ADU preemption bill dies

HB 1660, which barely squeaked out of the House with a 50-48 vote, failed to advance out of the Senate. Ultimately, the concerns that AWC and individual cities raised—that this level of preemption of local land use decision-making and the significant dip into the details of city development regulations—was heard loud and clear by most Senators.

With the demise of this bill and the missing middle bills earlier in the session, the Legislature has once again declined to mandate specific housing policies for cities. Instead, they continued with the trend of providing incentives to cities, as detailed in our article on HB 1099 (integrating climate-impacts planning into the Growth Management Act). That proposal’s final form contains some of HB 1660’s themes but in a purely voluntary manner.