Name: Bellingham Planning Commission meeting, Apr 16, 2026
Start: 2026-04-16
End: 2026-04-16
Location: City of Bellingham

Planning Commission

Thu, April 16, 2026

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Meeting summaryAI-generated

Planning Commission — April 16, 2026

This was an informational (non-voting) workshop session of the Planning Commission. Six of seven commissioners were present (Jerry Richmond was excused). No public comment was received. The entire meeting consisted of a staff briefing on Bellingham's interim middle housing, ADU, and design review regulations, followed by a brief director's preview of upcoming topics.

Briefing: Middle Housing, ADU, and Design Review Interim Regulations

Planning and Community Development Director Blake Lane presented, joined by Development Services Manager Kurt Nabfeld and Planners Chris Cook and Lindsay Kushner. The briefing covered the background, current status, and implementation lessons from a suite of interim ordinances adopted to comply with recent state legislation.

State Law Background

Two key 2023 Washington State bills drove Bellingham's regulatory changes:

HB 1337 (ADUs) requires cities to allow two ADUs per lot, prohibits owner-occupancy requirements, caps ADU-related impact fees at 50% of those for the principal unit, must allow detached structures up to 1,000 square feet, and sets minimum height allowances (24 feet for detached ADUs). It also allows ADUs to be condominiumized into separate ownership.

HB 1110 (Middle Housing) requires cities to permit a range of middle housing types in residential zones. Bellingham qualifies as a "Tier 1" city (population over 75,000) — the only such jurisdiction in Whatcom County — meaning it must allow up to four units per lot by right. A fifth and sixth unit are permitted near affordable housing or qualifying transit; because Bellingham has no transit meeting the state's definition (commuter rail, light rail, or bus rapid transit), the city instead used its discretion to allow the fifth and sixth units within a half-mile of major WTA GO Lines. The state identified nine middle housing types; cities must permit at least six. Bellingham allows all nine, including ADUs and small lots as two additional types beyond the minimum six.

What the City Did

Because a last-minute 2025 legislative amendment inadvertently eliminated the expected six-month grace period after Bellingham's comprehensive plan adoption, staff had to adopt interim ordinances quickly at the end of 2025 to avoid defaulting to the state's model code. The city went through two iterations of the middle housing interim ordinance — the second added ADUs explicitly as a recognized middle housing type after the first iteration left that question open and generated confusing applications.

Key provisions of the interim code include:

Up to four units per lot citywide (with fifth and sixth units allowed in the transit proximity areas described above), with exemptions for the Lake Whatcom watershed, critical areas, and areas without sewer service.

Floor area ratio (FAR) scales with unit count, reaching 0.6 for the base and up to 1.0 for higher unit counts.

ADUs may be placed anywhere within the rear 32 feet of a lot, up to property lines (subject to building code wall and glazing requirements).

To encourage preservation of existing character homes, conversions of existing structures into multiple units do not count against density limits — a direct response to a council member's concern about demolition of older homes.

Unit-lot subdivision (creating separate ownership parcels for individual units) currently requires an affordability component. Condominiumization of ADUs is allowed without that requirement.

Lane noted that roughly 13% of Bellingham's existing housing stock is already in middle housing form, with representation in every residential neighborhood except Western Washington University's campus and the Irongate industrial area.

Design Review Changes (HB 1293)

State law now requires that design review for middle housing and most residential projects use clear, objective, and measurable standards — replacing subjective language like "shall meet the general character of the neighborhood" — and be handled administratively by staff, without additional public hearings. Planner Lindsay Kushner and colleague Sarah synthesized design standards from numerous existing code sections into a streamlined interim ordinance. The new standards cover three areas: public realm (pedestrian orientation, street frontage, transparency), site design (grading, open space, circulation), and building design (entrances, articulation, massing). A "menu of options" approach lets applicants choose at least five qualifying design elements, allowing some flexibility while maintaining consistency.

Exceptions remain for locally designated historic landmarks and requests for departures, which go to the director. Urban village projects can still go to the Design Review Board for certain items. One notable clarification: standalone single-family homes are largely not subject to these new design standards; they apply primarily to middle housing forms and projects going through subdivision.

Implementation Challenges and Lessons Learned

Staff described several ongoing growing pains:

Vesting questions arose because the two iterations of the interim ordinance created uncertainty about which rules apply to projects in progress.

Utility service — particularly shared utilities for multiple units on one lot — is being worked out with the Public Works department.

Fire code and access is a significant constraint, especially in Birchwood, where lots are typically narrow (80 feet wide) and very deep (up to 450 feet). Fire code requires turnaround access (a "hammerhead" or "T" design) for lots more than 250 feet from a public road. Staff are working with the city's fire marshal to explore shared driveways, fire sprinkler trade-offs, and other solutions. A statewide "multiplex" building code update (aiming to create a middle tier between the International Residential Code and the full International Building Code) is expected sometime in 2027 and may ease some of these constraints.

Existing structures present definitional challenges — for example, whether a pre-existing home must meet the new 100-square-foot usable open space requirement per unit when converted.

Condominiumization is happening in only two or three known cases so far. Staff attribute this to the unfavorable refinancing math for homeowners locked into low-interest mortgages who would need to refinance at current rates to separate and sell an ADU.

Broader industry lag: Property appraisers, county assessors, and mortgage lenders (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac standards apply only to 1–4 unit properties) have not yet caught up to middle housing forms. Staff expect this to evolve over the next three to five years.

As for pricing, Lane estimated that middle housing and townhome units are coming in around $500,000, ADUs around $350,000–$400,000 — still out of reach for many residents, but meaningfully below the city's $700,000 median home price. Staff noted roughly 180+ ADUs have been permitted under the new rules.

What's Coming

Lane previewed that the commission will hear from the Parks and Recreation Department next week on the PROS Plan (Parks, Recreation, and Open Space). He also noted that a comprehensive residential zoning redesign is coming later this year and into 2026, which will revisit minimum lot sizes across the city (currently ranging from under 5,000 to 20,000+ square feet) — a change that will significantly shape how much density can actually be achieved under the new middle housing rules.

Director's Report

No separate director's report content was presented beyond what was covered in the briefing. The meeting adjourned early.

Key Takeaways

State law is driving major change: HB 1110 and HB 1337 require Bellingham to allow up to four to six units per lot and expanded ADU rights citywide, and the city adopted interim ordinances under a compressed timeline to avoid defaulting to the state's model code.

Design review is now administrative: Subjective neighborhood character standards are replaced by objective, measurable criteria applied by staff — no more public design review hearings for most residential projects.

Fire access and building codes are a real bottleneck: Especially in deep, narrow lots like those in Birchwood, fire code turnaround requirements significantly constrain how many units can realistically be built in the rear of lots. Staff are actively working on solutions with the fire marshal.

Affordability gains are real but modest: Middle housing units are pricing in the $350,000–$500,000 range — more attainable than the $700,000 median, but still well above what lower-income households can afford without subsidy.

Bigger zoning changes are coming: A full residential zoning redesign (moving toward low/medium/high residential categories and revisiting lot size minimums) is expected later this year and will be the next major opportunity to shape how middle housing plays out on the ground.

AI-generated summary from voice-to-text transcript. Not the official record. Verify important details with the source documents linked above.

What happened at this meeting

Briefing on Bellingham's interim Middle Housing ADUs and Design Review Regulations

# Roll Call Summary

Director Blake Line and staff presented on Bellingham's interim ordinances for Middle Housing and ADUs, explaining how state legislation (House Bills 1337 and 1110) require the city to allow multiple units per lot with relaxed restrictions. Staff demonstrated infill housing development strategies and clarified that ADUs count as middle housing, while also addressing implementation challenges including fire code constraints, design review standards now applied to single-family homes, and utility coordination. Though design standards and building code classifications (IRC vs. IBC) create economic barriers for some housing types like stacked flats, staff noted that local fire marshals have some interpretation flexibility and are exploring solutions such as hammerhead turnarounds for rear lot access. Staff emphasized efforts to discourage demolition and preserve existing housing stock, with design review working well particularly for infill projects, while acknowledging pricing gaps—current ADUs range $350,000-$400,000 but affordability goals target $100,000-$200,000 through solutions like tiny homes. Commissioners praised the comprehensive presentation and staff's work, with upcoming discussions planned on parks and neighborhood commercial opportunities.

Agenda items (1)

General Business

1General BusinessBriefing on Bellingham's interim Middle Housing ADUs and Design Review Regulations

City staff will explain new temporary rules that allow property owners to build accessory dwelling units (small additional homes on single-family lots) and outline design standards that new construction must follow.

What happened

Verbatim transcript available

227 transcript segments indexed

like to call to order the April 16th meeting of the city of Bellingham Planning Commission. Uh, if you all could please silence your electronic devices before the meeting starts, I'd appreciate it. Uh, Heather, please call the role.

>> Lethre >> here. Must >> here. >> Red Baloo >> here. >> Swingo >> here. >> Lisa Marks >> here. >> Dan Blumer >> here. >> And Jerry Richmond is excused. >> Okay. Tonight uh we don't have any meeting minutes to approve so we'll just jump in.

It's aformational meeting tonight. I think purpose of the meeting is to get a presentation on um the application and lessons learned from uh some of the temporary ordinances on middle housing ADU and design review.

Um and so since it's not a voting uh meeting, we will do public comment first. Um, so at this time, uh, give the public the opportunity to address the commission on any subject that you like to talk about.

Um, there's no one in here right now, so I don't know if there's anyone no one on. Okay, I guess we'll jump into the, uh, presentations. >> All right. Good evening. Blake line, director of planning and community development.

Also with me is Kurt Nabfeld, uh, our development services manager. Chris Cook who's our planner two and Lindseay Kushner also a planner too. They were uh a lot of the subject matter experts that brought a lot of this actual codew writing and processes to bear.

What I'm going to do is walk you through a little bit of the information that we provided to city council. So you can see a little of the context uh for what uh was put forth and then if you want to dig into the interim codes, we have subject matter experts here to help answer any of those questions.

But I'm going to keep it relatively high level. This may be stuff that you're familiar with uh in general, but we just want to make sure kind of everybody's operating on the same page and then we can kind of dig in from there.

So bear with me for one second and I'm going to bring all this up. Um okay. Um I'm not going to get into co-l livingiving. that was all part of the cluster that we gave to the council at that time. But um that there are a few things that we wanted to talk a little bit about.

You may recall in the 2023 legislative session, uh, the state adopted House Bill 1337, which talked about, uh, needing to update the ADU requirements for local jurisdictions allowing, amongst other things, uh, two ADUs per lot as opposed to what was once, um, allowed for one.

There's a few other provisions that kind of came out as also in part of that. Uh the impact fees cannot be more than 50% of the principal unit on there. There's no longer an allowance for owner occupancy or requirement for owner occupancy.

Um you must allow the full range of uh structures including detached structures on there. Um and you can now increase the ADU size up to a th00and square feet. Um if they are detached then they uh you cannot mandate a lower height than 24 feet.

If they are attached or incorporated into the principal unit then they follow whatever the height district the height measurements are for that particular district. In most of our cases it's 35 ft. And then it also allows for uh a different ownership model.

If you do want to convert them into condominiums then there is that option uh that's available. Um and so we we went ahead we went through the effort of um doing an interim there and then adopted that as a formal set of code criteria.

So we have been functioning with this for um a little while now and been operating under that. One of the pieces and I'm going to give you a little preview as we get into the middle housing um with these different state laws that came into effect.

part of it was trying to figure out okay um does does do ADUs now count as a middle housing type. Um and so in in many cases in the first iteration of the interim ordinance for middle housing uh we left that topic silent and we started seeing a pretty um interesting influx of how people were interpreting that.

So when we went through and we made a modification to the middle housing piece, um the kind of the second iteration of that, uh we included that housing form in the middle housing type. So it counts as one of those and I'll I'll get into it in a little bit.

It'll make more sense as we go through some of that. So these are the different forms. All right. When we talk about middle housing, again, many of you may have heard uh House Bill 1110 as the reference to the state legislative act.

Again, that was also in 20 uh 23 legislative session. But what it did was it said that local governments had to adopt uh development regulations within 6 months following your comprehensive plan update, which for us was at the end of last calendar year.

Uh and so we needed to make sure that this was in fact in place. The law in and of itself really identifies um three different tiers. Bellingham falls into what's called a tier one city because we have a population of over 75,000.

So, we're the only jurisdiction within Watcom County that that falls into that um area. Uh it requires jurisdictions to allow up to or be permissive up to four units per lot. Um you can get to a fifth and a sixth and or a sixth.

uh the way the state law was written, it really provided uh two different avenues of getting there. One of which was that if they were affordable uh under the state's definition of affordability and then second was with if you were within a proximity to transit.

We don't have any transit that met the state's definition of that. It's typically, you know, commuter rail lines, light rail, uh bus rapid transit. Um, but one of the things the city council did in the interim ordinance was we have the ability to be a little bit more permissive.

Uh, we can't be more restrictive than what the state laws and I'll I'll get into a couple things that we do there. The state also identified nine different um housing types and jurisdictions have to be able to accommodate at least six of those nine and we'll get through that a little bit in a minute.

Um we also have to have um objective development and design standards. So for example, you may recall in some of the old uh neighborhood plans and other things that says stuff like shall meet the general character.

That's very subjective in its nature. And so um the design criteria now require us to be very objective. So it's very measurable. and and no longer do we have the ability to go through um additional public hearings, additional public design review meetings.

All of that has to be done administratively by staff. So, the intention was to streamline some of those actions and make um make sure that they accommodated in a more timely manner. There were a few opportunities for exclusions, particular areas that don't necessarily have to abide by this.

One of the provisions um I oversimplified it on this slide in terms of the Lake Watkcom wershed that the state definition is different than that but it's it's about a basically a groundwater recharge and the ability to to uh exempt out particular areas.

You can also exempt out critical areas um so wetlands uh steeply sloped sites or if the area is not served by utilities. So we have some areas in the city, for example, like some of our south neighborhood, we don't have sewer that extends all the way out there uh at this time.

So we don't have to apply those same these same criteria to those particular areas. All right. So let me tell you on the left uh is an illustrative example of what the state law would have required with the exception of um you know the um line one which is down here to Fair Haven.

Again, we don't follow any of the transit lines, but if we were going to say take the WTA go lines and apply that, this is kind of what a quarter mile shed from those different go lines would look like.

And then the graphic on the right is if you extend that out to a half mile kind of the areas that were covered and the council uh saw it again without we did the dash line you can see there on that one.

So it does not include this portion here where route one goes but there is a half mile radius. So you can get to that fifth and sixth unit on the lot if you're within any of those kind of bolder brighter colors uh within the kind of red bubbled areas.

Right. State law. These are the um different types. And uh I know you see eight on there, but if you look in the upper right hand corner, you see five plexes and six plexes are illustrated by the same.

So that's technically the full nine that the state allows. We've had on our books the infill toolkit since 2015, if I'm correct in that. Uh and so we've applied a fair bit of that and expanded the utilization of that infill toolkit uh citywide as well.

And we identified these as our uh middle housing types. So you can see in here the small lot and the ADUs are something that we can be more uh we can be inclusive of those tip two additional types because we allow at least six of the others that are consistent with state law.

So, uh, we've kind of pursued that in this manner. Just to kind of give you a little bit of context. Um, if you're thinking about it as a kind of a standalone detached unit, the cottage units that you see in the upper left here, um, the small lot, the ADUs are typically the forms that you see kind of presented in a in a a detached and then everything else becomes a bit more of an attached uh, opportunity.

So this is the example of the uh okay 2009 uh was when the so was a little off my dates earlier I said 2015 it was 2009 um so the pink area and then it got expanded into the green areas in 2018 um and essentially what we've said is now we're going to allow with the exception of the lakew walk and watershed up here in the in the right side of the graphic it's now allowed everywhere the other thing that the state law did um is it said that it does not override or supersede if you have a an existing um covenant and restriction for an HOA, but that you cannot create new covenants and restrictions that would prevent or preclude that.

So any any new formation of that is not allowed to accommodate that. All right. We're also going to be going through and this is kind of the effort that's now um underway kind of post comp plan where we're going to be looking at the some of you were on uh planning commission when we did the um changes to the residential medium and we did some consolidation and some changes there.

We're going to be looking at updating the kind of residential zoning designations um throughout the city and begin to have this in mind as we start to do some of that kind of stuff. So, you'll see different opportunities of instead of having that single family zoning kind of R um R approach to this, you'll start to see kind of a residential low, medium, high, and different opportunities to do that throughout the city.

So that'll be part of kind of a separate uh measure that'll be coming probably later this year and and bleed into next year as well. Just to give you a this is a graphic that commerce put out um as they were starting to develop this.

I should also mention that if local jurisdictions such as ours didn't adopt these development regulations, the state developed a model code and if we didn't do it by the timeline, then the model code would supersede our local development regulations.

So that was why we wanted to make sure we u met that even though it was through the interim ordinance um and that gives us time to bring all the details back that still is compliant with state law. But Commerce put out this particular information um just as a graphic example of saying the grade out uh units are existing over the course of time.

You might see, you know, some lots change over. It's not not going to be an entire lot at any given time or entire block at any given time. It may be, you know, a patchwork quilt kind of approach where you see different opportunities present themselves, but hopefully integrated into the overall context of the existing street and block and neighborhood.

Um, the other thing I'll mention, we we do a lot of tracking of this on our city website. Um, I found it interesting. We have about 13% of our existing housing stock is in middle housing form as of today.

Um, so we have representations in all but two of our neighborhoods already. So the only two that don't have it are Western's uh campus because that's mostly student housing on the campus itself and doesn't qualify as middle housing and Irongate which is predominantly industrial.

But every single residential neighborhood has at least a representation of middle housing um somewhere already. So, you know, some of them are are much older examples and some of them are a little bit more um contemporary, but we do have uh you know, a distribution of those across the city as well.

Here's a couple examples. Uh, and I I did this very intentionally more so for I think for the general public than than for you all as commissioners, but in you you can see in this example where um you have, you know, kind of middle housing on, you know, kind of mixed into that.

This is a block in the Fair Haven neighborhood is uh Donovan Street where you can see the southern portion of this uh street face is all detached single family homes and then the northern portion is represented by um the residential transition area into the downtown Fair Haven uh and the Fair Haven neighborhood village plan.

And you start to see a variety of different middle housing types kind of along there. And they and they work well together and in close proximity. And then you start to think about that scale as they get a little bit higher.

Um and you have again some single. This is the Leonard Streets neighborhood uh as you get close to um Oldtown. And you start to see examples over here on the on the graphic up above where slightly higher uh density and and urban form in there.

And then that kind of is reflected a little bit uh in this cross-section on the bottom portion where you see a little bit higher scale to the right of the image and then even some middle housing kind of uh filtered through the neighborhoods as well.

And then lastly is kind of a a transition along a corridor. So this is the um fountain urban village. You know Peabody is down here on the bottom. Uh this is Meridian up on top. and you start to see a little bit more of kind of the commercial and mixed use along the meridian frontage and then some middle housing types uh that are um along Peabody and Broadway and here even uh with some single family there as well.

So again, we we have representations of these everywhere trying to break down that uh concern that oh my gosh, this is so new, so different, so you know, uh potentially problematic. And it's like, no, we have great examples already in the in the city.

Um I'm not going to dig into this. This is just ways of thinking about it in terms of an incremental where you can start with an existing single family, you can add on to that. One of the things that we did in the interim code, and this was a um in direct response to one of the council members who was concerned about um the potential of somebody coming in and u raising the property and losing some of the character of some of the period homes that we might have throughout the city.

And one of the things that we talked about is the ability to if you retain that existing structure, you can actually take that existing structure and demise it up into smaller units. Uh you still have to meet building code requirements and go through those types of things, but we won't count that um additional uh conversion of that unit as towards density.

So you still have the ability to add additional units if you want in the back. And so it was a way to try to help uh use an incentive base to retain some of those existing character homes. This is an example of, you know, how you might see something like that where you've got a single unit on the left uh and then maybe it gets uh demised up in smaller type units uh throughout you can where you can still retain those.

Here's a good example uh in the Letter Streets neighborhood where this existing home is actually three units uh now and it and it works within the block. There's a couple different examples uh that are out there in the industry.

This one that that I brought up is um from Utah. Uh but where you start to see these different kind of uh scenarios where they start to lay out um how not every housing type is going to fit on every lot.

There's an assessment that you know you kind of have to go through and and determine some of that kind of stuff. So you start to look at what are the setback requirements, what are the height requirements, uh and you can start to play around with some of those different details and see about what fits into into that particular area.

So, I'm not going to take a ton of time to go through these, but these are just a couple examples that exist out there kind of in the industry already. Um, floor error ratio. You guys probably got this pretty well.

So, I'm going to go through this just really quickly in case we have any members of the public that are uh watching this that don't understand. This is a little bit more on uh the technical side, but you're basically starting with the the lot size.

Uh so in this example, we've got a 50 foot wide by 100 foot deep lot. So you've got 5,000 square feet. If you're talking about a floor area ratio, that's basically the amount of coverage that you get on that particular.

So if we have a, for example, in the middle of this graphic, if you have a floor area ratio of one, you take that 5,000 square ft and you can now build that 5,000 square ft on that lot. It doesn't mean you have to do it all single story and cover the entirety of the lot.

In fact, our zoning wouldn't allow for that. We have certain setback and open space requirements with that. But you can potentially get to if you do two stories or greater, you can use that uh that volutric calculation um to to drive that.

And this is an example in Sacramento, California, where they kind of show how that diff ratio scales from left to right. And you can start to see additional capacity uh for for that on those lots. Started laying out a few of those.

So again, same kind of example, 50 foot lot by 100. Um, if we start to talk about, okay, we take out the setback requirements, what does that do uh to the kind of the building envelope in the middle of the lot?

Um, and then you can start to see where you put the different units on. if you're doing a different uh you know if you do a ADU or a second unit on that particular building those conversions for the floor area under the prior infill toolkit used to be based on uh housing type.

And so, uh, when we made this transition to, um, this particular interim ordinance, we adopted the state model code where they talked about doing it based on unit count. So, the floor area ratio increases depending on the number of units.

In the first iteration of the interim ordinance, um, you see the asterisk under the 6 there. It's because we had um a lower uh ratio for that particular unit kind because we did not include uh ADUs at that point.

When we in the second iteration when we added ADUs we went up to the 6 because that still allows you to accommodate the the overall development intensity that you see here. Happy to dive into that greater if if it's warranted, but I'll I'll leave it there for now.

Um this is just a couple very rudimentary graphics about where you start to think about uh you know again the primary unit in yellow uh the additional ADUs. So if you're adding a second you get up to that 08.

If you're adding a a third unit you get up to the 1.0 and you can start to see how they start to move around a little bit. The ADUs themselves can be u anywhere within that rear 32 ft of the lot. You can go up to property lines and start to work through that.

that doesn't give you an exemption from the building code requirements. If it's an interior lot, you still have to think about how much of the um the wall area can be open or glazed. And then we've had some additional discussion about what does it look like if you're talking about a landmark tree where there's still critical root zones um and and working through those kind of different iterations.

Let's skip past some of this. One of the other provisions that uh is in the ordinance is there's a lot of conversation or at least there was about um whether or not you can split up. We mentioned earlier the state allows for the condominiumization of um ADUs.

And so in that context that is essentially creating uh an ownership structure within the building. So you're basically buying the the space within the building. Um there's also some considerations about kind of unit lot subdivision and whether you can parcel off portions of those that parent lot and actually create different ownership lots.

We structured that such in such a way um is that in order to do that you have to have uh an affordability component with that at this time. So that that's kind of structured uh in that way under the interim ordinance.

So, it allows us to accommodate those that are trying to provide that uh affordable ownership model to do that, but we have not opened that up um broadly, so to speak. Some of this conversation about land use and land division is really going to come to head when we have that residential zoning discussion because now we're going to talk about what different lot sizes are available.

So, we've got lot sizes uh throughout the city that on the high end are a minimum of 20,000 square feet and on the low end they go much much smaller than that. Uh and so that's going to really start to inform the conversation about what kind of yield you can get on a particular property.

So, if you're coming in, for example, and you've got a 20,000 square foot lot and you want to go through a short plat and create, let's say, four 5,000 square foot lots, then you have the potential of saying, okay, if we've created those four, then each one of those lots has the potential of getting to that four to six units on those lots.

So, you can see how that that can really uh, you know, drive the the unit count uh in a in a different direction. Couple uh brief examples. These are a little dated, but I again I didn't want to change what I showed the council.

This this is in the uh in the Letter Streets neighbor. You see up in the upper right hand corner. This was an existing uh unit that was kind of tucked in the kind of you can see it down here in the um south uh east corner of the property.

And they came in and they actually uh were looking at seven additional town homes on this particular property. So, uh, that's the kind of site plan superimposed over the top. So, kind of two attached here, a building of three, and another building of two.

This one's actually under construction right now as we speak. That's the example. Uh this is a prior iteration of the uh front elevation, but you can kind of see again the three-unit building there in the middle and then the two-unit building and it, you know, to some degree uh kind of reflects a little bit of the character and dynamics of the existing house on the on the left.

>> In these cases, is this one lot or was this subdivided into four? >> So in this case, because they're town homes, they will be fee simple lots if I remember correctly. Um, so it'll it will be what was one parent lot and then they'll create individual lots.

>> So this isn't this isn't an example of eight on one lot. This is >> Oh, I do have a couple examples like that. >> This is turning into like >> Yeah, these will be seven lots. >> Unless you guys know differently, but I believe it's it's fe simple town home.

So they're going to create seven additional lots. So, to your point, more than likely it will be uh and I don't know the exact answer, but I imagine that the the existing unit will be on its own lot. Each of the town homes will be on a lot.

You may have some common area, right? >> You know, pieces that are on kind of a association lot scenario. So, it may be kind of in that 8 8 n range. And so this this zoning lets you go down to a lot size of like >> Yeah.

On the >> like more than 5,000 or >> Can you do your mic? Can you do your mic? >> Uh this is a high density zone. So it's actually unlimited density in this area. >> Okay. So So the reason these lots are able to get so small is because of that high >> Yes.

>> Okay. >> Yeah. Um here's another example where you have um one, you know, flag lot here. So the kind of the pipe stem that comes in off of the street opens up in there kind of in the back uh towards the east.

There's an existing home and the proposal there. Existing home is shown in the kind of purple square here. Um and then they are building um eight additional single family homes in uh should say principal units in the yellow and then an associated ADU in the blue.

So they're building an ADU for the for the um original home as well as ADUs for all of the eight other uh single units as well. So you're going from a one to a what is that 16 18 something like that 18.

>> Do these have to have the affordability component? >> They do not because in this situation again they're also going through a subdivision where they're creating individual lots. So where we start to talk about the if they were trying to um make the ADUs on their own independent lot then they would have to do that.

Um but as if because the ADUs the blue are on the newly created lot and associated with a principal unit then they they do not. >> Okay. So the affordability component for the lot subdivision is just related to the ADUs being >> yeah if you want to be on a standalone independent lot um I should say and when we talk about affordability in that context I'm using the term with the capital A affordability meaning like subsidized um income restricted type units.

One of the things that I think is notable and we try to use this nomenclature when we're talking to the general public is that part of what middle housing is really trying to do is build back in some natural affordability um some attainability.

Now, we can go down this path if you want, talk about different price points and income ranges and stuff, but the simple version is when you the area median income, the last time I checked uh for this metropolitan service area was 106,300 for a household of four.

What that means that AMI sets you basically you have to be making low 80% of that. There's different income bands. 80% uh is considered low income and then you kind of go down from there. That's where you qualify below 80% for those subsidies.

The air the median home value in the city is um is closer to 700,000. So you almost need to be making about 160% of AMI to be able to afford that. So we've got this pretty big gap between there. So you go 80 to 150 160%.

Um that we've heard the term missing middle. Not only is that referring to a housing form, but it's also referring to kind of that uh you know that widening gap between this. And so it's not the only tool, but one of the more significant tools that's available to help bridge that gap is supply and bringing in more units, different types of units, different sizes of units.

And so you start to see things like ADUs, um, and, you know, smaller uh, lot sizes and other things that bridge that gap between. Um, new construction is still relatively expensive. Uh, so you're not going to you're not going to see them dropping from $700,000 down to $200,000, but you may get into the threes and fours, you know, uh, and that kind of thing.

So, again, more attainable, maybe not 100%, you know, affordable, but um, all of it helps. This is an example and I the numbers that are referenced in here this is a architecture and urban firm from Atlanta.

So I want to just qualify these are not local numbers. Um but if you if you I think it's a good illustration and example where you have you know um an independent uh home that's on a on a fairly decent size lot and again you need in this case 145% of AMI to be able to afford that uh total cost for for that home and in this case that's 400,000.

So if you scale that up to closer to 700,000, that's kind of local numbers. And so what you start to see is, okay, if I parcel that out, build additional units on that site, that lot one shrinks down.

Um, it doesn't totally undercut, you know, the the initial home, but it it does take some of the land value off of there. Um, but it makes now that home a little bit more attainable for somebody in the future.

And then when you start to look at those additional lots, the two, three, and four, now all of a sudden those are at a price point again, not below the subsidized level, but again, more attainable, more you've heard it term terms of workforce housing or other things like that that might be more eligible uh for more a broader array of people in our community.

Here's another example of one where again these homes that you know infill sites homes situated and such that there is additional capacity on that lot. So they retain the existing home in the upper right hand corner and look at three additional new homes that potentially can come on to that site.

We got another one. Uh, again, existing home kind of where the red icon is there and potentially looking at getting additional units on there. Yeah. >> Um, on the previous slide, I think that might have been Columbia.

Is that an example of four units on one lot because it's lower density zoning? >> Yeah. >> So, this would be the max unless you did something creative with affordability. >> Yeah. So in this scenario, you you might be in a s situation where the existing home is retained and they might be able to demise that like we were talking about earlier where they can chop it up.

Now that's a pretty small home. It's like a 800 foot home. So that likelihood of that happening is pretty limited. But yes, the three additional homes that might be the best you can get. Now they technically >> lot they're not drawing drawing new lot lines here.

>> No. Technically, they could get up to six on that lot, but again is question of whether or not you're talking in this scenario, the uh property owner chose to keep them all at single stories. So, they weren't doing like stacked flats where you might have, you know, one unit on the ground floor and the second unit up above.

Uh but in this case, they've done that. when uh you shared the missing middle housing types from the state, they had uh stacked flats included in their like menu of options and then it wasn't on the city's menu of options.

Is there a particular reason? I mean, I know reasons why I wouldn't want to build stack flats, but why why >> no we we do allow them. It may not have been illustrated in there, but it is it is something that we can accommodate.

Um again we can talk about it a little bit but the as you're aware of the stack flats um from a purely from a building code criteria are a lot more challenging to do. So we don't see them uh defaulted to as as regularly.

And in large part it comes down to and uh again we don't have to get into this in in a ton of detail but part of what is still playing catchup is a lot of these things that we're talking about are the land use zoning development regulations.

The building code still has some some catchup work to do. So, right now, uh, in the state of Washington, if you're building a single unit or a duplex unit, you can qualify under the International Residential Code, the IRC.

And it's a very kind of streamlined uh version of the building code. When you get to three units and greater, you're under the international building code, the IBC. And and the challenge right now is that a three-unit building in the IBC is subject to the same criteria as a 30-unit building as a 300 unit building.

So you start to talk through a lot more requirements and and the economies of scale aren't really there at those lower ends. And so the state building code council has been tasked with looking at ways to try to find some space in between those two or kind of work through some of the details.

They're calling it a multipplex. Um memory serves me correctly. They're they were tasked with coming out with something by November of this year. I think it's been pushed a little bit, but I don't recall how it's into 27 I believe.

Kurt, do you remember? No. Okay. It's It's not crazy far out, but it's a little further than than November of this year. But the intention behind the multiplex is to look at things that allow for, hey, we did all this work for middle housing.

How do we open up the building codes? We still want to protect the integrity of the life safety criteria and those requirements, but we were trying to open up this capacity and get these additional units.

And we've started to see other components of that come to play with like the single stairwell buildings and other things that uh this year's legislative session they had scissor stairs. There was some additional elevator uh accommodations.

And you have your hand raised. Sorry if I missed that for a while. >> Uh yes. Now this is kind of referring to you're you're mentioning all these changes to the building code. I think if you look at I think your next slide had a property or in Birwood that has all that going down the street.

I believe this is in fact off Birchwood a uh but I think in relating to the building code changes is there anything similar to fire code because I know with this property what they have to do is you see that little T at the end there.

I believe you it is required that you have that if the property is more than 250 feet from an from a a road basically an access point. >> Um I think most other countries don't have that kind of requirement.

Do you know if there's anything happening at the state or national level with fire building code in regards to like that kind of middle density? >> There is not at the moment that I'm aware of and I'm don't see anything from my colleagues.

So I'm not aware of anything. I know that we have been talking with the city's fire marshall about those different requirements. It's certainly something that we're talking about. The challenge in Birwood in particular is that you've got a a fairly large swath of that neighborhood that has these narrow, in this case 80t wide, as I showed on here, by 450t deep.

Um, and as as Dan mentioned, um, he's right. If a fire truck were to service this particular and when you start to look at this neighborhood, you see kind of most of those lots are front-loaded uh, with the homes because they have that requirement of basically if the fire truck were to park out here in the street, they have um, hose pull lengths and they've got to be able to get around the entirety of the building to do all of that kind of stuff.

uh when you start to get into these kind of scenarios where you're trying to get to the rear or the back portion of the lot, there's a couple different ways that you can start to approach some of that kind of stuff.

And this is what we're working with our local fire marshall on. Some of which is in this example where the kind of pink hashed area is where you have to have a fire lane that takes you back and you have to have adequate turnaround.

uh which is why you see that kind of tea or the hammerhead design there to allow for that and accommodate that. There are provisions that allow you to have um but you cannot serve more than two lots. So you can go a certain depth and then you can have kind of a private drive from there that gets you a couple more units.

Um but this will be a challenge for you know everybody across the state to figure out how to do some of this. Part of what we're trying to think about is and many of these lots are under individual ownership.

So you can't require one to wait on the next one, but if there's a way to consolidate some of these. So for example, in this scenario, if this was being developed with this road and the adjacent property were also to redevelop, could there be a shared or common drive?

And so you're not doing this on every single lot. The other part of the uh the scenario that we're starting to look at is there an opportunity. Birchwood is uh does not have alleys or in many of the cases the blocks are fairly long and so is there a way to look at some of those kind of development patterns and the criteria that's associated with it.

U because that will uh open up different opportunities to consider. What flexibility does the like our local fire marshall have over like our state fire code? Like do they have flexibility and what they can do or they stuck?

>> Um all the codes have a fairly uh fairly rigid framework, but there is opportunity for interpretation and in some cases there's opportunity from like what they call local technical amendments. And so there's ways to address some things.

I can't really give you a a cart blanch answer on some of that kind of stuff, but that's part of why we're trying to work through uh you know some of those criteria. But yes, there are a number of things that are going to be pushing a bowler uphill to try to get state code changed.

The one the one example that I remember scratching my head about was like a hose pole and it was like 250 ft but they have 500 feet of hose actually on the truck or something like that. It was like back in the day they only had 250 ft.

So like could a fire marshall decide like actually we have 500 feet of hose and so we can pull farther or something. Well, and there's different there's other criteria that where you can start to get into some of these is like if you provide uh fire sprinklers within the in the units, then you can then there are some degree of exceptions or additional accommodations you can make.

So, there are some things like that that we're kind of working through and kind of thinking through um trying to address as well. >> Kurt, you're into this as well. Do you have anything that you want to expand on?

No, I think you hit it all there. Like there is some flexibility in the in those building codes and um our both our building official and our fire marshall have been great to work with so far. Um and we've got great working relationships with them and feel like we will be able to continue that and hopefully find some better ways um forward.

And there is I mean there absolutely is a bigger statewide and to some degree uh nationwide because a lot of a lot of jurisdictions use the international codes as kind of the baseline for some of that stuff.

And so there there are conversations that are happening uh at both the state level and the international code level, code council level where they're trying to open up some of these things and look um and look at them squarely so that so we can address the housing needs.

Yes, we are we know here in Washington state, you know, we've got a critical need. We're not the only state in the nation that is facing that kind of thing. All right. Um I'll just mention it because it's in here.

So the co-l livingiving if you recall um this is where you have basically um an opportunity to have uh you know a single a principal building and then you can u have rooms that are independently rented out and then they have shared space like kitchens or laundry facilities or other things like that.

And so um we made some code amendments. You all were involved in that process I believe. Um so gives the opportunity to do that. This is an illustration. Again, each one of those rooms that are kind of colorcoded on there would be independent uh but then they have shared facilities.

Part of this is again that fits into the fabric of the neighborhood. You can't I don't know maybe you can but I don't think you could probably tell which of these three illustrated on here are is the is the shared and that's kind of by design.

So all right. Um, one of the requirements that came out of the state legislation was House Bill uh 1293 and it talked about streamlining development regulations and one of those I mentioned earlier under 1110 which is kind of a little bit of the overlap was those administrative design review that staff looked at.

So Lindsay and our other colleague Sarah did a quite a a herculean task of getting all that stuff uh brought forward before the state timeline. I don't know if you recall but we had a scenario um in the state legislature where the different jurisdictions around the state are on different comp plan cycles.

So we were in 2025 and they had historically had given um all the jurisdictions an additional six months. They moved the comp plan deadline from the middle of the year to the end of the year. So they gave us an additional six months and then we had six months thereafter to develop uh development regulations um to be consistent with these state laws that I'm referencing.

in the in the 25 legislative session, they were looking out to to those jurisdictions that were required to do um them in 2026 and 2027 and they said, "Hey, you've had two years of kind of leadup time.

We're not going to give you that additional six months on the back end." And when they did those floor amendments, they said, "Okay, if you don't have an adopted comp plan, you don't get the additional six months." And it passed through and became law.

And we're saying like, "Hey, like we're in the middle. we haven't adopted ours yet and so it inadvertently applied to those that were in the 2025 cycle. So we thought we had the six months and it got taken away.

So we had to kind of rush to get a lot of those in place by the end of this past calendar year 2025 which is why you see the use of some of these interim because we just felt like we needed to get them in to be consistent and compliant with state law and then go back through and clean it.

So, um, Chris did a lot of the heavy lifting on the middle housing and the ADU piece, and Lindsay and Sarah did a lot of the heavy lifting on the design regulations. Um, so I'm going to touch on them a little bit again.

Uh, and then and then if if we want to give Lindsay her day in the spotlight, we can certainly do that. Um, I touched on these already. There are a few exceptions um for the clear and objective standards.

So again, if you're in a a local historic landmark, um you can uh be pulled out of that and we can still go through that. We do uh concurrent review on those as well. Um we do allow to have one public meeting like in this case like a neighborhood meeting or something like that.

It's different than a public hearing and it's intentionally different. So unless somebody's applying for a variance that's associated with their land use or something like that, we're not having design review meetings.

All right. Um this is the intent of our existing design review. We held strong on this portion of it. We really want to um emphasize the pedestrianoriented components and really talk about how they orient to the street and think through some of the uh transparency requirements associated with that and really try to make sure that that does what you see there which is enhancing the public realm and really u move through a lot of those kind of overall intent.

Um the objective st design standards are broken down into kind of three primary categories. Again, the public realm being the first. Then you dig into the site design and then you get in so that's where things are are positioned uh on the property and then you get into um the building design.

And one of the things that we did to be um consistent with that objective design criteria is start to identify a range of different choices. So like in this example you see on the bottom right hand side of the screen where you see this menu of options and you have to pick five from that menu.

So it does so the idea is to give some opportunity for design interpretation and approach to that and how they want to achieve that. But we've got some degree of consistency and expectation about what that is that will lend to those overall approaches without being monotonous and repetitive in in that respect.

Uh we still go through if there are requests for departures, you know, there is an opportunity to come to to me as the director for those considerations. Um, and in urban villages, we do have still the ability to take certain things to the design review board.

And so, we've got those dialed in a little bit more. I'm going to go back to that same example. This is the one I showed you earlier, uh, in the letter sheets where there's the, you know, the existing unit in the lower right hand corner and then the seven additional town homes there.

So, in this example, you can see that all of those on the left side of your screen are oriented out towards G Street. So that's your kind of building orientation. You got vehicular access that's internal to the site.

Um so you can kind of see that those two uh approaches have been met. We talk about site design. There wasn't a tremendous amount of grading on on this example, but you can see that there are different opportunities for usable open space, internal circulation.

You can kind of see splitting between the threeunit building here and the two is kind of a a walkway. uh carries along and through out. So you get that internal circulation and then this example shows you a range of different landscaping and different opportunities there.

So it meets the the kind of overall site design criteria. And then when you start to talk and again I I use this only as an example. This changed a little bit and uh and so this is not um representative of what's out there right now.

But again, that same idea about, hey, we're looking at the overall building design. Is there a clear entrance, what's the transparency look like, how are we dealing with articulation? And then again, you get the menu of options that you can choose at least five of those.

Not prevented from doing more than five, but just that's kind of the the minimum approach, the overall. So the these standards get applicable only to the middle housing and those forms, not single family residential.

>> Oh, single family is obligated to do it as well. So one of the things that I didn't touch on in the state law is that the um middle housing forms cannot be any more restrictive than than your more traditional single family homes.

And so in order to keep consistency because we historically have not had design regulations on single homes um we included them now in that process. So there are things like this where uh and and you'll hear a little bit of that from the development community because they're now having to step up to meet the same threshold.

So things like the green factor, things like um frontage requirements, things like the design review pieces are components that are now equally applied to single family. >> I was thinking of like houses where you have the garage in front of the entry and it seems like one that's kind of >> common you see on single family and then now you look at the regulations and it's kind of like not really something that you're supposed >> Yeah.

I mean we certainly you can see some of those where the you know maybe the house sits a little more proud of the garage or maybe uh we look at the proportion of that so the garage is not twothirds of the frontage or something along those lines.

So we are trying to deemphasize that there's not alley access everywhere so that's not always that uh you're not capable of always doing that. There are other things like certain topographic sites that have some restrictions and things like that.

So, it's not a absolute across the board, but it is a design driver that we're trying to accomplish. >> Can I just clarify one thing on that? The um like a standalone single family, many of these design standards don't apply to them.

There are some other things with the middle housing that do, but um if you were to have a like a small lot or something like that as a part of a middle housing, then some of those design standards could apply.

But just a standalone single family does not. And that's actually a um in the House bill design was that one component that allowed some um departure from uh when it came to u the middle housing uh ordinance and rules.

So yeah, thanks for the clarity. Yeah, this it was strangely worded. So Kurt's absolutely right. All right, let's see if there's a um this is trying to look at a you know kind of a sidebyside comparison of um a variety of different things where we can say okay we can be more permissive.

I'm not going to take the time to go through all that. Um that's stuff I showed council. These dates don't apply anymore. Oh, so that's it. Um Lindsay, you had do you have anything you want to add on the design review piece?

I'd just say that we we basically took what we have and there were design standards and lots of different places of the code and handbooks since we've had design review since I believe 2001 or around then and uh just found the common themes and then made them objective instead of subjective language.

Um, so yeah, we do our best to to make it as clear as possible. >> I'm sure um having real life projects come forward and try to use the code has been enlightening on how it's being applied and like where the rub is on some of those.

And I'm I'm just curious like what are some of the common like lessons learned or challenges that you are coming up against? >> Um are you talking about specifically from a design review perspective or just overall >> just implementing?

>> We could probably go on. Uh no >> no let me let me let me start. I know I know Kirk can absolutely chime in on this one. So I think um a number of things that we're trying to work through is um like we had some questions about vesting and like which codes apply because we did have the initial interim and then we did the second interim and so there's a little bit of that that works through.

We're really working uh with our other departments, public works in particular, on how we do utilities and then we serve some of these. You're well aware of the shared utility discussion that's been going on and kind of thinking through um how we service these particular properties and and multiple units on that.

And because the city doesn't um regulate ownership structures, then that can shift the conversation and change things a little bit in terms of how those are served. Um so we're just kind of working through a few of those um you know growing pains a little bit and trying to figure out working through some of the you know the fire access and fire code requirements uh on some of these things.

I don't Kurt did you want to elaborate any further on some of that? Well, I think one of the one of the good things about an interim ordinance is it gives you time to learn, right? And so, uh, we are definitely learning.

Um, we've, you know, you create rules, um, and you you try to write rules for about 90 90% of what happens, right? Well, you're you're you're bound to get those 10% crazy. Well, what in the world is going to we going to do here?

Um, and we're seeing a lot of those. um we have been working together as a team to be able to kind of even put up put together our own user guide um because um people can interpret things a little bit differently.

So that has been a great it's been a great opportunity for us to to see where we need to clarify things. Um another one of the kind of the larger items that we're we're working through is how we treat existing homes.

You know, one of our main goals at the with the rental housing was to to retain existing housing stock. Um, and there are so many different existing units, types, and counts out there right now that it's kind of challenging.

Um, take for example, um, when you convert those or you do they have the usable space requirement? Every unit now, every new unit is required to have 100 square feet of usable space. What do we do with an existing house?

We want to make sure that we retain that. Are we now going to require them to have 100 square feet of usable space? So, um existing units and how we deal with those. Um again, trying to preserve those uh that that existing housing stock.

Um trying to discourage displacement and demolition of that as two big things. And so we're trying to be as lenient as possible with existing structures, but that is definitely creating some questions and challenges.

And I Lindsay, how about from the design review? I know I've heard some good things about that so far. >> Yeah, I'd say anecdotally, it's it's uh been working pretty well. um especially from an infill housing perspective, we really didn't change very much from what was in or for middle housing, what was in the infill housing code.

So that was has been I think say pretty seamless. And then um and then we have had um some mixeduse and multifamily projects and we've applied the standards to and it's it's it's been it's been working pretty well.

So, >> I just wanted to show you one. This was in a a different presentation that we've provided, but this is an example of what uh Lindsay and uh Sarah did is we we went through all of these different code sections that you see represented up here and to Lindsay's just statement a moment ago about synthesizing those down into the interim design review regulations.

So that's been one of I think that's probably one of the challenges that we still have ahead of us in some respects is that our uh existing code has a lot of different pieces and parts all over the place.

And so trying to synthesize that down trying to be a little bit more lean on how we do that a little more user friendly. I think one of the things if you had the chance to kind of look through the kind of final iteration of the of the Bellingham plan, I think that does really well at taking that and and um streamlining it and we're trying to keep that in mind.

We've had a recent conversation with um the mayor's office and and city staff in terms of looking at different types of codes. Um, some of you may be familiar with the term uklitian zoning, but it's this uh basically very textheavy um kind of chapter and verse approach, which is in large part where zoning has really lived for the last uh probably 40 50 years.

And you're starting to see new uh approaches to some of that. One of which is what we call a unified code, which begins to again consolidate and streamline those and do them in different chapters. And so that's kind of the direction that we're we're trending uh right now.

Our code as it exists has elements of that that you start to see. Uh and so we're going to try to lean into that a little bit more and so try to really make it user friendly. And one of the things that we've talked a fair bit about um on the implementation side of things is the things that we say we want which is these middle house.

How do we make that one of the easiest things to do? We've um outside of this kind of um regulatory framework, we've been having development task force meetings where we meet with a variety of different folks across the industry.

And I I touched on it a little bit and in that the land use portion of it is kind of the leading edge of this conversation. You then have the building codes that are coming and following on with that.

Um, as as Rose mentioned, the fire codes still have a little bit more catchup to do. But what we're also seeing across the industry is um like property appraisers, for example. You're you're a residential property appraiser if you're looking at one to four units.

You get into commercial if you're five to six. Whole different set of standards. How's the county assessor working on this? How do the different lending agencies look at that stuff? So Fanny May and Freddy Mack, which are federally backed mortgages, which can be traded on the market, open up a very different lending practice for our financial institutions.

When you start to get into these middle housing forms, it doesn't fit in that box. And so now they're having to figure out new ways to lend and new ways to do some of this kind of stuff. and it's just it's moving the needle for a lot of the different kind of industries that come around that.

So the the land use and the development regulations again on the front end. So we will see probably over the next probably 3, five plus years um you know all of these kind of secondary industry is starting to kind of catch up to some of these things and and play out.

>> Okay, one one last question. um with the projects that you've seen come forward, do you I mean is there a sense of how many are being condominiumized versus they're just retaining the ownership? >> Um I would say very few are being condominiumized right now.

Um, and the way I understand why, the reason why I understand that is if you have a property owner that is still carrying a mortgage and let's say they're locked in at a 3% rate, if they're going to condominiumize that ADU or one of the other units that's on the property, they have to refinance the property to be able to pull that piece out and sell that piece off.

And so the there's less favorable terms in the refinance world right now. And so it doesn't make a lot of financial sense to um lose your 3% mortgage and refinance at 6% only to be able to sell off this.

So it's just it it's more the financial side. It's not really the regulatory side from the city's perspective. I think I'd add um I think to for Chris's numbers, he's got some great stats on just the number of ADUs that we're getting.

Um and it's upward of like 180 some of how many we've uh permitted and I know of it's it's two for sure and maybe three projects that have indicated that they are doing condominiums for those ADUs. So, it's it's still a very low number like Blake was saying, >> and most of them are going in.

And what we're also seeing, this wasn't really your question, but what we're also seeing is the cost of ADUs are still a little on the higher side. And so you're seeing a lot of people that either have ownership outright or that have a particular um you know family need or other objective in mind.

It's not purely just to put it on the market and and do spec building. And so we're starting to see a little bit of that. Um but as Curt said there we are seeing some uh it's just we need a lot more you know and so that's why we're trying to make it easier.

We're trying to streamline that. We're trying to bring in and I'll I'll give a quick shout out and plug to Wiku because we've reached out to a couple different uh local financing agencies and they've come to the table and they're trying to figure out how they can be a good partner in this and lend and and develop new u products to be able to lend to some of this stuff.

The other piece, and it's not really the the um main premise of what we're talking about tonight, but what we're seeing kind of we talked a little bit more about those different price points. So, the you know, single detached unit again, um median prices are in that $700,000 range.

So, when you start to see the town homes come in or some of the middle housing stuff come in, you know, you can probably knock off maybe a couple hundred,000, you know, and get in that kind of $500,000 range.

ADUs are probably coming in still at around 350 400,000 depending on, you know, some variables in there. So, that's still a fairly high bar to get to, you know, 350,000. Um, there's conversations about tiny homes, tiny homes on wheels, uh, you know, other different opportunities to think about to continue to find that price point where you can get into how do we get into the twos?

How do we get into the mid 100,000s? Um, is that possible? Again, new construction always has some challenges and complexities in that. Um, our community development side of our branch is very invested in trying to protect existing housing stock and to support some of housing rehabilitation loans and other things along those lines to, you know, kind of maintain some of the naturally occurring affordability that we have already.

So, it's a it's a yes and approach where we're trying to do a lot of things. Any other questions? >> Dan or Lisa got anything? >> Nope. I'm all good. >> Right. >> I am too. Very informative. Thank you for all your hard work.

>> Yeah, absolutely. And just to kind of give you a little bit of a preview of u what you have coming. Thank you all for um sorry we threw three meetings at you this month but next week you'll have an opportunity to hear a little bit from our parks and recck department on the pros plan.

So that's our public recreation and open space part of and it gets a little bit to your question Rose earlier is what are the things that we're talking about. We've put a lot of time and thought energy into thinking about okay if we are going to have compact urban forms.

What are the things that make neighborhoods and the community livable? Certainly walkability is one of those pieces. Access and proximity to open space is absolutely another piece of that. And so the pros plan is going to be a critical part of the overall uh livability of our community in the future.

And so we want to make sure as we start to think through some of this different dynamic and you're seeing okay maybe a little bit more capacity uh on these individual lots, you'll start to hear in the coming year or more about um you know kind of some of the um neighborhood commercial and some of those opportunities coming in.

You'll start to hear a little bit about the open space uh elements and trails and parks and things like that. So all of that kind of feeds into kind of the thinking about the neighborhood planning scale and and the kind of regional assets that we have available.

Hopefully you can start to see some of the dots connecting a little bit. >> All right, if we don't have anything else, I guess we can adjourn early. Enjoy the sunshine. >> Very good. Thank you all. >> Thanks.