Policy & Advocacy
2024 Legislative Session Overview
Happy 2024, members, community stakeholders, and tireless affordable housing advocates! Read more.
The Housing Development Consortium is excited to announce the opening of the 2024 Washington State legislative session, on January 8, 2024. This 60-day short session is a valuable opportunity for transformative policy to create equitable, sustainable, and affordable housing. Read more.
Advancing Affordable and Abundant Housing in Bellevue through Comprehensive Planning
The Eastside Affordable Housing Coalition is committed to advancing housing affordability through Bellevue’s Comprehensive Plan update. We appreciate the work Bellevue has done to prepare the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). We are writing to express our strong support for allowing an abundance of homes to be built, alongside expanded funding and robust inclusionary zoning policies to create new homes affordable for low-income families. Read more.
Bellevue faces a housing crisis. Home prices and rents in Bellevue have spiraled out of reach for so many people. This reflects Bellevue’s desirability as a city and a basic job-to-housing imbalance that forces workers to commute long distances into Bellevue. To sustain itself, Bellevue must build homes affordable to its essential workers–the teachers, nurses, firefighters, and restaurant workers that make the city’s economy and society function. Read more.
Bellevue has a window to make significant progress in advancing affordability and the opportunity to be a regional leader in addressing the housing crisis. This Comprehensive Plan Update is a major opportunity to create a more livable, equitable, and vibrant Bellevue. Read more.
Alternative 3, by allowing the highest amount of housing capacity alongside implementation of mandatory inclusionary zoning, goes the furthest to realize a vision of abundant, affordable housing throughout Bellevue. Allowing more housing to be built will help address Bellevue’s housing shortage and job-to-housing imbalance. Mandatory inclusionary zoning allows the public to capture some of the added value from upzoning and ensure we are directly creating homes affordable to low-income people. Read more.
Alternative 3 will also help create a better city for Bellevue residents, by creating complete neighborhoods with a mix of housing options, jobs, services, and multimodal transportation. It will expand walkable access to small businesses and retail, giving more people the choice to meet their daily needs without a car. It will support investments in frequent and convenient transit and safe and connected walking and biking routes. And it will help more Bellevue residents of all income levels and life stages find a place to call home in a city they love. Read more.
HDC Coalition Comment on Seattle Comprehensive Plan Update – Expand Scope for Abundant and Affordable Homes
We, the undersigned organizations, represent a coalition committed to advancing housing affordability and addressing climate change through Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan update, including affordable housing developers and operators, environmental advocates, climate activists, and grassroots housing organizers. We thank you for the opportunity to comment on the scope of the environmental impact statement (EIS) for the One Seattle Plan 2024 Comprehensive Plan update. It is essential that the City analyzes a full range of growth alternatives in the EIS. We urge you to expand the scope of analysis of each of the alternative growth strategies and to advance a new transformative Alternative 6, to provide as much flexibility to build as many homes as possible. Read more.
This Comprehensive Plan update is a once-in-a-decade opportunity for Seattle to lead the region by reforming land use, increasing density, and allowing for mixed uses in neighborhoods. At this distinctive moment in time, the urgency of the city’s affordable housing crisis is combined with a growing climate crisis and the disturbing reality of persisting inequities. We cannot ignore the interconnectedness that must bind our efforts inextricably on housing, and climate action. Read more.
We have an exacerbated housing crisis; far too many of our neighbors sleep unsheltered, struggle to afford rent, or have been displaced from their communities, all because of how expensive homes in our city are. Simply put, we have a shortage of homes, and we need to build more of them. We need more affordable homes, more sustainable homes, more homes to rent and to own, and more middle homes, apartments, and corner stores throughout our city. Read more.
We also face a climate crisis driven by transportation as overwhelmingly our region’s top source of climate emissions, accounting for a whopping two-thirds. Car-dependent sprawl is not consistent with our climate goals or a sustainable future. As the center city of this region, Seattle must lead in welcoming sustainable land use patterns. Per capita emissions are lower in Seattle due to better access to transit, jobs, and walkable neighborhoods. By not welcoming housing growth in its borders, Seattle forces it to the suburban fringe, where residents are locked into car dependency and growth jeopardizes forests and farms. Read more.
Of the options currently drafted, Alternative 5 is the only alternative to make a major positive impact on Seattle’s housing costs by allowing for more housing growth to meet demand. Per the City’s analysis, by promoting a greater range of rental and ownership housing, the Combined Growth Strategy would address past underproduction of housing and rising costs and support complete neighborhoods across the city. It furthers climate goals by allowing more people to live in walkable, transit-rich communities near jobs and amenities, and could help create transit-supporting densities throughout Neighborhood Residential zones. And finally, it goes furthest among the five drafted alternatives to correct the racial inequities of historically exclusionary zoning policies. Read more.
In addition to advancing Alternative 5, it is essential that all the growth strategies studied include as much flexibility to increase housing supply, diversity, and affordability as possible. A new Alternative 6, should expand on the Combined Growth Strategy with policies to create abundant, affordable housing throughout the entirety of Seattle. Read more.
Pro-Environment, Pro-Density
The Housing & Climate Crises Density is a critical solution to our compounding housing and climate crises. Our region’s housing growth does not meet the scale of our growing population’s needs. To address this sustainably and equitably, we must grow … read more.
Affordable Housing Week 2020 Recap
“COVID layered a housing emergency on top of a long-term housing crisis, making it even more important that we work with urgency to find housing solutions… It’s critical that we work together to find regional solutions to keep people in … read more.
Seattle’s Fare Share Plan
HDC is extremely pleased to announce that the Seattle Fare Share Plan has been unanimously approved by the City Council on Monday. Mayor Durkan signed the cutting edge strategy into law on Tuesday, November 26th. HDC is extremely proud to … read more.
Support budget to study new housing types in Seattle!
There is a significant need for more housing options in Seattle. City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda is sponsoring a budget action that would require the City to produce an Environmental Impact Statement studying land use in our city. This is one step … read more.
Walking the Walk
We know that King County needs 156,000 more affordable homes right now to ensure no one is spending more than 30% of their income on rent. The scale of the problem is vast, clear, and not up for debate. We … read more.
Maximize Lodging Tax Dollars for Affordable Housing
On 7/30 Housing Advocates told King County Council to prioritize affordable housing over Safeco Field Maintenance. Bright and early Monday morning, housing advocates woke up ready to raise their voices in support of safe, healthy, and affordable homes for everyone … read more.
Housing Developments: Lather, rinse, repeal?
HDC Members: Help set our policy priorities for 2019 Each year HDC staff seek policy ideas from members for consideration in our annual Policy Priorities, beginning with an online survey. Staff at all member organizations are encouraged to use this survey to share what … read more.
