But it needs relaxed parking mandates, widescale zoning reform, and public funding to make the most of the opportunity.

According to Ryan Donohue, there is only one way to solve the shortage of affordable homes in Washington: widescale zoning reform that legalizes multifamily housing without onerous parking mandates, and an influx of public funding to match.

“If we don’t solve both of these problems, we will never be able to solve the housing crisis,”

explained Donohue, the Chief Advocacy Officer for Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King & Kittitas Counties (“Habitat SKKC”), Washington’s largest Habitat for Humanity chapter.

All across Washington state, people need more homes of all kinds. One million more, the Department of Commerce estimated, by 2044. But local exclusionary zoning laws adopted by city and county governments between 1920 and 1980 have restricted homebuilders' ability to meet demand. Bans on apartment buildings, townhomes, and duplexes, combined with costly parking mandates, have contributed to Washington having the fifth worst undersupply of housing in the United States.

But simply re-legalizing those lower-cost options won't automatically put homeownership within reach for everyone, since prices have already been pushed so high. Since 2010, the median home price in Washington has increased 250 percent.

“Subsidy is simply a necessity,”

said Donohue.

“If it's going to be affordable at or below 80 percent area median income, it's going to need public dollars.”

In the absence of coordinated action by lawmakers, the shortage of affordable housing has grown into a billion-dollar problem, instead of just a million-dollar one.

That all might start to change this year. Legislators in Olympia have proposed a suite of pro-housing legislation this session that would increase housing supply through state zoning standards, reduce parking requirements and permitting barriers, increase renter protections, and reduce fees for affordable housing. Governor Jay Inslee is currently touring the state to build support for a $4 billion dollar housing bond.

Habitat’s move to multifamily

When most people think of Habitat, Donohue explained, they see a detached home with a white picket fence and a grass yard and kids playing.

“While that’s a beautiful picture,”

Donohue said,

“the reality is---especially in King County, but really across the state---that isn’t the case anymore and hasn’t been for years.”

Habitat SKKC now focuses on townhomes and condo buildings. The cost of land has gotten too expensive to only build one home per lot. Even the smallest project in Habitat’s three-year pipeline will include seven residences in just two buildings.

More ambitiously, Habitat SKKC is currently planning the largest single-building Habitat project in the world, siting 58 new homes within eyeshot of the Columbia City light rail station in South Seattle.

But opportunities to build at that scale are hard to find. In Seattle, only 25 percent of the city’s residentially zoned land allows the lower-cost multifamily housing Habitat can build. It didn’t always used to be that way. One hundred years ago, multifamily housing was allowed throughout Seattle. But decades of zoning policies rooted in racial exclusion have confined these types of homes to discrete areas of the city.

“We are living in more segregated neighborhoods today than we ever did at the end of redlining,”

said Donohue.

“We’re essentially creating our own new version of segregation in our cities and states based on land use codes.”

Habitat has been an ardent supporter of housing bills like HB 1110, which would lift detached-house (or “single family”) zoning restrictions, re-legalizing duplexes and fourplexes in communities across the state.

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