How updating a few musty housing laws can promote the smart, affordable housing options we need across fast-growing Northwest towns and cities.
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Affordable housing is lacking across the Northwest, with housing policy here effectively excluding from the market many lower-cost options for low-income families and individuals. A raft of outdated laws bans the types of residential arrangements that once housed most of the North American working class and prohibits modest home options near jobs, transit, schools, and neighborhood centers—from mother-in-law apartments and triplexes to rooms that were safe, comfortable, and convenient but small and basic.
As a result, families may scrimp on food or heat to be sure they can pay rent each month; they may opt for black-market housing; or they may even go homeless. Everyone deserves a clean, safe place to live; but beyond safety regulations, the floor plans mandated by current housing rules aren’t affordable for everyone. In this series, Sightline researchers explore the key laws that prevent smart, affordable housing arrangements of the past from getting to market today, and look to a Northwest revival of inexpensive housing options.
This article is part of the series Legalizing Inexpensive Housing After decades of impasse in a thousand city halls, housing advocates are looking to statehouses for zoning reform. Many now think state, provincial, and even federal reforms may pass more easily than local ones. I don’t think that’s because the politicians who lead larger governments … Read more
This article is part of the series Legalizing Inexpensive Housing Pro-housing state lawmakers hoping to ease Washington’s dire housing shortage tried something new this year: the offer of a financial incentive to cities if they opt to allow more homes by loosening their zoning laws. Cities embraced the approach, in stark contrast to their typical hostility to any state … Read more
When thousands of people are living in tents and doorways, it makes no sense for the government to stop people from living indoors. But that’s exactly what some cities and counties do by capping the number of “unrelated occupants” who can legally share a home, no matter how large. Both Oregon and Washington are considering … Read more
When is Seattle going to fix microhousing? David Neiman and his daughter look at data over time resulting from city policy changes.
Washington state legislators eye three new state-wide strategies to incentivize cities to adopt local abundant housing rules and tackle the state’s affordability crisis by addressing the home shortage.
Our families and living groups come in all shapes and sizes. Some households need more than six bedrooms. Cities shouldn’t replace a bad cap on household size with a bad cap on room count.
Slam another nail into the coffin of the notion that it’s politically unthinkable to lift bans on small attached homes. In a Vancouver, BC, poll released last week, a majority of likely voters endorsed citywide sixplex legalization, with 16 percent undecided. Supporters outnumbered opponents by a 21-point margin, far beyond the 4.9 percent margin of … Read more
Should pro-housing advocates focus on making bad cities less bad, or on making good cities better? Here in Cascadia, we’ve just seen some interesting evidence that relatively modest state laws actually do both. That’s because state (and federal) laws that force anti-housing cities to welcome a bit more housing can also open up useful new … Read more
Can Vancouver BC’s six-homes-per-lot plan work? Re-legalizing smallplexes takes on expensive housing, segregation, and climate chaos. Ironically, sky-high land values make it possible to cap the price of two homes in a smallplex—if it’s built big enough.
California’s repeated failure to strike down local bans on close-in housing has an incalculable number of victims. But 13 million of them live in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Year after year, through booms and busts, California sends a one-way jet stream of people moving north to Cascadia. If comparable numbers of people were instead able … Read more
