Mayberry-esque Middle Housing Toolkit is a Trojan Horse for downzoning Washington State.
Before HB1110 was adopted, the Washington State Department of Commerce was working on development standards to illustrate how jurisdictions could create new infill housing that would play well with the detached single family neighborhoods. Unlocking the development potential of residential land is critical if we’re going to provide the more than 1.2 million homes Washington State projects it needs in the next twenty years. We should take a good hard look at how growth is done and create development standards that support the big picture goals of abundant housing for Washingtonians.
But that is not what is happening here. The underlaying premise of these overlay development standards is to make middle housing as palatable to neighbors as possible (low densities, smaller footprints, bigger setbacks, lower heights) rather than embracing the challenge we face with the housing crisis and climate change. The standards do not match up with the reality of many neighborhoods (funky cul-de-sacs, small narrow and deep lots, parcels with buildings already on them). At its very worst, this toolkit will give slow-growth municipalities cover for downzoning by providing the option to select overlays that are less intense for the majority of their currently residentially zoned land.
I’ve reviewed their proposed standards and I’m honestly a little shocked by just how far short they’ve fallen. None of the four options as shown would comply with HB1110, and all of them reflect real reductions to today’s zoned capacity. My annotations in yellow/red. If my comments sound a little harsh, it is only because I’m flabbergasted by the enormity of the misguided effort here.
- They state “This toolkit does not provide standards for buildings taller than 3 stories.” This is a egregious oversight — we need to grow up rather than out and we need planners, architects and ultimately politicians with vision to show how that can be done.
- Most of the building types are 2.5 stories — less that most of Washington cities least dense residential zones today. Rather that proposing an actual incremental increase, it ignores the status quo as a starting point. If you want a single pitch ‘shed’ roof, the 22’ height limit is actually less than what we allow for Detached Accessory Dwelling Units today.
- They require parking even in our transit rich areas, which will soon be illegal under HB1110! It screams out to me that this package will be immediately obsolete by not addressed the new law or understanding where this region is going with regards to parking.
- Most overlay zones top out at 4 units per parcel, equivalent to Seattle’s second least dense zone, Residential Small Lot. There is a lot of ‘middle’ housing that is missing between a triplex and the 5 over 1 medium sized apartment building and this toolkit is silent on helping planners visualize appropriately scaled urban buildings.
- They don’t look at Seattle, Bellevue or Kent — large impactful cities with distinct parcel types and neighborhood structures.
- They don’t plan for any housing types that seeks to preserve existing housing. The standards are very prescriptive in a way that will heavily penalize preservation, leading to more displacement.
- There is nothing about mixed use.
- If you dig into the details, it is chock full of reductions: larger setbacks, less lot coverage, less height, larger minimum lot areas, prescriptive design standards, etc.
- Doesn’t understand townhouse development-the dominate paradigm of infill housing.
- At the multi-plex level, it preferences low slung boxes that will nearly cover the lot, without space for trees, yards, and ventilation (lots of double loaded corridors facing other double loaded corridor buildings). For a better way, please head over to my Sightline Institute article : CITIES’ BIGGER FUTURE CAN LOOK AND FEEL BEAUTIFUL — IF WE BUILD FOR IT
Overall the development standards are parochial, regressive, and nostalgic re-imaginings that don’t reflect real conditions in Washington and do less than nothing to get us to our goals of housing abundance and climate action. We should scrap this work and start over with middle housing types that work all the way up to mid-sized building in keeping with the best practices of urban planning around the world.
