautiful once they’re detailed and articulated. It also turns out they’re the best thing for sustainability too. Let’s encourage the buildings that deliver homes and sustainability. Let’s cut the red tape of process and become a more equitable, sustainable and beautiful city. We don’t need public input veto points (processes which are dominated by White homeowners) for every little thing. We need cities that meet our environmental and housing goals and that don’t trip ourselves up in the process.

The post To Meet Housing and Sustainability Goals, Seattle Must Streamline Land Use Code first appeared on The Urbanist.

Housing costs are still on the rise and more people are still moving to Seattle. Rather than passing austerity measures to save money so the Mayor can devote 100% of her time to rebuilding a highway to West Seattle, City Council should look at ways to modify and improve our construction practices to meet our climate goals and wear the sustainability moniker as a badge of honor.  

Passivhaus (or, Passive House in English) is a design philosophy focused on the interior environment of buildings seeking limited energy use, more fresh air, and sustainable construction. It is a building philosophy that reduces the impact we have on our environment. Doing the right thing comes at a price to the bottom line. Passive House design utilizes triple pane glazing, thicker walls, air tight-sealed buildings, and these construction premiums typically aren’t built unless there is a return on investment.  

Incentives make the world go ’round.  

The City of Seattle passed the beginnings of a plan in 2016 that allows developers to build taller buildings with more floor area in exchange for affordable housing. The program, known as Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA), is a win-win scenario. The city receives more affordable housing and developers get bigger buildings.  

Seattle also offers bonuses in sustainability programs. The City’s Living Building Pilot Program offers additional height and floor area in exchange for meeting the International Living Future Institute’s high standard for sustainable construction. With such incentives, the city grew from one Living Building (the Bullitt Center), to over 15 proposals in the current pipeline.  

Passive House design goes beyond Living Building Standards and affordable housing programs. They reduce heating loads by more than 50% and offer fresh, clean air filtration, something we could have used in the smoke season. The result is a structure that uses less energy to heat and cool, and maintains a comfortable environment.

Seattle doesn’t offer any bonuses for Passive House design.

Despite going well beyond any sustainable program we do incentivize, Passive House projects are provided nothing from our city. The Seattle City Council should pass a series of sweeping incentives to guide the future of construction.

Give Us More Floor Area

Like the MHA program, the City of Seattle should incentivize Passive House construction by simply giving additional floor area and an extra story to build. Rather than a five-story building, it would be six stories. Rather than ten-stories, it would be eleven. Such simple concepts are the backbone of the MHA program and should be utilized for Passive House projects. For single-family proposals, the city should upgrade their zoning to Residential Small Lot (RSL) automatically. Residential Small Lot is limited to the same building heights as single-family projects, but increases the lot coverage from 35% to 50%. The zone also reduces the amount of restrictive setbacks and would be an enticing incentive for building passive house projects on single-family zoned land. The result would simply be more building area with the same neighborhood character.  

Give Us More Homes

Most multi-family zones are not governed by how many units you can provide, so by giving Passive House projects more floor area and an extra story, they will build more homes. But in single-family zones, unit count is restricted. With Residential Small Lot zoning, these restrictions go away. Residential Small Lot provides a density limit of one home per 2,000 square feet of lot area. This means the larger the lot, the more homes can be built. Contrast this to single-family zoning, which only allows three homes regardless if your land is 4,000 square feet or 10,000 square feet.

To sweeten the deal, the density limit should be improved to one home per 1,750 square feet of lot area. A standard 5,000 square foot lot will now allow three principal homes and three additional dwelling units, doubling what was previously permitted. This is a win-win for developers and the city. By utilizing zoning we have already deployed across single-family neighborhoods, this automatic upgrade will entice more density and more homes to be built sustainably.

The post Passive(haus) Aggressive Incentives Could Jumpstart Green Building first appeared on The Urbanist.

This parcel is going to be redeveloped. It is presently zoned IG2 U/45, which is an industrial general zoning that allows 45-foot tall buildings. IG zoning allows heavy manufacturing — but also commercial (retail/office/entertainment/R&D). As I noted for The Urbanist a few weeks ago —industrial lands were exempt from contributing to MHA. This, despite contributing to the jobs/housing imbalance, exacerbating our housing crunch.

As we should have done with Fort Lawton, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to build a dense, car-free/car-light ecodistrict for thousands of residents with a wide range of incomes. We should do everything possible to prevent this from just becoming another corporate campus. The Interbay EcoDistrict could be a massive shift in the way we approach housing: an affordable, mass-timber, car-free, family-friendly, passivhaus district.

Challenges and Opportunities with the Armory Site

The site poses several issues. It is built on fill. It is at risk for flooding with storms and sea level rise. These could all be mitigated — mass timber buildings have passed shake tests. But it also offers immense opportunities. It sits a block off the RapidRide D line. With light rail headed to Ballard, the potential for an infill station at Interbay is highly possible. It’s a flat, 20-minute ride on the beautiful Elliott Bay Trail to Pioneer Square. Most importantly, not a single resident would be displaced for housing here.

I know what you’re thinking… Can trains and housing even co-exist? Naturlich. They coexist all over the world, quite densely, even. Yes, there are pollution issues. This could be partially mitigated by requiring all projects to meet passivhaus so there is little air leakage, and all air is filtered. That passivhaus is a buoy against energy poverty only adds to the resilience here. There are other things that can be done, like putting circulation on the train-side, as a buffer against the noise. This was the approach for a large passivhaus social housing development adjacent a railyard in Vienna.

And speaking of Vienna, the city is in process of completing a large neighborhood development of a brownfield that is similar to what could happen here, adjacent to the tracks at the main train station. The Sonnwendviertel is a new district with 5,000 homes, 40% of which are social housing. It also includes a large park, schools, kindergartens, and shops.

In Frankfurt, on a swath of land only slightly larger, the city is leading development of the Schoenhof-Viertel — a new district planned for 2,000 homes (600 affordable), with daycare facilities, a school, retail space, and a park.

If these models are successful in major European cities with a commitment to addressing climate change, perhaps instead of re-inventing the wheel, we just copy-paste what these progressive cities are already doing.

Let’s do a little math…

Twenty-five acres, with a housing density of 100 dwelling units per acre (an amount Jane Jacobs figured was likely too low for urban living) would be 2,500 units. Housing for 5000 residents (or more, if we built 3 and 4-bedroom units here). Requiring 30% of them to be social housing would net 750 units. But we can do more!

Directly north of the armory site is an ROW which could be vacated — and the Interbay Golf Course. Adding these into the ecodistrict would net 75 acres. Because of Initiative 42, we can’t just take park land and use it to develop social housing (alas). However, what we could do is run a massive park down the middle of the development that is of equivalent size, and would be available to more than a couple of golfers a day. Thirty acres at 150 dwelling units per acre would net 4,500 homes, places for nearly 9,000 people.

But we can keep going. This triangular section is roughly 12 acres — enough to yield another 1,800 units. That’s 6,300 homes. Think providing moderately dense housing for nearly 13,000 people — adjacent to a massive park, connected to transit, and highly bikeable — would be a massive improvement over a corporate campus like the one being built directly to the south? I do.

Remember how the anti-housing Seattle Times argued we should waste $400 million dollars on a redundant bridge only a few thousand people would use per day? What if that $400 million was utilized for the development of a new school campus, several hundred units of social housing, a new urban park instead… This would be a game changer for Seattle, but it isn’t anything new. This is exactly what cities like Basel, Zuerich, Vienna and Amsterdam are doing to address the housing crisis, climate crisis, all the while improving livability.

There will be several meetings over the next few months, with the Interbay Project committee providing a recommendation to Governor Jay Inslee by November 15th. The first open house on this project will be March 19th in Ballard. Housing and climate activists should show up en masse and demand a dense, affordable, climate-resilient ecodistrict.

This is a cross-post from Mike Eliason’s blog on Medium.

The post Let’s Build a Dense, Climate-Resilient EcoDistrict in Seattle’s Interbay first appeared on The Urbanist.

Fortunately, a traditional material is here in an updated form to help save the day. New materials techniques have allowed for the large-scale prefabrication of solid wood panel, referred to as mass timber products. Cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels are the most prevalent and consist of multiple layers of kiln-dried lumber stacked in alternating directions and bonded with adhesives before being pressed. These panels are lightweight yet exceedingly strong with excellent fire safety, seismic, and thermal performance. While mass timber is a hot topic in urban development classes and construction industry circles, there is little widespread public knowledge of the substantial benefits of cross-laminated timber over concrete and steel. 

One benefit is in construction speed: CLT panels are cut to size at the mill and shipped to construction sites allowing for quick and easy assembly.  The production of one laminated wood beam compares favorably to that of a steel beam of comparable strength while using only one-sixth of the energy required for steel. Mass timber also offers significant environmental advantages due to the carbon that is captured by trees as they grow, mitigating the effects of climate change by capturing carbon in wooden buildings at a rate of one cubic meter of wood storing one ton of carbon dioxide. 

Furthermore, wooden window frames provide nearly 400 times as much insulation compared to steel and over a thousand times as much as aluminum, further increasing the energy savings and limiting environmental impact. Another 2012 study tracking building materials from cradle to construction, concluded that CLT offered a lower environmental impact than reinforced concrete in 10 out of 11 scenarios as well as large improvements in carbon capture and sequestration. In short, using mass timber products reduces our carbon emissions while also sequestering carbon. Mass timber construction could be a critical tool to quickly reduce carbon emissions and mitigate our impact on the climate.

The passage of the Timber Innovation Act, officially signed into law in December as part of the national Farm Bill, is a big step for incentivizing the use of CLT. One of the most important provisions of the bill is that it provides annual matching grants to advance innovation in wood construction including prioritizing the use of funds to retrofit sawmills in areas of high unemployment. The increased research and development, education and technical assistance opportunities offered by the Timber Innovation Act are another positive sign for the mass timber industry and another opportunity for Washington State to achieve sustainable working forests.  

Our very own Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) hit the nail on the head when she said, “The Timber Innovation Act will create new jobs across rural Washington by fostering innovation. The building technologies promoted in our bill, like cross-laminated timber, will bring several wins to Washington including faster construction of buildings, more eco-friendly buildings and new timber jobs.” The passage of this bill marks a huge opening for Washington to jumpstart stagnant economic growth in rural Washington counties that for years have been heavily reliant on the timber industry; not to mention addressing environmental concerns and the increasing need for housing.

Some steps are already being taken to make Washington State a center for mass timber innovation. The Washington State Building Code Council (SBCC) made code changes last fall that will allow for the use of mass timber in buildings as tall as 18-stories. Washington is the first state in the nation to allow mass timber buildings without pursuing an alternative method, and Oregon has passed similar language. 

The International Code Council is following the SBCC’s lead and after two years of testing, including controlled burns of five different cross-laminated timber structures by the National Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, is embracing tall timber buildings in the United States. This refutes one of the common arguments made by alarmists in regard to mass timber: the danger of fire. In truth, cross-laminated timber panels outperform steel panels in fire tests.  

Seattle’s origin as a timber town makes it a poetically appropriate place for CLT structures to have an impact. In May, the Seattle City Council approved the construction of CLT buildings up to six-stories on a two-story concrete base. In the wake of the SBCC’s decision to allow CLT buildings up to 18-stories Seattle should follow suit.

Other Pacific Northwest cities are already pursuing ambitious CLT projects of a similar scale. Vancouver BC’s 18-story Brock Commons, constructed in 2017, is almost entirely constructed out of CLT. Construction was finished a mere 70 days after the arrival of the prefabricated CLT panels, a full four months faster than a similar concrete and steel structure. 

With vast timber resources and ready for retrofit facilities, the Pacific Northwest has an opportunity to lead a revolution in sustainable building and with the major challenges Seattle is facing around housing affordability and homelessness, our city can and should be at the center of demand for mass timber. We need to act now if we want Washington State to be the place to capture the huge economic potential of mass timber.

California recently announced a $500,000 prize for “viable and repeatable” mass timber solutions in the state with one of the stated objectives of the project being to stimulate interest in potential in-state production capacity. This doesn’t mean we should clear cut our forests. Instead, this is an opportunity for sustainable, working forests through environmental groups and industry working hand in hand. With responsible and economically incentivized forest management, we can change the calculus of deforestation, encourage replanting and continued harvesting as younger and lower grade trees can be used in mass timber products such as CLT. 

Together, we can work across the divides of party and geography to advance a new and exciting industry benefiting urban and rural Washingtonians alike. It is time for us to revisit our roots as a timber state and do our part to reduce global CO2 emissions.

Conor Bronsdon is a consultant at Olive & Goose specializing in applying technology to social challenges. He serves as the Legislative Action Chair of the Washington Blockchain Coalition and is a former Executive Board Member of the League of Women Voters of Washington. You can read more of his writing at conorbronsdon.com

Andrew Lewis is a Seattle native and attorney with a passion for public policy and civic discourse. A former Henry M. Jackson Leadership Fellow, he currently is an assistant city attorney for the City of Seattle. You can read more of his writing at Crosscut.

Featured image courtesy of Forterra, showing construction crews install cross-laminated timber panels while building new classrooms at Greywolf Elementary School in Sequim, one of the schools selected for a pilot project that builds new class space with CLT.

The post Seattle Should Lead on Mass Timber–and Solve Our Housing Crisis first appeared on The Urbanist.

State Senator Steve Hobbs proceeded to propose a smaller carbon fee to funnel money into a slush fund for highway pork barrel projects. Misguided as it was, Senator Hobbs demonstrated a willingness to raise significant revenue for new infrastructure. What if our state spent those billions on social housing instead of gratuitous highway interchanges? After all, 350 Seattle has argued that housing action and climate action are one. Investing in deep green housing on a massive scale would bring down the state’s carbon footprint.

Thursday morning State Rep. Nicole Macri announced a package of housing bills aimed at tackling the crisis. Rep. Macri is a real leader on this issue and her policy prescriptions, like expanding the state housing trust fund and rezoning low-density urban areas, would be a big help. However, I think a tectonic shift is in order to grapple with the scale of the problem and get beyond treading water as housing prices continue to climb as median wages stagnate in comparison.

President Ronald Reagan eviscerating public housing in the 1980s marked a turning away from social housing. He switched the funding model to private-public partnerships and the low-income housing tax credit, and public housing has floundered and shrunk since then. We need to reinvest in social housing to overcome four decades of underinvestment and callous disregard.

Washington State 100,000 Homes Initiative

Paris recently made news completing its 100,000th social housing unit since launching a building campaign in 2001. If Paris can do it, Washington State should be able to build 100,000 social housing units in the next decade too.

The need is great. Eight percent of students in Washington state are homeless–more than 40,000 kids! What if we guaranteed a home for every kid in our state? Is that so much to ask in a state as wealthy as ours? Maybe climate messages aren’t as persuasive statewide, but ‘House Every Kid in Washington’ would be a convincing pitch. 100,000 new social homes would be enough to house every homeless student and their family, and we would make a huge dent in housing insecurity and homelessness across the board.

Interestingly the $16 billion that Senator Hobbs plans to spend mostly on highway trinkets appears to be enough to build 100,000 homes if leveraged two times over and built in a smart and dense way. One way to build smart is to take advantage local resources and deep green building techniques by investing in mass timber construction, such as cross-laminated timber. Recently, Washington State changed its building code to make 18-story mass timber buildings legal; so the time is ripe. Building this way would stimulate the state’s sustainable forestry industry, spreading the economic benefits of a booming Seattle to every corner of the state.

We have an opportunity to jumpstart the mass timber industry, but the private development community is conservative and not likely to take the leap without demonstrated success. Setting up a a cross-laminated timber factory requires sufficient demand to justify it; we have to get over that hurdle. A requirement to build at least a quarter of those 100,000 homes with cross-laminated timber would provide the surety to open a cross-laminated timber plant in the state, speeding up adoption in the private homebuilding industry, too.

A sustainably harvested mass timber building spree also has the potential to trap a lot of carbon in our buildings where it can do us the great service of keeping people warm when they want to be, rather when they don’t (i.e, from global warming).

King County Option

I-1631’s popularity in King County presents an opportunity to break free of the climate skeptics and implement a climate investment package at the county level. A state solution offers the widest benefit in response to an affordability crisis that reaches far beyond Seattle. People are suffering from high housing costs and homelessness all across the state, and it’s compounded by another crisis, student debt, that is leaving a generation behind.

To close the housing gap, King County needs about 44,000 homes affordable to lower income households. King County should rise to the occasion of this housing affordability crisis and invest the resources necessary to build 50,000 affordable homes in 10 to 20 years. King is a county that invested $232 million in a new youth jail and forked over $135 million for a stadium slush fund to appease the Seattle Mariners. Surely we’re not that hard up for cash. Plus, spending money to house people before they are in crisis actually saves money over the alternative: relying on expensive emergency services and policing to deal with the repercussions of the gaps in our social safety net, as Downtown Emergency Service Center research has shown.

A ‘Build 50,000 Affordable Homes Climate Action’ platform would likely be popular and link two pressing issues in an elegant way. We can lower our carbon footprint and stimulate the green building industry by building the 50,000 homes to a super-green Passive House standard.

50,000 is a big number, but, because there are about one million homes in King County, it still would only represent about 5% of the county’s housing stock. By comparison, social housing is about 60% of Vienna’s and 82% of Singapore’s housing stock. In Paris, it’s 20%, with a goal of 30% by 2030.

50,000 new social housing units in King County would bring a welcome balance to a supercharged housing market, providing something for everyone. 10,000 homes could be senior housing, helping elders stay in communities where they have friends and support networks even as housing prices have grown beyond the generally more fixed incomes retirement brings. 10,000 homes could be student housing, helping to lower the skyrocketing cost of a college education that is driving many young people into massive amounts of debt. At some community colleges, homelessness rates among students are at double digits. This is no way to run a society.

The Seattle Option

But what if King County isn’t having any of it? Seattle needs to build social housing on a grand scale. A ballot measure to build 10,000 homes in a decade approaches the scale needed, when paired with existing investments. We just authorized a $1.7 billion publicly-financed convention center expansion, hoping to boost corporations and hoteliers and get a nice public benefits package in the process; we can spend that much funding on social housing to boost our people.

Our economy would benefit, too. One of the biggest challenges businesses face right now is finding workers and retaining them, given skyhigh housing costs. A 10,000 homes initiative would be a statement that the working class have a place in Seattle forever.

To date, the Seattle Office of Housing boasts of having funded 12,000 affordable homes. The 10,000 homes measure would nearly double this number, marking a significant impact especially when paired with investments from Mandatory Housing Affordability investments and the ongoing Housing Levy.

Mayor Durkan bragged of 4,000 affordable homes in the pipeline last month. While admirable, this isn’t nearly enough to close the housing gap. Every district in Seattle deserves to have a major social housing development. Moreover, the government owns land that could host social housing across the city. Here’s some possible sites:

• District 1 – West Seattle Golf Course;
• District 2 – Lowe’s in Mount Baker;
• District 3 – Central District;
• District 4 – U District lid;
• District 5 – Jackson Park;
• District 6 – Ballard Station area development; and
• District 7 – Lids in Interbay and Downtown.

Since some of the sites are quite large, it provides the chance to make bold plans. How about Barcelona superblocks to make interior streets car-free so they make great places for kids to play and people to walk, roll, bike, and mosey carefree. Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda proposed implementing these pedestrianized superblocks during her campaign, and she pushed for using public land for social housing, too. The new housing developments don’t have to be completely car-free, but parking could be consolidated on the edge of the complex with access to the exterior, freeing up the interior streets for people. Plus, with these developments being oriented toward high-quality transit, not much parking will be needed.

Why Social Housing: Freeing Housing from Mega Developer Preferences

Upzones are an important part of the housing solution. But on their own, upzones aren’t sufficient to tackle affordability. Recent research by Yonah Freemark underscored this point.

Freemark published a paper based on a natural experiment in Chicago comparing neighborhoods that were upzoned with those that were not. Surprisingly, he could not detect an increase in new housing construction within five years, but housing prices did spike. Here’s Freemark’s abstract:

What are the local-level impacts of zoning change? I study recent
Chicago upzonings that increased allowed densities and reduced parking requirements in a manner exogenous of development plans and neighborhood characteristics. To evaluate outcomes, I use difference-in-differences tests on property transaction prices and housing-unit construction permits. I detect significant, robust increases in values for transactions on parcels that received a boost in allowed building size. I also identify value increases for residential condominiums, indicating that upzoning increased prices of existing housing units. I find no impacts of the reforms, however, on the number of newly permitted dwellings over five years. As such, I demonstrate that the short-term, local-level impacts of upzoning are higher property prices but no additional new housing construction.

Yonah Freemark – “Upzoning Chicago: Impacts of a Zoning Reform on Property Values and Housing Construction”

Whether Freemark’s findings have external validity (and apply in Seattle’s case or when inclusionary zoning is in force) probably requires more research, they do suggest more emphasis is needed on social housing to fill in gaps that the private market cannot.

If you hate developers, but still want density, you need social housing. The reality is a 500-home tower is going to cost $100 million or more. Only giant corporations like Vulcan are going to be able to deal with financing packages that large. That is, unless you’re the government.

The post Social Housing Now: Washington State Should Build 100,000 Homes first appeared on The Urbanist.

• Senate Bill 5450 directs the State Building Code Council to adopt rules for the use of cross-laminated timber products in residential and commercial development. The direction is general by not prescribing any specific methods, but adoption of such rules will need to be a consideration in promulgating building standards for the state.
• House Bill 1085 allows cities and counties to eliminate or reduce minimum floor space requirements for detached single-family homes. The State Building Code Council prescribes minimums. For instance, the state-adopted 2015 version of the International Residential Code prescribes a minimum of 70 square feet and no dimension less than 7 feet wide for habitable bedrooms.
• House Bill 2015 allows the Washington State Convention Center (WSCC) to apply the King County lodging tax (7% in Seattle, 2.8% elsewhere in the county, in addition to state and local sales and use taxes) on all lodging uses, including hotels and motels with fewer than 60 units, except in four instances. The tax won’t be applicable to lodging uses in a town with less than 300 residents, any hostels, or lodging uses associated with University of Washington Medicine. The tax will also apply to short-term vacation rentals, except in Seattle where a tax was recently imposed. Seattle is allowed to repeal its short-term vacation rental tax and defer to the Washington State Convention Center to impose a tax instead. In exchange for this, the tax collected in the city would be distributed back to the city in full and must be used for the Equitable Development Initiative and affordable housing programs program. King County is also eligible to receive additional funding under the expanded lodging tax. Seemingly this bill closes a funding gap for the WSCC Addition making it full steam ahead for the $1.6 billion-dollar project and its $83 million in public benefits.

• House Bill 1570 addresses housing and assistance for homeless people in several ways. Firstly, it increases the recording fee on documents like deeds and plats from $40 to $62 and makes it permanent. $10 from the document recording fee is dedicated to homeless housing and assistance programs and plans in counties. Counties can also use proceeds from the document recording feet to pay off bonds used for homeless housing. Several other policy changes are addressed by the bill, such as requiring state and local homeless housing plans to be updated every five years instead of every 10 years and establishing more specific analysis, data collection, planning, and implementation methods for the state homeless housing strategic plan and local plans.
• House Bill 2538 makes all buildings and structures that provide emergency shelter for victims of domestic abuse or people experiencing homelessness exempt from impact fees such as parks and road impact mitigation fees.
• Senate Bill 6371 increases the Housing Finance Commission debt limit by $2 billion to a total of $8 billion. Debt from the commission is used to help finance housing construction, particularly lower-income housing throughout the state. The bill also modifies the Nonprofit Facilities Program by expanding eligible organizations for low-cost financing to include public development authorities and local governments, local housing authorities, and federally recognized Indian tribes in the state.
• Senate Bill 5143 modifies statute on property tax exemptions for nonprofit housing entities like community land trusts that sale or lease land to lower-income households. The bill specifies that a property tax exemption may be available to the nonprofit developer prior to development and sale of property that will be developed with single-family dwelling units to be lease for at least 99 years or life of the structure to low-income households. The property tax exemption is available up to 10 years, including a three-year extension. The bill will allow property tax exemption to remain in effect through 2028.
• House Bill 2578 modifies the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act by banning housing discrimination based on a tenant’s source of income (e.g., public rental assistance, veterans benefits, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, and retirement income sources). The bill also establishes new statute that specifies violations by a landlord (e.g., discouraging lease, expelling an existing tenant, refusing to show a unit, and charge higher rents) that are grounds for lawsuit by a prospective or current tenant using alternative sources of income. Additionally, a new mitigation program will be created for landlords for reimbursement for claims related to damage by certain tenants. The program will be funded by a housing surcharge on recorded documents, which will rise from $10 to $13 with 40% of the additional $3 going to the program.
• House Bill 2444 eliminates the imposition of real estate excise taxes on property sold to bona fide low-income housing developments or where there is a controlling interest in a qualifying low-income housing development through July 2035. Qualifying low-income housing developments are considered to be projects with real property and improvements for which the seller was allocated Low-Income Housing Tax Credits.
• House Bill 2448 similarly eliminates the imposition of real estate excise taxes on property sold by a legal representative of a person with developmental disabilities to a qualified entity that will provide living assistance to people with developmental disabilities. Qualifying entities including nonprofit companies or family homes that will provide living assistance. Properties transferred without imposition of real estate excise taxes must be made available for people with developmental disabilities for at least 50 years. Additionally, required remodeling and improvements for health and safety could be eligible for state Housing Trust Fund grants.
• House Bill 2382 deals with the surplus process of state property. All state agencies will be required to notify state, local, federal, and tribal agencies and governments of any sale of surplus state land. State or local agencies and governments will be allowed to transfer surplus property to any public or private for affordable housing development on any mutually agreeable terms. The Washington Department of Commerce will be required to work several state agencies (e.g., Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, and Washington State Department of Enterprise Services) to inventory state property that is suitable for development of affordable housing.

By and large, these bills represent positive housing policy changes. Many other worthy bills didn’t make the cut, but there’s always next year.

Cutoff Deadline for State Housing, Transportation, and Environmental Bills Fast Approaching

The post Olympia Passes Housing Bills Advancing Cross Laminated Timber, Homeless Funding, and WSCC Lodging Tax first appeared on The Urbanist.