Because housing solutions are solutions for homelessness, jobs, equity, climate, and conservation.

Each year, Washington state’s worsening housing shortage means that more families struggle to pay rising rents or find homes they can afford to purchase. More people face homelessness. Young people move away or can’t move back because they can’t find apartments they can afford. The self-inflicted shortage of housing inside cities puts pressure outside cities, forcing more development to sprawl into the state’s forested areas, agricultural land, and wildlife habitat. Employees at growing companies can’t find housing they can afford. Local businesses, big and small, can’t find workers. And city-level leaders are hamstrung in the face of a statewide problem that spans outside their jurisdictions.

The core reason more and more Washingtonians cannot find homes they can afford is that there aren’t enough homes to go around. And a big reason for that is widespread local bans on everything but stand-alone houses on large lots, the most expensive and resource-intensive kind of housing there is.

This shortage can’t be solved by any one city or county alone. It requires elected officials working together at the state level. Fortunately, the Washington state legislature will soon have a chance to establish statewide standards for homes like triplexes and rowhouses in our job centers—state leadership much like that of our neighbors Oregon and California.

The 2023 middle housing companion bills HB 1110 and SB 5190, sponsored by Rep. Jessica Bateman (D-22) and Rep. Andrew Barkis (R-2) and Senator Yasmin Trudeau (D-27), would legalize “middle housing” in cities throughout the state. That is, the spectrum of housing options that exist between detached, stand-alone houses and large apartment buildings: modest-sized options that serve a broader range of people and families. For details on the bill, see this explainer article. In brief, the bill would legalize:

Up to six homes per residential lot within a half-mile of frequent transit and

Up to four homes per lot in cities with a population of 6,000 or more, or cities of any size within the contiguous urban growth areas surrounding Seattle or Spokane.

Washingtonians can’t wait, and their leaders can’t either. They should make 2023 the year of affordable housing, lifting exclusionary zoning laws by passing HB 1110 and SB 5190. Here’s why:

AFFORDABLE HOME OPTIONS AND ECONOMIC SECURITY FOR WASHINGTONIANS

A family spending more than 30 percent of its household income on housing is considered “cost-burdened.” In Washington state, nearly half of all households statewide had unaffordable housing costs in 2019, and 47 percent of renters at all income levels are cost-burdened, leaving too many perilously close to eviction and houselessness. Every additional dollar those families and individuals spend on their housing costs is money they can’t spend on other things, like food, medicine, education, or recreation.

Re-legalizing middle housing will help fix the root cause of Washington’s housing affordability crisis: a shortage of homes. A primary cause of the shortage is exclusionary zoning laws that ban middle housing options from some three-quarters of residential land in Washington’s cities.

Middle housing is inherently less expensive than stand-alone houses because the homes are generally modest in size and the cost of land is split between a few households—a triplex, for example, puts three homes on a city lot where only one is typically allowed, often under one roof. In contrast, detached-house zoning guarantees that only the most expensive kind of homes can ever get built in most residential neighborhoods.

Middle housing types such as townhouses and rowhouses boost homeownership options. Washington has an especially acute shortage of affordable for-sale homes because the vast majority are detached houses on large lots, as mandated by current one-size-only zoning laws. Re-legalizing middle housing will...