# While 2023 was dubbed the 'year of housing,' 2024 could be a second act, with unfinished business left to tackle. In 2023, the Washington State Legislature focused its attention on increasing the state's housing supply with a fervor not seen in decades. And that attention paid off. Laws were passed that will soon require cities| The Urbanist » Advocacy journalism for better cities.
# In this year’s legislative session, the Washington State Legislature passed extensive housing reform. House Bill 1110 compelled many cities in Washington to open up single-housing residential zones to long-banned duplexes, cottage courts, and small apartments. Such middle housing has been missing from the calculation for years, and it’s no wonder that housing has become unaffordable| The Urbanist » Advocacy journalism for better cities.
# In House Bill 1110, the Washington State Legislature read the will of the people and demanded that we tackle the housing crisis more proactively by allowing middle housing in most cities and towns. The Washington State Department of Commerce has created a basic zoning template that supersedes local code if town planners balk at updating| The Urbanist » Advocacy journalism for better cities.
# The land use committee meeting on Wednesday was an eventful one, as several councilmembers shared their critiques of the Seattle comprehensive plan work thus far. Councilmember Alex Pedersen had already attacked the plan from a conservative 'slow the growth' perspective, but most of his colleagues urged OPCD to think bigger and add more housing options.| The Urbanist » Advocacy journalism for better cities.
# The Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) cleared another hurdle in crafting its growth plan for the next 20 years with a scoping report published today. The report summarizes comments and lays out the Comphensive Plan alternatives that OPCD is studying in greater detail. It also keeps the five alternatives that the department| The Urbanist » Advocacy journalism for better cities.
# Single family zoning will soon be a thing of the past for most Washington cities thanks to passage of statewide “missing middle” housing reform this state legislative session. This monumental success was thanks in large part to lawmaker heroes named below and the far-ranging coalition that coalesced behind the bill. The state legislature took up| The Urbanist » Advocacy journalism for better cities.
# The bill could result in a builder's remedy to force resistant jurisdictions to allow apartment construction. Representative Jessica Bateman (D-22, Olympia) has filed a brand new bill that seeks to push local governments to increase housing production, especially those that have set up a regulatory gauntlet to restrict homebuilding. Dubbed Washington's Housing Accountability Act, House| The Urbanist » Advocacy journalism for better cities.
# Seattle has grown much faster than planners and policymakers predicted, which means our planning framework needs to be nimble. Every ten years Seattle makes a major update to the Comprehensive Plan, used to make rules about how we plan for growth and what kind of housing can be built where. The last time we had| The Urbanist » Advocacy journalism for better cities.
