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A Fairer Election System in Alaska Helped More Independents Win Office 

Find audio versions of Sightline articles on any of your favorite podcast platforms, including Spotify, Google, and Apple.

The demographics of the Alaska Legislature looked slightly different after the 2022 election. Alaskans sent more Independents to Juneau than ever before. More Millennials won office as the years-long retirement trend among Baby Boomers continued. The share of women legislators held about steady. Racial diversity ticked up modestly.

We wanted to know whether Alaska’s first-time use of open primaries and ranked choice general elections affected any of these demographic changes.* Given the multiple factors involved and the very small sample size of one set of election results, the job seemed futile. The exceptionality of 2022 showed itself early with the unexpected death of Alaska’s longest-serving Congressman, and it persisted for reasons other than the debut of Alaska’s election system. The 10-year redistricting process reshaped legislative boundaries and put 19 of 20 Senate seats, along with all House seats, on the ballot (normally, Senators serve staggered 4-year terms and House members serve 2-year terms). The open seat in Congress triggered a special election. And a record number of incumbents chose not to run again. Attributing all the new faces and dynamics in Juneau to the election system would overlook these and a host of other factors that influenced who ran and how voters made their selections.

Still, we decided to check out the data. We found open primaries combined with the ranked choice general election most obviously influenced political diversity in the legislature. But when it came to age, gender, and race, nationwide demographic shifts toward greater diversity that predated the system appeared to exert more significant effects. The system probably didn’t do much to improve diversity in these cases but also did not appear to disrupt preexisting trends. Nor did it significantly alter the Independent/right-leaning dynamic of the House and the Senate. Its virtue lay in providing Alaska’s many Independent-minded voters a way to express their nuanced, non-binary political views.

How we did our analysis 

To measure diversity in the Alaska legislature, we gathered data in four demographic categories tracked by the National Council of State Legislatures. They were political party, age, gender, and race. We then analyzed legislative classes from 2008 to 2022 and the factors most likely to have shaped their demographic makeup, including the following: 

  • The debut of Alaska’s voter-approved election system of open primaries and ranked choice voting;  
  • New political boundaries from the latest round of redistricting changing the constituencies of some seats; 
  • An unusually high number of veteran legislators choosing not to run for a variety of reasons (e.g., family considerations, health issues), making way for an unusually large freshman class; 
  • Normal generational turnover; 
  • Shifts in political culture and societal norms; 
  • Quality of candidates and campaigns; and 
  • Buzzworthiness of candidates at the top of the ticket. 

Independents have more representation than ever  

More Independents serve in the Alaska legislature today than at any point in the state’s history, with six members of the House eschewing party labels. The growth in representation by Independents did not meaningfully alter the longstanding political order. In both chambers, Republicans maintained the majority they’ve held since the 1990s, and no Independents won seats in the Senate.  

Nearly 60 percent of Alaska voters are Independents, meaning they self-identified as “nonpartisan” or “undeclared” or opted not to choose any political affiliation when signing up to vote.1“Nonpartisan” means that a registered voter is not associated with or does not support the policies or interests of a political party. “Undeclared” means that a registered voter does not wish to declare an affiliation.
 The Independent identity of Alaska voters takes many forms: the pro-oil development Democrat is no anomaly here; nor is the Republican pushing to spend billions in state budget dollars on the Permanent Fund Dividend (or the “PFD,” which researchers from the University of Chicago and elsewhere have studied as a form of universal basic income, a concept with socialist roots).  

And yet, until 2022, Independent representation in the legislature never broke single-digit percentages. The advent of open primaries, which allowed all candidates and all voters to participate in a single primary, regardless of party, did away with election laws that were stacked against candidates outside the two major parties. And ranked choice general elections gave Independents the leeway to run with little risk of becoming the “spoiler” candidate. The new system, more than any other factor, was the most obvious game-changer for political diversity in the Alaska legislature.  


Before 2022, political parties ran Alaska’s primary elections and tended to treat Independents as second-class candidates. The Republican party barred Independents from its primaries entirely, and so did Democrats until 2018. In those years, Independent candidates wanting to run in a primary had to give up their political identity by registering with the party running the primary they wanted to enter. Maintaining their Independent brand meant missing out on the primaries and having to gather enough signatures to qualify for the general election ballot.  

Former Representative Paul Seaton (Homer) was a longtime Republican legislator. In 2018 he ran as a nonpartisan candidate because, he said, he felt the party “had gone off track and was not working on solutions.” In the previous session, as co-chair of the House Finance committee, Seaton had angered a panoply of voters because of his work to shield Alaska’s budget from the booms and busts of the oil market by diversifying sources of revenue. He annoyed a large cross-section of constituents, including those who opposed a fiscal plan that would have increased taxes on oil companies, introduced a state income tax, and reduced the PFD. 

“There was the Republican primary and the everybody else primary, and I ran in the everybody else primary.” –Former Alaska State Rep. Paul Seaton


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Seaton’s stance on state budgeting put him at a disadvantage, but so did Alaska’s election laws, which obfuscated his identity as an Independent. Democrats allowed third party candidates and Independents into their primaries that year, while Republicans did not. If Seaton wanted to participate in a primary, he had to go on the Democratic ballot. “There was the Republican primary and the everybody else primary, and I ran in the everybody else primary,” Seaton said.  

He ran unopposed in the primary and went on to face a Republican in the general, where ballot labeling presented another hurdle for Independents. Seaton had an (N) for “nonpartisan” next to his name, along with the far more prominent label of “Alaska Democratic Party Nominee,” determined by the Division of Elections. (Pre-open primary, the division’s choice of ballot labels was a contentious issue.) Though Seaton had been a Republican for 50 years, voters in his district, where former President Donald Trump won easily in 2016, could be excused for thinking he had switched parties. Unsurprisingly, Seaton lost the seat he had held since 2003.   

A few Independent legislators nonetheless managed to win elected office under the old system, starting with Rep. Dan Ortiz (Ketchikan) in 2014. Since then, their numbers have remained so low that name-checking all of them isn’t a huge stretch: Rep. Jason Grenn (Anchorage) ran successfully as an Independent in 2016, joining Ortiz in the House. Grenn then lost in 2018, while Ortiz won.  

(In 2019, two former Democrats, longtime legislator Bryce Edgmon (Dillingham) and John Lincoln (Kotzebue) changed their party affiliations to undeclared while serving in the legislature. Though they did not actually run for office as Independents, they are included in the chart below.) 

In the election years we analyzed, Ortiz and Grenn were the only Independents to run and win until 2020, the first year candidates had ample prep time to run in the Democratic primary. Even then the numbers were modest, with four Independent legislators winning office. Two of them, Edgmon and Calvin Schrage (Anchorage) ran in the Democratic primaries. Ortiz and Josiah Patkotak, a right-leaning Independent, appeared on the general election ballot only. 

In 2022, Alaska voters returned to open primaries and, for the first time, used ranked choice voting in the general election. Open primaries, where all candidates of all political affiliations run on a standard ballot accessible to all voters, equalized the playing field for Independents. Electoral reforms that lowered barriers for candidates and voters outside the major parties appear to be the likeliest explanation for the record high number of legislative Independents. The previous round of redistricting a decade ago did little to change the political diversification of the legislature. And Independents have been a large voting bloc in Alaska for years. The new system finally gave them a real chance to run and win. 

Millennials gained and Boomers waned (but remain powerful)   

Generational diversity in Juneau hit a low in 2014, when Boomers held 46 of the legislature’s 60 seats. Since then, the number of Boomers has declined every election, and an influx of Generation Xers and Millennials has led to more age diversity in the legislature.2The years used for each generation are: Generation Z (1998-present), Millennials (1981-1997), Generation X (1965-1980), Baby Boomers (1946-1964), Silent (1928-1945) and Greatest (before 1928).
 In 2014, two Millennials served in the legislature. In 2022 voters sent 17 Millennials to Juneau and Boomers made up less than half the legislature for the first time during the eight legislative sessions we examined.  


The gradual exit of Boomers masks the fact that they continue to win an outsized number of seats relative to their share of the population. In 2020, for example, Boomers won half the seats in the Senate and House combined, while making up just 28 percent of Alaska’s voting age population, according to American Community Survey data from the US Census. This isn’t surprising. Older lawmakers with years of experience have had ample opportunity to accumulate the connections, institutional knowledge, and seniority that afford them staying power.  

Alaska isn’t the only political body where Boomers hold disproportionate sway. In the US Congress, the median age in 2023 is higher than it’s ever been. And Boomers are a large cause for the increase. Boomers won 48 percent of seats in the current Congress, while making up about 21 percent of the general population.  

Natural aging of the population seems the likeliest cause of changes in generational makeup of the Alaska legislature. The steady drop in the number of Boomers began in 2016, well before open primaries and ranked choice voting went into place and several years before the COVID-19 pandemic kicked off a nationwide retirement boomlet. An unusually high attrition rate among incumbents due to redistricting, burnout, family obligations, pandemic stress, and the financial demands of maintaining a second household in Juneau, created more opportunities for new lawmakers to win office but didn’t noticeably alter the overall rate of generational transition. 

Open primaries and a ranked choice general election appeared to have little positive or negative effect on generational succession. Running for office is a daunting undertaking for younger candidates who lack the political experience, financial backing, and networks necessary to run a successful campaign. Youth-oriented political action committees, role models, and targeted encouragement may prove more effective than the election system in boosting the number of Millennials and Gen Zers holding political office. 

Women need more than electoral reforms to win  

An enduring but incorrect Alaska stereotype is that men vastly outnumber women. That’s certainly the case in the Alaska legislature, where just one-third of lawmakers who won office in 2022 were women. But among registered voters, the ratio of men to women is nearly equivalent. In October 2022, 49 percent were women and the rest were men.  

Open primaries and ranked choice voting didn’t appear to influence or alter the gradual, years-long trend of more Alaska women winning legislative seats. The presence of women lawmakers in Juneau has grown steadily over the past 8 election cycles. From 2008 through 2014, women never won more than about 28 percent of seats in the legislature. From 2016 through 2022, women have held at least 30 percent of seats. 


Nationwide, more women have moved into powerful political roles, regardless of the type of election they’re running in. The number of women in Congress is at a historic high, according to a report in October by the Congressional Research Service. And women have made political gains elsewhere: the vice presidency, the president’s cabinet, governorships, mayor’s offices, and city councils. Two of the three members of Alaska’s Congressional delegation are women, with voters sending Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska’s senior senator, and Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, a House freshman, to Congress in 2022. “There’s no clear narrative” as to why women are making gains, according to Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. 

Alaska has a higher percentage of women in its legislature than Congress does, but among state legislatures, its record of electing women is exactly average, ranking 25th in 2023. Fourteen states and territories have over 40 percent of their legislatures represented by women, while Alaska’s legislature is 33 percent women, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. 

The share of women in the Alaska legislature representing both major parties is identical, with nine Republicans, nine Democrats, and two Independents. A woman, Rep. Cathy Tilton, a Republican, is House Speaker. Sen. Cathy Giessel, also a Republican, is Senate Majority Leader of a bipartisan majority that includes all but three senators. Data shared by Glenn Wright, associate political science professor at the University of Alaska Southeast, shows a decade-long trend in the Alaska legislature of Republicans fielding the higher intra-party percentage of women. In 2020 and 2022, however, Democrats reclaimed the top spot.3This is important because Republicans typically hold more seats than Democrats, so comparing the percentages of women within each party gives us a more accurate view of which party is doing better at gender diversity.
  

Women are underrepresented in US politics for all sorts of reasons, from sexism in media coverage of politicians to sexism on the campaign trail to sexism in state legislatures. A RepresentWomen study posited that ranked choice voting makes elections more women-friendly by reducing concerns over vote-splitting between women candidates, incentivizing more cooperation between candidates, and lowering the financial barriers for all candidates. More equitable election policies can help, but other changes, targeting barriers from the psychological to inadequate support for raising a family, are also necessary. 

Men are 40 percent more likely than women to field suggestions to run from close contacts, including colleagues, spouses, or family members. And men are two-thirds more likely than women to receive encouragement to seek office by an elected official, party leader, or political activist according to a 2022 report by the Brookings Institution.  

“Potential candidates’ self-perceptions are consistent with messages they receive—or don’t—about running for office,” the report said. “Still today, we operate in a world where people see men as candidates. And men see themselves that way. Significantly fewer women live in that world.”  

The Alaska legislature is more racially diverse than ever  

Of the eight election cycles we analyzed, voters sent the most racially diverse group of lawmakers to Juneau in 2022.4 Of the demographic categories we examined, race is by far the hardest to define. People are complex and may not fit exactly into any single category. We relied on previous candidate statements, news articles, campaign websites, and other searchable information to determine the race of Alaska’s legislators.
  Six identify as Alaska Native, three are Black, two are Asian, two are Hispanic, and one is Multiracial. They come from across the state: Southeast Alaska; Anchorage; the North Slope hub community of Utqiagvik; and Dillingham, in Southwest Alaska. 


Legislators of color tend to be Democrats, underscoring Republicans’ lower success in expanding the racial diversity of their candidates. The trend occurs nationwide. While the GOP added more people of color in Congress, it still lags Democrats. In Congress, 80 percent of lawmakers of color are Democrats, while 20 percent are Republicans. Similarly, in Alaska, two lawmakers of color are Independents, three are Republicans, and eight are Democrats. Two of the three Republican legislators are Black. Both Independents are Alaska Native, with one leaning left and the other leaning right. 

White politicians still make up an outsized majority of Alaska legislators, holding 77 percent of seats while whites make up about 65 percent of the population. Alaska Natives remain underrepresented. They make up close to 20 percent of the voting age population, according to Alaska Native voting advocacy groups, but hold only 10 percent of legislative seats. Still, that 10 percent marks a high point in the eight election cycles we analyzed for Native representation in the legislature.  

Open primaries and ranked choice voting coincided with the election of the most racially diverse class of legislators in the years we analyzed. While demographic change seems a highly likely reason for the increase in racial diversity in Alaska’s legislature, it doesn’t explain everything.  

True, younger generations in America are more diverse than older ones. And, as we explained above, Millennials appear to be replacing Boomers. This would seem to indicate that racial diversity is somehow tied to generational succession. And yet, until 2022, racial diversity in Alaska’s legislature remained essentially flat during the years we studied, even as the number of Boomer legislators decreased and Gen Xers and Millennials took their places.   

Does that mean open primaries and ranked choice voting in Alaska did somehow open the door for candidates of color? Possibly. But there’s also the marked shift in the way Americans view race that began during the pandemic with the police murder in 2020 of George Floyd. Political participation by people of color increased as a result. What’s more, across the country, states with election systems different from Alaska’s, including California,5California uses open primaries, but only two candidates can move on to the general election, rather than four, as is the case in Alaska. And unlike Alaska, California does not use statewide ranked choice voting.
 Oregon, and Minnesota, also elected their most diverse legislatures ever in 2022. We expect additional elections will offer a more complete picture. 

For better or worse, Alaska’s legislature hasn’t changed dramatically  

Alaska has had only one election using open primaries and ranked choice voting, and it appears to have had positive to neutral effects on four of the main markers of diversity tracked by the National Council of State Legislatures. While some may feel disappointed that the system didn’t cause a dramatic uptick in diversity, incremental change did occur. The system advanced political diversity by allowing more Independents to run; and it didn’t interfere with natural generational change, didn’t appear to help or hurt women, and possibly played a role in more seats being won by people of color. 

Is the legislature as diverse as it should be? Probably not. Boomers still hold an outsized influence, both in numbers and power, relative to their share of the population. (Podcaster Andrew Halcro, himself a Boomer, goes so far as to label these legislators the “tyrannical generation.”) Women continue to be vastly underrepresented. And so do people of color.  

On the other hand, the legislature does accurately reflect Alaska’s Independent/right-leaning politics. Anyone arguing that the system was rigged to send a wildly different cohort of lawmakers to Juneau has only to look at the makeup of the two chambers. The state Senate has a 17-member bipartisan majority and appears to be making good on its promise of “compromise and consensus.” Meanwhile, the House shifted rightward, veering into the tumult that has come to define some branches of the Republican party. The dynamic of the two chambers is a mirror image of Alaska’s most recent legislatures, where the House had a bipartisan majority and the Senate leaned conservative. 

Are they still haggling over the Permanent Fund Dividend? Yup. Are culture wars over sexual orientation and gender still a thing? Yes. Are school budget talks still hugely difficult and sticky? Absolutely. All this is to say Alaska’s legislature didn’t undergo massive change in 2022 when it came down to the business of lawmaking. But by choosing open primaries and a ranked choice general election, Alaskans gave themselves a more democratic method than they’ve ever had of picking the people for the job.  

Thanks to Nakeshia Diop for collecting the copious amounts of data that are the heart of this article. 

The Northwest Needs More Midsize Solar

Find audio versions of Sightline articles on any of your favorite podcast platforms, including Spotify, Google, and Apple.

To meet climate targets, the Northwest needs to build unprecedented amounts of wind and solar power and the electric transmission lines to carry it.  

Easier said than done.  

Utility-scale renewable projects—like acres-large solar installations or miles-long corridors of wind turbines—and the electric wires that connect them to cities and towns increasingly inspire opposition. They can require vast tracts of land, and, if not planned responsibly, can threaten sensitive habitats, prime farmland, and tribal rights.  

In light of these challenges, some advocates argue that the region could avoid building transmission lines and large renewable projects if it instead dramatically scaled up what is known as “distributed solar.” Unlike their utility-scale counterparts, distributed solar projects generate electricity close to where it is consumed—say, on home and business rooftops, over parking lots, on small, unused fields—and bypass the transmission grid altogether. Distributed solar typically ranges in size from small, 0.001 megawatt (1 kilowatt) projects to medium, roughly 5-megawatt (MW) projects. For comparison, utility-scale solar farms in the United States tend to have installed capacities of 100 to 200 MW. The biggest farms in the country top 500 MW. 

Graph showing how distributed solar is only 1% of utility solar

Unlike other parts of the United States, though, distributed solar has limited potential to offset the need for new transmission capacity in Cascadia. That’s in large part because most places in the region that are on the receiving end of transmission constraints need most of their power in the winter, when the sun is weakest. The biggest exception is southern Idaho, which, with its strong sun and high demand for summer power to irrigate farms, could be a prime candidate for scaling up distributed solar.    

Even so, distributed solar, especially when combined with storage, can help decarbonize Cascadia. Local generation helps the region hedge against the risk that we simply won’t build new transmission lines and utility-scale renewable projects fast enough. But the Northwest is lagging in installing the most promising type of distributed solar infrastructure: midsize projects in the range of 1–5 MW. Idaho and Washington are especially behind. Policymakers in these states would be smart to lift project size limits to net metering and look closely at community solar, which has catalyzed midsize solar growth in other states, including Oregon.1Net metering refers to systems in which owners of distributed solar resources, like rooftop solar arrays, get reimbursed from their electric utilities for any electricity they produce that they don’t use (less any electricity they buy from the utility). The rate at which owners are reimbursed depends on the state.
  

Distributed solar holds the most potential for offsetting transmission buildout in the few “summer peaking” parts of Cascadia  

In the Pacific Northwest, as elsewhere, more transmission capacity is needed to 1) meet rising electricity demand associated with electrifying everything from cars to stoves and 2) replace the supply of power that today comes from burning gas or coal. We’re especially short of transmission lines to bring clean power to cities and towns in western Oregon and Washington and southern Idaho.  

The argument that distributed solar can prevent transmission buildout is that by producing more power close to the people who use it, you won’t need to generate as much far away and thus won’t need to build transmission lines. Plus, you’ll lose less electricity in transit. Indeed, in 2018, California’s independent grid operator recommended canceling 18 transmission expansion projects to save $2.6 billion. It cited reductions in projected electricity demand thanks to increasing levels of rooftop solar and energy efficiency. (And note that distributed solar isn’t the only way some places could prevent or defer building transmission lines. Others include upgrading existing lines, increasing energy efficiency, rolling out demand response programs, and installing distributed storage—all with different potential in different locales.2Demand response programs encourage electricity customers to reduce or shift the timing of their electricity consumption to better match available supply. They can reduce peak electricity demand.
 These are not the focus of this article but are topics Sightline will analyze at a later date.) 

Graphic showing the path of electricity, from generation, transmission, to distribution.

However, the vast majority of the Northwest’s transmission-constrained areas use most of their power in the winter, when sun in those areas is weakest. This unusual “winter peaking” pattern happens because of the region’s famously temperate summers, which have historically rendered air conditioning unnecessary, and high reliance on electric resistance heaters. Of the 11 load service areas west of the Cascades in Oregon and Washington, none sees its electricity demand peak in the summer, according to the Bonneville Power Administration’s (BPA) 2021 Transmission Report.3Load service areas are cities or groupings of cities or towns that are either geographically or electrically near to one another. Together their demand forms the electric “load” of the area.
 (Portland is “dual-peaking,” meaning its highest demand for electricity occurs in both summer and winter.) Distributed solar in winter-peaking areas of Cascadia can do little to offset the grid buildout necessary for meeting peak power demand, since it does not produce enough energy at that time of year.4 Grids are built to handle the highest electricity demand a given area has, even if that peak happens only a few hours a year.
 

Distributed solar in most of western Oregon and Washington also can’t sufficiently replace retiring fossil fuel resources. To help illustrate why, the chart below shows the energy generation and consumption patterns of some friends’ Seattle home with rooftop solar. The home is indicative of what we can expect in future: it is fully electric and relies on a high-efficiency heat pump to both warm in the winter and cool in the summer. From May to October, the output of the solar panels (shown by the green line) entirely offsets the family’s electricity use (shown by the orange bars). But from November through April, the home requires at least some power from its electric utility. (The home also likely relies on the grid for nighttime power in the summer since it is not equipped with battery storage.)   

Chart showing the two peaks of energy use, and how distributed solar can provide support

My friends’ electric utility is Seattle City Light, which is powered overwhelmingly by hydropower. But if they lived in that same house in say Olympia or Bellevue, Washington, which have similar climate patterns to Seattle, they would be served by Puget Sound Energy (PSE). PSE relies on gas and coal for about half of its generating capacity. That means it needs to build or buy new renewable power to meet a large chunk of winter power demand as it drops its carbon-spewing gas and coal power. The story is the same for the other investor-owned electric utilities in the region, which depend heavily on fossil fuels.5Investor-owned utilities (IOU) are for-profit monopoly utilities regulated by a state’s public utilities commission (PUC). In Washington and Oregon, they are subject to clean electricity laws. Investor-owned utilities serve about 80 percent of Idaho’s electric customers, 75 percent of Oregon’s, and 43 percent of Washington’s, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Other types of utilities are Public Utility Districts, rural electric cooperatives, and municipal utilities (like Seattle City Light), which, in the Northwest, primarily rely on hydropower from the Bonneville Power Administration. Electricity mix data for investor-owned utilities: Oregon IOUs; Puget Sound Energy; Avista; Idaho Power; PacifiCorp.
 Distributed solar doesn’t produce enough power in the winter in western Washington (or western Oregon) to completely fill that gap. Instead, most of the new power will have to be found in places with year-round strong sun or wind. And we will need big power lines to carry that juice. 

That said, distributed solar could help mitigate some transmission constraints in the few summer-peaking areas in Cascadia. Southern Idaho already uses most of its electricity in the summer because of air conditioning and irrigation pumps. Plus, it’s a solar hotspot: the conditions are superb for solar power generation. Even here, though, in order for distributed solar to offset building more transmission, the area would need to meet further conditions, including ensuring the distribution system has adequate capacity to hook up the projects.  

Notably, too, several other areas are likely to transition from winter to summer peaking as the climate changes and more northwesterners install air conditioning and as high-efficiency heat pumps replace electric resistance systems. BPA expects Portland and Salem in Oregon to become summer-peaking by the end of the decade. And the Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia area may flip from winter to summer peaking in 20 years, according to Sightline’s analysis of BPA’s data. (BPA likely bases these forecasts on historical energy use patterns, not a modeled future of widespread electrification and fossil fuel retirement, so they may underestimate future energy demand. Nonetheless, these trends paint an indicative picture of a changing seasonality of energy use.) Distributed solar could help render unnecessary some new transmission capacity associated with meeting this growing summer demand. But it can barely contribute to the larger challenges of meeting colossal increases in year-round power demand that will come with widespread electrification and backfilling the gap left by retiring fossil fuels.  

Distributed solar is still a good idea 

So, is distributed solar a waste of time and money? Not at all. It’s true that large, utility-scale arrays of solar collectors are the cheapest and most efficient way to harness the sun. It’s also true that transmission lines can reduce over-build of new energy projects by allowing regions with different energy profiles to share resources. (That’s part of Idaho Power’s stated rationale for the controversial Boardman-to-Hemingway transmission line connecting eastern Oregon and western Idaho: it should help southern Idaho meet its early summer peak with excess hydropower from the Pacific Northwest rather than with new generating resources.)  

But utility-scale renewable projects and transmission lines are increasingly difficult to site and build. Take, for example, the opposition in Benton County, Washington, to the proposed 1,150-MW Horse Heaven Hills wind, solar, and storage facility or the controversies with the Boardman-to-Hemingway transmission line, which has been in development for 20 years. Several counties in south central Washington have imposed moratoriums on solar development, though the state can override them.  

“Siting is probably the biggest challenge for utility-scale solar,” Jack Watson, Policy and Regulatory Affairs Director of the Oregon Solar and Storage Industries Association (OSSIA) told Sightline. Both Oregon and Washington are going through multi-stakeholder processes to identify land suitable for solar development that will cause the least harm to farmland and natural habitat and will respect tribal rights.  

The 150-MW Lund Hill Solar Farm in Klickitat County, Washington, the largest in the state as of this writing. The county recently imposed a solar moratorium.  

The 150-MW Lund Hill Solar Farm in Klickitat County, Washington, the largest in the state as of this writing. The county recently imposed a solar moratorium.

In the meantime, distributed solar, which largely avoids siting and land-use challenges, can keep us marching toward clean energy goals.  

“Distributed solar can act as a hedge,” Sashwat Roy, Technology and Policy Manager at the advocacy group Renewable Northwest told Sightline. “Unless and until we figure out the siting and interconnection backlog, distributed solar and storage seem like low-hanging fruit,” he said. Distributed solar can offer other benefits too, especially when combined with storage, he emphasized, like resiliency in the case of a power outage caused by a wildfire. Indeed, some Northwest utilities are planning more distributed solar than ever, some naming grid constraints as a primary motivator.  

The big opportunity is midsize solar 

Prioritizing midsize commercial scale solar projects in the range of 1–5 MW can help alleviate the high costs of distributed systems. These projects, like the one IKEA installed on its rooftop in Renton, Washington (see below), cost roughly twice the amount of utility-scale ones, while small, residential-scale solar systems cost roughly triple. In fact, 1–5 MW projects can actually be more cost-effective than utility-scale systems when installed in certain locations. Residential rooftop solar, by contrast, is unlikely to ever beat utility-scale solar on cost-effectiveness. And, of course, by virtue of their larger size, thousands fewer 1–5 MW systems are required to help clean the grid than if we relied on residential rooftop solar alone.  

IKEA’s 1.13 MW rooftop solar installation in Renton, Washington. Photo Credit A&R Solar

IKEA’s 1.13 MW rooftop solar installation in Renton, Washington. Photo Credit A&R Solar

“If you really can’t build transmission [lines], you can talk about doing more generation locally. The best way to do that is not residential rooftops usually,” Dr. Severin Borenstein, director of the Energy Institute at University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, told Sightline. A friendly critic of distributed solar and net metering in California, he emphasized that flat, roof-mounted or ground-mounted systems are most cost-effective. That’s because developers of these projects can buy panels in bulk, reducing costs, and also install trackers to follow the sun, upping energy output. This technology is not possible on tilted home roofs.  

But Idaho and Washington are skimping on these midsize systems, trailing Oregon. Idaho’s capacity from moderately sized systems is just 1 percent—and Washington’s just 11 percent—of Oregon’s, as shown by the chart below.6Sightline used size as a proxy for distributed solar. These figures include all systems under 5 MW in each state, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration.
 Midsized projects, from 1–5 MW, are in yellow, and small projects, less than 1 MW, are in blue. 

Chart showing solar energy distribution

And none of the Northwest states meets its full potential, according to a 2016 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.7Not all, but most distributed solar today is on rooftops. The technical potential for all distributed solar would be even higher than this if it included ground-mounted systems.
 Even a cursory glance at the area near the Washington IKEA reveals dozens more similarly large commercial roofs, none with solar panels, as shown below.  

gif of Google Maps showing solar panels on top of the IKEA in Renton, WA -- and none on the surrounding buildings

Idaho and Washington restrict midsize solar growth in two big ways  

It is impossible to trace solar growth in Oregon to a single policy. Plus, barriers to distributed solar in Oregon persist, including building codes and upgrades required to the distribution system, Jack Watson of OSSIA told Sightline.  

But two key policies in Oregon that encourage moderately sized systems are notably absent in Idaho and Washington. And the Washington legislature missed an opportunity to pass bills in the 2023 legislative session that could have helped the state catch up.  

1. Idaho and Washington exclude midsize systems from net metering 

Net metering refers to systems in which owners of distributed solar resources, like rooftop solar arrays, get reimbursed from their electric utilities for any electricity they produce that they don’t use, less any electricity they buy from the utility. The rate at which owners are reimbursed depends on the state. It’s a tool that has enabled distributed solar growth in much of the United States. But in Washington and Idaho, only residential or commercial systems with a capacity up to 0.1 MW (100 kW) can participate. In Oregon, by contrast, the limit is 20 times higher for commercial systems, or 2 MW. Other states sharing Oregon’s higher limits include New York, Illinois, and Florida.  

By not allowing projects greater than 0.1 MW to net meter, Idaho and Washington disincentivize owners of buildings with larger roofs, like supermarkets or warehouses, or farmers with fallow fields, to install solar panels.  

“Having worked for a solar installer for 13 years, we weren’t developing any projects [in Washington] above 100 kilowatts [0.1 MW],” Markus Virta, the president of Washington Solar Energy Industries Association (WASEIA) told Sightline. He believes the lack of a Washington market for midsize systems helps explain why Puget Sound Energy, the largest electric utility in Washington, is now on its third attempt to source the 80 MW of non-residential distributed solar it needs by 2025 to stay on track with meeting Washington’s Clean Energy Transformation Act. 

“If you really can’t build transmission [lines], you can talk about doing more generation locally. The best way to do that is not residential rooftops usually.” –Dr. Severin Borenstein, director of the Energy Institute at University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business


In Idaho, many farmers are interested in installing solar panels to help meet their summer power needs, but the financing doesn’t pencil out with the current 0.1 MW net metering limit, according to Brad Heusinkveld of the Idaho Conservation League.  

The Washington legislature had a chance to raise the state’s net metering limit to 2 MW in the 2023 legislative session with House Bill 1427, which Representative Sharlett Mena sponsored.8The 2-MW limit would have applied to projects in investor-owned utility service areas. The limit would be 200 kW in consumer-owned utility territories.
 But many utilities in Washington and elsewhere oppose net metering because the arrangement typically requires them to purchase electricity at a higher rate than they would on the wholesale market.  

Utilities also generally make their case against net metering by arguing that it is unfair to low-income customers, who utilities say are subsidizing the cost of rooftop solar for wealthier homeowners. The evidence for this cost-shifting is mixed at best (see here, here, and here for skeptical takes on utilities’ claims about cost-shifting and here for arguments that it is indeed a concern). There is no data showing cost-shifting has occurred from net metering in Washington. Nonetheless, HB 1427 took these worries seriously and would have convened a multi-stakeholder working group to develop a fair “value of solar” estimate to support low-income customers, much like other states have done, that would replace the current net metering policy.  

In any case, the electric companies fought the bill, and it never made it to a vote on the House floor.   

2. Idaho and Washington hold back community solar 

A second policy that has facilitated growth of midsize systems in Oregon and elsewhere is “community solar.” Community solar programs allow multiple individuals or businesses to subscribe to a solar project that is located near but not on their property. They then earn money on the energy from the sun that the system sends back to the grid. 

Community solar policies have helped several states drive midsize solar installations. In the United States, community solar projects have a median size of 1 MW. Minnesota passed a community solar law in 2013 and now boasts 834 MW of community solar, 60 percent more capacity than all the solar in Washington today. Oregon established its community solar program in 2016, and projects began launching in 2021. The program will add at least 161 MW of community solar to the state, and each project can be up to 3 MW in size. (See examples of some Oregon Community Solar project sites here.) 

Idaho, meanwhile, has no community solar program, and Washington has one in name only. Washington’s program, which the legislature passed in 2022, is missing key ingredients that have allowed other states’ programs to take off. Most importantly, utility participation is optional. This means that if any entity other than a utility—say, the Washington nonprofit Olympia Community Solar—wants to set up a community solar project, it can’t offer potential subscribers credits on their electricity bill, limiting the ability to scale projects. 

Unlike Washington’s program, Oregon’s requires the state’s three investor-owned utilities, Portland General Electric, PacifiCorp, and Idaho Power, to purchase power from community solar projects. Nonprofits and private sector developers, including the Oregon Clean Power Cooperative, Sulus Solar, and Conifer Energy Partners, are building the projects. Utility customers who subscribe to the projects receive credit directly on their electricity bills for the energy flowing from the solar arrays.  

Without a similar requirement, midsize community solar projects are unlikely to expand much in Idaho or Washington. Among investor-owned utilities in these states, only Puget Sound Energy (PSE) in Washington has an active community solar program. (Avista has one tiny community solar project in Spokane that was fully subscribed in 2015.) PSE plans to up its community solar capacity to about 25 MW by 2025. But that’s still just 15 percent as much expansion as Oregon’s utilities plan over the same time period. Plus, PSE pays customers who subscribe to its program less than half the rate that the Oregon Public Utilities Commission requires Oregon utilities to pay.  

In the 2023 legislative session, Washington state Representative David Hackney introduced House Bill 1509 to develop a community solar program in Washington more akin to Oregon’s and other states’. It would have allocated 50 percent of the program to low-income customers, who today are largely shut out from rooftop solar and who suffer disproportionately high energy cost burdens. Like HB 1427, HB 1509 took fire from Washington’s three investor-owned electric utilities, who again would lose money from the arrangement. The bill never made it out of committee. 

Distributed solar for Cascadia: A worthwhile solution, but it can’t succeed alone 

As transmission constraints mount in Cascadia and opposition grows to utility-scale renewable projects, many are understandably hoping distributed solar can provide an alternative—a way to meet climate commitments without long transmission lines or big wind and solar farms. But for much of the Northwest affected by transmission constraints, distributed solar by and large won’t get us out of the bind. The combination of our unusually high winter electricity demand, huge new demand for electricity, and retirement of fossil fuel-based generation sources serving winter load precludes that. Possible exceptions to this rule include southern Idaho, which enjoys strong sun and needs a lot of summer power, and some cities in Oregon. 

Nonetheless, distributed solar can help Pacific Northwest states continue cleaning up the grid, as a complement to utility-scale projects and transmission expansion. Today, Cascadia is nowhere close to tapping its potential for distributed solar, and Idaho and Washington lag woefully in midsize systems. State leaders looking for ways to meet climate goals in light of limited transmission capacity would be smart to look again at lifting barriers to net metering and community solar. If they do, the region’s energy future could be a great deal brighter.   

Montana’s Big Bipartisan Housing Deal

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UPDATE 05/19/23: All of the bills listed in this article have been signed into law by Governor Gianforte.

In the last three weeks, Montana rocketed through a housing agenda that would give most US states a nosebleed. 

Duplexes: legal. Backyard cottages: legal. Discretionary design review: ended. Residential parking: optional after the first space. Commercial zones: they’re also apartment zones now.  

How’d it happen? A bipartisan coalition united around a simple idea: when in a housing shortage, let cities build like they used to.  

A series of housing supply bills, expected to be signed by Governor Greg Gianforte, would restore the ability to build accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and duplexes in cities across Montana as well as permit multifamily housing in commercial zones. Other bills shielded new housing from “not in my backyard” challenges and delays. All these bills gained wide bipartisan support in the Republican supermajority legislature. 

Combined, the adopted policies will change how Montana grows for decades to come. Currently 70 percent of residential land prohibits or penalizes multifamily dwellings in Montana’s 13 most populous cities. These exclusionary zoning laws were commonly adopted during the last century, restricting less expensive types of homes like middle housing and ADUs, and pushing new construction to the outskirts of cities—to sprawl.  

It wasn’t always that way. Senator Greg Hertz (R) recounted that there used to be more housing types when he was growing up, from apartments above the garage to triplexes. “It was all over the place,” he said. “We don’t have that anymore. Local governments zoned all that out.”  

Regulatory reform efforts have most commonly been fought in blue states with rapidly growing metro areas. But Montana is showing that, when a housing crisis looms and affects community members of all political stripes, victories can come from anywhere. 

montana housing Bills that died in 2021 came back, with more friends and higher stakes 

2023 had already been such a success for housing reform in Montana that when CityLab’s How YIMBYs Won Montana was published at the end of April and two major housing supply bills had run into hurdles, the writer still dubbed the state’s overall pro-housing policy successes a “Montana miracle.” By now, even those two bills have sailed through the legislature. A miracle indeed. But it took both an intensified crisis of affordability and a careful cross-partisan collaboration.  

This is a 180-degree turn from the last legislative session in 2021, when these same ideas quickly were shot down. Just two short years ago, bills to allow ADUs and middle housing options never made it out of their first committees. 

What changed? First, the housing crisis in Montana has soared to new heights. In the past five years the average home price in the state has nearly doubled, increasing from about $239,000 in 2018 to $428,000 today, according to Zillow. That is the second highest price spike in the United States, after neighboring Idaho. The state legislature in Montana only meets every other year, adding to the pressure for action to head off the affordability crisis. 

“We can’t afford to wait any longer,” Sen. Hertz testified on the ADU bill he brought back after failing to get support 2021. But this year, the same committee that had killed the bill voted 7-2 in support.  

Another shift: a well-organized set of stakeholders respected by both parties. The driving force behind the year of housing was a strong bipartisan coalition of advocates, first convened by the Governor on a housing task force. Hertz had served on it, as well as pro-housing Missoula Democrat Danny Tenenbaum. Nonprofit organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Shelter Whitefish sat next to free-market driven think tanks like the Frontier Institute and Mercatus Center. A few months before the 2023 legislative session started, the unlikely bedfellows published a report recommending regulatory changes to boost housing affordability. The organizations also built buy-in on their own sides of the aisle.  

“We were able to go to mostly Republicans and talk about free markets the importance of property rights. They were able to go to folks on the left and talk about climate and social impacts,” Kendall Cotton, the president and CEO of the Frontier Institute told CityLab. “It doesn’t break down on normal partisan lines. Advocates shouldn’t silo themselves on the normal partisan lines.”

Trusted voices on the left, including the Blackfeet Tribe, Forward Montana, and Shelter Whitefish, testified in support of legalizing a variety of multifamily housing, which tends to cost less than comparable detached homes.  

“Duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes are some of the most affordable types of housing available,” testified Izzy Milch, of youth-led advocacy organization Forward Montana. “And they’re currently banned in much of our state, which is leading to urban sprawl, increased prices, and decreased access to housing for the people who need it the most.” Debates on the bills largely sidestepped specific affordability requirements for new housing that have tripped up Democrats elsewhere, like the transit-oriented development bill that died in Washington state this year. The bills were kept simple, their final versions clocking in at just four pages each. 

Even the sweeping Montana Land Use Planning Act, SB 382, which changes local housing approval processes and forces cities to adopt a number of land use reforms, became stronger throughout the session instead of being watered down. 

Much like “California-style zoning,” a foe both sides trotted out as the bogeyman to quash, the zoning restrictions at the heart of Montana’s housing crisis are unfortunately widespread in plenty of other states and provinces across the continent. Fortunately, though, the pace of political change that unfolded in Montana over the past few years can also spread far and wide. It took a few dozen people at the heart of this effort, working across party lines and for the common interest of their residents, to change the conversation in Big Sky Country. Where else could pro-housing advocates do the same to promote abundant, lower-cost housing options? 

Montana’s Big 2023 Housing Bills 

SB 245 – Sponsored by Senator Daniel Zolnikov (R) 

Legalizes multifamily and mixed-use buildings in existing commercially zoned districts in cities with more than 5,000 residents. Zoning in those jurisdictions may not require more than one parking space per household anywhere. This will make a significant difference for cities like Billings, where Zolnikov is from, which currently requires two parking spaces for each household even in mixed-use buildings. 

SB 528 – Sponsored by Senator Greg Hertz (R) 

Possibly the most permissive statewide accessory dwelling unit (ADU, also known as “backyard cottages” and “bonus homes”) legalization in the United States. This bill allows one ADU on every lot where single family homes are allowed, up to 1,000 square feet or 75 percent of principal unit (whichever is smaller). Cities will no longer be able to mandate off-street parking, owner occupancy requirements, or impact fees. 

SB 323 – Sponsored by Senator Jeremy Trebas (R) 

Legalizes attached or detached duplexes anywhere where single family homes are permitted in cities with more than 5,000 residents.  

SB 406 – Sponsored by Senator Jeremy Trebas (R) 

Limits local building codes from being more stringent than what the state requires. 

SB 382 – Sponsored by Senator Forrest Mandeville (R) 

No discretionary approval required for projects that comply with local comprehensive plans. Municipalities must adopt five reforms from a list that includes options ranging from increasing building heights to reducing parking requirements and impact fees.  

SB 407 – Sponsored by Senator Shane Morigeau (D)

Limits design review to items that affect public health or safety. Variance requests moved to staff-level approval.

How the Washington Legislature Burst the Housing Abundance Dam

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Washingtonians just won big on housing abundance. In a landmark session, lawmakers passed a suite of bills to create more home choices, at more affordable prices, in communities all across the state. These measures, large and small, get at the core problem: the acute shortage of homes that has blown up prices and rents and caused a statewide affordability crisis. To make it official, Governor Inslee will sign the bills at a ceremony today in Seattle.

Thanks to these new laws, over the decades ahead, tens or even hundreds of thousands of people will be able to live in more walkable, lower-carbon neighborhoods, in homes they can afford, close to opportunity, close to jobs, schools, transit, and parks—close to each other. Washington just took a big step away from sprawl and segregation and toward compact communities that welcome more neighbors of all ages, races, ethnicities, and incomes, where cars are an accessory to life and not its organizing principle.

The biggest win for housing abundance in Washington’s cities is HB 1110, which legalizes fourplexes or duplexes in most communities. Close behind is HB 1337, legalizing two accessory dwelling units per lot and lifting numerous restrictions.

On top of those two biggies, bills passed that:

Below we describe how we got here and what these measures’ impact could be. Then we discuss each bill in detail. 

How 2023 became the “year of housing”: Coalitions, champions, and greater public understanding 

It’s no small task to pass state bills that defy typical local zoning, the rules that have for nearly a century codified the “American dream” of a big house with a lawn and driveway. Up until this year, only Oregon and California had pulled it off. Washington can now join that elite club. Montana, of all places, earned membership this year, too. And Colorado currently has a strong bill in play. Meanwhile, statewide zoning reform has stalled in New York and Arizona.

In the previous four years Washington only managed to pass a few narrow bills, no matter the good efforts of a handful of pro-housing legislators. This year, the dam finally burst under compounding pressure from multiple factors:

  • More constituents seeing or personally experiencing the worsening crises of housing affordability and homelessness; 
  • Increasing consensus that the core problem is a housing shortage and that restrictive zoning is the main culprit;  
  • Superhero champions, notably Rep. Jessica Bateman on the middle housing bill and Rep. Mia Gregerson on the ADU bill; 
  • Bipartisanship: All of the above-named bills passed with strong bipartisan votes and could have died without Republican support, notably led by Rep. Andrew Barkis (Republican opposition was a big factor in the recent failure of New York’s big housing bill, for example); 
  • A pro-housing coalition that was stronger and broader than ever before (see for example this coalition letter organized by Senator Yasmin Trudeau and Lt. Governor Denny Heck); and 
  • Last but not least, the legislature’s always capricious swirl of internal process and politics. 

Impact of housing abundance wins: Helping to close the homebuilding gap 

Washington’s housing abundance wins couldn’t come soon enough. Over the past few decades the state has dug itself into a deeper and deeper hole on housing, and it will take all these actions and more to get out of it. By one estimate, the deficit rose from 64,000 homes in 2012 to 140,000 in 2019.

Officials project that Washington needs to add an average of 55,000 more homes per year over the next 20 years. In recent years, the state has been permitting around 45,000 homes per year, give or take. So if the status quo continued, the state still would fall behind by roughly 10,000 homes per year.

The lack of precedent for statewide zoning reforms makes homebuilding projections difficult. Best available data suggest that the middle housing and ADU bills together could make up for at least half of the 10,000-home-per-year gap between what Washington has been building and what it needs to build (more on projections below). The boost in homebuilding that could result from the measures that reform building codes and accelerate permitting is even harder to estimate. But in a housing crisis, every bit helps.

All told, the package of bills that Washington passed this year is a monumental leap toward alleviating the state’s housing shortage and creating more homes that more people can afford, in neighborhoods where they can thrive.

That said, this year’s wins won’t be sufficient. State lawmakers have more work to do next year. The top three policy candidates would be legalizing apartment buildings near transit, lifting parking mandates, and allowing homeowners to split their lots.

Read on for a closer look at the 2023 bills. 

Visualize housing abundance: Fourplex illustration by Alfred Twu for Sightline.

 

The housing abundance bills that passed in 2023, explained 

Saying yes to middle housing 

On the passage of HB 1110, I wrote that it’s “hard to overstate what a sea change this is for the state of Washington taking proactive action on zoning reform to create more housing choices.” State lawmakers have never before come anywhere close to passing a law with such a dramatic effect on local zoning. On the vast majority of residential lots all across Washington, cities will no longer be able to restrict choice to a single-detached house. The most pervasive and harmful form of exclusionary zoning is a thing of the past.

Most local government officials oppose bills that supersede local control of zoning, and in the prior four legislative sessions the Association of Washington Cities (AWC) effectively led the charge to water down or kill any and all mandatory zoning reform bills. This year, however, the pressure for statewide action became too great. AWC and legislators aligned with the group prevailed on a few compromises that weakened HB 1110, but overall the bill remained strong.

The upshot of what HB 1110 does (more here):

  • In cities with populations of 75,000 more, it legalizes four homes per residential lot, and six per lot if located within a quarter-mile of a major transit stop or if two of the homes are affordable.
  • In cities with populations greater than 25,000 but less than 75,000, it legalizes two homes per lot, and four per lot if located within a quarter-mile of a major transit stop or if one of the homes is affordable.
  • In cities with populations under 25,000 that are located within the state’s largest metros, it legalizes two homes per lot.*
  • Alternatively, cities can comply by authorizing the above allowances on three-quarters of their residential lots, subject to limitations on the parcels included or excluded.**
  • Cities must adopt zoning that complies with the bill within six months of completing their next Comprehensive Plan update. That means mid-2025 for cities in the four-county Puget Sound region, and in following years for other parts of the state.

The version of HB 1110 that passed was weakened from the original in three significant ways:

  1. The Senate Ways & Means committee reduced the requirement from four homes to two homes for cities smaller than 75,000. The bill as it passed the House would have legalized fourplexes in any size city located in a major metro.*
  2. On the floor, the House amended the alternative compliance path to 75 percent of lots, as noted above.
  3. The House Housing committee raised the cap on parking mandates from one space per lot to one space per housing unit.

For comparison, Oregon’s 2019 middle housing bill legalized four homes per lot in cities larger than 25,000 located in the Portland metro; and it legalized two homes per lot in all remaining cities in the Portland metro, and in all cities larger than 10,000 statewide. California’s 2021 bill SB 9 legalized duplexes and lot splitting for all residential lots statewide that are located in an urbanized area or urban cluster as designated by the US Census. 

Officials estimated that HB 1110 will yield an additional 75,000 to 150,000 homes over the next 20 to 30 years in the Puget Sound region, which is home to about two-thirds of the state’s population. Scaled up on a per capita basis for the entire state, the midpoint of that estimate is an average of 6,700 homes per year statewide.

The uptake on home construction legalized by HB 1110 will depend on the details of how local governments implement the zoning changes. If, for example, cities require too much parking or don’t allow multiple-unit buildings to be larger than single-unit houses, uptake will suffer.

Saying yes to in-law apartments and backyard cottages 

Washington’s passage of HB 1337 puts it at the top of the heap for the best statewide accessory dwelling units (ADU) policies in the US (they’re also known as “backyard cottages” and “bonus homes”).

Compared with Washington, California went further on reducing parking mandates but not as far on design standards such as size and height. Oregon took the critical step of completely eliminating parking mandates but was mostly mute on design standards. Montana’s legislature just passed a strong bill that ends parking mandates and lifts all the key barriers but only legalizes one ADU per lot.

Here’s what HB 1337 does (fun fact: it’s nearly identical to the ADU bill Rep. Gregerson first primed in 2019):

  • Prohibits owner occupancy requirements (also known as “renter bans”); 
  • Legalizes two ADUs per lot in any configuration of attached and detached options; 
  • Caps impact fees at 50 percent of those charged on single-detached houses; 
  • Lifts parking mandates on ADUs within a half-mile of a transit stop with 15-minute service; otherwise caps mandates at one space per ADU on lots under 6,000 square feet; 
  • Legalizes an ADU on any lot size that’s legal for a single-detached house; 
  • Establishes that cities allow a minimum size of at least 1,000 square feet; and 
  • Loosens several other restrictions (see details here).

Though it morphed along the way, HB 1337 as passed was overall about as strong as it was when introduced. The original version gave cities flexibility to choose three out of the first four actions in the list above, except that the parking provision completely lifted mandates. The Senate Local Government Committee removed the parking provision but mandated the remaining three actions. Then on the floor, the Senate amended in the parking reductions noted above.

The House pushed out the compliance date from July 2024 to six months after the jurisdiction’s next Comprehensive Plan update. Unfortunately, that’s an added delay of about a year for most of the Puget Sound region and several years of delay in other parts of the state.

The best we can do for a production estimate is a back-of-the-envelope figure based on data from other places that have already adopted similar ADU rules. ADU completions in California increased by about 10,000 per year after all its reforms were adopted. Scaling by relative population, we could expect an average boost of about 2,000 ADUs per year in Washington. As an upper bound, if all of Washington’s urban growth areas saw a per capita increase in ADU production similar to Seattle’s post-ADU-reform boost, that would be about 5,000 ADUs per year.

Saying yes to better building codes 

HB 1042 facilitates adding housing within the envelope of existing multifamily buildings by exempting the added units from parking mandates, density limits, and other regulatory barriers. It enables a commonsense solution for creating more homes relatively quickly and with minimal impact on the surrounding community.

SB 5491 requires the State Building Code Council to develop recommendations for raising the allowed height of apartment buildings with a single stairway to six stories and to adopt those changes by 2026. Single-stair buildings fit well on small urban infill lots and also allow for better light and ventilation because each apartment has an exterior wall on the front and back.

SB 5258 modifies condo laws on construction defect actions and warranties, deposit requirements, and local government planning, and would exempt condo sales to first-time homebuyers from the real estate excise tax. For years, Washington has suffered from a dearth of condo construction, which has worsened the state’s shortage of lower-cost homeownership options.

SB 5058 exempts projects of two stories, with up to 12 units, from building enclosure design and enclosure inspection requirements, both of which add excessive costs to small-scale condo developments.

Saying yes to streamlined permitting 

HB 5412 exempts from State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) review proposed housing developments within urban growth areas that comply with local Comprehensive Plans. SEPA review has become largely redundant with local regulations and adds cost and delay to homebuilding. Worse, it makes it easy for activists to abuse SEPA to block housing through legal appeals.

HB 1293 requires local design review of homebuilding projects to use standards that are “clear and objective” and don’t reduce development capacity. In addition, the review process cannot require more than one public meeting. Capricious design review requirements can drive up the cost of homebuilding by adding delay and uncertainty.

SB 5290 establishes grant programs for local governments to reduce permit review timelines and supports their transition from paper-based to software/web-based systems. Sightline analysis showed that for a typical six-story apartment building, every two months of delay adds development expense roughly equal to the cost of constructing one apartment.

Saying yes to infill housing abundance as a climate strategy 

HB 1181 makes a broad set of changes to the Growth Management Act to address climate change, including a provision for local governments to legalize higher-density housing as a way to meet goals for reducing climate pollution.

Saying yes to record-setting state funding for affordable housing 

Washington’s 2023–25 Capital Budget allocates $570 million for affordable housing, including: 

  • $400 million to the Housing Trust Fund (the highest amount ever), 
  • $60 million to connect affordable housing developments to infrastructure, 
  • $50 million for affordable transit-oriented housing, and 
  • $40 million for land acquisition.

Three bills the Washington legislature should prioritize in 2024 

The following three housing abundance measures died in session but fostered important conversations that will surely come up again next year. They’re strong policies that address several remaining key barriers to abundant housing and could unlock thousands more homes per year.

HB 1245 would have legalized lot splitting, allowing homeowners to sell off part of their house lot for the construction of another house, creating more affordable homeownership choices while also providing financial options for existing owners.

SB 5466 would have legalized more homes and jobs near the state’s biggest transit investments. As introduced, it required cities to allow midsize apartment buildings within three-quarters of a mile from bus stops with frequent service, and larger buildings within a quarter-mile of light rail stations.

HB 1351 would have made parking optional near transit by lifting local mandates for off-street parking in new housing or commercial developments located within a half-mile of transit stops with 15-minute service, and within a quarter-mile of stops with 30-minute service. 

 

*Definition: Contiguous Urban Growth Boundary

HB 1110 was designed to exclude small cities in rural areas and include small cities located within the state’s major metros. The bill applies to all cities, regardless of size, that are (1) part of a contiguous urban growth area that includes the largest city in its county, and (2) in a county with a population of least 275,000.

HB 1110 as introduced legalized four homes per lot in cities that met the two above criteria. HB 1110 as passed only legalizes two homes per lot in those cities.

This map shows Washington’s urban growth areas as designated in accordance with the Growth Management Act. Washington has six counties with populations of 275,000 or more.

**Definition: Seventy-five percent compliance path

HB 1110’s alternative compliance path that allows cities to apply the bill’s density requirements to 75 percent of residential lots includes guardrails to ensure that local choices on which areas to exclude do not compromise equitable outcomes:

  • The excluded 25 percent must include all environmentally critical areas, and all areas delaying the bill’s implementation based on displacement risk or lack of infrastructure. 
  • The excluded 25 percent may not include any areas that historically had exclusionary covenants or where retention of existing zoning would exacerbate racially disparate impacts. 

Parking Reform Legalized Most of the New Homes in Buffalo and Seattle

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What comes after repealing parking mandates? Lots of newly legal homes. Studies from two cities observed that in the years following reform, 60 to 70 percent of new homes would previously have been illegal to build. 

The new data add to the heap of evidence that parking mandates—local rules that ban new homes and businesses unless they have a pre-determined number of off-street parking spaces—are a binding constraint on housing construction. While only a few buildings opted out of providing parking entirely, most new homes in the studies ultimately benefited from the increased flexibility.  

“It isn’t surprising,” said researcher C. J. Gabbe, who authored one of the studies. According to Gabbe, homebuilders have been saying for a long time that demand for off-street parking was lower than what zoning rules required.  

The results suggest that across jurisdictions, the majority of potential future homes are being held back, in part, by parking mandates. Based on little to no data, these requirements limit the number of homes that can be built and increase costs for the ones that are, contributing to a housing shortage that has been decades in the making.  

“Cities of all types stand to benefit from undoing constraining parking policies of the past,” researchers from Buffalo wrote in their findings. In many cities, though, these new homes remain illegal to build. 

Two different cities: Seattle vs. Buffalo 

It’s hard to imagine two housing markets more different than Buffalo, New York, and Seattle, Washington. Seventy years of depopulation and disinvestment have left Buffalo with the oldest housing stock in the United States, with most homes pre-dating World War II. Here, housing affordability hinges as much on the high rate of poverty as a shortage of housing. Reusing derelict historic buildings and vacant lots was a primary goal of Buffalo’s zoning code overhaul in 2017, which eliminated parking mandates citywide. 

Seattle, by contrast, has never been bigger. Since 2010, the population has increased 21 percent. Despite a surge in homebuilding (one in every three homes was built in the past twenty years), population growth continues to outpace construction, creating intense competition and escalating prices. Partway through this building boom, in 2012, the city reduced or eliminated parking requirements in urban centers and near frequent transit stations. 

Both of these cities’ policy changes provided a natural experiment for measuring the effects of parking policy. Researchers in Buffalo collected information on 36 major developments that went through permitting in the two years after its so-called Green Code was adopted. In Seattle, a different team of researchers collected data on 868 new multifamily buildings permitted from 2012 to 2017, accounting for over 60,000 new homes.  

Sightline asked both research teams to look through their numbers to see how many homes were in buildings that would have been illegal before the reforms. Both datasets yielded a strikingly similar answer: more than half of new homes.  

Chart showing the majority of new homes permitted after eliminating parking mandates were illegal under the prior code.
Lifting parking mandates supported already growing construction rates 

The timing of Seattle’s parking reform coincided with an increase in multifamily construction nationally, as the United States recovered from the late aughts’ Great Recession. Similarly, at the time when Buffalo eliminated parking minimums in 2017, people were already talking about Buffalo’s renaissance. New census data confirmed the city is growing again for the first time in 70 years and seeing a record amount of new investment.  

“It’s impossible, really, to tie a specific code change to changes in the market,” explained Brennan Staley, a strategic advisor for Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development. Other local regulations, housing prices, and international finance markets all play a part in the real estate market. Michael Hubner, who works on long range planning in Seattle, agreed: “It’s very difficult to point to a causal relationship.”  

What is clear to Hubner is that the market chose to use the flexibility the city began offering. Not just on the margins, but by a lot. During the first five years after Seattle’s reform, a total of 35,388 new homes in Seattle ended up benefiting from the freedom to not build excess parking. Today, those homes account for 9.4 percent of the city’s entire housing stock.  

Staley pointed out other benefits of the flexible code. “It’s not just the supply of those units that may be increased, but also that there are cheaper units because they didn’t have parking,” he said. One parking space can add over $200 to monthly rents. Even when landlords charge for parking separately, they can’t recoup those expenses and so end up spreading the cost to everyone. Seattle researchers estimated that at $30,000 per parking space, builders collectively saved $537 million in expenses that would have been passed on to future tenants. 

Builders used the new flexibility on parking, while often still providing some 

In both cities, the majority of new buildings still included off-street parking voluntarily. Most people own cars, after all. In Seattle, 70 percent of all new buildings continued to provide off-street parking for residents. Buffalo’s ratio was even higher, at 83 percent of major building projects.  

Chart showing how even with parking mandates, most buildings still included parking
But even those numbers overstate the number of buildings with no parking at all, because it doesn’t account for parking on an adjacent property. The Pardee building in Buffalo is one of six housing projects that was categorized as having no parking spaces. But from the street, the passerby would have no idea that the parking lot and the building are technically on separate parcels of land.  

A “no parking” building in Buffalo. Image from Google Maps. 

A “no parking” building in Buffalo. Image from Google Maps.

Other previously illegal housing developments in Buffalo included a former gas station that transformed into 32 new affordable homes with a bridal shop and gym on the ground floor. On the other side of town, an empty parking lot grew up into a historic-styled main street with ground floor commercial space and 70 new market-rate homes. Both of these buildings included on-site parking, but at lower ratios than what the city had required. 

Buffalo, like many other cities, let builders request special permission to deviate from city-determined parking ratios. In the six-month period before the zoning reform, one in three new homes in Buffalo were permitted through that variance process. Once allowed by right, that ratio flipped, with two in every three homes opting to use the new code’s flexibility. 

All in all, the market only ended up building 20 percent fewer parking spaces than the previous code had required.  

Buffalo’s zoning change re-legalized this new building complex on Seneca Street. Image from Google Maps. 

Buffalo’s zoning change re-legalized this new building complex on Seneca Street. Image from Google Maps.

In Seattle, whose reforms were concentrated in the most urban parts of the city, new buildings provided 40 percent less parking than would have been required before the reform. While that sounds like a dramatic drop, the change merely right-sized parking to match existing demand. In fact, it was exactly in line with a separate 2012 study that had observed 40 percent of the parking spaces in King County, where Seattle is located, never get used.  

The 2020 study of Seattle also found reason to believe that parking flexibility would be useful in other parts of town, too. Forty-three percent of buildings in Seattle still subject to parking mandates built the minimum number of spaces required, suggesting that these projects might have opted to build more homes per parking space if allowed. That also suggests that an unknown number of homes would exist today if not for the parking mandates still in place. 

Lessons for other cities 

For most cities, the chilling effects of parking mandates remain largely invisible. Few builders end up taking on the risk and expense of requesting a variance from zoning codes. But thanks to these vanguard cities, the significance of parking reform is finally coming to light.  

Far from affecting just a handful of buildings, these studies suggest that a wide array of housing projects would use flexibility around parking minimums if given the opportunity. For cities and states searching for solutions to their own housing shortages, eliminating parking mandates is a simple action that seems likely to help create a lot of new homes. 

Anchorage Adopts Model ADU Reforms

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In-law apartments, backyard cottages, and other types of “bonus housing” known as accessory dwelling units (ADUs) just became easier to build in Anchorage, with a remarkable package of zoning code reforms that took effect last month. The reforms signal a new willingness by elected officials here to reverse housing-unfriendly land use rules that have led to a shortage of attainably priced homes, record-high prices, and a one-style-must-fit-all housing market. They also better serve the needs of the city’s changing population, where in the last 20 years the market share of small households (one- and two-person) has grown, and larger ones (three-person or more) has shrunk.  

ADUs, or “bonus homes,” are relatively modest but complete living spaces paired with at least one main unit on the same lot. Anchorage’s amended ADU codes aren’t just significant locally. In aggregate, they put Alaska’s largest city out front nationwide in making it easier to add a home to properties where at least one home already exists. The Anchorage Assembly approved the changes 9–1 in January, with votes on the nominally nonpartisan body coming from both right- and left-leaning members. The mayor’s office also cheered on the removal of regulatory barriers.   

Bonus homes are a throwback to a time when America’s housing market was less burdened by regulation and therefore more affordable. They allow multiple generations of a family to live together, increase property values and income for owners, and give renters more options in desirable neighborhoods near trails, schools, restaurants, and other community anchors. They can help retired and working-age people stay in Anchorage rather than leave for cities where their housing dollars go further.  In neighborhoods that want more walkability, ADUs complement reforms that encourage upzoning, allow homes and businesses to coexist, and turn walking, biking, and public transit into desirable options. 

Bonus homes were trending even before the COVID-19 pandemic drove up demand for more space at home. First-time listings of ADUs across the United States increased an average of 8.6 percent between 2009 and 2019, according to a report from nationwide mortgage finance company Freddie Mac. Dallas, Seattle, and Miami were among the fastest-growing markets. In 2019, Freddie Mac counted 1.4 million single houses in America with permitted ADUs. 

Anchorage’s ADU reforms allow a bonus home in all commercial and residential zones and on all kinds of housing, including large, multifamily buildings. Owners can build a bonus home, or buy a home that comes with one, but no longer have to live on the property. Design-based barriers, including square footage, height, and architectural requirements, were eased or eliminated. The ordinance requires the city planning department to help people navigate the permitting process and start tracking the number of ADUs. Anchorage already did away with parking mandates, another design-related impediment to ADUs, in a separate ordinance last year.    

“Bonus homes” on all kinds of housing 

Most cities limit ADUs to lots with single houses in residential zones. But Anchorage now allows them with multifamily homes, too. The reforms give property owners the option to, say, add a basement apartment to a duplex or a bonus unit in an apartment complex, provided the project meets other zoning requirements. They’re also now allowed on residential property in commercial zones, like parts of downtown and the Fairview neighborhood.  

The original draft ordinance called for allowing ADUs on properties with duplexes, not just single houses. But progressive-leaning Assembly Member Meg Zaletel, who represents Anchorage’s Midtown district, proposed allowing them on all housing types in all residential and commercial zones.  

Zaletel’s amendment effectively makes at least 8,000 properties, from duplexes to triplexes to garden apartments, newly eligible for ADUs, as long as the project meets other zoning requirements. (This very rough and conservative estimate is based on municipal building type data from 2021 provided by Cook Inlet Housing Authority.)   

“This allows an accessory dwelling unit to be created anywhere there is already a dwelling unit on a parcel,” said Zaletel, who is also executive director of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness. “It can include triplexes, fourplexes, sixplexes on up.”  

“There are actually a lot of multifamily buildings out there that have areas for an additional unit. I wish I’d thought of this. I love it.”

–Anchorage Assembly member Kevin Cross


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Anchorage isn’t the first jurisdiction to allow the pairing of ADUs with multifamily homes. California also allows ADUs (sometimes more than one) on multifamily properties. The mortgage industry is taking notice. Previously, Freddie Mac would only buy mortgages on properties with ADUs if the main dwelling was a single house. In June 2022, the lender revised its policies to buy mortgages to properties with either a duplex or triplex and one ADU (but no more). 

Assembly member Kevin Cross called Zaletel’s amendment an “excellent idea.” A commercial real estate and loan broker representing conservative-leaning Eagle River, Cross has seen potential bonus home conversions, from old garages to storage areas, go unbuilt because of zoning restrictions.   

“There are actually a lot of multifamily buildings out there that have areas for an additional unit,” Cross said. “I wish I’d thought of this. I love it.” 

The Assembly passed the amendment 10–0. Whether growth actually occurs on these newly eligible properties will depend on the effects of other zoning restrictions, market demand, architectural limitations, and the ability of prospective builders to obtain financing. 

Owners don’t have to live on the same property as their aDUs 

Before the reforms, owners planning to build a bonus home or buy property with an ADU had to sign a sworn statement promising to live on the land for more than six months of each year. No other housing type in Anchorage, aside from rooming houses, had an owner occupancy requirement. Owners of single houses, duplexes, and triplexes on up could already rent out units on their property without having to live there. 

The Assembly took the logical step of voting to eliminate owner occupancy requirements for properties with ADUs, opening up to 10,500 single-family rental homes in Anchorage to bonus home development. (Other rules in the zoning code may make some percentage of these lots ineligible.) Based on similar policy changes in other cities, a small fraction of the owners of these properties will actually add a bonus home. Some of the new units will become short-term rentals. Some will never go on the rental market. And some will add to the housing stock as long-term rentals.  

Owner occupancy requirements assume that renters, specifically those living in an ADU, need special oversight and that the owners are uniquely qualified to provide it. But as appellate judges in a 2019 New Jersey owner occupancy dispute pointed out, “the status of a house’s occupant as a property owner rather than as a tenant is no guarantee that he or she will be a law-abiding and considerate neighbor.” The judges also noted that deed restrictions, such as owner occupancy laws, “cannot functionally delegate to a private landlord a portion of the municipality’s police powers.” On those and other grounds, courts in New Jersey, North Carolina, and other states have struck down owner occupancy requirements. Eradicating the owner occupancy requirement eliminates the risk of such litigation for Anchorage.  

Like Anchorage, other cities have repealed owner occupancy requirements as part of a package of ADU reforms. So, it’s hard to know exactly how many ADUs will be built as a direct result of this particular policy change. Seattle, which also did away with owner occupancy requirements in 2019, among other reforms, issued permits for a record 513 bonus homes in 2020. The number continued to rise, according to the city’s 2021 ADU annual report. And in 2022, Seattle built more ADUs than single houses for the first time. Anchorage, with less than half the population of Seattle and much higher building costs, will likely see a smaller number of ADUs built.  

The elimination of owner occupancy requirements will also help the city keep a more accurate count of ADUs. The city had been tallying them using signed owner occupancy affidavits and assessor data. It was an imperfect system; anyone who intended to build an ADU had to sign an affidavit well before the project was complete. Following the reforms, the Planning and Private Development departments added a new ADU checkbox on incoming building permits. Allowing permit applicants to flag projects that include bonus homes should vastly improve the quality of municipal ADU data. 

Builders have more design flexibility  

Pre-reform, the city already allowed ADUs on 69,000 single homes in Anchorage occupied by the owner. But by the city’s best estimates, only 1.4 percent of those properties, or about 1,000 in all, have bonus homes. (This statistic includes the city’s estimate of unregistered ADUs.) Moving to less prescriptive design standards, like lifting a prohibition on ADU entry doors facing the street, could allow ADUs on more lots. 

An ADU could begin its life as a short-term rental, morph into an office, and transform into long-term housing for elderly relatives, adult children, or renters.


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Greater design flexibility makes bonus homes less complicated to build and gives owners more options to change uses over time. An ADU could begin its life as a short-term rental, morph into an office, and transform into long-term housing for elderly relatives, adult children, or renters. Anchorage’s reforms also may make possible bonus home projects that would have been architecturally unfeasible under the old code.  

Realizing that homeowners who aren’t professional builders may want to take on an ADU project, the ordinance requires city planners to help people understand the permitting application and review process. So far, the Planning Department has produced an overview sheet highlighting changes to the code and may update it based on questions from the public. The rules occasionally differ for attached ADUs (AADUs), those units that are part of the main dwelling, and detached ADUs, like backyard cabins and above-garage apartments. And there may be some differences between ADU zoning code in Eagle River, the Anchorage Bowl, and Girdwood. The table below focuses on old and current ADU code in the Anchorage Bowl, where most residents live.  

ADU Regulatory Changes for the Anchorage Bowl

Old Code (pre-January 2023)Current Code (2023)
Entry LocationFor attached ADUs, the entry door cannot be on the same side as the primary dwelling but may be located on non-street-facing sides. Detached ADUs are exempt.Bonus home doors may face the street.
Number of BedroomsMaximum of two bedrooms.No limit on the number of bedrooms.
Maximum HeightMax height is 25 feet for a detached ADU.ADUs above detached garages can now be up to 30 feet in height, while other freestanding bonus homes and those attached to the main house remain limited to 25 feet.
Maximum Gross Floor AreaClass A districts (urban): size may not exceed 900 sq. ft. or 75 percent of the total area of the primary home. Class B districts (rural): size may not exceed 900 sq. ft. or 35 percent of the total area of the primary homeIn all districts in the Anchorage bowl, the gross floor area of the ADU, not including any related garage, shall be up to 900 square feet or 40 percent of the total gross floor area of the principal dwelling unit, whichever is greater. An ADU shall not exceed 1,200 square feet.
SetbacksFor detached: The ADU shall, on all street frontages, either have a front setback of at least 40 feet, or be at least 10 feet behind the street-facing façade of the principal dwelling unit. An ADU shall not encroach into any required setback, except that an ADU may encroach into the side or rear setback abutting an alley. Detached ADUs taller than 15 feet shall adhere to a 10-foot side setback abutting a neighboring R-1 or R-1A lot.All ADUs now have the same setback rules as the principal dwelling and may encroach into the side or rear setback abutting an alley.

But there is an exception: Detached ADUs taller than 15 feet must adhere to a 10-foot side setback abutting any neighboring lot in single-house residential districts (R-1 and R-1A).
Architectural StandardsIncluded the following purpose statement: “Ensure that ADUs maintain and are compatible with the appearance and character of the principal residence, lot, and neighborhood.”Removed the purpose statement on appearance and character.

Separately, the removal last year of parking mandates citywide means developers and homeowners, not the city, make the call on whether paving a spot for parking is necessary. Previously, the city required one parking space per ADU, with on-street parking qualifying if the traffic engineer approved. Owners could also have the parking requirement waived by signing a no-car covenant.  

Time to match Anchorage’s housing options to its residents’ needs 

A significant number of people in Anchorage are living in and paying for square footage that exceeds their actual needs. It’s like being forced to buy a triple-decker burger when all you really want is a side of fries.


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With Anchorage’s population shrinking, it’s natural to ask why the city should change its land use codes to add more infill housing, like ADUs and multi-unit homes. The short answer: Anchorage households have gotten smaller, while its homes have gotten larger, according to data from the US Census. That means a significant number of people in Anchorage are living in and paying for square footage that exceeds their actual needs. It’s like being forced to buy a triple-decker burger when all you really want is a side of fries. 

Consider this: Between 2000 and 2020, the share of one- and two-person households in Anchorage grew. At the same time, the share of households with three or more people shrank. And yet, Anchorage’s housing market continued to focus on the one-unit-per-lot model—the largest, most expensive housing type. In 2000, 46 percent of occupied homes were single detached houses. Twenty years later, the market share of these houses had swelled to 58 percent.  

This is a problem because millions of people in different life stages across four generations are competing for smaller homes on smaller lots. Arthur C. Nelson, who holds urban planning professorships at both the University of Arizona and University of Utah, notes that Boomers and Gen-Xers are downsizing as they age, but Millennials and Gen Z don’t want large homes on large lots. They want to own or rent the same smaller homes on smaller lots or attached homes, especially those in walkable communities, Nelson said.  

“The changing demands for the types and location of homes of four generations are going to overwhelm the current and projected supply of homes in those categories unless we change the ways we’re planning and building for that future,” Nelson said  

Allowing more bonus homes is a small step toward right-sizing the square footage and the price of housing in Anchorage. So was getting rid of parking mandates. Let’s hope the Assembly and the mayor keep the momentum going and enable homebuilders to give more Anchorage residents the housing they actually want.  

Ranked Choice Voting Would Help Oregonians Vote for their True Favorite

UPDATE 06/30/23: The Oregon legislature passed a measure on June 25, that lets voters decide whether to adopt ranked choice voting in statewide elections, including those for president, US House and Senate, and governor. If approved by voters, the measure would also give cities, school districts, and other local entities in Oregon the choice to adopt ranked choice voting in their elections. The question will appear on the November 2024 ballot.  

UPDATE 03/24/23: Public comment on HB 2004 was heard by the House Committee on Rules on March 16 and March 21. The bill is now waiting for a work session and recommendation from the Committee to advance.

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Oregonians deserve the ability to vote for candidates that share their values and represent their communities, but the state’s current election system too often discourages voters from doing that. Almost every election comes with a discussion of “spoiler candidates,” voting for somebody who’s “more electable,” being sure not to “waste your vote,” or even “a vote for Candidate X is a vote for Candidate Y.” Voters are often wary of voting for a less popular candidate they might prefer, worrying that doing so may just help their least favorite major-party candidate win. 

But a new bill sponsored by Speaker of the Oregon House Dan Rayfield, a Democrat representing Corvallis, could allay voters’ calculations about spoilers.1Corvallis and surrounding Benton County both currently use ranked choice voting for some elected positions.
HB 2004 would let voters choose whether to adopt ranked choice voting, also called instant runoff voting, in primary and general elections for state and federal office.2President and Vice President, US Senator, US Representative, Governor, Secretary of State, State Treasurer, Attorney General, and Labor Commissioner.
If voters opt to reform the election system in 2024, Oregon elections would no longer be limited to selecting a single candidate (though they could choose just one if they wanted to). Instead, voters would be free to rank candidates in order of preference.3For the nonpartisan Labor Commissioner, there would be a single ranked choice general election and no primary. Currently, this position has a nonpartisan top-two primary followed by a general election.
 If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first preferences, ballots go to further rounds of counting where last-place candidates are eliminated and their voters’ later choices are considered, continuing until one candidate has over 50 percent of the vote among the remaining candidates. 

An example ranked choice voting ballot with instructions for the voter and a grid of bubbles for six candidates and four rankings. This voter ranked Terry Tea Party first, Larry Libertarian second, Ronald Republican third, and Deborah Democrat fourth.

Voters would also get to decide whether the Oregon Secretary of State’s office should provide guidance on implementation for jurisdictions adopting ranked choice voting for their local elections. This would ease some of the burden for cities and counties looking to follow in the path of Benton County, Corvallis, Portland, and Multnomah County. 

Ranked choice voting beats Oregon’s current pick-one voting system on a few key measures, particularly in contests where voters have more than two candidates to choose from (as they do in almost every state election). Here are five reasons voters win out with the option to rank candidates on their ballots:  

1. Winners earn stronger bases of support 

Pick-one elections often work fine for elections with just two candidates in the running: voters select their favorite, and the person with more votes wins. But things get tricky when voters have three or more candidates to choose between.4 Or even two candidates and a write-in option.
 Maybe only 40 percent of voters cast their ballots for the winner, while two contending candidates each receive 30 percent. Or maybe there are ten candidates, and the winner comes out with support from only 15 or 20 percent of voters. When the top candidate has a plurality (the most votes) but not a majority (more than half of the votes), more voters voted against the winner than for them. 

This happens all the time in Oregon. Of the seven gubernatorial elections since 2000, four saw the winning candidate finish with less than 50 percent of the vote.5Of course, that doesn’t mean that these winners are illegitimate. If voters are only able to report their single preferred candidate, the candidate with the most votes winning is definitely a better result than a candidate with fewer votes winning. But Oregon can do better.
 In 2022, with high-profile nonpartisan candidate Betsy Johnson drawing nine percent of the vote, Tina Kotek won the race for Governor with only 47 percent of voters supporting her. 

It’s even worse in primary elections. Oregon’s Republican primaries for governor since 2000 usually saw nine or ten candidates,6Democrats typically had fewer primary candidates and ended up with a majority winner in this period. In four of those seven primaries, an incumbent Democratic governor ran for reelection.
 and in only one race did a winner receive a majority of the vote.7In 2014, State Representative (and eventual Secretary of State) Dennis Richardson took 66 percent of the primary vote against five political newcomers.
 2022 was a particularly extreme example of this, with 19 candidates running; Christine Drazan came out on top but garnered only 23 percent of the vote. But say those other 77 percent of voters really didn’t like Drazan, and voters would have jointly preferred another candidate even if their first choice lost. Those 18 other candidates split the anti-Drazan vote, and the Drazan supporters, a small minority overall, got to pick their favorite, overriding the majority.8Plenty of commentators diagnosed this phenomenon in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries as well, won by Donald Trump.
 

Ranked choice voting would help that majority coalesce around a single candidate, mitigating vote splitting among multiple similar options. Since Drazan wouldn’t be immediately elected in the first round of counting, later rounds might show that a stronger candidate had the support of more voters. Or they could show that other voters did support Drazan, giving her a clearer base of support heading into the general election. By counting voters’ later choices once their first choice has been eliminated, ranked choice voting helps identify stronger candidates that are supported by more voters. That means stronger party nominees, happier voters, and officeholders that know they’ve appealed to Oregonians. 

2. Minor-party candidates don’t invert results 

Pick-one voting is also heavily vulnerable to spoiler candidates, a specific type of vote splitting where a minor candidate siphons enough voters away from the leading major candidate closest to their platform that the major candidate loses the election. This happened quite famously in the 2000 presidential election in Florida when Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, whose voters generally preferred Democrat Al Gore over Republican George W. Bush, received nearly 100,000 votes and Bush beat Gore by just over 500 votes. 

Closer to home, the 1990 Oregon gubernatorial election saw anti-abortion independent Al Mobley draw 13 percent of the vote, likely from voters who otherwise would have supported Republican Dave Frohnmayer, leading to the election of Democrat Barbara Roberts with the support of only 46 percent of voters. And in Maine, far-right Governor Paul LePage won his two elections when voters split between a left-leaning independent and a Democrat. This was one major impetus behind Maine’s ballot measure moving the state to ranked choice elections. 

But just like vote splitting more generally, ranked choice voting helps deal with spoiler candidates sensibly. The minor candidates are eliminated in early rounds because they received the fewest votes, and their voters’ later choices are counted to see which remaining candidate is preferred by a majority of voters. A minor candidate with only a few points of the vote won’t throw the election to a different major candidate. 

3. Voters can choose their honest favorite 

Due to a (very sensible) fear of slim plurality winners and spoiler candidates, the pick-one system incentivizes many voters to cast their ballots strategically, picking a candidate they see as electable rather than the candidate they like the most—somebody they think can win, not somebody they think should win. And campaigns take full advantage of this, spending chunks of their time and money on arguments about feasibility instead of making the substantive case for their candidate. I can’t even count the number of pro-Tina Kotek ads I saw last fall that said “I like Betsy Johnson, but she can’t win” or “a vote for Betsy Johnson is a vote for Christine Drazan.”9Despite my best efforts, I wasn’t able to find any videos online of these ads. If you know of any, please shoot me an email! jay@sightline.org
 

Ranked choice voting changes this dynamic entirely. Since their second choice will count if their first choice is eliminated, voters can support a less popular candidate without “taking votes away” from a more popular candidate. Maybe the first round of that Florida election looks the same, with Nader receiving two percent of the vote, but the second round of counting, when Nader voters’ second choice votes are tallied, puts Gore over the top. Or you can honestly vote for Betsy Johnson first and still know that if she loses in the first round, your vote will count for Tina Kotek in later rounds. 

4. More representative candidates can run and win

Thanks in large part to vote splitting, voters and candidates in a pick-one system know they must act strategically, angling to end up with a least-bad outcome. Voters often judge women as “less electable” than men, pushing women candidates more often into the trap of feasibility and strategic voting. And candidates often must decide even before entering a race whether their presence would lead to vote splitting and help elect a minority-preferred contender. This frequently applies to less established third-party candidates, women, and people of color. In Chicago’s mayoral election last month, the chair of the City Council’s Black Caucus publicly called for some candidates to drop out to avoid splitting the vote among Black candidates. 

When communities can better coalesce around their preferred candidates under ranked choice voting, those candidates can worry less about electability or vote splitting. That likely means opportunities for more women, people of color, and minor candidates to run and earn votes with lower likelihood of throwing the election to a less-preferred winner. One study found that in the Bay Area, women were more likely to win elections in ranked choice cities than in cities that had not adopted ranked choice voting. In 2006, San Francisco used ranked choice voting to elect a new Supervisor from the majority-Asian District 4, and four Asian candidates ran against two white candidates. While no candidate had more than about a quarter of the vote in the first round of counting, large numbers of second- and third-preference votes from supporters of other Asian candidates in the race helped put Ed Jew over 50 percent in the final round. Even if votes were split among those Asian candidates in round one, ranked choice voting helped those voters to join forces with their second- and third-choice votes behind a candidate of their choice, even with multiple candidates running. 

Better voice, better choice 

Ranked choice voting holds a lot of promise for Oregonians, helping to mitigate the current pick-one system’s high potential for vote splitting without placing heavy limitation on voter choice and candidate entry. Voters can expect more winners who’ve received votes from a majority of voters, a greater range of choices on their ballot, and officeholders more likely to represent their preferences. Candidates win by running campaigns more focused on the issues, dodging negative rhetoric and arguments about electability. HB 2004 is a major opportunity for the state to support more responsive democratic outcomes. 

CLARIFICATION: We have revised the article to clarify that Oregon voters would need to approve the use of ranked choice voting. When Sightline originally published this article, the bill had not yet been amended to put these election reforms up to a vote of the people. 

Thanks to Research Assistant Nakeshia Diop for contributing research to this article. 

Video: Housing Solutions Are Climate Solutions

What do land use rules that keep home prices and rents high in most cities have to do with climate change?  

The fact is that the zoning rules prevalent in most cities in the United States—rules for land use that restrict what kinds of homes are allowed—not only drive up housing costs but also drive more sprawl, longer, costlier commutes, more traffic, more toxic runoff from roads, and more climate-warming pollution.

Screengrab of an animation showing car exhaust building under a bridge

Sprawl amounts to fossil fuel infrastructure  

In Washington state transportation is the largest source of global warming pollution. And toxic runoff from traffic on our roads is the biggest water polluter in the Puget Sound area. In most cities, around three-quarters of residential land is reserved only for the biggest, most expensive kinds of homes—homes that gobble up all the convenient, transit- and job-rich areas. These rules force sprawling development to meet housing needs, rather than allowing infill housing near jobs and transit, locking us into more driving and more exhaust from cars. They keep people from living in the communities where they work and hampering their freedom to walk, bike, roll, stroll, or ride transit more often.  

As national leader for climate policy solutions, KC Golden, put it, “local zoning laws in most of our cities today represent a de facto mandate for harm: More sprawl, more pollution, more driving, and limits on anything but the most expensive and resource-intensive housing.” 

Climate justice and housing justice go hand in hand 

Climate justice and housing justice are linked. Bans on moderately –priced housing were enacted historically across the country with the aim to exclude people of color. Discriminatory residential zoning rules—like the ones that ban modest home types in sought– after, conveniently –located, close-in neighborhoods—still segregate Washington’s communities by race and income today, dictating who has access to opportunity, jobs, schools, homeownership and wealth-building. These are the same rules that promote sprawling development, require more driving, and contribute to climate pollution from exhaust—low-income and BIPOC residents are more likely to be pushed farther from jobs and to bear the brunt of unhealthy, expensive, time-consuming commutes. In Washington state, as in many other places around the country, air pollution disproportionately harms communities of color. 

Lifting restrictions on middle housing is an important step to correct the legacy of redlining and exclusionary downzoning in our communities, including disparate health impacts from traffic, driving, and pollution.  

Solutions for climate and affordability: More homes, all shapes and sizes, in our cities 

Cities and states can undo the restrictive zoning rules that lock neighborhoods into big, expensive houses, more roads, more traffic, and outsized carbon footprints.  

Saying “yes” to more homes of all shapes and sizes, near jobs, shops, schools, and transit—a range of home choices, like backyard apartments, duplexes, triplexes, and apartment buildings—will go a long way to curb sprawl and cut climate pollution. It will ensure more people can afford to live in the communities where they work and where their families and friends are.  

Climate and affordability advocates unite! 

Our Homes4WA video, adapted for Washington state from a California YIMBY production in collaboration with Ruben DeLuna Creative, makes the housing and climate connection in 90 seconds.  

Take a look, and spread the word among your networks! We can solve this challenge when more climate solutions champions join with housing affordability, housing justice, and homelessness solutions champions to get the job done!

 

What Washington, DC, Can Learn from the Other Washington about Climate Policy

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by the Niskanen Center, authored by Kristin Eberhard, the Center’s Director of Climate Policy. Prior to joining Niskanen, Kristin was the director of Sightline’s climate and democracy programs. She continues to serve as a Sightline senior fellow. 

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Some insiders in Washington, DC, have given up on carbon pricing. Across the country in the state of Washington, advocates had for a while done the same, after more than a decade in which numerous carbon pricing bills collapsed in the Legislature and not one but two carbon pricing ballot initiatives crashed and burned at the polls. But just a few years after these disappointments, the Evergreen State put in place what veteran climate journalist (and state resident) David Roberts termed the nation’s most ambitious carbon pricing law.

The pioneering environmentalist Denis Hayes, founder of Earth Day, hailed the measure, saying, “Finally, we have a bill that addresses climate change and reduces air pollution while enjoying support from much of the state’s business community, organized labor, environmental groups, tribes, social justice organizations, farmers, and religious leaders.”

How did Washington climate policy go from lead balloon to bubbling success? And what should climate advocates in DC take away from it? For one, legislators can accomplish a lot when they focus on working together and solving longstanding issues.

Policy designed for IPCC goals

In 2021, the Washington legislature passed the Climate Commitment Act, giving teeth to its recently passed greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals. Those goals had been set in line with recommendations from the  UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: a 45 percent reduction by 2030, 70 percent by 2040, and 95 percent/net-zero by 2050 (see Figure 1). The Climate Commitment Act caps emissions at these levels and enforces the cap by requiring emitters to use a limited pool of allowances. The state will distribute some allowances to electric and natural gas facilities and manufacturing facilities, and auction the rest to raise revenue that can then be invested in accelerating emissions reductions and delivering other public benefits.

The program will cover 75 percent of Washington’s GHG emissions and will raise around $500 million per year in revenue. Some have called it the “gold standard” in state climate policy.

Figure 1: Washington’s declining cap on GHG emissions

Sources: NCEL and WSDE

Feeling the heat

Most Washingtonians are concerned about climate change and say they want climate action. Intense fire seasons in the Pacific Northwest in recent years may have added urgency to their concerns. Washington voters in 2018 gave Democrats control of the state House and Senate while continuing a trend of reelecting Governor Jay Inslee, a climate hawk, by ever-widening margins. His two-percentage-point edge in 2012 jumped to more than four points in 2016 and became a nearly seven-point advantage in 2020 after his presidential and state campaigns focused on a climate platform.

Figure 2: Election results for Washington House, Senate, and Governorship

Legislators roll up their sleeves

Electing Democrats paid off for voters who wanted climate action because, once they gained control of both houses, Democratic legislators set about passing several climate and clean energy laws. In 2019 they passed an act to decarbonize the electricity sector by 2045, efficient building and appliance targets, and hydrofluorocarbon limits. In 2020 they passed a zero-emission vehicle standard, a low-carbon fuel standard, and the updated climate goals.

These successes helped lawmakers build confidence and momentum towards the bigger goal of economy-wide pricing. Representative Joe Fitzgibbon summarized the impetus behind this whirlwind of climate and clean energy legislation, saying, “If you’re not in a place to push for a carbon price, push for whatever the best sounding complementary policy is, because everything we do to ratchet down emissions makes the next thing more doable.” From his strategic post as head of the Senate Environment Committee, Senator Reuven Carlyle (D-Seattle) posited that starting with “a sector-specific approach” paved the way for “economy-wide pricing.” Once we passed the 100 percent [renewable energy mandate], it opened the acknowledgment, I think, within political circles that big legislation was possible.” Past failures were in the past. Washington legislators were building on their success with sector-specific legislation, working their way up to an economy-wide price.

In 2021, they passed that “big legislation,” an economy-wide cap-and-invest bill and a companion environmental justice bill. Cap-and-invest here means cap-and-trade, but the emphasis is on the investments in part because there is expected to be minimal trading as all entities will be able to get the best price at the state-run auction, rather than through trading.

The cap-and-invest act won votes from 81 Democrats, including Senator Tim Sheldon (D-Mason County), a rural Democrat who caucuses with the Republicans. All 60 Republicans voted against, along with five progressive Democrats, (in some cases for the latter because they favored a different bill with a higher carbon price that was perceived as further left).

Though the Climate Commitment Act didn’t garner any Republican votes, Republicans came to the table to negotiate and pass a follow-up bill in 2022 that made some fixes to the original bill. They have also sponsored bills to determine how the revenue would be spent—effectively buying into the program and helping secure its long-term future.

The cap-and-invest program that legislators put together is broadly similar to California’s but with several changes to avoid problems that California has experienced. As Carlyle said, “We looked at California and tried to learn the lessons with humility.” In particular, they noted passionate objections to offsets’ role in California’s program. California allows facilities to use offsets in place of compliance allowances, thus exacerbating an already problematic overallocation that puts too many allowances in circulation, undermining the mandated reductions. As a result, the state has failed to achieve the emissions reductions it desired. Washington, in contrast, will remove allowances from the auction whenever an offset is used for compliance, thus preventing offsets from replacing emissions reductions. This policy choice softened the left’s opposition to carbon pricing.

Grand bargain: Paying for transportation projects, cleaner air, and other investments

Economists might salivate about how a carbon price can internalize the externality costs of greenhouse gas pollution, but voters and organizations get excited about what the revenue from the carbon price can do. The governor and lawmakers worked in tandem to design a package of bills that met the various needs of a broad coalition of the left.

For Washington lawmakers, how to pay for a big transportation package had been a long-standing headache. The carbon price became a funding mechanism for key parts of the $16 billion transportation package that passed in 2022. (The transportation package was large and complicated and needed another year to hammer out. The governor took advantage of the state’s line-item veto rule to reject a required linkage between the cap and the transportation package. Still, legislators understood it was part of the grand bargain and came back to the table and passed it in 2022 almost entirely along party lines.) The money, plus strong labor standards, brought union support for the bill. As Matthew Hepner of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers enthused, “We were able to turn around and use (Climate Commitment Act) funds for our transportation package this year.”

Environmentalists had been trying to pass a low-carbon fuel standard for years, and legislators passed that, too.

Tribes had been asking for consultation and consent rights regarding projects impacting their lands and resources, and funds to aid in their efforts to fight climate change and  relocate as rising sea levels rendered their coastal lands unlivable. The Climate Commitment Act included these items, though Governor Inslee used his line-item veto to eliminate the consultation and consent provisions.

Finally, environmental justice advocates wanted protections against air pollution that burdened their communities’ health. While the state carbon program is based on global pollutants, the Climate Commitment Act, and its companion Healthy Environment for All (HEAL) Act, includes further protections against local pollutants, winning the support of environmental justice advocates.

Business support

The Washington Business Alliance, an organization dedicated to bringing “the best business methods and entrepreneurial thinking to the work of government” created the Clean and Prosperous Washington campaign to work on design details and public messaging. Big employers in the state such as Microsoft, Puget Sound Energy, and Shell supported the bill. Even oil giant BP, which had previously opposed carbon pricing efforts, got on board. In a letter supporting the bill, BP said, “the findings of climate scientists are real, and the world is on an unsustainable path. We support the aims of the Paris Agreement and have called for a faster transition to a low carbon economy.”

Republicans might come around when it comes to spending revenue

In opposing the Climate Commitment Act, Republican lawmakers did not deny the existence of climate change or society’s need to address it. They didn’t say a transition to a low-carbon economy spurred by a carbon price would be bad for business (a position which would have been difficult to defend, given support for the bill from the Washington Business Alliance, Microsoft, and others). Instead, they based their opposition primarily on the argument that the program could increase prices for individuals and families, especially  those who were lower-income or rural. “Any change in the gas prices will kill my small communities,” said Rep. Joe Schmick (R-Colfax). “This bill ultimately punishes the poor in our state,” said Rep. Chris Corry (R-Yakima).

However, by closing ranks as the party of “no” on a policy that would make significant investments across the state and speed the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, Washington Republicans may have gotten crosswise with many of the rural voters they claim to represent. A 2020 poll showed that 63 percent of Washington voters, including most rural or agriculture-associated voters, supported cap-and-invest. Rural voters strongly supported electric vehicles, clean energy, and natural climate solutions such as managing forests and soil to capture carbon and reduce pollution. They may have been swayed by the promise that the cap-and-invest program will spur clean energy development, with much of the revenue to be invested in Washington’s transportation infrastructure and rural communities.

Republican legislators are now catching on, showing they are active participants in discussions about how to spend the cap-and-invest revenue. In 2022, state Rep. Mary Dye (R-Pomeroy) introduced a bill to spend some of the carbon pricing revenue on forest health. Her colleague J.T. Wilcox (R-Yelm) said,

We can make a huge impact on carbon by fully and permanently funding the forest practices that are necessary for healthy forests, which sequester carbon at the fastest possible rate.” Republicans have also proposed the Outdoor Recreation and Climate Adaptation (ORCA) plan to spend revenues on state parks, forest health, and drought and flood mitigation.

A similar shift may have occurred in California, which passed a carbon pricing bill in 2006 with zero Republican votes (although Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed it into law). When the California act was renewed in 2017, eight Republican lawmakers signed on. “I focused on what was the best policy, not what would be the party line,” said Assemblywoman Catharine Baker (R-San Ramon).

These shifts in Republican positioning at the state level could presage possibilities at the federal level. Some Republicans have moved away from outright climate denial, and rural voters are increasingly interested in clean energy and natural climate solutions.

What can Washington, DC, learn?

Like many other cap-and-invest programs around the country, Washington’s cap-and-invest program passed with a simple majority vote by Democrats. State legislatures might, in select cases, be able to steamroll legislation along party lines, but Congress rarely can, and even then, only with the unified government. Since the filibuster is still in place and unified Democratic control is not in the cards in the immediate future, must we content ourselves with implementing the recently-passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’ (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)? Or is there hope that the federal government, like Washington state, could put a price on carbon? A few lessons from Washington state are applicable at the national level:

1) Businesses are supporting market-based climate action.

A key piece of the Washington story was business support for the cap-and-invest program. Nationally, business groups are increasingly and publicly supporting carbon pricing – as seen by carbon pricing endorsements from the Business Roundtable and the American Petroleum Institute. Business groups have historically been a key Republican constituency. (That said, the growing power of the populist wing of the party casts some doubt on the role business positions will play in the future.)

2) Legislators can legislate.

Another feature of Washington’s experience was the success of legislative leadership. Rather than leaning on public initiative or executive action, when legislators decide they need to get something done, they can do the hard work of building relationships, conducting diplomacy, and passing policy. We have also seen this at the national level with the bipartisan IIJA and the party-line IRA. If a member of Congress decided we must take the next step and send a signal throughout the market that the smart money is on low-carbon solutions, they might be able to do the behind-the-scenes grind necessary to bring fellow lawmakers along.

3) A climate bill can solve longstanding needs.

For climate hawks, a carbon price is all about climate, but a bill could be about much more. Legislative leaders in Washington identified a persistent legislative pain point – the transportation package – and used the carbon revenue to help fund it and the political momentum to help pass it. They also worked with a key constituency, Tribes, and made sure the Act met their needs for resources and consultation. Congressional leaders could similarly identify enduring pain points such as addressing the debt ceiling or extending funding for child tax credits and use carbon revenue to fund those, as well as identifying and working closely with key constituencies to meet their needs.

4) Focus on the investments, not the price.

The upfront costs associated with a cap-and-invest bill can strike fear into constituents’ hearts, and often toll the death knell for such legislation. Indeed, Republicans used the same talking points about poor people’s energy bills that have successfully defeated previous carbon pricing efforts. But Washington’s success demonstrates the value of lawmakers staying relentlessly focused on the investments t such a policy will create. Republicans are traditionally budget hawks, so stressing the revenue could help generate support across the aisle for a future effort in D.C.

5) Republicans might come to the table for the chance to “pay for” their priorities.

Although they all voted no on the initial bill, Washington Republicans came to the table to work on a subsequent clean-up bill, other pieces of the grand bargain, and on bills determining how to spend the revenue generated by the initial legislation. At the national level, every Republican voted against the IRA. Still, some voted for IIJA, and they might be interested in future efforts to fund their priorities, such as infrastructure, forest protections, agricultural innovations, and rural jobs. This could bode well for a future push to pass a carbon pricing policy if that push focuses more on  revenue spending than  the revenue-raising mechanism.

6) Build momentum first.

An economy-wide carbon price is a big lift. Legislators must first warm up by tackling particular sectors as they did in Washington.  Congress may already have done a warm-up by passing the IIJA and the IRA. The IRA even includes a carbon price on methane. Congress could continue building momentum with a carbon border adjustment mechanism paired with an industry-specific price.

Habitat for Humanity Goes All In for Multifamily Housing

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According to Ryan Donohue, there is only one way to solve the shortage of affordable homes in Washington: widescale zoning reform that legalizes multifamily housing without onerous parking mandates, and an influx of public funding to match.  

“If we don’t solve both of these problems, we will never be able to solve the housing crisis,” explained Donohue, the Chief Advocacy Officer for Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King & Kittitas Counties (“Habitat SKKC”), Washington’s largest Habitat for Humanity chapter.  

All across Washington state, people need more homes of all kinds. One million more, the Department of Commerce estimated, by 2044. But local exclusionary zoning laws adopted by city and county governments between 1920 and 1980 have restricted homebuilders’ ability to meet demand. Bans on apartment buildings, townhomes, and duplexes, combined with costly parking mandates, have contributed to Washington having the fifth worst undersupply of housing in the United States.  

But simply re-legalizing those lower-cost options won’t automatically put homeownership within reach for everyone, since prices have already been pushed so high. Since 2010, the median home price in Washington has increased 250 percent. “Subsidy is simply a necessity,” said Donohue. “If it’s going to be affordable at or below 80 percent area median income, it’s going to need public dollars.” In the absence of coordinated action by lawmakers, the shortage of affordable housing has grown into a billion-dollar problem, instead of just a million-dollar one. 

That all might start to change this year. Legislators in Olympia have proposed a suite of pro-housing legislation this session that would increase housing supply through state zoning standards, reduce parking requirements and permitting barriers, increase renter protections, and reduce fees for affordable housing. Governor Jay Inslee is currently touring the state to build support for a $4 billion dollar housing bond. 

Ryan Donohue (left) and Brenden Lersch (right) at the Highland Terrace project, which will provide 12 new homes through a combination of primary structures and accessory dwelling units. 

Ryan Donohue (left) and Brenden Lersch (right) at the Highland Terrace project, which will provide 12 new homes through a combination of primary structures and accessory dwelling units.

Habitat’s move to multifamily 

When most people think of Habitat, Donohue explained, they see a detached home with a white picket fence and a grass yard and kids playing. “While that’s a beautiful picture,” Donohue said, “the reality is—especially in King County, but really across the state—that isn’t the case anymore and hasn’t been for years.”  

Habitat SKKC now focuses on townhomes and condo buildings. The cost of land has gotten too expensive to only build one home per lot. Even the smallest project in Habitat’s three-year pipeline will include seven residences in just two buildings.  

“We are living in more segregated neighborhoods today than we ever did at the end of redlining… based on land use codes.” –Ryan Donohue, of Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King and Kittitas Counties


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More ambitiously, Habitat SKKC is currently planning the largest single-building Habitat project in the world, siting 58 new homes within eyeshot of the Columbia City light rail station in South Seattle.  

But opportunities to build at that scale are hard to find. In Seattle, only 25 percent of the city’s residentially zoned land allows the lower-cost multifamily housing Habitat can build. It didn’t always used to be that way. One hundred years ago, multifamily housing was allowed throughout Seattle. But decades of zoning policies rooted in racial exclusion have confined these types of homes to discrete areas of the city.  

“We are living in more segregated neighborhoods today than we ever did at the end of redlining,” said Donohue. “We’re essentially creating our own new version of segregation in our cities and states based on land use codes.” 

Habitat has been an ardent supporter of housing bills like HB 1110, which would lift detached-house (or “single family”) zoning restrictions, re-legalizing duplexes and fourplexes in communities across the state. 

Veronica Fleming looks out the window of her new home, currently in the last stage of construction. Photo by Catie Gould. 

Veronica Fleming looks out the window of her new home, currently in the last stage of construction. Photo by Catie Gould.

The new starter home 

“I understand how important housing is. Once you have that stability, you can take on the world.” –Veronica Fleming, future homeowner in Habitat’s “Capitol View” building


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Veronica Fleming, 26, never expected to own a home. She never expected to plan for a long-term future at all, having been born with cystic fibrosis, a rare and life-threatening genetic disorder. That was until a new treatment was approved in 2019 that changed everything. She moved across the country to Seattle, where she has worked with autistic children and is currently a housing case manager for low-income clients.  

“I understand how important housing is,” said Fleming. “Once you have that stability, you can take on the world.” Renting has been hit or miss for Fleming, who estimated she has moved to a new apartment nearly every year in the past six or seven years. 

In March she will get the keys to move into her own home, a 13-unit condo building in the Capitol Hill neighborhood named “Capitol View.” Her mortgage will be $110 less each month than what she is currently paying in rent in the neighborhood and allow her to start building equity.  

Currently, the average Habitat homebuyer is in their mid-thirties, but Habitat would like to get people onto the housing ladder earlier. The organization wants people like Fleming to start building wealth for themselves and their families.  

Donohue doesn’t think new homebuyers like Fleming will want to stay in her one-bedroom home forever. “That’s not the intention,” he said. “The hope on our end is that they are there for eight to ten years, and they sell it back to us.” At that point in life, maybe those residents are ready to start a family or seeking something bigger or different. “That’s a success right there, helping people getting started on the housing continuum.” 

Habitat typically sees 10 to 12 applications for every home it builds, but interest in housing of this smaller size has been strong. “We’re finding that the demand for one- and two-bedroom ownership units is just incredible,” said Donohue. 

Parking flexibility provides less expensive housing options 

Homecoming stories like Fleming’s are only possible because Seattle started eliminating mandatory parking minimums near transit in 2006.


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Homecoming stories like Fleming’s are only possible because Seattle started eliminating mandatory parking minimums near transit in 2006. A study later found that only 30 percent of new residential buildings without parking requirements did not include any off-street parking. Capitol View is part of that minority. 

The choice was a simple one. “If we had to do parking there, it wouldn’t have been possible,” Donohue said. At 350 square feet needed for each parking space, even a small parking lot quickly would have overtaken the 4,000-square-foot property. “Our mission and our goal is to build a world where everyone has a safe, decent, affordable place to call home. ‘Everyone’ doesn’t include cars,” said Donohue. In other areas of the city, the same building would have required one parking space for every unit, whether residents use them or not. 

Fleming has never even owned a car. “I’m not a fan of driving,” she said, “and that’s another expense that I don’t really have the money for.” Between the insurance, maintenance, and parking costs, it always felt like a waste of the precious time and money she had. “Personally, it just doesn’t seem worth it.” Capitol View residents that do own cars can buy a street parking permit from the city for less than $100 per year. 

More housing opportunities on the horizon 

The reason why affordable housing is so often located in Seattle, Donohue explained, is that the two essential ingredients already exist: 1) more housing types that are legal to build, with flexibility on parking, and 2) public funding through the Seattle Housing Levy. “Practically speaking, we can build it there. The projects go where the money is,” said Donohue. 

Even with an influx of state funding, Capitol View is illegal to build in many other parts of Habitat SKKC’s service area. A new report from the Urban Land Institute found that in the Puget Sound region, a third of the land within a half-mile of frequent transit is zoned exclusively for single-detached homes. On more than half of the residential land near transit, the construction of new housing depends on a pre-determined number of accompanying parking spots.  

“Our mission and our goal is to build a world where everyone has a safe, decent, affordable place to call home. ‘Everyone’ doesn’t include cars.” –Ryan Donohue, of Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King and Kittitas Counties, on how parking flexibility supports more affordable homes


But that could soon change with Senate Bill 5466, which would legalize five-story buildings and lift parking mandates within a half-mile of frequent transit stations across the state. It just passed the Senate floor on March 1 with a bipartisan 40–8 vote in support.  

Many of the housing bills introduced in Washington in 2023 gave flexibility over parking needs back to homebuilders. But a fear of inadequate parking supply remains a contentious issue. A late amendment to SB 5466 offered an exemption to cities who make a determination that on-street parking is infeasible, which could continue to limit the lower-cost housing options available to Washingtonians. 

“Seattle doesn’t really require parking near transit already. Bellevue does. Kent does. Renton does. All of these other places [in King and Kittitas counties], generally speaking, do require parking,” said Donohue. “And that’s going to be incredibly difficult to build affordable housing in those spaces because of it.”