Remember ‘missing middle’? Lacey set to advance housing action plan
Lacey City Council revisited its housing action plan during a Thursday work session and is now set to advance it Sept. 16.
But several key elements of the plan are still pending, which means it may still be some time before the council finally adopts the plan. And some council members on Thursday wanted reassurance that they will not be voting on something next week that hasn’t been fully vetted.
For example, if the council next week was voting on a sales tax to fund the housing action plan, Councilman Lenny Greenstein said he would not support it.
He said he had serious problems with a new sales tax, calling it “problematic.”
Rick Walk, the city’s community and economic development director, said the council will vote on whether they agree to the housing action plan strategies, but it does not mean that all elements of it will be enacted.
Lacey’s housing action plan is unique to the city, although there was coordination with the cities of Olympia and Tumwater in 2019 because of the area’s interconnected housing market, said Planning Manager Ryan Andrews.
Based on a housing needs assessment and landlord survey, the housing action plan identified seven areas to tackle. Among them: reduce the cost of housing for low-income and cost-burdened residents; increase the variety of housing through changes to single-family zoning; and increase permanent housing for people with disabilities or those at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
City staff recommends the following to achieve those goals:
▪ Adopt changes to single-family zoning that encourage more duplexes and triplexes. Accessory Dwelling Units, or ADUs, are already allowed in the city.
▪ Adopt zoning changes for emergency housing (homeless shelters).
▪ Reduce fees for private-sector development of affordable housing. The city already waives fees for nonprofit developers of housing.
▪ Reauthorize the multifamily tax exemption for the city’s Woodland District, which includes Midtown, because it expires in 2024.
▪ Increase housing action plan funding through a sales and use tax.
However, all five recommendations will not be approved next week, the City Council was told.
Of the five recommendations, the council zeroed in on the proposed changes to single-family zoning.
Councilman Ed Kunkel praised the overall housing action plan, but said he had concerns about the changes to single-family zoning and the potential impact to Lacey neighborhoods.
“I would like to see public input,” he added.
Planning Manager Andrews said there was a significant public outreach process, with Andrews recalling that he appeared on the front page of The Olympian in a story about the potential Lacey zoning changes.
But that was in 2019, and even Andrews acknowledged the housing action plan has been pending for a long time.
The proposed zoning changes would essentially eliminate the lowest of the low-density zones of 0-4 housing units per acre and replace it with a new low-density zone of 3-6 units to create flexibility for duplexes and triplexes.
Most of the 0-4 units per acre zoning can be found in Lacey’s older neighborhoods where homes were built on larger lots.
The changes to zoning likely would not apply to newer housing developments with homeowners’ associations because HOAs typically have covenants that prevent anything but single-family residences, Andrews said.
Mayor Andy Ryder said he supports the proposed zoning changes, so long as the character of neighborhoods is maintained.
This story was originally published September 10, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
