The announcement comes on the heels of the roll out of the Comprehensive Plan’s second phase, which includes targeted upzones only directly along streets where frequent buses run — on top of 30 new neighborhood centers clustered around existing business districts — and completely steps away from density increases where they had previously been proposed, but where the City faced community pushback.

“I’d like to provide some clarity so that there is no misunderstanding about where we are. OPCD and the new administration have every intention of putting into our phase 4 Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, the expansion of upzones to two blocks on either side of frequent transit corridors, and that will be all frequent transit corridors that are as defined by Seattle Department of Transportation,” Quirondongo said. “That scoping is not something that we have on paper at this time. That is not a consultant that we have on board at this time. I’m just speaking to what our intention is as staff and the discussions that we have had with the administration.”

Quirindongo said the plan would need to go through a full environmental study, which would put the zoning change to what the department is calling “Phase 4” of the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan. The plan was due at the end of 2024, but Phase 4 is looking like a 2027 or 2028 effort. The delays and cuts to scope stem from former Mayor Bruce Harrell, whose team pushed back on an early OPCD plan to add upzones more broadly than his ultimate plan did.

Harrell’s scaled back plan was widely criticized by housing advocates, with the Seattle Planning Commission among those pushing the City for a bolder plan adding more housing density and broader corridor upzones.

The planning commission pledged support for the two-block plan. In fact, a few planning commissioners appeared to push the City to go further, noting that policymakers could use generous land use policy to induce a virtuous cycle with more transit and greater ridership.

“We tend to maybe not center the fact that land use and density needs to come first for transit service to follow, even though it seems like it’s the other way around,” Commissioner Dhyana Quintanar Solares said. “It is this chicken and egg situation where the land use does drive where service and demand and future ridership potential and increasing fair revenue and justifying infrastructure expenditures and investments go. So I think putting forth a vision of where these corridors and the expanded TOD perspective and upzones happen should have the opportunity to plant where we want to see frequent transit.”

OPCD again pointed to legal requirements for environmental study as limiting the City’s ability to implement corridor upzones on a faster timeline. Phase 3 is already scoped to include the eight additional neighborhood growth centers that city councilmembers discussed last year. Department leaders have said shoehorning more upzones into that study would delay phase 3, as reported earlier in The Urbanist.

“The final EIS for the Comp Plan and zoning legislation that was released in early 2025 studied a preferred alternative that included upzones along transit corridors at a depth of generally half a block, in most cases, including only those parcels that had frontage on the arterial served by the transit,” Sarah Graves, OPCD’s Communications Manager, told The Urbanist following Quirondongo’s appearance at the planning commission. “OPCD had studied a concept of wider upzones in the draft EIS. However, analysis of that alternative was not as detailed as in the FEIS and not sufficient to fully address SEPA requirements legislation to enact significantly broader zoning changes, such as going out to one or two blocks from the arterial.”

The early plan that OPCD internally floated in 2023 and The Urbanist revealed through public records request, included wider transit corridor upzones using an eighth-mile radius that appears even broader than the Wilson administration plan. Harrell also cut OPCD’s 50 proposed neighborhood growth centers down to 30.

Whether two-block-radius transit corridor rezones for midrise apartments are enough to sate housing advocates and urbanists remains to be seen. As the earlier lessons with the Harrell administration shows, an overly limiting environmental study can come back to bite the city and tie policymakers’ hands later in the process.

Before all is said and done, it could be that Harrell’s decision set the city backed by four years on more fully embracing transit-oriented development citywide, rather than in handpicked locations that often allow wealthy and well-connected neighborhoods to weasel out of doing their fair share. The change in leadership does appear to mean that those transit corridor upzones are coming eventually.

The post Seattle Planning Director Says Upzones Within Two Blocks of Transit Inbound… Eventually first appeared on The Urbanist.

After a period of public review and City Council deliberations, OPCD aims to pass the new zoning regime by this summer, a move that will bring the city into compliance with state law. Mayor Katie Wilson has pledged to come back and expand on these upzones, which would likely need to wait for next year to allow for environmental study and outreach work. Virtually all of the work to prepare these zoning changes happened under her predecessor, Bruce Harrell.

“This legislation builds on important zoning reform, updating the rules on what can be built and where, so we can create abundant and affordable housing,” Wilson said in a prepared statement. “Seattle is a great city, and more and more people want to make it their home. We’ll keep advancing zoning changes and developing social housing, as we expand our housing and affordability options. And we are just getting started.”

Wealthy enclaves beat back some upzones

OPCD had already circulated draft zoning maps earlier in the marathon process for the major update to the City’s Comprehensive Plan, which happens once per decade by state law. Planning officials portrayed changes from that earlier draft proposal as relatively minor, though journalists did not get a look at the maps during a press briefing on Wednesday to confirm that assessment.

I'm already seeing a few notable ways that this has been scaled back from the last version of these maps that OPCD had released. Upzones along the Route 2 heading down to Lake Washington in Madrona have been cut out, for example.

[image or embed]

— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) January 29, 2026 at 3:42 PM

As is the custom in Seattle, several wealthy neighborhoods were able to wriggle out of proposed apartment zoning. Among those jettisoned (or never proposed) transit corridor upzones in some parts of North Capitol Hill, Madrona, Magnolia, and Montlake. Two entire blocks of zoning changes along Densmore Avenue N in Haller Lake, close to the impending Pinehurst light rail station, were dropped without explanation.

Where they are intact, those transit corridor rezones are only a half-block and generally Low-Rise 3 (LR3) zoning, which would allow five-story buildings. OPCD noted that the plan would update LR3 citywide to the stronger version that is currently only in urban centers, which it portrayed as an enticing zoning type for builders.

Upzones along the 49 in North Capitol Hill (next to our very nice under-construction highway lid) scaled way back.

[image or embed]

— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) January 29, 2026 at 3:45 PM

Urban Center expansions and Pinehurst center upzone

LR3 may be the most prevalent zoning type in the rezoned areas, including wide swaths of neighborhood centers and in a handful of expansions of existing urban centers that were included in the plan. Significantly expanded urban centers include Admiral District, Morgan District, and Greenwood.

Pinehurst, meanwhile, is an entirely new urban center being added around Seattle’s soon-to-open infill light rail station at N 130th Street, which will be a stop for both the 1 Line and 2 Line. The presence of Jackson Park Golf Course next door to the station makes this an oddly shaped center.

Housing advocates had already raised concerns about how the transit corridor zoning was set to be implemented. The Seattle Planning Commission, the Complete Communities Coalition (of which The Urbanist is a member via its advocacy arm), and other advocacy groups were clear in pushing the City to upzone beyond the immediate transit street to neighboring quieter streets, with some suggesting a five-minute walk would be a better rule of thumb. That suggestion clearly died by the wayside.

Rather, the movement from the draft maps to the final maps was largely in the other direction, with OPCD dropping proposed upzones in wealthy neighborhoods where displacement risk is low.

In line with Ryan Packer’s earlier reporting, the Wilson administration is sticking with a plan to pass the zoning changes queued up in December under previous leadership and come back in Phase 3 and Phase 4 to expand on the plan and add even more potential density. Wilson ran a campaign focused on the issue of affordability and said she would have gone farther than the previous administration in encouraging housing density. Her campaign performed much better in apartment zones, as opposed to wealthier single family areas, where Harrell was popular.

Why Wilson isn’t overhauling Phase 2

OPCD Director Rico Quirindongo explained that state deadlines were looming and hinted at risks to grant funding provided via the Puget Sound Regional Council.

“The less time there is between the adoption of the Phase 1 legislation and the adoption of the zoning implementation, the better, both for Puget Sound Regional Council and the state,” Quirindongo said. “Opening up the box to try to make changes with the phase two package has delay implications that are concerning, and so that’s where we really want to lean into both Phase 3 and Phase 4 and do a real exploration of what are the other things we know we want to add back into the toolkit, and actually give us a little time to do that.”

Other cities around the state are coming under state scrutiny for not passing their Comprehensive Plans on time, or for leaving out key elements of recent housing reforms approved by the legislature. While Seattle is likely not in any jeopardy of seeing serious consequences for dawdling on its plan, being out of compliance could ultimately mean risking eligibility for state funding.

Quirindongo is among the city department heads that Wilson is intentionally keeping in his role, a vote of confidence that suggests that he’s on board with the administration’s plans to go bolder next time. But the fact remains that it has been OPCD’s planners who have been shrinking neighborhood centers and transit corridors in response to pressure from neighborhood groups wary of too much change.

While the plan did not increase housing opportunities to the extent advocates were urging, it does represent a major step forward compared to the status quo. Planning officials say the zoning changes on deck as a whole will double housing capacity, and stressed that the plan was designed to increase affordability and homebuilding momentum — notwithstanding some of the quiet cuts in response to neighborhood pushback.

Queuing up future phases

Quirindongo sketched a rough timeline for future phases of Comprehensive Plan tweaks, which could include zoning changes in Seattle “Regional Growth Centers” — Downtown, Northgate, Uptown, South Lake Union, Capitol Hill/First Hill, University District, and Ballard.

“The plan right now is that four get adopted as part of annual amendments in 2026, four more in 2027, Ballard in 2028,” Quirindongo said. “And there may be some upzones that are part of that consideration, related to those, to some of those subarea plans that are also part of Phase Four.”

It’s already been a long saga for this planning update.

The City broke the Comp Plan into phases after the Harrell administration fell behind schedule and ran into challenges meeting the state deadline to phase out single family zoning, as required in House Bill 1110. Ultimately, the City relied on an interim ordinance to meet the state mandate and passed permanent “Phase 1” legislation in December, which became effective on January 21, 2026.

• Phase 1 – Changes in urban neighborhoods (formerly single family zones) meeting state middle housing requirements, completed in December.
• Phase 2 – Rezones implementing new growth areas in Comprehensive Plan via 30 neighborhood centers, expansions of urban centers, and transit corridors.
• Phase 3 – Adding nine neighborhood centers and expanding six neighborhood centers (as requested in Comp Plan companion resolution) and upzones in selected areas within existing Regional and Urban Centers (centers that don’t have ongoing planning processes that will take longer).
• Phase 4 – Additional upzones around transit to incorporate 1) remaining changes required to fully comply with state transit-oriented development requirements passed in HB 1491 and 2) changes to implement remaining Regional Centers subarea plans and station area planning efforts which are ongoing. This phase could also include additional changes (e.g., transit corridors).

The Urbanist was able to a bit more clarity on why a supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) was necessary in order to add the nine additional neighborhood centers that councilmembers proposed last year, largely at the prodding of Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, but ultimately only “docketed” for future passage.

Beyond the existing vague legal appeal risk excuse, Quirindongo and Michael Hubner, OPCD’s Long Range Planning Manager explained that the culling of centers that happened between the Comp Plan’s draft EIS and the final EIS meant that the 30 final neighborhood centers received more environmental study that the original list of about 50 neighborhood centers that Harrell’s office pared back. Under advice from the City’s legal team, planning officials wanted to make sure they had shown their work on State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) requirements.

“The scope of the Final EIS did not include any of the centers that Council has now asked us to do additional environmental reviews,” Hubner said. “There’s some other complexities in the weeds of SEPA there that we need: integration with our transportation modeling and all of those things.”

The supplemental EIS work is already underway, with OPCD indicating it had hired a contractor. That work is scoped to include the nine additional neighborhood centers and six neighborhood center expansions. However, the City could potentially add more to the environmental review, with the caveat it could mean the study takes longer to complete.

“We all know there’s more work to do,” Mayoral spokesperson Sage Wilson said.

Correction: An earlier version incorrectly indicated that broader transit corridor upzones are in scope for the Phase 3 supplemental EIS. Barring a contract revision, those citywide corridor rezones would need to wait for Phase 4.

The post OPCD Further Trims Corridor Upzones in Newly Unveiled Seattle Zoning Maps first appeared on The Urbanist.

Urban density is often misunderstood. To some, it conjures images of overcrowded cities with nothing but concrete and asphalt. But it can and has been done well with massive environmental and social benefits. It allows people to live closer to friends and family, as well as to where they work, shop, and play. And with these benefits, we all significantly reduce climate pollution and other pollutants that damage human health. 

As Seattle grows and corrects its deeply flawed urban planning policies and decisions of the past, we have the opportunity to choose our future: to be a vibrant, efficient, and sustainable community, or a place that is simultaneously dying socially and economically unaffordable.

Housing as a climate solution

Just road transport — largely driven by our car-dependent urban form — accounts for 58% of Seattle’s core GHG emissions from the sources that improved city policies can meaningfully affect. But even this large faction obscures the huge magnitude of emissions that have been induced by Seattle’s historical choice that made it illegal to construct more housing across most of the city. This choice has led to a Seattle that is now suffering from a significant housing shortage. Specifically, decades of restrictive zoning policies have limited people’s housing and neighborhood choices while driving up the cost of the existing housing stock and forcing lower-income workers to commute from increasingly distant suburbs.

Close-in and connected city neighborhoods with more housing flips this equation on its head. By permitting the development of affordable and vibrant mixed residential and commercial neighborhoods, we reduce the distances people need to travel and make low-carbon transportation options like walking, biking, and public transit the desired option. Research and the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (Chapter 8) find that transitioning to more walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods is one of the most effective ways to cut energy use and emissions, while at the same time improving both our quality of life and addressing inequality.

Enabling Low-Carbon Transportation

Building transit, such as the Seattle region’s growing Link light-rail system, is not enough. To be effective at addressing problems, it must be paired with a sufficiently dense and varied supply of housing near transit hubs that gives more people an affordable choice to use it. This obvious approach is already in Seattle’s Climate Action Plan. We just have to make Seattle’s policies match our plans and emissions reduction targets.

Further, by reducing the necessity for all trips to be by car, more walkable neighborhoods also free up valuable space currently consumed by parking lots and wide roads, which can instead be repurposed for green space and green infrastructure to capture stormwater runoff. The IPCC confirms that creating more space for small urban wetlands and forests is also a climate adaptation solution, as they are buffers against heat. During climate emergencies — like heatwaves or storms — compact communities with walkable access to resources and services are inherently more resilient.

Buildings are also a major source of emissions for Seattle, and the concentration of buildings enables the future deployment of more energy-efficient infrastructure, such as district heating and cooling systems, which are not viable in sprawling neighborhoods.

Debunking NIMBY Myths

Opponents of more infill housing development, often referred to as “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) advocates, frequently argue that new housing harms the climate and environment. However, these claims are not only misleading but are simply contrary to all of the best climate science available.

Claim #1: New housing development increases emissions. Critics often claim that building new housing generates significant emissions, from construction materials to energy use. While it’s true that construction has an initial carbon footprint, the long-term emissions savings from dense, energy-efficient housing vastly outweigh these upfront emissions. 

In Seattle, where car dependency is a major driver of emissions, preventing housing development within the city has forced growth outward. This has led to more suburban sprawl, longer commutes, and higher emissions relative to an alternative if Seattle had just allowed more housing to be built. This destructive dynamic continues today.

Claim #2: Housing development destroys trees and green spaces. Another common argument is that new housing destroys green spaces. However, concentrating housing in dense urban areas actually preserves more open land. Compact development uses land more efficiently, leaving more room for forests and wetlands, which also sequesters carbon. By contrast, sprawling development fragments ecosystems and consumes vastly more land per capita.

Claim #3: High-density living reduces quality of life. Some argue that dense housing leads to overcrowding, congestion, and reduced quality of life. Yet, when done thoughtfully, dense development creates vibrant, livable communities with easy access to amenities, public transit, and green spaces. Compact, walkable neighborhoods foster social connections and reduce time spent in traffic — improving mental health and well-being. NIMBY arguments often ignore these broader benefits, focusing instead on preserving the status quo. But the status quo is unsustainable—both for the climate and for future generations.

Claim #4: Housing growth comes at the expense of social cohesion and racial equity. Of course, building more dense housing is not without challenges. To succeed, we must pair it with policies that ensure affordability, equity, and inclusivity. High-density housing should not lead to gentrification or displacement but should instead provide opportunities for all. 

Seattle’s history of exclusionary zoning has contributed to both its housing crisis and its climate challenges. Reversing this legacy has begun through the newly passed State laws on transit-oriented development and zoning as well as some elements of the Seattle comprehensive plan, but further bold action to foster new housing construction, small shops in our neighborhoods, and walkable/bikeable neighborhoods is needed. To fully address the hole that we are in, we will also need to pair it with investments in affordable housing while continuing to invest in public transit.

Seattle, with its new leadership that deeply understands these issues, robust climate goals, and progressive spirit, is well-positioned to lead by example and show the rest of the country how a blue city can fix its problems and be a vibrant, affordable, and low-carbon place to live. This starts with simply allowing people to build more sustainable housing in neighborhoods they want to live in.

The post Op-Ed: Why Housing Abundance is Key to Fighting Climate Change first appeared on The Urbanist.

The appeal in question dates from last winter, one of six that were filed against the environmental impact statement (EIS) conducted on Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s “One Seattle Plan.” The updated Comprehensive Plan spells out which areas will see additional housing density as the Emerald City prepares to accommodate at least 112,000 new homes through 2044, and the policies the city will follow as it stewards that growth.

All six appeals alleged that the city didn’t conduct enough analysis on the future impact of housing and job growth, with environmental advocate Jennifer Godfrey’s appeal focusing on the potential impacts to Puget Sound’s population of Southern Resident orca whales from increased stormwater runoff due to tree removal.

Thanks in part to recent updates to Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), adopted by the legislature with the goal of eliminating predatory appeals that slow down the production of infill housing, all six appeals were dismissed at the city level last April. But Godfrey, along with the group “Friends of Ravenna Cowen” and Mount Baker resident John Cary, appealed that decision to King County Superior Court. After those two appeals were also dismissed, the group elevated their appeal to the state’s court of appeals.

A hearing on the two appeals, consolidated into one, had been scheduled for early March, but last Wednesday City Attorney Erika Evans’ office filed a motion to dismiss the case as moot, given the fact that the plan has now been fully adopted by the city and is in effect. The filing asserts that if the groups want to appeal the plan, the avenue to do so is the state Growth Management Hearings Board, which has “exclusive jurisdiction.” A 60-day clock to file that appeal started in mid-December.

In response, a coalition of conservation groups are now publicly pushing for City leaders to drop their fight against the appeal and allow it to proceed, despite the high likelihood of dismissal at the hearing, with the appellants directed to the state hearings board. A January 21 press release from Orca Nexus, a group Godfrey founded last spring after filing her initial appeal, contained a “call for accuracy in Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan environmental review.”

Among the organizations signing on were Birds Connect Seattle (formerly Seattle Audubon), Thornton Creek Alliance, Orca Conservancy, the Puget Sound Chapter of the American Cetacean Society, and the Oceanic Preservation Society. A form letter has been directing those calls to stop fighting the appeal to Mayor Katie Wilson, despite the fact that the Seattle City Attorney is an independent office that is separately elected.

“Trees filter pollutants, cool waterways, and reduce stormwater flow. Yet the City’s adopted plan fails to accurately assess the increased runoff and raw sewage overflows that would likely result from replacing tree canopy with concrete,” the release stated. “The One Seattle Plan will further reduce canopy coverage following years of the City’s failure to achieve canopy goals. According to the appellant, this dismissal effectively removes the public right to use the long established appeal process on an inadequate EIS, setting a dangerous precedent.”

Just before Christmas, those same groups filed an amicus brief in Godfrey’s appeal, contending that a dismissal would set a “set a dangerous precedent” that could make it harder “to ensure that the City’s compliance with SEPA and the [Growth Management Act] will include dependable, scientifically competent analyses of likely impacts at future stages of regulatory development and project permitting.” The group argued that the citywide analysis conducted on the plan was not robust enough to prevent environmental impacts that will get approved later, when builders head to the city to get their permits.

Ultimately, the brief encapsulates a split between environmental groups when it comes to the issue of urban development. Many old-guard organizations focused on conservation argue for local governments to more intensely micromanage growth and its potential impacts, a position that puts them at odds with environmentalists who argue such micromanagement slows down urban housing production that reduces greenhouse gases and limits pressure on the fringe of the urban growth area, where development has a much higher environmental cost.

“One of Godfrey’s main concerns is the unnecessary increase in impervious surfaces resulting from the removal of large trees to accommodate higher density housing,” the brief stated, bringing up regulations around tree preservation that predate the most recent update to the City’s regulations that occurred in 2023. “[We] are very familiar with this issue and believe the City has failed to update its tree ordinance to actually ‘protect trees.’ For example, an interdepartmental team did a careful evaluation of the City’s tree code in 2016–2017 and determined that the City’s ‘Current code is not supporting tree protection.'”

To date Godfrey has raised around $4,500 from a Gofundme page set up to fund the legal appeal, with longtime Seattle density opponent (and former aide to Councilmember Alex Pedersen) Toby Thaler handling the appeal’s legal filings.

“Seattle’s growth should not come at the expense of the last remaining 74 Southern Resident Killer Whales,” Godfrey said in the release. “This plan will literally pave over orca recovery efforts. It will increase hardscape and facilitate indiscriminate removal of the large trees that provide vital stormwater filtration, without requiring effective mitigation or honest analysis of the ecological consequences. At the same time, the plan will not produce the quantities of low income housing needed to solve the ‘housing affordability crisis.’”

Tree Action Seattle, a group that had turned out in force to Comprehensive Plan hearings to push for amendments that would reduce flexibility for homebuilders in the name of tree preservation, also joined the fight this week via an Instagram post. That prompted a response from Sierra Club Seattle Chair Robert Cruickshank, who made the case for increasing density within the city being a net benefit for orcas in an op-ed in The Urbanist last year with Futurewise advocacy director Jazmine Smith, who also serves on The Urbanist board of directors and elections committee.

“Building new housing is one of the most important things we can do to help our orca population survive,” Cruickshank said. “Density actually helps orca populations. That’s because it reduces the amount of pollution in stormwater that harms salmon and the orca that depend on the salmon runs. Now, what is in that stormwater that harms salmon and orca? It’s runoff from cars. It’s oil, it’s bits of tires. It’s the shavings off the brakes when you hit the brakes, when you’re driving. Stuff like that that gets into the stormwater, runoff goes into the sound, kills salmon and hurts orcas, and it’s exacerbated when we build sprawl, when we cut down forests and pave over farmland that destroys salmon habitat that orcas depend on, it also means more people are driving. So what we need to do is build dense cities.”

If the state court of appeals sides with the City of Seattle, the appeals could be dismissed as soon as this week… but that likely won’t be the end of the story.

The post Conservation Groups Join Push Against Seattle Growth Plan first appeared on The Urbanist.

The goal of the reviews is to ensure compliance with state laws pushing cities to accommodate future housing growth across all income levels, and they represent an early step in a process that could lead to potential consequences, including the never-before-used “builder’s remedy” — which would supersede local zoning restrictions.

The Housing Accountability Act, signed by Governor Bob Ferguson last spring, is intended to even the playing field between cities that have been welcoming to housing growth and those that have added barriers, in the form of restrictive zoning and onerous restrictions. Prior to its adoption, a direct appeal to the state’s Growth Management Hearings Board was the only way to force a recalcitrant city to come into compliance with existing laws on the books, a lengthy process that relied on concerted outside advocacy by nonprofit groups or involved citizens.

Now Commerce, the state department tasked with overseeing housing issues, will be asked to determine whether a jurisdiction is up to snuff.

Commerce selected these eight cities using criteria that were fully fleshed out last year, prioritizing those that are late in completing updates to their 20-year growth plan — missing a state-imposed deadline at the end of 2024 — or those whose plans and associated development regulations the department believes are “inconsistent” with state law. Cities with active appeals at the state hearings board, including Mercer Island, Clyde Hill, and Duvall, were passed over during this round of review.

A major yardstick these jurisdictions will be measured against will be House Bill 1220, a 2021 law that requires cities to break out planned housing growth by expected income level and specifically create plans for how to accommodate those future residents. In the past, cities have relied on new capacity for single-family homes to meet their growth targets on paper, despite the fact that lower-income households are unlikely to be able to afford such homes. As implemented by the state, HB 1220 requires local governments to allow additional density, a requirement that has been met with considerable resistance in many cities.

Even jurisdictions with very low housing growth targets could be determined to be out of compliance with HB 1220 if they’ve taken no action to accommodate any future low-income residents. The tiny enclave of Beaux Arts Village (population 310), for example, only needs to accommodate the addition of one new household through 2044, but a review of that town’s growth plan by the King County Affordable Housing Committe concluded that no action had been taken to do so.

“All of Beaux Arts Village’s residential land is zoned single family and requires a minimum lot size of 10,000 square feet,” the committee’s review, completed in late 2024, noted. “The town also has no units of income-restricted housing. The draft plan has no land capacity analysis, no policies explicitly stating an intent to plan for and accommodate its housing needs, and no specific strategies to accommodate housing affordable to low-income households.”

In Bainbridge Island, the largest city on the list, the city is months behind schedule on adopting a growth plan that will comply with HB 1220, with the election of two growth-skeptical councilmembers last year likely to complicate things even further. Out of the nearly 2,000 new housing units Bainbridge is required to plan for over the next two decades, more than half need to be affordable to households making 80% of Kitsap County’s area median income or below, with most of the density to make room for those new residents expected in Winslow, Bainbridge’s downtown district near the state ferry terminal.

But building affordable housing in Bainbridge Island may be easier said than done, with the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) currently running into significant obstacles trying to build around 90 units of workforce housing at Winslow’s front door, on a publicly-owned site that was once home to a city police station. One former city council candidate, supported by a group calling itself Responsible Bainbridge, has been appealing the zoning change needed to advance the project under the state environmental policy act (SEPA). LIHI was recently passed over for state funding, at least in part because that updated zoning isn’t in place.

The saga of LIHI’s Bainbridge project explicitly spells out the need behind one of the Housing Accountability Act’s biggest provisions: the builder’s remedy.

If the Commerce Department ultimately finds any of these eight jurisdictions to be out of compliance with state law, local elected officials will have a relatively quick turnaround time — just 120 days — to make corrections. If those edits aren’t sufficient, that’s when the builder’s remedy kicks in: mandatory approval of any affordable or moderate income housing development, with a ban on “conditions or restrictions that have a substantial adverse impact on the viability of the development or the degree of affordability of the development.”

Builders wouldn’t be able to get their projects approved in critical areas, or in industrial areas, but otherwise a jurisdiction couldn’t deny a permit for an affordable housing project until they get back into compliance with state law, a major incentive for cities to get their houses in order that hadn’t previously been in place. To date, the builder’s remedy has not yet been used in Washington, though it is in place in California.

Local governments can also appeal Commerce’s decisions to the state hearings board, a move that could prolong the amount of time that it takes to actually get to the point of a builder’s remedy. While it still remains unclear exactly how this new accountability framework will play out in practice, implementing the Housing Accountability Act is a major step forward in ensuring local governments aren’t standing in the way of housing construction.

The post Washington to Scrutinize Eight Local Housing Plans Under New Accountability Law first appeared on The Urbanist.

Early indications are the City will largely stay the course on Harrell’s growth plan in 2026, while queueing up additional neighborhood growth centers and broader transit corridor upzones to enact in 2027, once the City has conducted additional environmental review, which is intended to thwart legal appeals.

When Wilson took office at the beginning of the year, Seattle was right in the middle of a major update to its growth framework, which the state requires once per decade. Harrell signed a revamped Comprehensive Plan a few days before leaving office, and approved a major rezone of the city’s lower-density areas, intended to encourage smaller multifamily development.

Additional zoning changes were set to be transmitted over the coming weeks, including those allowing additional density in 30 new “neighborhood centers” that are clustered around existing business districts like Madrona, Tangletown, and Fauntleroy. Harrell’s plan also would upzone in the immediate half-block vicinity of frequent bus routes, which housing advocates (including the Seattle Planning Commission) criticized for being too limited and focusing new apartments along busy, polluted major roads.

The incoming administration faced a choice around whether to keep those plans moving forward, or to revamp them — and so far all signs point to keeping them moving and building on them at the first opportunity.

In an conversation with The Urbanist last week, Wilson described how she’s approaching changes to a growth plan that she had criticized as not going far enough in providing opportunities for housing growth throughout the city. She pointed to additional environmental review that the City’s Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) plans to conduct later this year a major chance hance to go further than the Harrell administration had decided to go.

“I think we’re going to have some exciting opportunities coming up later this year to potentially go further with opening up space for new housing,” Wilson said. “The supplemental EIS process is going to play out, and we’ll have the opportunity to look at additional neighborhood centers, potentially upzones within a larger distance from transit corridors. And I’m looking forward to having those conversations. And I think, in general, what’s passed already is a big milestone in terms of opening the way for new housing, and we also need to make sure that it actually results in new housing. And so that means paying attention to the details of how it’s playing out. We’re in a moment where there’s a downturn in terms of permit applications and the housing market generally.”

It will fall to Rico Quirindongo to oversee the work ahead. Harrell tapped Quirindongo to lead OPCD, Seattle’s long-range planning department, in 2023. So far, Wilson has given no signals she is planning an immediate leadership change. Reporting by The Urbanist and other outlets have shown how it was Quirindongo’s OPCD that was stifled by Harrell’s office itself, watering down a much more ambitious growth framework in late 2023, which delayed a long overdue draft of the plan.

Earlier this month at a meeting of the Seattle Planning Commission, Quirindongo was forthcoming about how things had progressed during the first few days of the Wilson administration, explicitly referencing opportunities that had been missed during the Harrell Administration.

“We have had a couple of great conversations with the new administration about where the Comp Plan is today, what’s been adopted, what were missed opportunities, and then what are the activities that we need to be leaning into in ‘26,” Quirindongo said, noting that the centers and corridors legislation the council is set to consider soon is required to keep Seattle in compliance with the state’s growth management act.

On the horizon, Seattle will need to make additional zoning changes around major transit stops to be in compliance with House Bill 1491, Washington’s transit-oriented development (TOD) bill, by 2029.

“Our message to the administration has been: we know there’s some new stuff that we want to do now that you guys are here, but we need to, rather than open up the box on the legislation that’s already complete, let’s get it sent down – there’s going to be lots of opinions about what’s in that package,” Quirindongo said. “Let’s get through that process, and then let’s explore through the supplemental EIS and the HB 1491 TOD compliance work that we need to do in ‘27, let’s go back and look at transit corridors again, look at the opportunities that we weren’t able to build into this round of [the] Comp Plan.”

OPCD also has its hands full with a full round of subarea plans, growth and transportation frameworks for individual neighborhoods that provide more detail than the larger Comprehensive Plan. After the Downtown Regional Center plan — which is open for public comment through early February — Northgate, First Hill Capitol Hill and Seattle’s two Manufacturing and Industrial Centers (MICs) in Ballard/Interbay and the Duwamish Valley are all set to come in quick succession, followed by South Lake Union, Uptown, University District and Ballard next year.

All of those plans were in the works well before Katie Wilson took office, but given enough time, they will clearly evolve to reflect the new administration. The Mayor said she’s confident that will be reflected in a growth framework that allows for more housing.

“I think that with the supplemental EIS, we’ll have some good opportunities to go further,” Wilson said. “And obviously that’s dependent on the will of the Council and building public support, but I remain committed to affordable and abundant housing, and I think that we’ve made some progress with what’s been done so far, but I think we can go a lot further.”

Doug Trumm contributed reporting to this story.

The post Katie Wilson Looks to Beef Up Seattle’s Housing Growth Plans first appeared on The Urbanist.

The ideological differences between Foster and Nelson were stark, with Foster joining the Council’s resurgent progressive wing. Meanwhile, Nelson anchored a centrist majority and recruited a slate of more conservative candidates who swept into office in 2023 and controlled the Council for two years, before voters appeared to tire of that approach.

While centrists had focused on austerity and appeasing business interests, Foster has echoed Mayor Katie Wilson in wanting to broaden the focus to everyday Seattleites struggling to get by and carve out a cultural space in the city.

“Listening to Mayor Wilson talk about, not only do people deserve bread, but they deserve roses, and rest, and space to live their lives,” Foster told The Urbanist, referencing the incoming mayor’s inauguration speech last week. “There’s a lot that we agree on, right? I think we agree on the need for new revenue. I think we agree on focusing the agenda on housing. I’m so excited to collaborate with the new mayor on expanding the shelter capacity.”

Wilson has set an ambitious goal of creating 4,000 units of emergency housing in her first term. Both Wilson and Foster have also set the goal of increasing housing capacity and production at all income levels via improvements to Seattle’s growth plan. The zoning component of that plan is still being ironed out, after the state-mandated plan fell woefully behind schedule under Mayor Bruce Harrell’s watch. With these strong housing stances, Foster earned the endorsement of The Urbanist Elections Committee (on which we serve).

Foster underscored the need to improve housing outcomes and affordability in a speech following her swearing-in ceremony.

“Our neighbors want to be able to raise their families here and have access to good schools and safe neighborhoods,” Foster said. “Our neighbors want the busses to come on time. Our neighbors want us to build the damn trains. Our neighbors want to feel safe crossing the street. Our neighbors want safe places to sleep at night. They want more housing and more places around the city, and they want thriving third places to spend their day, whether that be a park, a library, or a neighborhood business, and they all want to be able to afford to stay in the city that we all love so much.”

While laying out a firm foundation in progressive values, Foster also pledged collaboration across ideological divisions.

“My commitment to you as your newest city council member,” Foster said, “is to work, to negotiate, to collaborate, and sometimes to fight every day to help build this city alongside anyone who wants to push in the same direction, so that we together can make life better for everyone who makes Seattle the city that we love.”

A focus area for Foster looks to be easing displacement pressure, which is weighing heavily on working class Seattleites, especially communities of color and families struggling with child care costs.

“I am really excited to start to work on policies that are going to help make it easier to build more housing and also to protect our neighbors who are getting displaced,” Foster told The Urbanist. “I think we want to be able to talk more about the displacement that’s happening in the city for folks, and look at what we can do to continue moving the ball forward and keep people in the city.”

Foster will chair the housing committee, overseeing issues like renter protections, Seattle Office of Housing investments, and appointments to the Seattle Social Housing public development authority’s governing council.

Foster expressed excitement to be sitting on the land use committee, which will be chaired by fellow newly elected councilmember Eddie Lin, who handily won a special election in District 2. Since Lin was taking over for an appointee, he took office at the end of November, getting a head start on the rest of the 2025 class.

Like Foster, Lin will bolster the progressive wing, which had been getting a little lonely for Alexis Mercedes Rinck until reinforcements arrived. Rinck also took a new oath of office Tuesday, after coasting to reelection with 81% of the vote.

While mostly snubbed from the public safety committee, progressives are heavily represented in the land use committee, with features Lin, Rinck, and Foster, along with Dan Strauss and Joy Hollingsworth. The housing committee will feature the same members, but with Debora Juarez swapped in for Strauss.

Foster’s victory forced Council to elect a new president of the body, and councilmembers unanimously elevated District 3’s Joy Hollingsworth. Hollingsworth is to the left of Nelson and likely to act as a swing vote between the solidly progressive camp and the ardent centrist camp. Neither side has a rock-solid majority, which brings the risk of legislative gridlock as well as the opportunity for creative politics to forge new coalitions and a way forward.

The post Dionne Foster Takes Office, Aiming to Tackle Housing Issues first appeared on The Urbanist.

The role of Council President is usually an administrative one, without much fanfare involved. But Nelson wielded the role in a more heavy-handed way: making major staff changes that were seen as ideologically motivated, assigning legislation that she sponsored to the committee she chaired, and drawing a hard line against disruptions in council chambers that often ground council meetings to a halt.

With the Nelson era officially over, Hollingsworth starts her term as President on a council that is much more ideologically fractured than the one she was elected to serve on just over two years ago. The addition of Foster, and new District 2 Councilmember Eddie Lin, has significantly bolstered the council’s progressive wing, and the election of Katie Wilson as the city’s first progressive major in 16 years will also likely change council dynamics as well.

“This is my promise to you all and the residents of the city of Seattle: everyone who walks through these doors will be treated with respect and kindness, no matter how they show up, in their spirit, their attitude or their words,” Hollingsworth said following Tuesday’s vote. “We will always run a transparent and open process as a body. Our shared responsibility is simple: both basics, the fundamentals, measurable outcomes, accessibility to government and a hyper focus on local issues and transparency.”

Seattle politicos are predicting a closely split city council, arguably with a 3-3-3 composition, with two distinct factions of progressives and centrists, and three members — Dan Strauss, Debora Juarez, and Hollingsworth herself — who tend to swing between the two. Managing those coalitions will be a big part of Hollingsworth’s job, with a special election in District 5 this fall likely to further change the dynamic.

Though it took Tuesday’s vote to make the leadership switch official, Hollingsworth spent much of December acting as leader already, coordinating the complicated game of musical chairs that is the council’s committee assignments. In a move that prioritized comity among the councilmembers ahead of policy agendas, Hollingsworth kept many key committee assignments the same as they had been under Nelson.

Rob Saka will remain in place as chair of the powerful transportation committee, Bob Kettle will keep controlling the public safety committee, and Maritza Rivera will continue heading the education committee, which will be tasked with implementing the 2024 Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise Levy.

There are plenty of places for progressives to find a silver lining in the new assignment roster, however. Foster will chair the housing committee, overseeing issues like renter protections and appointments to the Seattle Social Housing PDA’s governing council.

"Our neighbors want to be able to raise their families here, and have access to good schools and safe neighborhoods. Our neighbors want the buses to come on time. Our neighbors want to build the damn trains. Our neighbors want to feel safe crossing the street." -Seattle CM Dionne Foster

[image or embed]

— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) January 6, 2026 at 4:00 PM

Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who secured a full four-year term in November, will helm the human services committee, a post she’d been eyeing for much of her tenure and which matches her background working at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. Labor issues have been added to her committee as well, and she will vice-chair the transportation committee.

Lin, a former attorney in the City Attorney’s office who focused on housing issues, will stay on as chair of the wonky land use committee, after inheriting the post from interim D2 appointee Mark Solomon last month. Thaddaeus Gregory, who served as Solomon’s policy director and has extensive experience in land use issues, has been retained in Lin’s office.

The land use committee overall will likely be a major bright spot of urbanist policymaking this year, with positions for all three progressives along with Strauss and Hollingsworth. The housing committee will feature exactly the same members, but with Juarez swapped out for Strauss.

In contrast, Kettle’s public safety committee will feature Eddie Lin as the sole progressive voice, and Dan Strauss’s finance committee, which oversees supplemental budget updates that occur mid-year, won’t have any of the council’s three progressives on it at all. Strauss will also retain his influential role as budget chair.

But the biggest issues facing the council in 2026 will be handled with all nine councilmembers in standalone committees: the continued implementation of the Comprehensive Plan, the renewal of the 2019 Library Levy and the 2020 Seattle Transit Measure, and the city’s budget, which faces significant pressures after outgoing Mayor Bruce Harrell added significant spending that wasn’t supported by future year revenues.

Hollingsworth will likely represent a big change in leadership compared to Sara Nelson, but with such a fractured council, smooth sailing is far from assured.

The post Joy Hollingsworth Takes Helm in Seattle Council Shakeup first appeared on The Urbanist.

Harrell’s framework has faced significant criticism for not going far enough to accommodate future housing growth in Washington’s most populous city, including from the City’s own planning commission.

On top of the 8-0 vote to adopt the plan itself, another unanimous vote will put new zoning standards in place across the city’s lowest-density zones, with beefed-up allowances added by the council that will allow builders to make small-scale multiplex development more easily pencil out as feasible. One local architect described those new standards as leading to Neighborhood Residential (NR) zones that are “fundamentally changed.” Formerly known as single family zones, NR areas account for nearly three-quarters of the land in Seattle zoned for housing.

Nonetheless, Seattle’s biggest housing debates still lie ahead. While the new Comprehensive Plan lays out the locations for 30 new neighborhood centers — areas of higher-density zoning, mostly focused around existing commercial districts — the exact zoning standards for those areas won’t be adopted until next year as part of the plan’s second phase. That phase also includes lifting apartment bans in the blocks directly along some of the city’s most frequent transit corridors, something that is much less prescribed by the plan and therefore more up for grabs.

Beyond that, the City has pledged a phase three, which will look at zoning changes to “urban center” neighborhoods that are already Seattle’s densest areas, like Northgate, Capitol Hill and Alaska Junction.

“When I talk to our neighbors about the Comp Plan, I often say that it’s the wonkiest thousand-page document that has such a deep impact on our day-to-day lives, because at the heart of this, the Comprehensive Plan is about how we will live our lives: where people can live across our city, how we will ultimately move through our city, and it represents our shared future,” Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck said ahead of Tuesday’s vote. “This update to our Comprehensive Plan represents such an important start to make Seattle a more affordable place to live, while also reconciling with our racist history of land use within the city.”

At first glance, the timing of passing a Comprehensive Plan now might look like a missed opportunity for the new mayoral administration, led by Mayor-elect Katie Wilson. On the campaign trail, Wilson had been critical of Harrell’s proposed plan for not going far enough, and it now represents the new floor which her administration can build upon. Rather than the plan itself, the biggest limiting factor in 2026 will be how quickly Wilson’s administration can conduct environmental review to make additional changes. In some ways, not having to worry about adopting a major Comprehensive Plan update at the same time will likely prove to be a gift.

“If we only plan for housing to match expected population growth, that’s a recipe for continued tight housing markets and unaffordable rents, with homeownership remaining out of reach for most,” Wilson told The Urbanist’s elections committee earlier this year in explaining why she supported going further than Harrell did. “We should be adding more neighborhood growth centers, expanding the definition of ‘near transit,’ granting social housing the same density bonus that other types of affordable housing get, eliminating parking minimums, fix the stacked flats bonus so it actually results in building stacked flats, exempt smaller projects from [Mandatory Housing Affordability] fees so they will pencil out, etc.”

The city council also came up against the barrier of the environmental review process when trying to pass their own amendments. Rinck’s proposal to restore eight neighborhood centers that had been explored earlier in the plan’s development wasn’t able to make it in for that reason, and instead it ended up in a resolution which also passed Tuesday, laying out a laundry list of changes for the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) to work on in 2026.

OPCD will have to juggle those priorities on top of any new goals added by Wilson, which could ultimately prove a challenge given the department’s limited staffing levels.

The council did make one substantive change to the plan before its final vote, removing a small area west of 18th Avenue that had been set to be added to the First Hill/Capitol Hill Regional Center. Filling in a “donut hole” of lower density within one of the city’s most transit-rich neighborhoods had been proposed by the Harrell Administration, but Comprehensive Plan Committee Chair Joy Hollingsworth raised concerns about lumping that area in with Capitol Hill’s regional center instead of the Central District urban center, which will extend east of 18th. Keeping a boundary at 18th was seen as essentially splitting this historically Black neighborhood in two.

Hollingsworth had intended to put forward an amendment moving all of the area into the Central District urban center, but that amendment would not have come with enough public notice to be legal.

“The intention behind this, the second phase to this, is during Phase Two of the Comprehensive Plan, is to then post a 30-day notice for us to upzone that area, particularly for that to be the Central District Urban Center,” Hollingsworth said.

Despite the fact that OPCD spent years holding open houses, attending community council meetings, and taking feedback on the proposed plan, Comprehensive Plan Committee Chair Joy Hollingsworth pledged even more outreach around the plan’s second and third phases. An alleged lack of outreach on the plan had been a concern raised by Councilmember Maritza Rivera and by Cathy Moore, who resigned from the council earlier this year. But to many housing advocates, those concerns seemed to come from a place of assuming that the City should be responding more vigorously to incumbent property owners who wanted to see the plan scaled back, even more than it already had.

“We will have better outreach to everyday people, from our [OPCD] department to our office as well, to make sure people’s voices are heard and that we get everyone’s voices across the city, that is really important” Hollingsworth said.

Eddie Lin, the council’s newest member who took office just three weeks ago, framed the decisions made around zoning and transportation as part of this process as foundational to how the city achieves its goals — or doesn’t. Lin will chair the land use committee next year, barring a committee shakeup next month.

“The reason we are in the position we are in today, around affordability, around homelessness, around unsafe streets is because of mistakes that we have made in the past. And this doesn’t solve all of those mistakes, but I think this puts us on a better path, moving in the right direction” Lin said. “This past weekend, we lost the life of a bicyclist in Beacon Hill, and that was pretty devastating for our community. And if we want to make real progress on Vision Zero, we have to think about how we’re addressing our built environment, how we’re building dense walkable neighborhoods with good infrastructure for pedestrians, for bicyclists, and that we’re transitioning away from our over-reliance on vehicles as our primary mode of transportation.”

While the biggest housing discussions are still in the future, finally adopting the Comprehensive Plan is a big lift, and the city won’t have to consider another major update to its growth plan under state law until 2029, as part of the Midpoint Comprehensive Plan Update. But given the new administration’s focus on housing affordability and sustainable transportation, the issues laid out in the plan will likely remain front-and-center.

The post Seattle OKs New Growth Plan, but Biggest Zoning Battles Lie Ahead first appeared on The Urbanist.

Council’s newly passed biennial budget also allows the County to use the tax to backfill federal support it expects to lose at existing facilities, following funding cuts. Though the County has not lost any federal funding aside from a FEMA grant, County Executive Ryan Mello told The Urbanist they want to be prepared, given the “signals coming out of Washington, D.C.”

Named for long-time housing advocate and Tacoma resident Maureen Howard, who died following a battle with cancer in 2023, the act set a one-tenth of 1% tax on sales within Pierce County to generate revenue for affordable housing. That works out to 1 cent for every $10.

The tax is the County’s primary source of affordable housing dollars. Mello said it’s “a meaningful stream of revenue,” but “does not come close to meeting the scale of need in Pierce County. We have families, seniors, and workers who are being priced out of the market, and federal uncertainty only heightens that challenge.”

On the whole, Pierce County — the second-largest county in the state, behind only King — lags woefully behind in its affordable housing needs, and it takes many years for housing projects to come to fruition. As part of its 2022 Housing Action Strategy, the County estimated that it would need to produce an average of 2,300 units per year through 2044 to meet its housing goals. More than half of these are needed for extremely-low income households. The County is exploring new options—some of which the Housing Action Strategy outlined—to try to meet the need.

Maureen Howard Affordable Housing Act

The county started collecting revenue from the tax created by the Maureen Howard Act in July 2023. The County had anticipated the tax to generate a little more than $18 million for affordable housing over the first year. By November 2025, the County had brought in more than $31 million from the tax.

In total, the County has estimated that the tax will contribute to the creation of 1,700 affordable units over a period of six years, based on an historical estimate of needing to provide about $50,000 in County funding per low-income housing unit built. That’s a fraction of overall building costs; so developers braid County funding with outside funding, such as state grants, philanthropic funds or low-interest loans, and federal tax credits.

The six-year plan for the tax specifies that 30% of revenues will go towards developing and preserving housing for those households at extremely-low income levels (30% AMI). This includes permanent supportive housing. An additional 20% of the revenue will be used for housing-related services, including wraparound services for people living in permanent supportive housing.

The Maureen Howard fund has already contributed to the creation of more than 1,300 affordable units, alongside other funding streams.

“The increase in the number of units is reflective of the awarded projects having more outside funding and a lower amount of County dollars per unit,” Mello said, noting that local public funding is important for developers to attract outside funding. “We’ve been able to get more new units than estimated due to strategic investments in projects that leverage a large amount of outside funding. This has allowed the County to stretch its dollars further and exceed the original estimate.”

The four housing projects funded this year

At its Sept. 2 meeting, the county council approved $12.2 million from the tax revenue to go towards four more housing projects in unincorporated Pierce County: Cedar Flats in South Hill/Frederickson, Chateau Rainier in Fife, FFC Homes XIV in Buckley, and Fairway at Dupont in Dupont. The County based its awards on funding criteria, awarding the first three projects all requested funding, and partially funding the fourth. The County denied six other projects from some of the same applicants that won awards.

The tax will fund about 650 affordable homes split among the four projects, with different developers handling the projects.

Macdonald Ladd Development, LLC, is leading the Cedar Flats development and the Fairway at Dupont developments. The 276-unit development at Cedar Flats development is projected to cost nearly $109 million, while Fairway at Dupont’s estimated cost for 113 new homes stands at just over $52 million. The County will contribute $7 million towards the Cedar Flats project and $69,752 to the Fairway at Dupont project.

The Pierce County Housing Authority (PCHA) will helm the rehabilitation of Chateau Rainier in Fife. The PCHA already owns the 248-unit building—but while it has been kept “naturally affordable,” it is not deed-restricted, and requires “significant capital repairs,” including new roofs, interiors, and windows, all of which will require tenants to relocate. 

The PCHA stated that it plans to add 76 project-based vouchers to the building, in order to make it more affordable. Of the 248 units, 96 will be for extremely-low income households, who are families or individuals earning 30% or less of the area median income (AMI).

Foundation for the Challenged, a nonprofit that supports people with disabilities, received $166,800 to buy three different 3-bedroom, single-family homes in the Buckley area, with the aim of rehabilitating and converting them into group homes for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities living at 30% AMI.

The Washington State Housing Trust fund will finance the full project, which will cost a little more than $3 million, the Tacoma News Tribune reported, while the other three projects will be funded through combining their Maureen Howard Act awards with low-income housing tax credits, tax-exempt bond financing, and private sources.

More flexible tax revenue use

Council Chair Jani Hitchen said that the County sees stable housing as a way to reduce the number of people in crisis or caught in crisis cycles. In order to get to a place where people experience homelessness once, instead of repeatedly, she said, the County needs to “build capacity.” This also helps service providers by reducing the burden of need, which allows them to work more quickly with those experiencing homelessness for the first time.

“Some of the most challenging to serve require the most services from the county and community when they are not receiving services,” Hitchen said of the Council’s decision to prioritize tax dollars for vulnerable populations.

Because the County is working on increasing density along its transit corridors, the Council also added language to the budget to prioritize funding affordable housing developments along SR 7, the main highway that runs through Pierce County and Pierce Transit’s busiest bus route. The Council additionally added a specific proviso that allows the County to prioritize using the affordable housing tax funds for development and preservation projects located in urban growth areas. Within those areas, the County will “especially prioritize projects located within ½ mile of State Route 7 south of South 38^th St.”

Backfilling federal funding loss

For the last 10 years, the County has received nearly $200 million in federal support, and about 50 of its programs rely on federal funding for at least 75% of their budgets, the County said. These programs include transportation, healthcare, and affordable housing. Handling significant federal funding cuts will be a serious challenge for Pierce County.

While the County has yet to lose federal grants save for a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant for its Department of Emergency Management, Mello said that “the signals coming out of Washington, D.C., make it clear that we need to be prepared. We can’t wait until cuts occur to start planning; our responsibility is to safeguard critical programs before disruptions reach our communities.”

This is why, Hitchen said, the County opted to add a proviso to the Maureen Howard Act that makes an exception for the County to use tax revenue to backfill lost federal funding.

“At the end of the day it is about keeping people housed,” Hitchen said. “I do not want to foot the bill for the federal government, for a service that should be paid for through programs from [Housing and Urban Development] or other agencies. But, if we find that the federal government is going to harm our residents by cutting programs, especially if we are seeing the potential for people who are stably housed to end [up] out on the street, we have left some flexibility in our budget to respond.”

Urgent need for more affordable housing

The affordable housing tax is currently the County’s only source of affordable housing revenue, but it’s clear there need to be additional revenue sources and strategies. The County has produced less than half of the affordable housing needed, according to its Housing Action Strategy (HAS).

The HAS, developed by Seattle-based consulting firm BERK, contains some bleak statistics. At the time of the strategy’s release, more than a third of the County’s residents were cost-burdened, which is defined as spending more than 30% of household income on housing. Of those, a little less than half spent more than half their income on housing. In order to meet this need, the County must produce more than 2,300 new affordable housing units through 2044, according to the study, adding  “addressing this challenge will require significant resources.” 

“Pierce County has access to funding tools for raising another $44 million in annual revenue for affordable housing production. This additional investment would make an important and meaningful impact,” the HAS states. “However much more funding will be needed. BERK estimates a remaining funding gap of $624 million to fully address the needs of households at or below 50% AMI.”

The study recommended the County utilize both the Maureen Howard Act and add an Affordable Housing Property Tax Levy to generate needed funds, as well as dedicate dollars from the General Fund to affordable housing. The County does not currently have an affordable housing levy, which would need to go before voters and earn majority approval. 

The study also advised attempts to attract private investments in affordable housing through tax credit programs and outreach, and establish a regional, coordinated housing effort, which it suggested an existing intergovernmental roundtable, the South Sound Housing Affordability Partners, could oversee.

Additionally, the study suggested the County expand its Multi-Family Housing Tax Exemption (MFTE), lower overall costs for developers to create affordable housing by making it easier to use surplus public land and assisting builders on “challenging” sites, and encourage “middle housing” development.

“At the Council level, we have been working with intentionality around focusing the various tools that we have, and potentially new tools like MFTE (Multi Family Tax Exemption) programs that the county has only used once,” Hitchen said. “In 2026, the Health and Human Services will be looking at establishing some MFTE zones in unincorporated Pierce county, and hope that this will be an additional incentive to get more housing in our urban/suburban areas, especially along our transit lines.”

Mello told The Urbanist that, in addition to its affordable housing tax, the County is considering other tools and revenue streams to bolster its housing strategy.

“The County is working with partner organizations, and governments on identifying public land for affordable housing development,” Mello said.

He said that the County has secured two public properties for affordable housing—Frederickson South in Frederickson, and a forested, undeveloped land in East Tacoma, both of which are owned by the Department of Natural Resources. The Frederickson development can hold 28 new homes, and will be geared towards households earning 80% area median income, while the undeveloped land will hold 24 new affordable units.

The County said it is coordinating three transfers of public property for affordable development and looking to acquire “additional” pieces of land in 2026 for affordable housing purposes.

Mello said a newer initiative aims to provide technical support for smaller developers and faith-based organizations interested in creating affordable housing. The County will host a developer open house or forum this coming spring, as well as technical workshops for prospective affordable housing developers.

The County is also working to help affordable housing builders acquire private property for affordable development via loans through the Pierce County Community Development Corporation (PCCDC). The PCCDC has already approved two loans for organizations to acquire land in Lakewood and Puyallup for future development, the County noted. Both properties will support units for elders, multifamily workforce housing, and people with disabilities.

The PCCDC already loaned the Olga Dor Cooperative mobile home park $750,000 to preserve 48 affordable units for elders in Parkland.

On the whole, Pierce County’s housing needs currently far outstrip its existing supply and planned stock of affordable housing. Mello did not say whether the County would pursue an affordable housing tax levy, but the County’s revamped Comprehensive Plan has begun pursuing some elements that the Housing Action Strategy suggested, including zoning updates to allow multifamily development in more places.

Pierce County includes a large number of urban incorporated areas, which the County council oversees and controls zoning policy. Nearly half of Pierce County’s roughly 960,000 residents live in unincorporated areas, and the County’s Comprehensive Plan update aims to continue growing in these areas, particularly in transit corridors, with 32,000 net new homes targeted by 2044. The County also aims to spur affordable housing creation, but has not set a specific target for affordable homes.

“We continue to look at working smarter and with broader partnerships,” Hitchen said of the County’s efforts to create more affordable housing. “The needs for affordable housing in our county far outpace what this one source [the tax] can do, but without it, we would be even further behind. If we truly want a thriving Pierce County, where everyone has a place to call home, we have to have a large and diverse inventory of homes.”

The post Pierce County Boosts Affordable Housing Creation, Leveraging New Maureen Howard Fund first appeared on The Urbanist.