Housing Executive Order

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On November 21, 2024, Bellingham Mayor Kim Lund signed an executive order directing City departments to take immediate actions to increase housing opportunities in Bellingham. The order identifies a combination of administrative actions and legislative actions to prepare for consideration by Bellingham City Council. 

These actions aren’t the full solution to our housing crisis, but as an important part of the suite of solutions, they are achievable, meaningful steps we can take now to spur more – and more affordable housing options – in our growing community. 

Why now? 

Some of this work has already been underway. And in many ways, this order dovetails with the updates to zoning rules that we are required to change in next couple of years. 

Yet we can do some of this important work more quickly, and we don’t want our community to wait longer than necessary for action. We are proactively jumpstarting the process. 

The Executive Order includes the following actions to increase housing opportunities across the housing spectrum. 

Administrative actions ordered: 

  1. Direct the City’s Development Review Team to adopt a solution-oriented approach to achieve our density, affordability and climate goals; proactively communicating with and supporting applicants; and seeking to simplify reviews where possible. The City’s Development Review Team includes staff from Planning and Community Development, the Fire Department, the Parks and Recreation Department and the Public Works Department.      
  1. Direct the Development Review Team to prioritize the review and permitting of residential projects that include low-income housing and/or infill development, and/or projects in key target areas, by creating a clear prioritization as follows:  
    • Downtown and Old Town development 
    • Low-income multifamily 
    • Middle housing  
    • Urban village multifamily 
  1. Reevaluate development review timelines, seek to implement process improvements, create performance measures and institute bi-weekly check-ins with the Development Review Team and Mayor’s Office staff to ensure clear expectations, quickly identify roadblocks and reduce inefficiencies and complexity within the City’s permitting process.  
  1. Expand engagement with the local development community to encourage the acceleration of development projects that align with the priorities above, identifying barriers and seeking collaborative solutions. 
  1. Identify potential catalyst sites in Downtown and work with developers to facilitate redevelopment, streamlined reviews, potential permitting strategies and other incentives. 
  1. Identify a new location and work with community partners to facilitate an additional tiny home village. 
  1. Continue assertively seeking properties and partnerships to create permanently affordable housing while evaluating options to better utilize and expand the Bellingham Home Fund. 
  1. While developing regulations to implement middle housing legislation, seek ways to incentivize retaining existing, character-defining homes in residential neighborhoods. 
  1. Continue to support rental inspection and protection programs and enhance future policies by creating a limited-term rental working group to better inform City policies, practices and actions. 
  1. Prioritize lobbying efforts to advocate for changes at the state level to enable vacancy taxes, streamlined wetland mitigation bank creation and other legislative tools that currently hamper growth and community vibrancy. 
  1. Evaluate possible changes to the City’s permit review fee structure while ensuring full recovery of City project review costs for major and complex development projects.  
  1. Continue refining new regulations for urban trees while evaluating existing regulations for landmark trees, land clearing and street trees to create greater consistency and predictability and improve the landmark tree ordinance to better align with our broader community goals. 
  1. Explore actions that would increase neighborhood equity, including removing legacy racial covenants and involving under-represented community members in processes and City advisory groups. 
  1. Develop with the City Council quarterly work sessions on land use policy concepts and opportunities to make substantial improvements to the City’s land use and development codes in support of our broader density, affordability and climate goals. Work session topics could include:
    • Explore permitting uses that are currently conditional to support pedestrian-focused development in residential neighborhoods, including childcare facilities, eating facilities and small-scale commercial uses. 
    • Explore height bonuses for affordability, 1 percent for public art installations or nature-integrated designs. 
    • Explore other infill approaches, such as adoption of single stairwell regulations, single room occupancy and lot splitting.  
  1. Undertake a cost of service and scenario analysis to help educate the community on benefits of density and middle housing forms and to better inform our growth strategies, including annexations. 
  1. Finalize changes to Multi-Family Tax Exemption program thresholds to better facilitate affordable housing. 

Legislative actions for accelerated City Council consideration:  

  1. Immediately draft an interim ordinance for City Council consideration to remove parking minimums citywide while following best practices for ADA parking, access requirements, electric vehicle charging and other key factors.   
  2. Immediately draft an interim ordinance for City Council consideration, ahead of state mandates, supporting increased middle housing through the adoption of the Infill Toolkit citywide. 
  3. Draft an interim ordinance for City Council consideration, ahead of state mandates, streamlining design review. 
Read the full Executive Order 

How this order will affect housing in our community 

First, by taking steps now to increase density and expand housing types in the long run: 

  • Diversifying the housing supply gives residents choices suited to their needs, income, and preferences.  
  • Denser development creates more housing within the city’s existing footprint, aligning with our community’s climate goals and desire to preserve our natural environment.  
  • Eliminating rules that require a set amount of parking for housing developments throughout the city can lower housing costs and increase land available for housing.  

This executive order will spur action across all three of those areas. 

Second, by streamlining the city’s permitting processes for housing development: 

  • Reducing time and uncertainty in the permitting process reduces the costs of development and by extension, housing.  
  • Streamlined permitting will also more quickly increase the supply of housing. 

Third, by incentivizing, funding or partnering to create housing opportunities that are harder to develop: 

  • Some housing types, such as permanently affordable housing or transitional housing (like tiny home villages), need unique partnerships that the City has a role to cultivate and fund.  
  • Other, market-rate, “middle” housing types – ADUs, townhomes, duplexes and other types of small, multi-family homes – have been harder to develop under our existing zoning codes. 

Why this order is needed 

Our community is asking for this change. In our recent engagement with the community on the Bellingham Plan, we heard clearly that people want all neighborhoods across the city to have more housing, with choices for everyone and a variety of housing types.  

Many barriers exist to expanding the supply of homes across the housing spectrum, and some of them are within the City’s ability and responsibility to influence. This executive order is about taking immediate actions within the City’s control to reduce barriers that get in the way of expanding housing opportunities in Bellingham.  

Housing Costs 

We’ve reached a critical point for housing affordability in Bellingham. Over the years, housing costs have increased, and incomes haven’t kept pace. In the last five years, the median rent in Bellingham has increased by 37 percent and the median home price by 56 percent. Additionally, 24 percent of homeowners and 56 percent of renters are cost-burdened, meaning more than 30 percent of their income goes toward housing.  

This order is designed to increase the supply of housing, which can increase vacancy rates and, in turn, helps keep rents and home values from rising – or even reduces them. 

Housing Options 

We need more housing overall, and more options that are within reach for people of all incomes. Currently, 75 percent of land zoned as residential in Bellingham is developed with single-family housing. Building more “middle” housing types – ADUs, townhomes, duplexes and other small multi-family housing types – is an essential part of helping us achieve our community’s shared goals for more, denser, and affordable housing. 

Having sufficient, affordable housing promotes the city’s economic growth, helps employers attract and retain qualified workers at all income levels, and maintains our city as a desirable and attainable place to live. Most importantly, quality affordable housing and equitable neighborhoods are foundational factor for health and well-being, fostering stability and prosperity for city residents. 

Frequently Asked Questions 

Bellingham has an abundance of single-family homes and many larger scale multi-family homes, such as apartment complexes. Middle housing describes home types and scales, at various price points, between those two ends of the housing spectrum. It includes duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, accessory dwelling units, and small apartment buildings. Middle housing is generally more affordable and requires less land per unit than detached housing. By making it easier to build more middle housing, we can help provide some relief to our community’s shortage of homes and increase housing capacity over a broader range of income levels.  

Middle housing has been difficult to develop under existing residential zoning regulations that prioritize preserving single-family homes. This order proposes that the City adopt changes to our code that would increase the availability of middle housing in all neighborhoods. This change is required by new state laws designed to increase the availability of middle housing, and we are proposing to accelerate the change. 

Upcoming State Requirements Will Expand Middle Housing 

In 2023, the Washington State Legislature passed legislation to increase the availability of middle housing. This legislation requires Bellingham to allow a variety of housing types and meet the requirements by June 30, 2026. Many of these changes reflect needs and desires we have heard from our community. Under the new state rules, we must allow up to four housing units on any lot zoned primarily for housing (with few exceptions). We must also allow up to six units per lot in some areas, depending on the affordability of the housing being built. In the process of approving these middle housing types, we may not require standards that are more restrictive than the rules for detached, single-family homes. 

Expanding Existing Middle Housing Rules 

In Bellingham, we’ve been using the Infill Housing Toolkit to promote middle housing since 2009. Infill Housing Toolkit regulations address many of the middle housing requirements, but don’t apply citywide. By adopting rules that allow the Infill Housing Toolkit throughout all neighborhoods in Bellingham, we can expand middle housing. In general, these forms include small homes that provide low-impact housing options. Each toolkit housing type includes basic design standards that are intended to help them architecturally blend into existing neighborhoods through careful attention to building design, parking and landscaping.  Learn more about Bellingham’s Infill Housing Toolkit. 

Infill housing adds more homes by filling in existing residential land with more housing – aligning with community values around climate and preserving the natural environment. Because infill housing is more compact, it can add more homes to a property, making better use of available land, like backyards or side yards, or by adding stories, like a unit over a garage or a basement unit. 

Bellingham’s Infill Housing Toolkit provides additional details about infill housing types and requirements. Learn more about Bellingham’s Infill Housing Toolkit.

Parking minimum requirements tell us how much land must be set aside for parking cars in Bellingham. By eliminating these rules, decisions about whether to create parking spaces and how many are put in the hands of individuals, rather than mandated by city code. This gives people the option of creating fewer parking spaces and, instead, using land in other ways, including developing more housing. 

Getting rid of parking minimums helps by: 

  • Increasing the amount of housing that can be built – Parking requirements often limit the number of units that can be built due to limited space for parking on a site.  
  • Enhancing environmental stewardship – Removing parking minimums can protect open spaces and trees and reduce the amount of paved surface. Without minimum parking requirements, property owners have more flexibility and less competition between parking and trees, yards, and housing in a constrained space. 
  • Lowering the cost of housing – Each parking space generally costs more than $20,000 in Bellingham, costs that are passed on to renters and homeowners. 
  • Encouraging more housing development – Creating adequate parking can be a barrier to housing development, and getting rid of minimums can unlock opportunities.  For instance, in 2023, the City Council agreed to eliminate parking requirements in Old Town. That change was one of several elements that supported renewed development interest in an area that went underdeveloped for decades. There are now plans to construct at least 500 new residential units in this area over the coming years. 
  • Building only what’s needed – By not requiring every structure have a certain minimum number of parking spaces, people can make site- specific decisions that allow them to use land more efficiently, and not build unused parking. This can be beneficial for individual homeowners, as well as renters who end up covering the cost of parking that is passed through as part of rent. 

Considerations such as ADA requirements, safety, and electric vehicle charging stations are always taken into account, even if parking minimums are eliminated. 

>>Learn more on our Parking Reforms webpage.

Yes, housing developers must still follow all the local, state and federal rules that protect safety, health and our environment. This order maintains development standards while reducing complication, time and uncertainty in the permitting process. It prioritizes low-income and infill residential development projects, and those in key areas:  

  • Downtown and Old Town development 
  • Low-income multifamily 
  • Middle housing (ADU, duplex, townhome) 
  • Urban village multifamily 

This order prioritizes support for applicants who submit permits for the above types of residential projects, and simplification of permit reviews when appropriate. 

Supporting housing growth with denser development is one of the best ways to make use of the City’s remaining residential land.  

  • Denser urban development further advances climate action allowing for greater preservation of forested lands, agricultural lands, urban trees and other critical areas by reducing the impacts of urban sprawl.
  • By building more densely within our city boundaries, we can support services like public safety, utilities, roads, sidewalks and transit in significantly more cost-effective ways.  
  • Denser urban development fosters economic growth through walkable neighborhood-level businesses, lowers barriers to entering the housing market and promotes inclusive neighborhoods.  
  • Denser urban development can bring uses together, which can support increased access by walking, biking, or using transit.

Affordable housing for low-income households and shelter for people who are unhoused are extremely important, and even though they aren’t the focus of this particular executive order, they are priorities for the City.  

At the same time, we need more homes across the entire range of housing needs, and most of the actions in this executive order address that more broadly. 

Two of the actions in the order are focused on creating more low-income housing: seeking property for more permanently affordable housing and identifying another location and funding for an additional tiny home village.  

This Executive Order isn’t the full solution to our housing crisis and doesn’t represent the full suite of the City’s work on housing. Learn more on our affordable housing and homelessness webpage. 

 

Learn More about City Actions to Support Housing 

Contact Us

For questions, contact the Mayor’s Office at mayorsoffice@cob.org.

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