This won’t get under thought and rushed through. WA never does that with legislation /S

I must have misunderstood. I assumed it meant it would become harder to build single family homes.

I definitely support relaxing the restriction on multi family development and letting the market decide what kind of housing is built.

One random survey quoted that 17.8% vs 3% out of thin air and everyone just throws around that number. Food, Medicine & Rent are excluded from taxes in WA. So not sure how the bottom earners are contributing more through car registrations (taxed based on model/year, at least very heavily in King county) & other sin taxes.

Building houses in further out suburbs will also require people to drive and add traffic to the region's roads

You are at a level of stupid I cannot comprehend. You know what regulation and zoning is right? We would still be a capatilaist country with this change.

We should do that with children too. It would reduce school class sizes and stress on teachers. And we should also do this with vehicles. Only one vehicle per SSN. That would help with climate change and reduce roadway wear and tear right? Then we should limit food, and travel, and vacations, and plane trips and other purchases too!!! Communist much?

This isn't restricting supply any more than it already is, nothing about this says anyone has to build foulrplexes. If they will its because the demand for dense housing is higher than demand for single family homes

You don’t think turning Seattle into the hottest realestate investment opportunity on the west coast would increase demand from buyers with infinite cash thereby increasing the cost of houses?

I’m not sure what the solution is. I just know that this was passed last year and probably talked about for years as a solution. The intention was to come up with a solution for more housing (and hence more affordable housing), but made the problem worse. 🙁 I will admit I thought it would help, but I was under impression that they would build up to $1mil 1600 square ft homes on 1/8 acre lots. Oh how I was wrong. I could never have thought of ways to squeeze in homes like they do.

I really hate those modern McMansions. We toured on during an open house - so sterile and unfriendly. I honestly do not understand why people like them.

Yes, in a matter of a few years.

Kirkland went from cozy and quaint to overbuilt and cramped.

No longer a small town when it’s not uncommon for houses to sell in the $5M to $10M range. Still truly an awesome town though.

But yes, with cottage zoning, there is a change to squeeze in three ~1,400 sqf houses on something close to 1/4 acre (driving up the purchase price for that lot vs if only two houses, etc).

Kirkland used to be nice, but all this density is ruining it. Redmond is even worse.

Did we figured how all those people in the newly created super dense areas are going to poo and enjoy things like electricity and water? Or are we going to worry about that after the fact?

I’d support this.

1/4 acre would sell for $1.4mil+ and they’d probably squeeze in 3 homes minimum if city allowed. The homes they are building on 8k-10k lots are usually around $3.2mil still. Decent sized lots are pretty much gone from most of the area unless you are in a $2mil+ home. Developers went bonkers during Covid.

I understand they want to make money, but the city has to put some limits. The developers have a ton of buildings sitting empty as they are waiting to build and bought up the area not only last year, but years prior. My friend had rats come into her house because a developer has left the building behind her house empty for years. She’s tried to get it condemned with no luck. The small town feel of Kirkland is quickly disappearing and not the same anymore.

I agree but that also should mean building up, like 26 stories. That's not happening.

oh ok, thanks. I understand better. I'll look up Oregon's case.

Recent transactions; old house on 1/4 acre lot purchased for $1.4M. 6 months later, older fixed up house on now 1/8 acre is sold for $1.3M. The other half (1/8 acre) will get a decently sized house, likely to sell for $2.3M (even in this market once construction completed).

Kirkland is to a large part (expensive) single family houses on decently sized lots, and that’s unlikely to change, as long as people love the area (views, lake, parks, close to everything, good neighbors, etc) and willing to pay for it.

Legislature would be making a grave mistake if nixing single family zoning.

It’s not a mandate to change existing single family housing. Just allowing the option to. You can choose not to.

Oregon passed legislation very similar to this in 2019. It probably hasn't been long enough to determine whether or not it has been worth it, but I don't really see the downsides. Yes, it could make traffic worse, parking worse, etc... but the idea is that you eventually reach a density where that is less important as transit becomes more feasible. They more or less needed to enact this since they have very strict land use laws and the urban growth boundary system (not a bad thing, but if you can't build out, you must build up).

As for applying it to the whole state, I think that's good as well. There are plenty of smaller communities that are in dire need of housing. Being able to build duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes is a good thing since it is impractical to buy several houses and try to put up a larger apartment complex. There is reason to believe there's less pushback from neighbors when we pursue infill projects like this.

Banning single family exclusive zoning doesn't mean single family homes don't get built, it just means landowners are free to pursue building more dense units per plot. It won't be without its problems, but housing costs are not sustainable now and it won't get better until we can build more. On balance I think it will be a positive for the state.

Oregon SFH Ban

Good, there’s no reason why upper Queen Anne Hill should be zoned single family. Condo and apartment that place up.

I think the biggest issue was that expectations was that yard sale was smaller, that homes would be priced lower to compensate. That they would provide affordable options. Instead developers are driving up the prices and not building anything “affordable.”

I’m from the Midwest and actually hate this. Moved to Olympia this year and love it. Funny enough we went on a hike in the Olympics and passed a handful of people with nothing more than a polite hi. Then we passed this older couple who asked about what’s to come on their route (where we came from) and it turned into a ten minute conversation we couldn’t get out of…because they were from the Midwest. Had to do an abrupt “enjoy, BYE!” to get out of it. Definitely don’t miss that shit.