Urban Planning Final
1.
In 2023, the Washington State Legislature decided to take affordability matters into their own hands. They passed HB 1110, which forces cities to allow middle housing in areas previously zoned for only single-family housing. Middle housing includes housing types between single-family houses and larger 5-over-1 midrise apartment buildings, like duplexes, triplexes, rowhouses, and stacked flats.
In response to HB 1110, Redmond has integrated middle housing into its comprehensive plan.
In the new plan, housing types from detached single-family homes to sixplexes to courtyard apartments are allowed throughout the city. This goes far beyond the state’s requirements, which only requires up to fourplexes everywhere.
One might expect the character of Redmond’s neighborhoods to change with the addition of all this new housing. However, for a new building to be permitted, it must go through a design review process. One requirement is that all new buildings “fit in” to the surrounding neighborhood. In addition, there are requirements for modulation and articulation so that larger buildings don’t feel quite so large from street level.
The result of this? New, denser development while the built environment’s form stays mostly the same.
In addition to new residential possibilities with missing middle housing, Redmond has also allowed many non-residential uses in their neighborhoods in an effort to form “complete” neighborhoods. Small cafes, daycares, and other non-disruptive uses are allowed throughout Redmond, while convenience and corner stores are allowed in a couple of neighborhoods.
2.
In Redmond’s new Downtown plan, all new housing developments must restrict 10% of units (or 10, whichever is greater) to those making 80% of the area median income or less. Then, developers can obtain permits for additional market-rate units by buildings additional affordable units beyond the required amount. If developers build units restricted to those making 50% of the area median income or less, they count as two 80% AMI units. In addition, if developers build enough affordable units, they can be exempted from paying transportation impact fees (which can be quite hefty). The new affordable units must also be varied in how many bedrooms they provide, so that developers don’t just build studios.
Now, if developers don’t want to provide affordable housing in their project, they have a few options. They could construct the same number of units off-site with another project. Otherwise, they can pay-in-lieu, which is a standard practice across the region.
Interestingly, the requirements for affordable housing are greater in neighborhood residential zones–at least 12.5% of new units must be affordable to households earning 80% AMI. In addition, some other neighborhoods of Redmond are more strict with their affordable housing, such as Marymoor, which requires 15% of new units be affordable to 50% AMI.
Now, back to Downtown. One project featuring income-restricted units is Eastline Grand Apartments. Located just across the street from the new Downtown Redmond light rail station, the building features 311 units total, with 31 income-restricted units to 80% AMI. This is a great example of affordable housing working–well-connected with transit access and located within a “luxury” apartment building.
3.
The consequential cases of Nollan (1987) and Dolan (1994) brought about the two-part test, which asks two questions:
- Are the fees/conditions sufficiently related to the government’s regulatory interests?
- Are the fees/conditions “roughly” proportional to the impacts of the development?
Together, these two requirements are called the “nexus” and “rough proportionality” tests.
Today, the fees applied to development are generally termed “impact fees”. In the Seattle region, impact fees are fairly common. The funds generated from them are used for the maintenance and construction of public roads, multimodal trails, public parks & facilities, schools, and fire protection facilities. Washington law bars the use of impact fee revenue for much else by WAC 365-196-850.
The cost of impact fees can vary greatly by city. The average cost is $5,717 per peak hour person trip generated by a development. This cost can really add up for housing projects which may be adding hundreds of new trips. Because of this, impact fees have been criticized before for contributing to the housing crisis by making housing more expensive to build.
Some forward-thinking cities have decided to remove or lower their impact fees in an effort to spur more growth. Seattle, for instance, has never enacted impact fees and saw massive growth in the past few years perhaps because of this. In 2011, Kirkland suspended their impact fees for existing buildings in an effort to boost business in its Downtown.