As all of our regular readers know, what has been termed by some the “year of housing” has spawned dozens of bills on the topic, and several continued past cutoff to move to the opposite chamber. There have also been a few other planning-related bills moving along.

The Senate ADU bill, SB 5235, has been scheduled for a hearing on March 13. You can refresh yourself on the status of the bill in our previous article.

The proposal we termed the “housing grab bag” has gone through some refinement. HB 1167 addresses many issues that cities raised. It also had a few additional items inserted into the grab bag. The bill contains elements requiring administrative design review, state developed ADU plans for cities to use, direction to the Washington State Building Code Council to facilitate middle housing codes, single stairwell buildings, and optional plan sets for meeting energy codes. Finally, it contains a version of the policy found in multiple bills this session that directs cities to treat middle housing developments consistent with their regulations on detached single family homes.

The bill integrating climate change considerations into the Growth Management Act (GMA) (HB 1181) probably wouldn’t count as a low profile bill in any other session, but since it’s largely the same bill we have been supporting since last year (then HB 1099) it hasn’t garnered a lot of attention. That is, until it took four hours to pass off the floor of the House in one of the longer floor fights of the session. It will receive its first Senate hearing this week.

A GMA Collaborative Roadmap Phase III recommendation to allow smaller cities (under 25,000 in population) to adopt the county critical area ordinance by reference, SB 5374, passed its chamber and is scheduled in the House.

The following bills have passed the first chamber but haven’t yet been scheduled:

• SB 5412 would implement two recommendations of the AWC Housing Solutions Group: providing a categorical SEPA exemption to residential developments that are consistent with a city comprehensive plan and restricting design review to objective standards applied administratively.
• SB 5290 was originally the Governor request bill to provide grants to cities for permitting improvements and technical assistance. The Senate also added the permit timeline reform bill that was a result of the GMA Roadmap process.
• A modest revenue tool for cities also passed the Senate. SB 5334 authorizes up to a 10% special excise tax on short-term rental lodging with funds to be used for affordable housing purposes.

Dates to remember

SB 5235 is scheduled for a public hearing in the House Housing Committee on Monday, March 13 at 1:30 pm. It is also scheduled for a committee vote on Thursday, March 16 at 8 am.

HB 1167 and HB 1181 are scheduled for a public hearing in the Senate Local Government Committee on Tuesday, March 14 at 8 am. They are also scheduled for a committee vote on Thursday, March 16 at 10:30 am.

SB 5374 is scheduled for a public hearing in the House Local Government Committee on Wednesday, March 15 at 8 am. It is also scheduled for a committee vote on Friday, March 17 at 10:30 am.