Last week’s Edmonds City Council meeting drew an overflow crowd for several reasons, including the council’s consideration and passage of a firearms storage ordinance. But another equally volatile issue drew numerous public comments and significant council discussion: The ongoing debate over the city’s draft housing strategy.

City of Edmonds Development Services Director Shane Hope took the lead in presenting the updated draft housing strategy to the council July 24, noting that the topic as been on the city’s Planning Board agenda 35 times between early 2015 and early 2018.

“They took this issue seriously,” Hope said of the council-appointed planning board. “They talked about different solutions, they talked about problems.”

Hope said she looked forward to clarifying to the council “some things that might be misunderstandings” regarding the draft strategy, which has been the subject of passionate public comment during past planning board meetings, including the one My Edmonds News covered here. Citizens have also been making their feelings known during the public comment periods at recent council meetings, including the July 24 meeting.

One citizen wondered why the council hadn’t yet received the minutes from the most recent planning board meeting, during which there was significant public comment. (Hope said it was noted in the council agenda that transcription of the minutes had been delayed due to the minute-taker being on vacation.) Yet another citizen suggested the draft strategy was aimed at increasing building heights in the Edmonds Bowl, which Hope later emphatically said was not the case.

Others commenting said they worried that the housing strategy would casue their property taxes to go up. When Councilmember Tom Mesaros asked Hope later in the meeting if the strategy as proposed would cause tax hikes, Hope said she expects no such increase. “There is no expectation that the city is going to spend big chunks of money on housing,” Hope said. “A lot of it is about partnerships, working with others to see what can be done. I don’t see any tax change from what’s proposed here unless the council chooses to do something different (from the proposal).”

Hope began by reminding the council of the purpose behind the draft strategy: In 2015, the Edmonds City Council adopted a comprehensive plan that had as an action step a requirement for the city to develop — by 2019 — a housing strategy. The goal was “to increase housing for all income levels and to meet diverse housing needs.”

The aim of presenting the draft July 24 was to stimulate discussion among council members, with no immediate action required, she added.

In early 2017, Mayor Dave Earling appointed a Housing Strategy Task Force comprised of people with professional expertise on housing issues, Hope said, to provide “specific, professionally based recommendations” to the city planning board.

The housing task force met six times between September 2017 and May 2018 and identified “a number of things that could be done for housing,” Hope added. There was a public open house May 23 and the draft strategy was presented to the planning board June 13. Now the matter is before the city council to consider.

Berk Consulting’s Kevin Ramsey then reviewed the issues underpinning the strategy document: The Seattle area is growing rapidly, prices and rents are going up across the region and people are priced out. They can’t find affordable housing near where they work, so the result is more traffic, more pollution, people spending more time in cars and on transportation costs. “It’s not good for anyone,” Ramsey said.

The goal is to tailor the housing strategy to the specific community, but the overall approach is to provide more homes and a wider variety of homes, he added.

Ramsey pointed to “a pretty severe mismatch” between wages of jobs located in Edmonds and the cost of housing here. “There are nearly 11,000 people who work in Edmonds, and 60 percent of those jobs pay less than $40,000 a year — that’s about 40 percent of area median income,” he said. If you are earning 50 percent or less of area median income, you can’t find affordable rental housing in Edmonds, he added.

To provide an example of the problem, Ramsey cited a home health aide — a typical worker in a city with an aging population. A person in that line of work typically makes $26,000 a year, and $840 a month is considered affordable housing on that salary. Yet, the average rent of a small efficiency studio apartment in Edmonds is $1,000, and they are in very short supply, he explained.

“People are commuting very long distances to get to jobs in Edmonds,” Ramsey said, noting that at least 2,400 low-income workers commute over 10 miles to get to jobs in Edmonds, while at least 1,000 people commute over 25 miles.

In addition, the amount of income-restricted housing, specifically set aside for people who qualify, is about 270 units — far less than the people who qualify for it, he said.

The draft strategy also notes that the housing that is occupied in Edmonds isn’t necessarily meeting the needs of its occupants. For example, more than 70 percent of households have one or two members, but only 11 percent of housing units have one bedroom or less, the report said. People who can afford their home may not have a home best suited for them, but may not be able to afford a different one, and those who don’t have a home may need the space that a single person occupies.

“One reason for that is a number of empty-nest people living in larger homes.” And there is not a lot of opportunities for those empty nesters to downsize because of the lack of housing stock.

The strategy put forth by the consultants and the housing strategy task force is meant to address some of the ways the City of Edmonds could house more community members at a price realistic for their income, Ramsey added.

After Ramsey went through the draft strategy’s six objectives, Hope came back to the microphone to elaborate on the details of ways to implement each of the six:

1. Encourage the development of more multi-family market-rate housing, including apartments and condominiums. These strategies include:

– Supporting transit-oriented development along current and future transit corridors (such as Highway 99), and consider the flexibility that transit-oriented development can allow. According to the draft strategy, the idea is for the City of Edmonds to coordinate with Community Transit and Sound Transit to identify current and future areas for transit-oriented development and review potential schedules for implementation.

-Allowing greater flexibility in multifamily zones, which could mean “some parking reductions or some changes in the number of units allowed,” Hope said. The city could also reduce residential parking requirements in targeted areas “where it makes sense,” she said.

-Providing for a fast, predictable and user-friendly permitting process. “Faster permit reviews, predictable timelines, and an easy to understand process and requirements would reduce the administrative and carrying costs for development projects in the community,” the draft plan states.

-Providing density bonuses for projects that set aside income-restricted units, “kind of an incentive approach,” Hope said.

-Exploring the application of “micro-housing” style developments. Hope described these as “really small apartments” — less than 200 square feet — but stressed that people are paying for them.  “They may not be the size that we would have wanted to live but it’s fine for some people, particularly for those who want some housing but don’t need a big place,” Hope said.

2. Expand housing in the “missing middle,” which refers to housing that falls between single-family homes and apartments.

Strategies to implement this include allowing more flexible requirements for accessory dwellings, such as backyard cottages. they also include permitting more housing diversity– accessory dwelling units, townhomes, duplexes, cottages — in some single-family neighborhoods, allowing smaller lots in some locations.

3. Support the needs of an aging population

Hope said this strategy includes pursuing partnerships, working with social agencies and other jurisdictions to support aging in place, for people who want to stay in their owners. It also involves exploring ways to offer property tax relief for senior citizens, she said.

4. Increase the supply of income-restricted affordable housing.

This element of the draft strategy “doesn’t mean that the city is going to go out and build such housing,” Hope added. But the city should take inventory of existing affordable housing, plus any surplus public or non-profit land that might be available for such needs.

The draft housing strategy recommends that the city “allocate funding to help support an affordable housing project targeted for extremely low-income households. A contribution by the city can greatly improve the competitiveness for receiving additional grant funding, such as Washington State Housing Trust Fund grants that are administered by the Housing Authority of Snohomish County,” the strategy draft says.

The city could also work with legislators to ensure there are enough Section 8 housing vouchers to accommodate those residents who need them, Hope said.

In addition, the city could expand the multifamily tax exemption (MFTE) program, now allowed in two areas of the city, Hope said. This program is currently applied to Highway 99 and Westgate areas. “It should be expanded as appropriate to spur the development of affordable housing in other locations,” the draft strategy says.

Another idea is to explore the development of an inclusionary zoning program, which is “a little bit controversial,” Hope said. Through changes in the zoning code, the city could require that some developments must be “mixed income” — with some housing of a certain income level, for example — in exchange for reduced development fees.

5. Participate in South Snohomish County efforts to broader strategies to reduce homelessness.

This “seems to be the strategy that gets people’s attention the most,” Hope said. “Anything with the word homelessness in it seems to get a lot of passions flowing.

She stressed that this strategy does not include any recommended actions. Rather it points to potential actions that Edmonds can look at without committing the city to any of them.

For example, they include exploring partnerships with the county, other south county cities and non-profit service providers to provide social services “or other types of helpful facilities”; exploring opportunities to develop “permanent supportive housing,” and considering reducing barriers to tiny village housing.

The draft strategy says the city “could partner with nonprofits or regional partners to develop new permanent supportive housing intended to provide stability and integrate services that attend to necessities like food and shelter without preconditions such as sobriety, treatment, or service participation requirements.”

The city could also consider reducing barriers to single room occupancy housing. “This is not talking about tents,” Hope said. “this is talking about permanent housing where people can live with dignity.”

6. Provide protections for low-income tenants.

Hope said that this objective creates requirements to provide fair housing information “so that people know what their rights are” and to create anti-discrimination information for tenants.

Following the presentation, councilmembers had an opportunity to ask questions and make comments. Council President Mike Nelson said he wanted to make sure that the city develops a housing strategy that is “for Edmonds, not anytown USA.”

“We need to talk about homes, not just housing,” Nelson said. It’s also important to address the many concerns that citizens have expressed in recent months regarding the draft strategy, he added.

“Will it raise our property taxes? Will it lower our property taxes?” he asked. “Will more homes increase crime or will there be no change at all all? Will it increase traffic? Will it increase congestion, or will it not?”

Nelson said he also wanted the city to look at communities in this region that “have successfully tackled this problem,” including the fiscal impact, jobs created, tax revenue generated and economic benefits.

The council president also said there needs to be more public engagement in developing the draft housing strategy. “I need to know how that (the housing strategy) makes sense in Edmonds and I think that’s what’s missing,” he said.

Councilmember Dave Teitzel asked Hope about a recent comment made by Planning Board member Alicia Crank during an Edmonds Planning Board meeting. Crank recalled a housing requirement in the Silicon Valley community of Mountain View, Calif. that used a below-market rate program as one of its housing strategies. The program required developers of multi-use projects to set aside 10 percent of units for low- and moderate income tenants — but established priorities for who could live in the units, Teitzel said.

First preference was given to Mountain View public safety employees, public school teachers who live in Mountain View, those who live the city and those who have worked in the city for at least two years.

Noting that the Mountain View program “is all about serving members of the community,” he asked Hope if the City of Edmonds could legally pursue such a strategy, and Hope replied that the city could do so.

Councilmember Tom Mesaros reiterated Hope’s statement that the strategy “is just that. There’s a lot of plans that have to go in once this strategy is adopted so we really understand what we are going to do about housing.” he said.

According to the schedule presented last week, the council is scet to hold a public hearing on the draft strategy Aug. 21, with more follow-up discussion at future meetings. The earliest the council could develop a draft strategy would be September, Hope said.

“Adopting a strategy does not make any of these things happen by themselves,” Hope added. “All the rest of it takes implementation of specific things.” That could occur as early as later this year, next year or even further into the future, she said.

More details on the strategy can be found here.

— By Teresa Wippel