By Patience Malaba
Look around an older neighborhood in just about any city in Washington state. Hidden in plain sight is a century-old secret that can help us find our way out of today’s housing crisis.
Scattered among single-family houses, you’ll see old corner stores with homes tucked above or behind, Craftsman duplexes here and there, and maybe a small, brick apartment building.
But in most newer neighborhoods, that variety of homes is missing. Smaller-footprint, less-expensive housing is missing because about three-quarters of our cities’ residential areas now allow only the most expensive type of housing: big, detached houses on large lots. Everything else is prohibited by law.
Companion “middle housing near transit” bills in the Senate and House would empower Washington’s cities with a range of options for allowing more homes in established urban areas and lifting restrictions on homes that more people can afford.
From Bellingham to Walla Walla, and in cities all over Washington state, neighborhoods where working-class families can afford to live are vanishing. Week after week, year after year, we’ve all heard the news stories: home prices climbing ever further out of reach for Washingtonians who lack multigenerational wealth. Tenants facing the worst rental shortages in decades. Too many of our neighbors living unsheltered or just one paycheck or hardship away from homelessness.
This is the displacement that befalls our communities when there aren’t enough homes available. Bidding drives up prices, and escalating prices drive people with lower incomes further and further out, resulting in cities increasingly segregated by race and income.
Sadly, this zoning system is working exactly as originally intended. Starting in the 1920s, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that affordable home types, such as apartment buildings, were “mere parasites,” cities started to restrict what housing could be built. By the 1960s, most cities had banned even duplexes from half their residential areas.
I’m not typically nostalgic for the policies of the past. But to add the homes Washington families need today, it’s time to reverse that history of downzoning near our job centers and re-legalize a range of modest, mid-sized homes in our cities. The one-size zoning we’ve got now isn’t working.
When we don’t allow the homes we need near jobs and transit, near our schools and centers of culture and commerce, fewer people can afford to live in the communities where they work, resulting in diminished opportunities and longer commutes. And it costs us all. We suffer more traffic and pollution, more sprawl, and more loss of habitat, farms, and forests. If we want mixed-income communities, then we need mixed-price neighborhoods. To stabilize prices, we need enough homes to go around.
So, what’s holding us back?
Constrictive zoning on the books locally, city by city, is at the root of Washington’s housing shortage. But no city can fix this alone. Our statewide housing crisis calls for state-level solutions.
The best time to re-legalize middle housing was 100 years ago. The second-best time is right now.
Washington legislators have the chance this session to act on behalf of all 7.6 million of us to set basic inclusivity standards for local zoning. Companion “middle housing near transit” bills in the Senate and House would empower Washington’s cities with a range of options for allowing more homes in established urban areas and lifting restrictions on homes that more people can afford, like duplexes and townhomes, especially near major public transit. It follows in the steps of recent bipartisan legislation to expand “missing middle” housing in bigger cities in Oregon, California, and Massachusetts.
This solution wouldn’t pay off overnight; adding the homes we need, and the variety of homes people can afford would be gradual. And it isn’t the only thing we should do for housing prices and to protect housing-insecure Washingtonians.
But state leadership to allow middle homes in our urban neighborhoods would open a door for cities and towns across Washington to build their next vibrant chapters. It would lay a foundation for stabilizing prices and preventing sprawl into our treasured natural places. And most importantly, it would welcome home the families and individuals eager for the opportunities a stable, affordable home supports.
The best time to re-legalize middle housing was 100 years ago. The second-best time is right now.
Patience Malaba is the Director of Government Relations and Policy at the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County- a membership association of more than 200 organizations who seek to advance housing stability.