Planning Commission

e e e [Music] okay welcome everyone I'd like to call to order the May 16th 2024 meeting of the city of Bellingham Planning Commission uh Heather can you please call our role Rose LEP here Mike m here Scot Jones here Robert plaset here R rby here Jed blo here M gues here uh um I don't believe we have any minutes um okay tonight's agenda we have one item it's an informational session um staff will be presenting as part of the Bellingham plan or comprehensive plan um going over population growth and economic growth um and before we get into all that uh we like to start every meeting with a general public comment so if anyone here in the audience would like to speak to the Planning Commission uh we'll we'll give you a three minute tour so come on down to the mic uh we'll make sure the mic is on and just state your name and I'll keep time good good evening to all my name is Dan blemker and I am an engineer that currently lives in Birchwood I wanted to speak this evening on the Bellingham plan and the direction everyone's hoping to move the city firstly I want to commend staff on the work they've been doing as I have never seen so much Outreach and work done to inform and get feedback from the community I feel like I can't do anything without seeing a notice for an open house they hosting so I wanted to thank you all uh but into the meat of it a good chunk of the Bellingham plan is understanding future growth in our city and notably implementing House Bill 1110 these go hand in

hand is allowing truly allowing missing middle housing is one of the easiest ways for our city to expand the housing Supply and improve affordability based on the numbers you'll see tonight from staff we need to plan for a median of 29% growth over the next 20ish years to accommodate that over 20 years we could do just one in four single family homes could become a duplex notably one in four being a pretty normal housing turnover over 20 years um one in seven could be a Triplex or 1 in 10 could be a quadplex would achieve those numbers to me that generally sounds pretty doable and in fact in other places is it is currently being done in 1994 Seattle opened up areas around what they call their Urban Villages into what a lowrise multi family Zone which allowed for Town host development these areas expanded housing by a rate of 3% per year 75% over the last 20 with the comparison single family zones being nearly stagnant in Housing Development these homes were twice as likely to be owned by people making less than 80% Ami a third more likely to be under 35 and nearly twice as likely to be already owned than the comparison Zone all these numbers are coming from an AI study that I have with me if you would be care to see it after the meeting uh the key findings from this study to achieving these results was to try to not micromanage the process minimizing required setbacks and parking minimums increasing allowed floor area ratios study found that at a sample of 3,000 of these

conversions there were 975 different Builders these are small and medium home builders that have the creativity and flexibility to make small Lots work which we have a lot of these in Bellingham keeping them able to do this in ways that financially pencil is key I ask that you please be bold in trusting in American and Washington and Bellingham Ingenuity as our history of doubting by placing restrictions on housing has only led us to the affordability Crush we're currently in thank you for your [Music] time thank you Dan any other general public comment come on down please not required any Zoom hands if you're at home watching on Zoom now is your one and only chance to give General comment uh hello I'm just a young Scout uh working on my Communications Merit Badge and I'm pleased to say that I am glad that Bellingham has been able to improve so much what is your plan for improving more thank you for your question we generally don't go back and forth um and that is a quite deep question that would take a lot to answer so but follow along in the comprehensive plan process and you will hear about the long-term plans for making our city better will there be a trans transcript of this uh the video will be available uh later yes in a couple days okay thank you very much thank you any other Zoom hands okay uh if there's no other takers in the audience we'll go ahead and close the general public comment and I will turn it over to Chris and staff for the presentation all right thanks

very much and good evening planning Commissioners um Elizabeth Erikson senior planner with planning and Community Development and I are here again um to give you an update uh since the last time we were before you uh we're going to review some of the uh recent Rec and upcoming engagement uh that we've been having with the public and talk about some of the things that have been top of mind for people in those different sessions and some of the topics we' present presented information to the public on um we'll be talking about some of the uh again the population growth projections and the implications for the plan and then uh what's what next steps are and when we be in front of you again after that so with that I'll hand it off to Elizabeth she'll get us started good evening everyone Chris started us off well so we've got a pretty packed presentation today so there's a number of different topics as Chris said so bear with us as we get through all of it and then we're happy to revisit slides or kind of revisit those topics when we get to the discussion so as Chris said here's kind of our agenda a couple big topics a little bit of update on everything and then tying what we've heard at the engagement events that we've done so far back to some of the policy areas that we're expecting to see updated as start drafting the plan itself and then Chris will go through the growth projections and that process um and then he'll also wrap us up with the growth Alternatives as well so we'll

be doing a little bit of back and forth this evening so just a reminder on the project schedule we've been here a few times so for anybody who's tuning in you can always look back on our website to see our past presentations and get more detail on this information um but this is our overall engagement schedule and kind of how that links to the work that we're doing and you can see that we're right smack in the middle of phase two right now um for those who've been involved there have been a ton of events a lot going on that that are is public facing but there's also been a lot going on in the background as we try to incorporate everything we're hearing and everything that we're getting from boards and commissions and the the council and bring that all together as we get towards phase three where we want to have a draft released so you can see that there's a lot happening and it's all kind of up in the air right now and we're starting to to bring it all back together again so this is one of your opportunities to give us a little bit of feedback as we start winding all together and then we'll have some more opportunities over the coming months as well back back with you all in Planning Commission um we also wanted to just note um I think we we let you all know this back in March but there was an extension to the schedule by 6 months from the state legislature um that doesn't mean we're planning to extend our schedule that full amount but we might get an extra month or two a

little bit more leeway in how we go through the adoption process so we'll plan to start phase 4 at the start of 2025 rather than trying to squeeze it in at the end of this year so that just gives us a little bit more um give with our schedule so we're going to start off by just going through some of those Community engagement events that we've done this phase and just giving you a quick wrap up of what we've heard and then um we'll sort of bring that back later in the agenda to what we're working into the policies themselves so back in February we had a big event um a kind of kickoff event for this phase called Community Vision we had about 150 attendees a lot of folks showed up for this one which was really great to see the photo at the bottom of the slide is once we got to the second half of the of the event um we sort of did these Round Table discussions and this has been a really great opportunity to get folks to talk to one another people with all different backgrounds all different opinions talking to one another about kind of mey policy Concepts and then they were able to take notes and we're able to synthesize all of those notes as staff after the fact and understand where those conversations went and where people are kind of excited about or where there's disagreement as well so that's been a great way to run these events um we also heard in this visioning event about a lot of topics that folks care about I don't think there were a lot of surprises in the sense that

um there was you know a lot of these themes showed up in their first phase of Engagement but we dug in a little bit deeper and got a little bit more Nuance to um an understanding of these issues and so we heard a lot about um people's interest in more mixed to use places more ways to gather more kind of community elements spread throughout the city um there's also a huge emphasis on access and how people get around an interest in different alternative modes of transportation in addition to making sure that it's still possible to drive around in a car as well and really finding ways to um have pedestrian focused areas really vibrant spaces so that that's been a theme throughout this project um as we all know housing is a big focus of this plan and that was no surprise to come out in this event as something that people see as a legacy that this plan will make a shift on housing and depending depending on how we do it could be good it could be bad but it's going to have a legacy so let's do it right um and then finally as always nature and Greenery has always been really important to Belling hamsters and this came out and this is part of our vision this should always be Central to our vision these are just a few photos of some of the boards from this event and some of the uh open house portion as well you can see on the left is one of our favorite boards that was not intended to be an interactive board it was more of an informative one but people really liked it and they started

putting notes on it so it's been great to see people take part our second event was in March and this is our vibrant Equitable and welcoming Community one bit of a mouthful but all very important uh we had about 80 Folks at this one and for all of these events we have everything posted online after the fact so anybody who wasn't able to make it to any of these events please viit visit engage Bellingham do org and um you can find all of that information and um you can always gaug there as well there's different of surveys and things like that that mimic all of these boards so we love to give people different ways to take part at this event we really focused on how we can really come together as a community um address the safety concerns that came out in the first phase understand what that really meant you can see on the fourth bullet on this page we really dug into safety and folks talked about housing and services for everybody being you know basic needs are how people are safe but they also talked about um safety related to policing efforts that's that's what what some people think of when they think of safety so a lot of traffic related issues you know pedestrians cyclists um worry about their safety when when in the road so safety means something really different to everybody and so it was really important to dig into what they meant when they said that they want us to be a safe Community I think all of those things together build a safe Community um they also again

talked about sort of human scale elements that kind of pedestrian oriented um planning was really important to folks and um just a variety of different kinds of ways we can be more welcoming to a diverse group of of people so we got some very specific examples of ways we can do our programming differently or kind of design spaces differently have better language access all those different kind of nitty-gritty details that we can build into policies as well um I just wanted to share some of our stories so um for each of these events at least these first four events we had uh story option those are all still available online we love to hear people's personal experience es so we asked about people safety stories um and this is just an example that I wanted to pull not going to read the whole thing but I highlighted a few things in Orange to just highlight um this is an example of someone who was talking about their their experience as a cyclist and what that meant for safety um and that they really want to see that expand but it's hard to expand it without it having the the right infrastructure to feel safe um again just a couple uh photos from that event our third event was in April and it was on housing affordability this one had our biggest um attendance uh as far as RSVPs went but it was a really sunny day and it was kind of the first one of these we got so I think a lot of folks decided to visit our beautiful Parks instead um but we still got good good attendance with 80

folks and I think a lot of folks have looked at everything online after and started engaging that way so it's great to have Alternatives when we do get those those nice sunny days um again a photo here to to just kind of show you in the space what it looked like and um we heard a lot of different topics and you'll see um in the event we have next month that there there will be a tie between those because this is the housing affordability event but we're also doing a housing types and neighborhoods event that will follow up on a lot of these topics and get some more information from folks um but you can kind of see some themes here emerging around um you know interest on those middle housing types and some of the unique ways that they could come out in our community and um looking at some of the design elements that we're going to have to consider with some of the state legislation that we've described for to you figuring out how we're going to look at design standards how we're going to make them objective how they're going to apply to all of these different new housing types and how they might apply to existing housing types as well that we already have um so we started getting some feedback on that and that building orientation was something people really cared about how the building interfaces with the street um and we heard a lot of interest in co-living housing there was a bill we described before um this is sort of like the housing types where you might rent or own a

room but it might not include a kitchen so there's some more communal Living Spaces um that that might go with that so kind of a different form of housing that there's a bill that requires us to consider that in a lot of areas of the city but also something that folks are really excited about so that'll be a big part of this update as well and then just a lot of interest in kind of specific needs for different groups seniors and families come up repeatedly as groups that have really unique housing needs and folks that are really important parts of our community so making sure we have options for them and again a lot of kind of Transit bikes walking um to really be able to tackle climate change provide housing that's closer to where folks want to be another story example we asked for housing stories and so um this is a little bit of a heartbreaking one but those are really important for us to understand kind of where people are coming from so talking about somebody who has a full-time job has a master's degree but lives paycheck to paycheck um they feel like they're really privileged but they know that others are in even worse positions so really you know trying to figure out can I even stay in Bellingham or is this not sustainable and I think a lot of people relate to this story some photos from that event as well you can see on the right that was how we got some feedback on some of those building types and our upcoming event we'll really dig into those in a lot more detail

and then we had an event last night this is a busy week for the Bellingham plan actually have some staff at another event tonight as well not not as big of a public event as this but um we're kind of splitting ourselves up here so last night we had an event on economic Vitality um it was definitely our smallest event so far we had a lot of folks from kind of different um areas of the city different um kind of parts of our economy and so there were some really great conversations that I personally had as a staff member but also that people had at their table so just started filtering through everything we got but put up a couple key notes on here for you um we had some exercises on our Urban Villages and since that's a strategy that we brought forward in 2006 and that has really started to Blossom in quite a few of the these Urban villages we wanted to ask how that's going um so we got some some feedback on that especially around how parks are integrated um how people get around and get to there making sure that there's parking available those kinds of things that their walkability and what kind of activities take place in them and then we also are starting a conversation around neighborhood commercial uses so you can see a little bit more about that later when we talk about the policies but we got some feedback the event last night about what kinds of uses people want to see but also um what kind of concerns they might have about having some of these commercial uses in more

residential areas or near residential areas um we also held an open house at Western the students are really big part of our community and Western's a big part of our students and so we wanted to make sure that we go to them since they often aren't going to have the the the time or physical like access to come to us um so we had about 60 folks come through throughout a couple hour period um and engage on same kind of boards we had at our other events and a lot of their um kind of topics of Interest are similar to The General Community but a couple areas are more important to students than others so we we definitely notice some themes around kind of people's basic needs being really important a lot of folks saying they didn't have their parents helping them out they wouldn't be able to be a student in Bellingham um you know a couple professors taking part and saying they struggle with housing affordability so really understanding what a big swwa of our community is struggling with today um they also were a little bit less interested in the middle housing types because I think they they saw most of those types as still unattainable um but there was a lot more interest in the sort of like co-living type of housing which I think is traditionally related to a lot of students um in recent years and they want to gather in ways that don't necessarily require alcohol so a lot of interest in late night places that they can spend time if they're under 21 um so and then also just a lot

of safety related to um meeting their basic needs uh meeting housing uh needs um people not understanding differences um people on both sides of the sort of police presence issue so a lot of really um interesting kind of tidbits as well on that topic so that kind of rounds out some of the big events we've had over the last few months and some of our big takeaways we'll go in in a little bit on how that relates to the policy work we're doing um but just letting you know about our upcoming events um we do have an event next week that will be entirely in Spanish and so we've been working with um some great Community groups and getting the word out with them we've had some focus groups with some some folks in this community um and are really trying to build relationships there so we're hoping this will be kind of a good event and kind of a first time for the city doing something like this and then in June we have our housing types and neighborhoods event and in July we'll bring it all together with how we will grow is where we'll really talk about the growth Alternatives that Chris will go into later in more detail and then in July we're planning to send out a postcard to every household in the city letting them know about that final event but also letting them know about a survey that we'll have out that will um tackle some of the different things that are in the Alternatives and start to feed into how those pieces can come together into a preferred alternative and this picture

on the right is just showing our events page right now and how packed full of things it is the bottom half is all the different like kind of Engagement um activities you can do online if you miss them in events the top half is all the different events so lots to do and I'm going to pass it on to Chris to go through the growth projections thanks Elizabeth so every time we update a comprehensive plan which we do about every 10 years the one of the big kind of first Milestone pieces is that countywide growth projection that we get and um we'll be uh talking about that a little bit here in the next few minutes um those always start with the State Office of Financial Management which which is the the state group that they do a variety of things for Washington State but one of the important things is they forecast growth and then that's all used um in the state budgeting process so look at population growth economics and a variety of other related things but importantly it's also a keystone of the growth management work that all the counties and cities do so again they do that um they don't uh necessarily always align with our particular planning cycle because the state has 39 counties and the counties are grouped into batches um there are kind of three different ones for instance there is a a group of counties that are planning on the 2024 adoption cycle we're in a group um of counties that are planning on the 2025 cycle and there's another group following us on the 2026 cycle so

they're kind of staggered a lot of that just has to do the Practical reality that the Department of Commerce that provides support to counties only has so many people and they have to kind of kind of stage things like that to make it practical for them to support all of us that are doing this work um so in um 2022 a series of forecasts were released and those are the numbers that we're working with they go out um beyond our 2045 planning Horizon so a county like watcom and the cities within it like Bellingham that are all planning on that time frame will pick um for us we pick the the within that forecast the 2025 to 2045 planning period and work with those numbers so that's that's what we're kind of jumping off with here um an important thing that all of the counties are doing this time is uh the housing for all incomes planning piece which is not something that we've had um in previous comprehensive plan updates that's something that Washington State uh passed in 2021 with House Bill 1220 and so that's a big Cornerstone of all of our housing chapter updates that each jurisdiction is doing and it's important to that that plays right into the forecasting piece as well because it it's not just how many housing units but how many housing units affordable to the incomes in our communities um as we look forward uh use those forecasts and look forward as all the cities in the county together we um the last couple of times we've done this exercise we have established a non-binding

injur or multi-jurisdictional resolution and what that is it's a mouthful to start with but what it really is is a a a preliminary number for both population employment and housing totals that uh we start with at the county and then we allocate to uh each of the urban growth so some of it goes to Bellingham some to Ferndale Lyndon and so on and then to the rural areas and those are not the final numbers they're not set in stone but their numbers that we agree upon are reasonable numbers to start our policy conversations with and so those are the numbers that we haven't done that part yet but we're moving in that direction we've got um a group of countywide elected officials that have been uh in a series of conversations about that each of the Cities will do its land Capacity Analysis to get a better feel for what our current zoning and proposed proposed land use changes would be able to accommodate in the way of Housing and jobs and then we will reflect back with uh a conversation with uh the countywide planners and with the elected officials and say okay these are numbers that we think are reasonable and then ultimately the County Council will adopt that non-binding resolution and that really gives all of the different jurisdictions the go-ahead to move forward with the more detailed planning work where we do like for instance the capital facilities planning and say okay for the number of housing units we agrie to and the number of jobs we think that will require what kinds

of improvements to our water and sewer systems to our roads um to our libraries and parks and fire you know uh Public Safety elements all of the pieces that uh make up our Urban services so uh that kind of gives you just an overall view of where we're at I'll be talking about kind of the preliminary uh projections at this point and then again a number of months from now we'll be coming back to you as we hone in on that uh multi-jurisdictional resolution just an overall view of the county um the numbers that we'll be talking about for 2045 include about 57,000 additional residents countywide and that translates to just over 30,000 new housing units and that's the Washington State medium level projection kind of the mid-range and they have a high range and a low range and we the the medium range is the one that we typically refer to because watman County typically tracks pretty close to that you can see on the map this is a just a shot of the countywide zoning map um highlighted in yellow are all of the different cities with their Urban growth areas and then you Al see also see on there the Cherry Point and Columbia Valley Urban growth areas which are um in unincorporated watom County so those are the the areas where we would see most of that growth land this is the uh city of Bellingham population growth uh graph um and you can see that you know from the really from the 1990s to today just past that 2020 kind of midline there um things have gone up and down a little bit but

the slope for the population increase has been pretty consistent and we don't really see anything that would make us think that that that's going to change dramatically for Bellingham um it'll go it'll continue to cycle as as the economy waxes and wanes and as migration patterns change but we anticipate that that number uh that that rate of increase is going to remain fairly consistent to what we've seen in the last couple of planning Cycles this is in your packet um and I think you've got hard copies in front of you um I will say um this is the consultant report uh technical report that was provided by uh produced by Leland Consulting Group um Leland Leland is under contract uh by watom County to do the countywide uh projection work uh and that um contract is jointly funded by each of the Cities as well we all get our different uh growth management Grant funds from Department of Commerce and we we peel off a piece of that and give it to the county to to do this consultant work which is again um we've done that for this last several planning Cycles in a jointly funded uh forecasting exercise I will say I think the copy you have in your packet may be dated April 29th there were a few minor um corrections to a couple of the charts that were made based on on aish sheet uh so the May 7th is the the most recent copy um it is available on the County's website as well but I think for the most part the the numbers that you'll see in your report are the same stepping through a few of

the key pieces in that report um this is a graph of overall watom County growth uh since 1995 um the dark blue bars on the left are the the uh the past and then the light blue bars going forward are the of future Trend and what you'd see mirrors what you'd see in in counties uh Statewide and honestly uh all all up and down the west coast and that is that just um growth rates in general are expected to decrease uh over the next 20 or so years and we'll talk about uh why that is happening in just the next slide here what you see here is the uh the natural increase component of of our local growth and again this is a a pattern that's mirrored nationally um the top green line is the birth rate and the darker green line on the bottom is the death rate and so what you're seeing over the the past few decades is a converging of those rates and that's really um what that really is is the baby boomer generation which has been a wides spot in our um population pyramid for uh a long long time um and the the fact of the matter is that the baby movers are are reaching end of life in many cases and so what we're seeing is that their uh succeeding Generations behind the Baby Boomers are just not as big and so what that what that means is that the comparison of people dying each year versus people being born is is uh converging and that you can see actually uh that dotted line is is uh 2023 and as we move forward into uh about the late 2030s to early 2040s we may actually have a negative

birth rate for a while in um not just again not just in Watkin County but all across the country so what that means is that that natural increase component of our population increase is is going to get smaller and actually disappear at some point in the near future and it will come back as population uh as we have population Bubbles and things wax and Wayne but that's just the what's happening with our uh demographics in the right around this the time that we find ourselves in um to look at those numbers a little bit more you can see that they're in 5-year increments and so uh that dotted line which represents the estimated natural increase is about 424 people um for this uh this last year so that kind of gives you an idea about how much of the countywide growth is is naturally increased and then this is the other major component which is the the has been for several decades the major component of growth in Watton County and that's immigration and so that's the difference between how many people are moving to this area versus how many people are moving away uh and going somewhere else and um you can see that uh as opposed to the birth rate the rate of um uh immigration is quite variable or volatile and a statistical sense it changes a lot based on economic Trends and um you know everything from politics to uh just people's uh you know real estate preferences there there's any number of uh kind of Market driven things that change that um going forward you can see that the uh

the general Trend that the office of financial management is making is is relatively stable but also conservative uh going forward and you can see the estimate on there the 2023 component of growth it's about 2830 people so again compared to the 400 or so that's the uh uh natural increase component the the largest piece of the 3,000 or so people that that move to Waton County or that that Waton County increases by um that immigration pieces is the the primary piece there this graph shows the uh the solid black line to the left is the historic Trend uh for growth in watom county and then you can see uh moving forward it fans out and the central Gray Line is that ofm Medium projection the mid-range projection and then there's a a the uh upper green dash line this one up here is the high range and the orange dashed line is the low range so between and then this is at 2045 are these total population numbers so growth management requires watcom County to plan within the range between this High number and this low number we're we have the discretion granted by the state to pick any number in between but those are the guard rails we cannot propose any growth higher than this and we cannot propose any growth lower than this here what Leland has done is they've looked at a variety of of um of uh factors that go into that projection exercise and they've narrowed it down to these uh the the orange dotted line and the green dotted line and then they've kept the the ofm medium range as as

the medium projection or the most likely outcome um from a statistical standpoint and they've just narrowed that down based on a variety of factors that are described in the report um the one of the key things to think about here is the um the high projection is noticeably higher above the medium than the distance between the low and the medium and uh Leland has preserved that relationship uh largely because um cities and counties one of the key pieces we do is we plan for infrastructure and so if if we assume this gray line is the most likely but if we guess wrong and that turns out for whatever reason not to be the most likely we um we if we pick a number lower we really don't want to pick one too low or we will have underplates a population number that was too low and then turns out maybe more people end up moving here um it it lowers that risk factor so that's one reason why Leland felt it was important from a planning perspective to keep that line um in relationship to the the medium and just to give you a little just a little kind of squint backwards at how that Medium projection is played out over time um again I said Watkin county is tracked very close to it if you look back um 22 years to 2002 when we when we did this uh two planning Cycles ago they uh looked forward to uh the year 2020 and forecast that there would be about 230,000 people in Waton County by that time and when we look at the census 2020 count it was 20 almost 227,000 which um is uh the forecast was

105 10.5% so they were only off by about 1 and a half% over uh a an 18-year period which we feel like that's that's pretty reasonable and then the more recent one in 2012 the ofm medium projection that was released then for 2023 was for 2 234,00 and some people um which was about 99.6% or only 4/10 of a percent off of the actual estimate from last year which was 235 800 so again that median projection Waton County over the last 20 plus years has tracked very close to the estimates that ofm has made for that kind of mid-range number so we feel reasonably comfortable again going forward that that uh they've done their homework on that one okay so switching from employment to or from uh population growth to employment this is just a a chart from the uh census um employment data site the longitudinal employer household Dynamic site and they break out countywide employment for Watkin County by industry sector this does not include the agricultural sector but it's all of the other industry sectors and you can see the general increase over um the last 11 years um one of the bigger ones that's increased has been the health care services and um just general other services uh government here um does include the education sector so that's where you'd find the the public school districts and also um our uh State institutional college campuses um so that gives you an idea of kind of how things have kind of changed over time you will notice the the drop off here um during the the pandemic

um if you were to see the 2022 and 2023 years we would be back up just about to the level that you see right here it'd be about straight across so it would have jumped up we just don't have that data in hand to display it with the with the sector breakout and so when we forecast uh growth we typically have forecasted population growth and then we we relate that to employment it's it's difficult to forecast employment um precisely but what we do is we say what percentage of the total population is in the workforce and so that's what this number shows here is that historically the employment rate in Watkin County so the number of people that are employed compared to the total population has been um is what this uh dotted blue line is and then you can see the state trend is the the lighter blue solid line in the bottom so first you could see that we are a little bit higher than the state relative percentage wise to the overall population as far as number of people working versus the total number of people um and then you can also the other takeaway is that we do follow the state St Trend fairly closely um if you see a peak they they tend to match up and the The Valleys also match up the number for uh the last 10 years the average is about just under 47% 46.8% um of the total uh population would be uh would equate to the number of people that are employed with a job in watom County so this this illustrates that we can say that the uh the 2023 population of 35,800 and if we look

at uh about 46.7 just under 47% of that that equates to um fairly closely to the 2023 employment estimate when you include uh this this number 112,000 does include the agricultural sector in there as well and using that going forward when we look at the uh the medium growth uh which would be for 2045 would be 292,000 14 people we take that same percentage it would equate to uh future growth of about just uh over 24,000 jobs across the county so that's again just the the exercise we go through when we're forecasting future jobs so then how do we translate population population growth to housing needs and this is where the Department of Commerce has provided their housing for all planning tool or we the acronym is hapt which is a uh spreadsheet based tool that has has a variety of pieces in it I'm not going to go through those in great detail but it is something that the county planners have been working with and that the Consultants uh leand um is working with to provide us uh housing projection numbers um by income level I I'll just say it incorporates uh information from the HUD Housing and Urban Development the um their uh uh income uh based information that they tie with housing um so that's the information that would identify how many people or households in Bellingham and in Waton County are cost burdened or paying more than 30% of their income for their housing um it identifies uh housing types and uh housing affordability by income range as well and then it rolls all

that up and it comes up we put in the forecast numbers and it says these are how many housing units each community in Waton County would need to balance their um their communities housing to create affordable housing for each income band so kind of in a simplistic ter simplistic uh view here's what that does we we start out with today's countywide population and we look at that 2045 again the the medium projection of about 292,000 700 people and then of that future total population there's a portion that will be in what we call group quarters so they're not in standard housing types um uh two-thirds of those are students on Western campus that are living in dormitories um and then the remainder are spread along um a variety of of different kinds of facilities it could be Memory Care Facilities it could be uh senior convalescent care um or other kinds of uh special needs types of um group group quarters housing and so um that's about 6,400 countywide would be the percentage that we would expect out of that future and then the assumption is that everybody else is in some kind of uh stick built housing of of one former or another and looking at that uh for that Medium projection number the countywide number would be just over 31,000 housing units by 2045 would be what we would expect we would need to produce on a countywide basis and you could see there's a variety of pieces to that 31,000 number um and again these are these are um numbers that are in flux right now but they

give you an idea of kind of the the proportions and how they would break out um about 9 600 of those would be housing units that we need to um eliminate cost burden for renters that are actually living in our community today so these are people that might be able to afford uh $1,200 a month for housing and they're paying $2,000 a month they're paying more than 30% of their income and so this would be how do we provide housing that would be more in line with their monthly income and so we there are um uh there's a shortage of about 9,600 housing units countywide when you look at Cost burdened households and so that's um that's a a big piece of that 31,000 um we have about 1,800 almost 1900 housing UNS we would need to build to accommodate people that currently don't have homes so the the homeless population in Waton County and Bellingham so that's again an important piece to plan for that that's part of that future Supply and then um just under 18,000 housing units would be needed to address remaining house old growth so those are additional people that um would be either being born here or or moving here over the next 20 years that are not um that are not cost burdened or would be coming in at income levels that would not be cost burdened and then finally um you all have heard us talk about the vacancy rate um and how low it is not just in um Bellingham but across the county and so um we have that goal of getting back to what we would call a healthy vacancy rate so that um

that doesn't contribute as much to the cost of housing having a tight Supply and so uh just under 2,000 units of this total would be just extra units uh they may not have anybody living in them but would go for uh go into the countywide supply and would um provide that cushion so that we would have something around a 6% vacancy rate so those are kind of the main pieces that that make up that 31,000 housing unit number so this is is uh getting at that housing for all incomes the uh blue bars on the bottom the darker blue are the existing housing Supply across watom County and they're just shown they're just shown in um the income ranges that the uh the cost of those housing or the value of that housing falls into so the bottom two bars are the uh 30% and Below of area meeting income so it's housing that would be uh on the the um lower end of the affordability level and that's broken into two categories all the others are just single categories but we have um permanent Supportive Housing which if you can think of uh if you're familiar with Francis place in Bellingham over on Cornwall it's a 42 unit multif family uh multi-unit building that was built a number of years ago that uh Catholic Housing Services operates and that's a permanent supportive uh that's an example of permanent Supportive Housing where it's uh occupied primarily by people that were formerly unhoused um and they are when they live there they have access to a full range of case management and supportive

services that helps them stay in housing and and and stay in that stable environment and so that's that there are all kinds of permanent Supportive Housing it doesn't necessarily um uh you know there could be any number of services for uh people with different kinds of needs and so that's a important part of that lower income picture and then you can see that there's um just the uh non-permanent supportive or just regular types of housing but also in that lower income band and then as we go up through you can see these are all relative to area median income across the county the 30 to 50% we have about just under 9,000 housing units we have uh a large supply of the 50 to 80% um of area median income housing um and a lot of that would be in Bellingham in our rental housing stock and then we have the 80 to 100% of median 100 to 120 and then all the housing that's greater than 120% which is largely made up of single family detached homes both in Bellingham and and across the county and then the last category are not housing units actually it's called emergency housing and that's actually a bed count as opposed to a unit count and so those are um 763 existing beds and those are primarily beds that are in um like the um the base camp shop shelter and other uh similar kinds of uh of emergency housing facilities um so they're not units they're actually beds so that's all the dark blue and then the light blue layered on top of that is that 31334 units that we talked about layered by

income range and so that's how that's distributed and so you can see based on the sizes of these uh Stacks here that we need a lot at the lower end which is not surprise to anybody um in fact the biggest of these numbers is landing in that very lower end of the 0 to 30% Ami uh we need about 8,000 more units countywide that are affordable to people that are at the 30% or below of median area income and then you can see what the other numbers look like so that gives you an idea of kind of what the what the distribution would be um that we would be planning for with just different changes to our zoning code and development regulations I just wanted to highlight this chart just shows housing units accommodated or built in each of the urban growth areas across the county uh since the last comp plan update I just want to highlight for Bellingham and this is uh information that's reflected in our buildable lands report Bellingham uh in the last seven years since the comp plan was adopted uh has finished about 4700 housing units which represents about 49% of the total that were built countywide during that period so just that 49% is the the proportion of growth that Bellingham has been able to uh accommodate and so when we take I'm just going to just bear with me for a second I'm going to bounce back from this graph to this graph this is the 49% of that previous graph so it' be instead of the countywide total this is if we took 49% of it which would be similar to the growth that um

the percentage that Bellingham has bable will accommodate in the last 7 years if that was the trend if that Trend were to continue and we would take exactly 49% of growth over the next 20 years this is what um the housing units we would build would be right around 15,500 units um and if we were to build it at the levels that would be appropriate for the incomes on our community much like that first chart countywide these would be the totals that we we'd be looking at in these lighter blue bars so 4,000 units affordable to 0 to 30% Ami and so on as you go up the chart here and again you can see that those numbers in the 80% and Below category are is where the majority of those units would need to be to accommodate the housing for the the community that will that will be Bellingham in 2045 this is just totaling that up if you took those lower four bars there which is everything that's 80% or below median income it's about works out to be about 450 housing units a year would be the the production rate um and then just a for reference there the uh Bellingham Home fund and the housing Levy that we leverage every year Our Community Development folks leverage that with our Community Partners to produce affordable rental housing over the last seven years they've been able to average about 130 units a year and this is what our need would be over the next 20 years about 450 per year so you can see we've got quite quite a gap there which um it's not not something we have a solution for

at this point but that's something we can we need to we need to figure out um how much of that would be um provided potentially by um developers through like the mft type programs or an inclusionary program to maybe get into the maybe the 50 to 80% range but those lower ranges that are deep where there's the deeper affordability um it's hard to contemplate something that's not going to be as subsidized housing product and those price ranges so that's a it's quite a challenge so and then this is just a quick glance County countywide at how those numbers you can see again bellingham's numbers that you just saw in that previous chart and then just the understanding that um the the requirements affect all of the communities in Waton County so the other cities and the county itself are um also trying to answer these same questions about how do we provide housing units particularly in the these lower income ranges to meet that countywide need for 30 31,000 some housing units so again um lots of lots of challenging conversations that we all have to have regionally to help help figure this out so to identify next steps so we've we've got these uh initial projections of growth and we're working on with the Consultants what and the the other County Partners what the allocations to each jurisdiction might look like and we will are in the process of doing our land Capacity Analysis to better understand what our current zoning and land use regulations provide in the way of uh capacity

when compared to our buildable lands and then we'll uh come back with those numbers each of the cities and the county will get together and we'll compare that to those preliminary allocations and we'll develop that multi-jurisdictional resolution that the county will then approve and then that will kick us off into the final stage of these conversations about what changes does Bellingham in particular need to make and getting to those um preferred like the preferred growth alternative that we'll be talking about how do we Implement that from a policy standpoint and what kinds of changes do we need to be talking about and with that I'll hand it back to Elizabeth all right we did warn you this is a long one but we're moving through it it so um we gave you a little interlude of a lot of data we gave you some information about what we've heard from the community and now we're starting to put it all together into what we're thinking about in each of the chapters of the plan so I'm going to walk through each chapter of the plan and some of the main big topics that we're expecting to address there are lots of little things that are also in there but we'll get to those later when we dig into the individual chapters in a lot of detail but high level we're going to go through each of these as I'm going through these ask yourselves as the Planning Commission um if there's anything big that's missing that you think should be kind of at this level of like the top two or three things in

each chapter um if there are any of these topics that you really want to hear more about at Future sessions let us know so that we know what we should dig into deeper um and if you have any questions related to these things that you want us asking at our community events let us know those so these are sort of the questions we have for you um we are intending to add two new chapters to the plan um these are not taken L we think these are both really important topics that um have come out both in our community engagement in some State legislation in things that the council talks about um just really important to our community as a whole um so the first one we're thinking tentatively of calling it Community well-being and this would cover a range of topics some of these topics are already in the plan in other areas kind of sprinkled throughout and we want to bring them together but some of these topics would be new so they would cover things like Community engagement tribal engagement really how we work together as a community um how neighborhood planning fits into things and kind of how we work with our various neighborhoods um how we can be a resilient Community a lot of the topics in that vibrant welcoming Equitable Community session would really fit in here um topics related to Human Services right now uh we do have some of that in our plan but they're mostly related to housing we also have services in our community that aren't related to housing so bringing that into this

chapter um topics around food security and the sort of basic needs and really having a theme of equity throughout the plan but particularly bringing it up in this chapter as well so those are some of the many topics that would be folded into this and again some of that already exists in other chapters we'll talk a little bit about that in the economic development chapter as well um we also really want to emphasize the importance of climate um both climate resiliency and climate adaptation um and really bringing things that we're already doing as a city and emphasizing them in the plan but also bringing some new um factors into this so we've talked a little bit before about 1181 the the bill that passed recently um that requires us to really address this in our plan we are thankfully in a really good position thanks to a lot of the work that folks are already doing out of the mayor's office um on this topic but we also have some some work to be done so we're going to really emphasize especially on the resiliency side of things um and also really looking at climate Equity as well so those will really be a big part of this new chapter and from there I'll walk through the chapters in the order that they exist in our current plan um we don't know necessarily where those two new chapters will fit but we wanted to highlight them front and center because of their importance so the first chapter in the plan today is land use this is obviously a huge part of this update um this

includes that math that we've talked about extensively that really guides our land use regulations and our zoning in the city so um that obviously will update with wherever that map ends up going and Chris will talk later about our growth Alternatives um but we also really want to make sure that this um is reflecting all of those more minor changes throughout so a lot of the things we'll talk about in the other chapters will also influence the the land use chapter um and things like the land use designation descriptions all live in this chapter so making sure that how House Bill 1110 or the middle housing Bill impacts how we look at housing densities for instance that will be reflected in this chapter um making sure that middle housing is really supported will land in this chapter as well as in the housing chapter um we also will want to make sure that in this chapter we address anything that comes out of the urban forestry management plan that's what UFM is here it's a full slide so we didn't spell it out um but that's really looking at how um really making sure that that we provide tree canopy across our city um also aligned with how we are um planning our different development strategies so looking at making sure our housing types align with that goal as well um and then we also are looking at introducing some small commercial uses in predominantly residential areas this is something that's come up a lot with the community um really being interested in being able to walk

or bike or take the transit to more things closer to home and having more places to gather out in the community and so looking at ways we can kind of fill in the gaps in um types of kind of smaller scale commercial spaces so next chapter is community Design This is Our chapter that really guides the way we look at design of both sites and buildings and our public spaces across the city um there's a lot in this chapter today so one of the big pieces is to really condense it streamline it streamline it prioritize things and really make it clear what is most important and that will feed in quite a bit to how we're looking at meeting some of the state legislation around design standards and making sure that we're not requiring those new middle housing types to be any more um stringently designed than single family um homes would be for instance and then also making sure that those are really objective standards so this chapter will really help us prioritize those things as we then under implementation update those standards the housing chapter of course will be a big Focus we already talked a lot about this in a general sense but some of the things that um are definitely coming out is making sure that we plan for those middle housing types um throughout residential areas across the city we talked about that sort of co-living Housing and making sure we can fill in a spectrum of options that kind of fit in that category and then we're also working with a number of groups right now

on laying the groundwork for any updates that we might be able to provide to um provide options for including affordable housing within kind of mixed income buildings and so that might mean that we look at kind of lay policy work that would turn into a code update on our multif family tax exemption program or other sort of solutions to provide more affordable housing opportunities that are economically feasible within private development on the next chapter is multimodal transportation this is a really important chapter that really brings a lot of the other chapters together as well and um it already is in a really good place in a lot of ways so some of the big updates that we would do would be around really focusing um more of the language and priorities on straight connectivity and providing kind of more ways that folks can get around um really for all of those methods of transportation and then we also are really thinking about especially with some of the conversations that council's having right now around parking um we we're really looking at ways we can talk about the future of Transit and how that can really connect with our land use planning and thinking about can we be a little bit proactive about how we'd um plan our more dense areas around Transit so that'll also come out in the growth Alternatives a little bit as well we also have an economic development chapter this chapter has a lot of the policies within it today that will also get shifted over to that

Community well-being chapter since a vibrant and healthy economy is also vibrant and healthy community and so a lot of those um policies will sort of be separated out and shifted over to that new chapter potentially um but we also really want to focus this chapter on really clearly defining what the city's role is there are a lot of really critical groups in wam County that work together on making sure that we have a healthy and vibrant economy and so we want to make sure that the city's role is really clear and we set expectations appropriately in this plan for that and one of the big things that the city can um help in different ways on is child care that's something that we hear all the time from individuals who are looking for better or more affordable child care options or Child Care closer to home all the way to companies that are saying we can't necessarily get a good Workforce because they don't have child care options so all these things come together to really support a healthy economy so looking at child care will be an update to this chapter as well we also have an environment chapter we in Bellingham love our environment it's one of the main reasons people live here stay here come here all of those things and so this is an important chapter um today and again we kind of want to streamline it simplify it and really emphasize the most important pieces again we really want to bring Equity into this chapter as well and um and emphasis on environmental equity and then

again the urban forestry management plan is continuing moving forward with conversations with Council and so where that lands we'll want to make sure that all of those pieces get wrapped into this chapter as well then the final chapter of the plan today is capital facilities and utilities this is not something that people get all excited about but it's really critical to our work as planners and so one of the big pieces we are taking a look at is how our current um system of planning for our infrastructure might be skewing some of the results we get as far as land use so making sure that the way we plan for our infrastructure is aligned with the priorities that we're trying to encourage folks to develop so um wanting to make sure that um our policies are aligned with our kind of code and our fees and all of those things and that we're encouraging the right things and that those right things are really a smart growth strategy so making sure that we're getting the types we need and that our strategy for Capital facilities and utilities both provides the infrastructure we need but also encourages the type of development that we're looking for and that we need as a community so with that I'm going to pass this on to Chris to talk through the growth Alternatives which is our last topic before we can get into discussion almost there all right so the growth Alternatives um these really are uh updates to the land use map are driven by the discussion and evaluation of these

Alternatives you might remember from the the project launch discussion um we had these uh diagrammatic representations of how we look at kind of Concepts about how ways that we can accommodate growth and then we sort those various ingredients into different defined approaches what could be you can think of those as different land use maps or or Alternatives and then we select um a preferred growth alternative which is something that we've we we are just at the kind of the middle point there of just starting to to find growth Alternatives eventually we'll select a preferred alternative and then um we draft the policies that help Implement that alternative so that's kind of the process that we'll be going through um the three draft Alternatives that I'll be running through with you in just a moment um are kind of these initial uh discussion points and we've they've been informed by um previous discussions with uh groups like you with the city council with um the the feedback that we got in Phase One and the various um Community surveys that we did the housing preference survey um and with the online engagement activities that we've had um and then staff have had input into those as well as we wrestle with things like House Bill 1110 and and uh other kinds of uh um uh growth policy elements that we have to wrestle with all three of the Alternatives do um the things that you can see bulleted there they all continue to focus on our Urban Village uh Urban Villages that we've been

again working on since 2006 and the significant investment we have in those they all meet the state mandated changes uh related to the housing and climate legislation and then they all have an equity element that focuses um on how we balance growth in higher opportunity areas with public investment and then how we mitigate for any economic displacement that might occur so they all have those things in common um but they do definitely have some differences which I'll highlight here um we've just sort of titled these uh alternative one is more of an Urban Village Focus alternative two is the transit oriented uh growth approach and then alternative three is more of a a complete neighborhood's approach um you'll notice some things that are common like I said on the previous slide they all three have the existing Urban Village uh areas represented on them um and then they all do uh accommodate middle housing like the state requires us to and then you can't see it on the map here but they all also um incorporate uh a response uh uh responsive to the the climate element that will be in the plan and then the differences are um the Urban Village Focus there's the existing Villages and then um in the areas around The Villages you can see this pink shading and that's representative of incentives that we would develop that would try and encourage more middle housing in close proximity to those Urban Villages so you can kind of think of it as Urban Villages and then maybe a second tier

Beyond those but in reasonably close proximity where you would have additional density compared to what you would find there today and that's just in really in recognition that these are servicer environments with well-developed transportation and infrastructure systems and so they're a logical place to encourage more housing to land and then um you see we have in this in this uh alternative provision for two new what we're calling kind of midsized urban Villages and I guess I would I'd say is think about the way that maybe the fountain District looks um where it's maybe not quite as built up as what you're seeing being built in sish way or in downtown or maybe Fair Haven it's a little bit more of a midsize profile so these would be areas that maybe would be more restricted in either Geographic scope or the floor area raes and building Heights that would be allowed but they would be Urban villages with all of the different Design Elements and and uh pedestrian and and uh uh mixed use kinds of things that you find in those areas you can see we have identified two um we don't have locations for them yet we have some question marks on the map we have some ideas about where those could be and those will be in our um alternative survey that's going out but um we haven't pinned them down yet and the size of those uh again it would all be to be determined but so that would that would include um a few new of those and then you can see this kind of grid pattern in the background and

that's just a recognition that middle housing the the house bill 1110 would be implemented and would be allowed in every residential Zone in Bellingham and so that's just spread evenly across the city um recognizing that there are zones that aren't residential on the map but we just for purposes of rep you know just showing what it would look like it would be spread across the city so that's the Urban Village Focus Al alternative one the uh Transit oriented growth uh approach one has a lot going on visually here you can see the again the urban Villages are there we have uh four question marks this time um for up to three new Urban Village sites um and again they're kind of a midsize range but you'll see that they're all located within these purple areas and those are the quarter mile walk distance to our existing go lines the WTA higher frequency Transit lines and so again with that Transit oriented approach it's strategically locating those in areas that are that are served by that higher frequency Transit and then also um this alternative would allow more density just generally along those corridors so along you know uh Northwest and Alabama and Lakeway and the the arterial streets that the go lines are on we would say um not just middle housing but let's actually allow more like Urban Village style development in a corridor profile that would go along those and that's again um kind of a chicken and egg kind of thing with Transit Ed development it's in recognition that the

transit provides the services needed by that kind of development and also that that development provides for those like what would be like potentially six-minute headways instead of 15minute headways for for Transit service to get to um what what the transit professionals would call that bus Rapid Transit model which is something that WTA is is exploring in the community right now so kind of a a a self-perpetuating kind of a a development model and then you can see a little bit lighter shade that's beyond that quarter mile walk distance and that's a an additional half mile out um not just from the go lines but from all transit lines and that's uh where we might maybe not as heavily as these areas but um to some degree incentivize middle housing to happen and provide ways that that that could be accomplished in a in a more efficient way and then for the remainder of the city um again intend being allowed uh up to four units on every lot um but just not incentivized to the same degree in some of these other areas and then the final what we're calling the complete neighborhoods um again the urban Villages and again middle housing happening throughout the city and then these smaller purple dots are representative of those uh smaller commcial smaller commercial uses and neighborhood service oriented uses that Elizabeth had mentioned um that we would find ways of uh in our development code of allowing and um providing a place for those to happen in neighborhoods in close proximity

to uh the the middle scale housing that we would see and then um you can see there are is this area at the North and this area at the South which are the two Urban growth area reserves that we currently have on our land use map and so this option this development uh um alternative includes those within our Urban growth area boundary and so that would be um allow ing for additional land to be brought in eventually and annexed into the City and then developed under the same uh rules and with the same Provisions that we would see in these other neighborhoods throughout the city so those are kind of the again the three Alternatives that we are looking at right now um these will go into the countywide environmental impact assessment and we'll see how they perform in that environment um and again like we said um in the in the memo these are not uh fully baked and it's and and it may be that the preferred alternative that the community talks about that you give us feedback on that the city council gives us feedback on could very likely include uh some elements from each of these and it may also include things that aren't represented here at all that might be new ideas that come to the table that either you think of or the community does so it's again it's a it's a starting point for the conversation so um well let me get one more slide and then we'll get to questions the next steps with these Alternatives would be first uh tonight we're here in front of you to hear initial thoughts

and reactions to these ideas uh we'll be going to the city council in just a couple weeks uh on June 3D to to do a very similar uh just a slightly abbreviated version of this presentation and get initial feedback from the council and then in in July on July 17th we'll have our session on how we grow um and then we'll hear from the community on again kind of their reactions and thoughts and ideas about these different Alternatives and the land use map and then after all of that in July we would hope to come back to you in probably August and reflect back what we heard at those uh public sessions what the council said and then any new information that's come out of those conversations and talk more about these in detail and uh start start that moving towards what we would call a preferred alternative uh to feed into that process so that's that's really where we find ourselves um and uh right now I guess we'd open it up for questions on either the Alternatives or any of the material that we presented tonight whether it's the growth projections in that process or the V variety of Engagement opportunities that um that we have had or are are upcoming so just jump back to the last slide I have a clarification question on the transit oriented development or growth uh number two there so the urban villages aren't going to move because they're physical infrastructure go lines are not physical infrastructure so we're planning for the future in number two based on existing go lines is

that right so what you see on the map are the existing goal lines but the um again these are at this point these are planning kind of conceptual level ideas so the way that um and we understand that wta's process is going forward in parallel to this comprehensive plan conversation that we're having with the city and so as as wta's plans evolve our land use map they they would evolve in parallel so the the concept is that we would have trans and oriented development and incentivized uh intensity of development around uh either the 15minute lines as they are now or where they would be in the future and that um again it's that chicken and egg thing that as WTA examines their their um service strategy at this point and what it might be in the future they're also looking at our L use map and how both of those things might Flex together and and uh really enhance each other as we move forward together so um so again not set in stone but on the map right now it's just graphically represented around the current Lin right so I'm I'm just trying to think of like in in in the context of a recommendation that we can make moving forward I don't personally know how WTA is choosing the routes they're choosing and if they go line are simply just the the most um effective arterials for them to move their buses around the city or if they're picking population densities or for example they're going to the airport because people ask them to even though there's very little traffic going there so

there's a lot of parameters that they have to think about I don't know what those are so in order to I think for at least me on this board to say oh we should focus on X Y or Z or whatever you know we're thinking about without understanding what dbta is doing in why they're doing it it's hard for me to look at number two and say oh yeah let's let's push for you know something to the north where the question mark is where we know that the the bus can one of the advantages of the bus versus a train or something else they can move whever right on almost on a whim so um I I guess in in a way I would like to know more information about how the WTA can be incorporated into this conversation so at least we know what they're thinking and I will say that I've been reading recently there are some people that don't think it's a chicken and egg it's literally we're doing it all wrong period right so and I'm I'm curious about that as well because I've always been of the mind that we need the density because the transit is not going to come first and because the transit can't fund what they can't go to their funders and say we have the capacity we have the need and we can show the need versus we don't have the need but we think there's going to be a need we're going to run empty for 5 years right so I just I feel like we need more information about what Deb is doing so we can make good recommendations on that Transit oriented growth scenario and and that's absolutely something we can bring

back um like for instance when we come back in August that would be something we're we're in conversations with watom Transit and have been part of their phase one brt study um and are participating in their phase two and they're also involved in our conversations with the as far as the periotic update goes so um I think that's something that we could we could have that yeah basically the current state of the information at the point when we come back to you and talk about that thanks um just a clarification on the August time frame are you anticipating coming back to us with something like three more flushed out Alternatives or is are you coming back to us with a preferred alternative in mind I think um we would have information we would have more detail than what we're showing you tonight and it would be more focused on of the specifics maybe maybe some of the pros and cons of the different changes to of these three that you see in front of you there might be some adjustments to these in in that period of time um but importantly we'd be kind of giving you the like a summary of some of the feedback that we'd heard uh from the public um we'll have a survey that will have been out in July um specifically on this topic and so being able to just again provide um you know I don't know if that would be a definitive conversation I suspect it might be start of a conver you know just a continuation of it um but that's that's the direction we by that by July we would like to be moving

forward um with more more refinements to this this this is not at all our last opportunity to weigh in on these three this is an early take on on these three early feedback like Mike's asking for more information about buses um we'll be able to to weigh in more strongly in more detail those are available yes that's what yeah we'd be looking for that um and again we understand we're not giving you a ton of detail here we're just kind of illustrating again really what are more diagrammatic representations of the kind of focus of you know some are more inward some include some outward expansion and then like the trans and orated one it's more of a corridor approach so it's you can kind of generalize them that way but there are uh nuances of them that we you know we'd like to talk to you about more and and understand um you know if you have specific you know uh questions or concerns about about any of them in particular okay um why don't we go around one by one one one question at a time and a question on the presentation feedback on parts of it that's all on the table is that kind of what you're looking for clarifying questions Andor specific feedback um Mike jumped in first we want to go to Barbara next that was your turn okay so um I'm I'm looking at this thing and I'm and it looks to me like um we're kind of siloing the middle and lower income into suburbs areas so we've got these Urban Villages where everything's kind of in the center right but then we're going to expand out

and put lower income people in the outer area which when lower income people have to go further for work it's an extra added cost and um I'm wondering if that's being taken into consideration yeah I think um I don't know that we're the are you referring to the like the house bill 1110 the the representation that that would be happening everywhere no I was I'm looking specifically at the first one because it was most clear in that one those um lighter pink rings are going to be um you know middle use middle income um housing engagement so if we're this this is what it it looks like to me and you I'm a Layman so I'm I'm seeing like you can afford to live in the dark pink if you can't afford it you got to live in the light pink and you have to go further for to work in the player for the people who live in the dark pink does that make sense um I on I think to the question what's the in relationship between high density middle density and some of the state mandates and your anticipation of the income level cohorts being accommodated by those housing types sure sure I can yeah yeah great great great question um the um the the state does provide some initial guidance it's quite General um and so we're in the process of refining that but um and we can we can bring back some information from our housing affordability session the next time we're in front of you and talk about it in more detail but in general the more affordable um housing styles that the Department of Commerce

identifies tend to be the multif family smaller uh format units and one of the ones that we've uh we talked a little bit about the co- living housing the idea where you can rent um a bedroom and share kitchen and living facilities within a larger unit um that's one of the ways that you can have an unsubsidized housing product that could be in the maybe $8 to $900 month um rent range where you could have a um you know which gets it below what you currently would be paying for like a studio apartment in Bellingham which could be 13 to 1400 a month so so that would be kind of the the lower end um and then that that would be unsubsidized and then um we do have some naturally occurring um affordable housing in in like our manufactured housing parks are a good example of um existing housing in Bellingham and then um as you get into the the what we would call kind of the middle income ranges like the 80% to 100 or to 120% of median income those are that's getting into the range where we would really hope that some of the middle housing would be naturally affordable in those ranges and so those would be things like duplexes triplexes um maybe some town homes or just smaller homes in general um would be in those price ranges and then really the the greater than 120% of median would be the the single family detached housing that I mean that's we all know that that's some of the most expensive housing we have in town right now and we assume that new construction in those forms would

continue to be um really only accessible to Upper income households but we're not focusing on um just the shared kitchens or co- living for the to reach the lower income br brackets that aren't being helped by Hud right cuz I me we've got families we've got you know families who have Elders there's like all kinds of Arrangements of families and and that doesn't sound like it's enough right and so that's where the um again there's the for that those incomes that are at 30% or or or lower of and even some of that are maybe in the 30 to 50% range um when you think about the housing that we have in Bellingham right now they're really isn't much that's not subsidized that is actually accessible to people in those income ranges and so going forward that's where again that like that number I showed you of uh over 400 units a year would be what ofm would and Department of Commerce would would forecast that we would need to be producing as a community um and countywide again the number is bigger than that and the other cities would be struggling to do the same thing so those are those are the challenges that we face that we may not have housing types right now that are actually accessible to those income levels without some level of subsidy um so it's there there isn't um we don't have a a diagram where we can connect every part of the map to an affordability level there are currently just gaps in that relationship where we say we just don't have a way to get there yet and we need to

talk about it and figure out if there are ways to make that connect so I mean that's that's kind of what I'm trying to get at is is that with um HUD housing you get people that are at the lowest end that are getting help the ones that can get on the list the ones that can get in not everybody in that low end can get in but then there's that group that's just outside of that range where they make too much money to get help and not enough money to pay rent and we got families and stuff and so we we have put incentives in this you know the city has some minor incentives to create that kind of housing but it's not wildly popular and and we're getting a lot of push back developers say we can't physically do that but I mean where's the the bridge I mean how do we we're planning for this but yet the mechanisms to get us to what we know what we need but the mechanisms to get what we need aren't there and how do we how do we bridge that Gap yeah and and those are exactly the conversations that that I mean the entire Community is having that conversation but that's that's um what we need to what we need to wrestle with with the land use map we I you know I can tell you right now we will not solve the problem but we need to make Pro forward progress and do what we can to make sure from a land use perspective we provide as much space for those housing forms as possible and so that's that's a big part of what house bill 1110 does is it says okay well Supply is a big part of the problem

and the variety of unit Styles is is the lack of variety has been a problem in the past so let's open it up to allow those the variety of middle housing forms and to allow it on every residential lot so that's a big part of this strategy is to to um Implement that state those new rules that the state adopted last year to get that to spread to all corners of the city I'm going to save my question I want to I'm going to go to the remote callers and then we'll wrap around to Russ damn it uh who on Zoom wants to go first jumping around sucks I'm just telling you when we jump around topics you guys the full thought for each topic is totally lost so there you go Rose or Scott whoever wants to jump in yeah I'll go ahead um just mostly thank you all for the work and all of the community outreach I've been attending a lot of those evening meetings and um really enjoyed the conversations with community members um I'm curious to learn a little bit about how you chose the three um growth Alternatives like are there others that you were entertaining and these ones Rose to the top or um yeah I guess um is there well I look forward to the conversations coming up about them thank you Rose I do want to jump in just um real fast to address a little bit of what we talked about kind of coming next on these and kind of how you all will be involved as well I think a good way to think about what we're looking for tonight versus what we'll talk about in the future is that tonight is sort of the

opportunity to make sure that things you really care about being considered any alternatives are part of at least one of these alternatives we probably will not just select one of these moving forward so our next conversation will be more like okay we selected these three Alternatives we did some analysis on them we're still working on some of that analysis but we've talked with the community we've talked with you all here are some pros and cons which pieces from each alternative do we want to pull together into a preferred alternative and so this conversation is making sure we have all the pieces covered somewhere and the next conversation will be about which pieces do we want to move forward into the the final you know map so I hope that helps a little bit yeah I'd like to Echo also my thanks to all this work it's incredible information and it really helps me wrap my head around everything of I had the benefit tonight of being able to go back on the video and look at some of the graphs that were shown earlier and my biggest question I'm sure you have answer to it is when I look at the blue graphs that show the 13% Ami of a need of 7,490 that's the the more well-off folks with the single detached down to the 30 to 50% Ami with a need of 6,600 I was wondering the Ami from 50 to 130 there's not a lot of need in comparison to the lower Amis and the higher Amis and I guess the definition or the the terminology of saying middle I'm worried that we're going to be building for

those 50% to 120% Ami and not building enough for the 30 to 50% Ami and of course the 0 to 30% and my other concern on top of that would be I've seen graphs over the years of the folks that can afford the 50 to 120% Ami they can of course afford the 30 to 50% so if there's not a dedicated promise that the 30 to 50% folks get that housing then the folks that can afford the housing that's just slightly more expensive and if they can't get that stock they go down one level and I'm worried that then even the 30 to 50% people who we've built for still get priced out because the folks who can't afford it just slightly more wealthy go down a level can you speak to both of those sure um see this on yeah Scott you've highlighted yeah exactly um you're exactly right in that there there's a real imbalance in the chart in in the reality in the community and so if you look at that this is the countywide number it's it's same pattern for Belling but I'm just it's easier to see this one because it's not uh compressed as far as the where the numbers are but you're right this this Center column here um we do have a lot of housing countywide in that range and a small a smaller slice that we would build compared to the the lower income ranges um and I think what you what you'd find is that um the the people we have a a smaller Supply in these lower ranges if you were to look at the households instead of housing units we'd have a large number of households down in this range and they're renting

in these two blue bars here which is why they're paying more than 30% of their income they're they're the cost burden households in the community those 9,000 plus households so they're they're occupying housing in the middle of the graph whereas their their incomes would mean that ideally they would be renting on the on the lower half of the graph but there just isn't there just aren't enough units in those price ranges for them and so they're forced to um for the ones that are able to stay in the community they're they're forced to rent uh you know with 40% or 50% or even more of their income going to housing in this area so you know it's it's it's kind of a there is no perfect solution to it and you've highlighted you know exactly what might happen in that you know if we if we do find a way to build housing that's in the the price ranges for the lower half of the graph you know you we don't necessarily have a means unless it's subsidized housing with income requirements um for market rate housing we we don't really have a way of directly connecting the people with the correct incomes to it because it's a it is a free market and we don't we don't have a way of that's not something government does we don't control that um but the hope is that over time if we do provide enough Supply in all of these categories that that people will have more choices and will be able to find housing that's more accessible to them and more appropriately in line with their household income um it

it we won't be able to match everybody up but just over time from a policy standpoint this this would be what we would call progress in getting there it just providing again more options more housing Styles in for more income ranges um and providing those opportunities for people that makes sense and I appreciate understanding more about that instead of it people going down a level right now they're being forced to go up a level um does middle housing stock allow for someone to afford housing from the 30 to 50% Ami or is that housing that needs to be more in line with an apartment or something else or subsidized housing yeah I mean what we've seen built from the the you know we've had quite a few infill toolkit projects in the last 10 years that have been built so um from a housing form standpoint we've seen a good variety of those we really haven't seen anything in the infill toolkit that's been naturally affordable at the those lower income levels um there have been a few that are um kind of in the middle income like that maybe the 80 to 100% Ami range um and maybe even some that are just below 80 but not not really anything below that range um that's really more again the only thing we're really seeing in the community that's um available to those households that um and again it's in very short supply as the subsidized housing products that are you know our Our Community Partners um are building with with fun fing from you know help from the city and and federal dollars so

um yeah so those are the things where again we you know like we talked about one being the kind of communal living would be more in the like potentially like the $800 a month given the current market range um but even that you know that that's something that you know you you wouldn't probably see enough of that to meet the need in those income ranges so um so and just to to finish up it sounds like when we focus on uh middle housing it's stock for those housing supplies that we need the least of I think to be kind of blunt about it any new building is expensive and when we look at what we're Zoning for and allowing when we're talking about new buildings if it's you know private developers building new buildings it's not going to be affordable right off the bat it's going to have potentially a few of those units if we're able to find a way to provide kind of mixed income projects but just kind of naturally the economics don't work out where new housing is going to be particularly affordable even when you look at kind of you know more dorm style housing it's it's new and it's expensive but there are strategies we can um kind of tackle um that can try to get at this from multiple perspectives I think something that we haven't really talked about today but that's really important is considering displacement and looking at older units and ones that are more naturally affordable and how our zoning practices either encourage preservation of those things or um encourage those things

to be redeveloped and displacing people so there are strategies we can take to try to you know like anti anti-displacement strategies to try to encourage some of the housing that already exists today to be more affordable in the future and to stay around knowing that you know today's new housing will be more affordable in 10 years the housing that we build in 5 years will be expensive immediately but then 10 years later will be a little bit more affordable so there's kind of a cycle and I think we just I think we're kidding ourselves if we say that you know oh we we we can Zone ourselves out of this problem that's not the only thing we have power over but it is one of the big things so it's sort of all these things intersect together to try to tackle it from multiple angles um it's not an easy solution like Chris said we're not going to magically say oh well we opened up zoning to this type of Housing and that'll fill our 0 to 30% Ami bar that's that's not going to happen but there are ways we can chip away at it and try to get closer absolutely and I just want to make sure that we stay focused on um the fact that there is not one solution and just by going after something as simple as or you know it's complex too but middle housing that's just we just you know shake our hands and say all right that's that's great we're done that we have to tackle this with every single tool we have because those what is it 14,000 households that are in the zero to 50% Ami they can't wait 10

years for affordable housing to trickle down to them they need it today and we need to find uh some ways to not solve it but at least like Chris said to chip away at it so thank you for working on that uh thank you um I've enjoyed you guys are still on tour that's what I call it right you're still on tour you got some more dates coming up so get your tickets and buy them early and get there to support it's been fun I enjoyed the conversation I'm going to continue to go um a lot of collaboration with the community what I'm kind of curious about is the collaboration with I call the city within the city which I call Western Washington University right has there been collaboration with Western Washington University and their growth plan which they call an imp plan right their institutional master plan um that's what I'm curious about I've challenged president zah uh and my conversations with him concerning there hasn't been apartment style living apartment style living uh situation for Western students since what Burnham Wood and banning towers and I've challenged them now to say you've got Lincoln sitting right there the parking ride right you could build a structure over top of that not take away the parking and have apartment style Living For Students why not and his response was great idea we're going to look at that in our institutional master plan right so are we collaborating with Western to challenge ourselves to to work together on this because that could free up as you

well know that orbit around seahome Hill quite a bit to help our vacancy in the city so that's one question I had I don't know if you have an answer forward or thought or give me something yeah sure so so for the not just Western but watom community and and BTC um uh they all have their own Master plans um the uh westerns and uh watching community colleges are are um uh ones that were adopted uh uh collabor their their collaborative planning uh process with the city Western is in the very early stages of updating their imp it was last updated in 2021 and um they will not be finished by the time this plan is adopted but but we are going to be involved in that process as well and so I think uh the process we're going through right now will help inform their process and um yeah we'll certainly be from the land use perspective and and the um uh planning you know the conversations we're having here th those are the kinds of things we would be talking with them about so yeah absolutely we're we're we work together on those kinds of things do you do you happen to know if their current imp allows do they have enough capacity in the Imp itself to add more buildings residential buildings if they chose to obviously there's funding and a lot of considerations they have to make on their own level but does their imp allow them to add because that's largely what imps are about is total square footage allowed over a 20 horizon or something yeah you know I I they um they haven't reached their

the what they would call the buildout threshold of their current 2021 imp yet um I I don't know exactly what's it's been a while since I looked at it to see what's left but um that'll be part of that update process is determining what they're you know looking at their um forecasts from the the state figuring out um you know roll to the other uh state colleges what their projected growth rate would be and then trying to figure out what that what that means to their own internal campus land use map and how they could grow I don't I can't speak to that specifically but one of the things that I would say to that is if you're going to have a a foresight of growth uh and a foresight of being a leader right I think you got a plan for that uh and say we think that this Regional University will continue to grow uh right and so my my challenge to him in that regard was to say this the fact that I consider it a city within a city this could be a an olive branch or a leave to the city of Bellingham to say we're trying to help one another it's a win-win we can help our student population and we can help the greater city of population of Bellingham so I I I challenge them to win-win and maybe the freshman and sophomores willon like me very much but challenge was something back in the 80s back in the years when I was at Western where as your freshman and sophomore you live on campus and then when you're junior C you have that option getting a little more experience but that uh going back to

that that mandatory scenario could help that situation and help the city so just a thought um I have a question around uh occupants per dwelling or res residents per dwelling are occupants per household and how that's trending over time like we we talk about we I worry because we talked about the buildable lands analysis and we said we did a good job and we we looked the the population numbers and the projections from uh prior planning sessions you know we picked the middle and the middle population ended up being pretty accurate but it's clear that our built units have not kept up with the need and so I'm wondering if there's other gaps actually my question was originally around um how do we take the the number number of um housing units needed and and come up with a way to catch up with our existing gaps and your slide actually covered that really well that was great to see like um catching up with vacancy rate and catching up with um cost burden rentals um as part of the calculation for housing units needed um but so you population net net increase you have births those happen now I'm assuming those go into an existing bedroom uh and there's a 18year delay before those people do their own household formation and what's the relationship between um do we have any insight on like barriers to household formation people living with more rment than they would ordinarily choose to do if they had access to housing at their price point um and is the the number of I know I've seen

stats that the number of occupants per dwelling unit is like just under two maybe in the city of Bellingham has that been trending down you you hear about empty nesters empty nesters staying in suburban houses with extra bedrooms not finding you know a smaller retirement living type housing form that they would like um is that accounted for at the ofm level like the the number of residents how you translate the net population growth to the net housing units needed and is that number different than we've seen in uh prior planning Cycles so lot lot lots to unpack there but yeah so let me just just I I'll give you a few pieces of information and then you can let me know if I didn't cover something um first yeah when ofm does do their um their forecast they incorporate information um that they receive from cities every April so every April because ofm provides an annual estimate Statewide for every city and for every County of population in current housing and so every every April our staff in the permit Center roll up how many permits we approved in the last from from April of the last year to April of the current year and we send a report detailed report off to them and those include um the style of unit in the bedroom count and so it's how many single family units how many you know duplexes triplexes fourplexes um multi-unit and then how many units were in each of those and they have based on census information they have uh for each Community the typical number of persons per

household in that style of unit and and they're so you know their CommunityWide numbers like all of Bellingham they would have a number from the Census and then they adjust those each year from the decennial Census when those numbers get reset with a hard count they adjust those with um a variety of information sources one of the main ones is the US Postal Service delivery rates they they adjust like vacancy and occupancy rates that way um and then they do surveys in their intervening years to kind of pull like what household size would be for different styles of units so so they nurse that along every year and then they incorporate that into their forecasting work and I I would say generally um Nationwide this has been the trend and it's no different here in Bellingham the numbers just vary a little bit Community to community but household size has been generally decreasing over time I I would say that there is um there is information that that we get from just the community that you know there are from Partners like the Bellingham School District for instance that there are definitely examples of Housing and Bellingham where you get families doubling up for financial reasons um and so that is a real thing in our community we don't have really a a good idea about how many units that's happening in but we do know that that that's a that's a uh definitely an an element of our current demographics in Bellingham is that there are individuals and also uh like families that are

doubling up in units to to make rent so that's that's kind of a sidebar to that but but in General household size has been decreasing for um quite a while um the last 2020 census for Bellingham it was just over two it was like 2.18 persons per household in um uh the the 2010 senten this I think it was 2.24 and before that it was 2.3 something in in in the year 2000 so it's it you know it's not dropping precipitously but it is decreasing um paired with that I think you guys have all seen the pie chart before where the the household size in Bellingham that um you know the first third of the pie is one person households and the second third of the pi is two person households so somewhere between six just a little bit north to 60% of the households in Bellingham are just one or two people um and then you know we do have some uh you know the other pie slices are you know three and four% households and larger so so there is also that that we have a lot of housing in Bellingham um that are three and four-bedroom units where it's just a couple or an individual living in that home and so we have a lot of um we have a real mismatch in town of of bedrooms basically you know larger units that are under occupied and smaller units that might be over occupied or just a lack of smaller units so it's it's there's a lot of complexities in that but I guess to answer your question in the simplest term in their forcasting ofm does account for household size and for Trends over time so they have a

number the house size they would say we're at today in 2024 is different than what they would project for 2045 they would they would look at those Trends and say we see you you know continuing to decrease at um you know a small rate I don't know if that flattens out at some point or not in their forecasting or not but but they do pay attention to that so they come up with the math to translate to housing unit counts yes that's the part of the housing for all planning tool is it uh we we pick the year and then what level if we're looking at the medium the high the low or something in between and then uh we plug those numbers in and it does the it uses a lot of the information that the state has come up with and it comes with up with a housing unit total based on that population number and again it's using for each County it's using all of that County's local data to generate those numbers the different occupancy rates and persons per household and the also the income data from each community um to come up with what those those uh values for the different bars and the income ranges are is that tool if there was a spreadsheet nerd that wanted to play with that tool is that publicly available uh yeah it's on their on their website we can we can provide a link called um happy happy to do that it's uh it does have some instructions on it it's fairly um it's it's a little challenging um and they are uh actually issuing a a a revised version sometime in the next month as well that's

why some of the some of the numbers are still um in flux but um but yeah it's it's it's a publicly available tool each um jurisdiction is required to use that in their they're planning um you know in the development of our plans and the numbers we come up with have to fit within that thank you Jed thanks so I ended up at the seahome uh Community engagement and there was definitely some Talk of the small commercial development which I think seems kind of uh it would be I think something that seems like a Bellingham type of thing um I live in Silver Lake and so there's just a couple smaller commercial areas kind of interspersed through that area and it's kind of you know those things are valuable to the people who live there and can't imagine not having those am minut there um some things that I'm curious about just in terms of kind of data um I know with 1120 um you know we're basically opening up multif family missing middle type of housing into most single family zones and I'm just curious I haven't really heard anywhere yet like how many of these areas are actually protected by covenants um seems like there probably wouldn't be that many but I don't really know the answer to that so it's curious about that and then also just you know in terms of these growth alternatives um I mean it looks to me like that there could be combinations of those um you know especially with the um the transit oriented type of thing um with that I'm curious on on the transit oriented if we're

looking at um maybe increasing ridership in some of those routes to trigger the sixplex or maybe even get into where if we end up having um bills coming through the Washington State Legislature that are focused on Transit Orting uh development that would be like more likely that we would actually be um fall under that you know Cate category of having that that busy of Transit um that's also just curious about you know the idea of um if we take all this housing stock that we have and we start to maybe take single family residences that are existing and U compartmentalize them into being multif family houses housing types um how do we see that relating to affordability is that potentially going to I don't know I just I'm I'm curious what we think the effects of that are going to be particular in the existing housing stock that could um be uh retrofitted or adapted to be multif family housing so um yeah so by way of response so some of those things are certainly things we can bring information back on um the I could say for the covenants and restrictions that's something that we're very curious about as well I know there was some work done by the University of Washington um or they they set up a a project for that and then there was work that was done um I believe by volunteers and various communities to kind of sift through um title records and auditor files to to build a map for different communities in Washington there have been and there is a map available online that shows

Bellingham and Watton County um and there definitely are um areas that have existing deeds and Covenants um you know on on plats um some of them as recent as the 1990s that do for instance prohibit uh accessory dwelling units or prohibit um anything other than a single family detached unit on them um so those you know that's definitely uh present in our community to some extent we have not completed a um you know like a CommunityWide map that shows all of the areas the um House Bill 1110 when it was passed um did include language that that said um from that point forward from the point the governor signed that bill um new covenants could not be brought um could not be created that would restrict middle housing forms um but some anything that was already in existence at that point um would still you know be enforceable so um so that's something we' we'd be you know we haven't done a complete map of that um and we that would be something we would be keeping an eye on I guess as as our middle housing legislation gets enacted to see if there are certain areas where where that was really limiting Supply um so no real no real solution we have in mind yet for that but certainly something to pay attention to um the uh as far as the the transit oriented development um that's I think we you know we kind of talked about that that it's one of those things that we're going to be coordinating with um WTA on and that would be something that as we develop as we move towards a preferred

alternative that if that's one of the elements then we would be um working with them on you know maybe having them be kind of the expert in the room on on that on the service end of that and then trying to figure out you know they would be relying on us from the land use about kind of trying to see well where are you thinking about making changes and we'd be talking about their kind of uh evaluation of different lines to figure out where might be a like a pilot project or something that that could be used as an initial an initial place to um do some land use changes and where it could be done in concert with development of the infrastructure to see how that would work the idea of um of existing housing being divided up to create additional units is something we've certainly talked about because that would be um you know there definitely some efficiencies there where you could um take advantage of existing structures whether they be homes or maybe even reconfiguring you know existing multif family buildings to create more units um so yeah that's definitely something that um we've we've talked about and that could be that could be a um you know a very common way that the the middle housing or House Bill 1110 gets implemented and you know if people decide they want to add a unit they may not necessarily need to add a new structure they could just create like a basement Adu or um divide their house up in in any number of ways so those are certainly something that uh like you said

that it might be a more affordable way of creating creating units over time got a two-part question on the same topic uh first question how do you do a land Capacity Analysis based on income I'm sorry can you say the last part again about how do you do a land capacity analysis based on income um yeah that's a very good question so we do a land Capacity Analysis that would generate um the the you know expect an expected number of units um and it's not just the same um what what now looks like a very easy exercise we've gone through in the past where we just say we know what the zoning density is and we know what the size of the parcel is after we take critical areas and other things often and then it's just math um now we have to look at okay well what style what range of units could be built on this property because it's not just the density it's are they building um you know are they are they um 500 or 1,000 squ foot units or are they 2500 foot four-bedroom units so you kind of have to do some estimating on what what how many and what type might get built in a Zone where we don't necessarily prescribe to that level of detail we we just say yeah you can build you can build units here um so this time I think it's going to be you know there will be a um some scenarios that we have to put out there to say well we think people could build this many of this kind or this many of this kind and there's capacity for this many as far as attaching the actual affordability to it those

are you know we we need to we do need to do that exercise but it'll just be kind of a a best guess given current market conditions um we'll be looking at you know for multifam Styles we'll have the current kind of median rent for a studio one two three bedroom for the um for sale prod we'll be looking at you know kind of what the current market rate for town homes are for duplexes triplexes those kinds of things um trying to figure out you know for um we we really haven't seen many Condominiums built in recent years but um that's something that we would try and account for how many of those we think we might get how do you factor in um for sale product versus rental product we have um you know we would we would look at different areas of Town different zones and we would make a guess at kind of what the split how many would be rental how many be owner and then um yeah for the the uh rental products we would look at kind of what the median rent is for that given product for an ownership based product um you know you you look at it and we we could use you know there there are ways of estimating the affordability but they're very dependent on things like you know prevailing interest rates and a you know wide variety of um you know kind of Market factors as well so you said something earlier and and it piqu my interest when you said I'm assuming boarding house style of housing at an $800 kind of target range Which is less than bedrooms are renting for in the city right now so

that would be I think I said out loud dreamy um you said that for a reason what what are you hearing that would suggest that that's those are those are when I said the you know $8 or $900 a bedroom those are just kind of the current market rates for um we we do have a few larger uh projects mainly marketed the students in town that that are those style of building and so those are kind of the the current rates on a per bedroom basis that those are being leased at yeah um as far as what the the um and so relating that to for instance what the kind of median rate for a studio would be in Belling him as opposed to you know one of those units it gives you an idea okay it's it's it's generally less but again that would be a you know the market could vary widely on that depending on the amenities and the size of the bedroom and you know location in town so I I have a little bit more information on this today than I would have had say eight months ago because I've looked at every single thing for sale in this town since January and now I'm looking at things to rent so I've got a very keen understanding of what is available for sale and for rent so it's interesting to see you know how you folks are going to try to projected based on the fact that we live in an economy that it's private ownership and an owner can choose to build densely or not and there's a property in my neighborhood that I don't think most people know about it's about 3/4 of an acre it's a lawn it would support a

ton of housing in an already sort of built up dense neighborhood the owner's not interested right so the projections are interesting but what the person you know what the owners are really wanting to do with it is sort of like a anybody's guess right um so to finalize the question if we're planning for a a medium population density right so we say okay we expect this many people we need fire um we need police we need Road capacity we need pipes in the ground we need electricity Okay so we've been doing that for decades at this point and we still don't have enough housing at the right price range for a ton of people so if we're planning for the infrastructure that's pretty easy to do but we still haven't provided the housing I'm very interested in making sure that the recommendations that we make are going to be able to help the council choose a direction that gets to that part considering that the properties are all privately owned right and I don't I'm not expecting an answer from you but I'm very curious about how we can find a step that we can make a recommendation that says try this and try that and try that because we've been doing all this planning for growth projections and providing the infrastructure in most cases but still short massively short on the housing right yeah I think I I think I have two kind of comments to finish off what or to respond to what you just said I think on the the first part the idea of the um you know the market price points and all the

details and Nuance in in you know just a a studio apartment and how much it can vary across town depending on any number of factors um you know we have these spreadsheets and models and tables and all kinds of detail that go into these things you know we're we're not fooling ourselves though this is it it is a model it gives us something to base some plans on um at the end of the day we're responsible for um doing all we can to make sure our regulations allow as many varieties of units in as many places and meet the letter of the law um and that we can whenever possible provide incentives to really encourage again those those kind of policy based choices um we're not the ones that are actually building the units and ultimately you know a private developer gets to take that risk financially and choose to go forward and and do that and and you know do their best kind of as a builder so it's it's it's a partnership we're doing our best to kind of create the simplest most most navigable regulatory environment to get out of the way as much much as we can and and again provide the land use and infrastructure to do that um and then and then you know what we can do is just kind of monitor it and adjust as we go forward and keep having these conversations um so that's kind of the again just you know not trying to fool ourselves we have a lot of detail but that's to make some good choices but it's not it's not a you know we we know things aren't going to turn out the way that we're

exactly how we're planning them it's just trying to use that as the in best information we have at the moment to make those choices and to to help people like you provide recommendations it's good to hear you say get out of the way right because I know that without putting Politics on this conversation there are some people that say the only reason we're struggling is because people government's in the way right I I disagree with that but but something that came up this evening and and Jed you mentioned it which was the small scale commercial in our neighborhoods not that long ago it was nearly impossible to do this so I don't know what happened between between 2020 and 2024 but we're having a conversation in 2020 that we are not having today right so or we're having a conversation day we weren't having back then right and I think we can all look around our neighborhoods and say wouldn't it be cool if that was there and like oh it used to be there but now it's basically banned and you know hearing that we're maybe getting away from Banning everything and bringing some of these things back I think we can all look around our neighborhoods and see the buildings that used to have a small business or whatever I know businesses that have um I'm not going to tell you who they are but I know businesses that are operating out of places they're not legally allowed to us they have addresses somewhere else right because they don't have a parking spot for a customer something like that

right so you know I think we know when we travel we like those neighborhoods so it's I'm excited to hear some of the things that that you're saying and I think the conversations that folks are having in this building they're they're really healthy so thank you yeah I want to just kind of jump in on that a little bit as well by trying to simplify a little a little bit of what we do you know you asked initially about how do we project our housing capacity by income and really we don't think about it that way because as Chris said you know we can't project all of those factors and we aren't the ones who build the housing in most cases and so we can't project it by income level but what we can do is identify gaps in our current housing Supply look at the barriers to filling those gaps remove those barriers and then we can take the funds we do have or the incentives we do have as Tools in our pocket and apply those to fill those gaps as well and so I think that's really what our focus is on you know you you talked a little bit about um how middle housing is not a silver bullet it's not going to solve all of our affordability crisis it's not but it does help fill a lot of those gaps not just in affordability but also in the types of housing folks are looking for being able to provide housing that is closer to where folks want to be um you know providing better um even like climate impacts not having as many impacts all of these things that the community has said is important and

that we're not um necessarily filling right now we want to be able to fill those gaps with choices so that's really how we see a lot of the work we do that's nice to hear because the paper just wrote an article this week that said move to blae and save 750 bucks a month so Blain cannot be our back stop right okay so sort of still in that same vein um we can build these houses in the 30 to 50 Ami and we have seen some properties being built out in the city and then once people are in and they've you know kind of established for a little a while they start creeping those rents up and then it's no longer fitting in those so this rent stabilization is another thing that we need to to address and I don't know if that's a part of you know if that's something in our purview um and the other thing is that we have we talked about um inappropriately housed families where multiple families are living in you know smaller housing units um for the amount of people that they have and some people that are like one person living in a two or three bedroom but we also have a lot of commercial buildings around town that are just blight just sitting there not doing anything you know south campus there's a church over I mean a the old movie theater the original movie theater over by that church there's a half a dozen other properties around town like that that are just sitting there not being used and I want to know how we can address that in our plan I think one way of looking at that too is the

opposite of what I just said about identifying gaps is identifying things that we have too much of potentially and thinking about how we can address that to fill those gaps it's not as easy as saying let's just converted into housing there's a lot of difficulties in that but I think it is a really good question to bring to the table as well uh back to zoom Rose anything Scott um we can come back to you guys if you have anything R uh Russ Chris will help me if I'm wrong here only I'm just thinking out loud and and and trying to creative capacity I think is a director Lake Lions made available to us planning Commissioners is it on the 29th of this month we're some planning students from Western and President saah we I can't it's a little fuzzy maybe Heather helped me um we've been inv is it this month or next month that we were invited to come talk about some possibilities am I am I the only one that saw this email and went and jumped on it with him or what anybody else help me out I remember seeing that I don't remember the date uh I thought it was I I'm a Wednesday May 29th yeah it is this month and it is on the 29th um there's a group at Western who has been working on some things related to this and so they have a student presentation on that date so I think you all have been invited it sounds like and some staff have been invited as well so that we can kind of hear some of the work that they've done thank you so I'm going to be attending that just to keep the creative

juices flowing here to look at other perspectives and ideas and all the great work you put in in the team and you're still on tour and and and just to keep because we're not the only County facing this right there were 38 other ones who are and I've got to believe that like I said I'm going to keep hope alive here the Synergy of all this massive intellectual brain power and passion we we got to figure this out right we've got to figure this out so we're not the only ones where it's not unique to us there's there's 38 other counties that are facing this issue maybe ours a little unique um right we got some natural borders to the north Canada to the West the Pacific Ocean or the bay so um but I I just got to believe we can figure it out and we're going to try to do our best to do such so I'll be very curious now that I do have to write the 20 night uh to attend it and just see what the students are thinking and what's going on there and uh maybe they have a different perspective so on that topic we do have um actually it's something Elizabeth started organized a number of months ago but we started conversations um monthly with other planners um in you know some planning departments from like Spokan and you know Kirkland and Shoreline and other places on specifically on kind of the middle housing topics but just generally on how that's how they're struggling with those and looking at implementing um code that is you know compliant with the new state laws and the variety of

things around you know design standards and infrastructure that we're all struggling with trying to figure out how that's how we're going to make that work so so there is some collaboration going on um there's there's nobody with a perfect solution figured out yet but all right CH Chris I got to ask you okay present a scenario you go to the conference with all your planner friends you you sit in on the classes and then at 6:00 everybody changes into comfy clothes and they head to the bar right what are you hearing while you're in the bar the crazy ideas wouldn't it be nice if that's what I want to hear right because what what typically happens and you you do this every day right you're like oh wouldn't it be nice if but we have these barriers right and if I can put a fine point on this the barriers are all our own barriers and think back preco you say oh let's do a cool little um uh seating area across the parking over here no way cannot do it what changed people's minds changed the physical infrastructure exactly the same the parking area the same sidewalk the same the business the same what changed people decided to change right so that's what I'm interested in hearing and if you have to do it offline with me outside in the parking lot let's do it because it's the interesting ideas are going to get to the point the gruss is making it's if we're stuck in making recommendations within what we perceive to be our barriers then we can't push and we can't make the change that

we're going to get to because I think we can all see exactly where we're going if we don't do something dramatic can we develop the mine yeah actually Mike one of the questions at the open house last night was whether you wanted more or less drinking establishments in urban Villages so I think we know where you stand last okay red is not noted um I had a thought on on the AL growth alternative the Tod um you know Mike pointed out some of the issues that that some of our Transit lines are are not permanent um like a light rail station um I've seen a map many times in here and and at um some of the open houses of basically like uh proximity to amenity and that means things like Parks churches grocery stores schools job centers Etc is there some combination of flavors like transit's a great amenity um but transit's not and Transit tends to be on arterials sometimes there's been a general criticism one criticism against Tod and as a general concept is you're concentrating more dense housing along arterials that may have more um car exhaust those types of things um and so is there is there a similar map or different map that would be influenced by like proximity to amenities allowing you know Equitable access of walking distance to Parks grocery stores Etc and what those different amenities are as an idea no that's a great great suggestion we we've talked about um we haven't mapped all of that but we do have like the idea around um you know where uh like certainly like the the Pro

Plan that you're familiar with you know we have those um walk distance to Parks walk distance to Trail heads um we have things like the safe routes to schools um mapping um so there are things like that that we can bring into that as well and and start to look at those in kind of in combination yeah there's there's a lot of desirable entities that have a more permanent form like a par or a school Jen yeah I just um I mean it's probably the question that you get asked a lot but are we um contemplating getting rid of parking requirements altogether I mean that's kind of a word on the street at least and uh you know developers are definitely thinking like should I build now or should I wait till we don't have any parking requirement um yeah it's an ongoing ation that's that's on council's upcoming agenda so we're we're waiting to see where where that conversation goes um but yeah it's it's definitely um it's definitely one of the one of the things that's at the top of the list to talk about for sure so yeah you jumped the line that's true any other questions Mike back not so much a question it's been brought to my attention that these meetings are not held or translated in any other language um there's no um Al American Sign ASL that that goes along with this so that'd be cool if we could do that right obviously we don't have the budget but somebody does and be cool but that brings up the Greater point about the the meetings you're having with you know in different languages I'm

very interested because I know if I go north of London and I have a public meeting I'm going to get some pretty interesting ideas about what the public open space should look like right and it's very different than what Boulevard Park looks like right so I'm I'm super interested in making sure that we tap into those other voices in our community that don't speak and look like me be super I think we'll find different answers that we may have been missing in the past I know some of that went into the new park space up in Cordata because that looks dramatically different than some of the other parks and I'm like this is pretty cool so yeah that's uh I'm interested to find out what those other voices are are saying and hopefully there's a good turn out there but few weeks ago when you guys came before us with this again you said that there were three communities that you couldn't reach and I'm wondering if we've made any more progress on that yeah I think we identified um kind of students in that age group as one category um the Hispanic or Spanish-speaking Community is another category and um what did we identify as the other it was low-income people renters and bipac yeah renters is the other one that that we really highlighted um so those categories we've kind of identified Pathways this phase to try to fill the Gap so as you all heard we've established some relationships with local community- based organizations to try to help with that so particularly with the Hispanic

community we've partnered with a local organization who works pretty exclusively with that community and that's been really successful we've had a series of three focus groups with folks entirely in Spanish um kind of a smaller group to really build on some initial discussions and really work with them and then that group is you know really excited about the this topic now and able to kind of spread the word in the community so we're hoping that they and some other Partnerships we're forming will help bring out turnout to our event next week so that's one way where we're sort of working on the Spanish speaking community in particular um that also is one of our largest communities that we can kind of tap into to help with some of those other gaps especially with the rental Community with the bipot community as a as a whole there's definitely some overlaps there um we also as you heard went to Western and um we were really excited that the folks that showed up to our event earlier this month there were a lot more diverse in what they were studying I think the the event we had in the fall had pretty good turnout but a lot of them were planning students which we love to hear from but we also want to hear from those who don't already know about these topics so we were really excited to see not actually that many planning students but a lot of other students um kind of from across the Spectrum at this event so that was a really good way to hear from them we've also been able to

build out our email list at those types of event so we now have a good list of folks who are interested in this topic who are students that we can email specifically so we might be able to do some specific Outreach to them as well so those are some of the things we've been doing I think we also just continue to ask for demographic so in that survey that we're doing in July you know it won't be through um a consultant who can make it statistically valid in a really robust way but what we can do is ask for demographics to understand you know we expect to have quite a few responses and enough that we can start understanding um you know what folks from different communities might think and if we're underrepresented in some areas we can kind of bring those voices to the surface and really emphasize what they're telling us they need so those are a few things that we've been doing um I just want to clarify something in in the survey meeting we had a couple months ago they were talking about I remember hearing that some of those under traditionally represented groups when you did the statistically valid random survey you saw response rates you did see responses but they were lower than the demographic population percentage you would expect it's not that we heard nothing right right correct yeah we basically when we do the statistically valid system we're able to even if they're still Under reporting to an extent we're able to wait those responses so that we hear kind of an equal

number to what we would expect if they were equally represented but we also used some methods in that Outreach we partnered with a number of community- based organizations to spread the word on that survey we also like oversampled um census tracks that have more of the folks that we know tend to not respond at such rate so there are things we can do to try to help in that way as well when you do the postcard in July that's not that's everyone or every mailbox um since that's not the same as a statistically valid survey are you still going to attempt to do waiting to bring it back to demographic ratios or is it just more open-ended than that I think that's a question have to answer when we see the results we get I think we're not seeing the survey as like a voting system so depending on you know who we hear from if it's really out of whack we might want to at least on certain questions that feel a little bit more like yes or no or something that it's really easy to to interpret those results we might be able to sort of wait it to show you what that would have looked like if we heard from a more representative sample but it just kind of depends on who we hear from it it won't be as robust as the survey we presented back in March but we would like to at the very least say oh well these folks thought um you know more along these lines so therefore the overall results would look like this if it were representative a little bit like we did with the vision survey which was similar

where it was mailed out to everybody and the results were not fully representative and so we were able to kind of show you based on demographics what different folks thought and where there might have been some variation we did find that there actually was a lot of agreement in that particular survey on those topics but we might find disagreement in this survey and in those topics we might dig in and start waiting it well I'm glad we Rose this brought found this issue early and sounds like you've been adapting as you go doing our best back to zoom real quick and last last call for comments from afar Mike nothing for me thanks the numbers that we're seeing in the graph up here they include um University or college students they would right yeah with the understanding that you know that that population is changing annual you know every year it rolls over but that's Western's population and watcom and btc's are included in our overall Citywide total um on the chart um Scott made the point earlier about people purchasing adjacent to the column they're in um the tallest column here is the one on the right um I I'm I'm wondering if is there an opportunity to break that into smaller segments like someone at 121 Ami 121 might be buying down in the you know column to the left of it and that's influencing those kind of shifts between columns we were talking about earlier um you know the building forms we need at 125 are different than 180 so we we have a lot of breakdowns in the

smaller range and I know we're really concerned as a community about fixing the issues on the the lower end of the income range are a lot more challenging um but there might be some insight in seeing that column broken up into smaller groups yeah we we have some ability to do that I know that the census um income data that we get it it is they do break out a little bit higher than that there's not a lot of detail we might be able to get Maybe One More Bar out of there to be honest I think they they cut it off at something like 150,000 and greater annual income currently um we'd have to see how we could tie that to the this is straight out of the um housing for all planning tool which the Commerce doesn't doesn't do anything in the upper you know beyond that range they don't provide any DET detail but we could potentially use census data to kind of make our own like you know what's what's the makeup for Bellingham and Washington County as a whole we we could try that to see maybe you wouldn't get a lot of detail though I just just warn you it's it's probably too challenging from the do sources but I can just see like what is the bell curve of income look like and the bell curve of housing cost because they obviously differ but I'm not sure we can get that yeah so so we could absolutely provide a uh a matching chart with the same number of bars for household income and then housing by affordability range we have we have that and we can share that with you so and that does it

does kind of it's it kind of helps you connect the dots on it and see that oh yeah a lot of people at the low end not many housing units a lot of units in the middle um and and you know more households there than there probably should be because there un enough units at the low and so they're renting and those above their means units and so it's you can kind of compare the two side by side and see oh yeah these are kind of looping up into the next next category or maybe two categories up depending on what the availability is okay that's cool I think different visualizations help because we've got this P we've got this puzzle at the top and this puzzle at the bottom and I don't know exactly what that means do do the do the Realtors weigh in with you folks and tell you what they're actually selling because they're they're more on the ground than the ofm we've had we've had quite a bit of input yeah from the Realtors from Bia they've been um in attendance I think in one way or another at most of our sessions and we've done we've gone to them and given it you know um in phase one last year um spoke to them at their different kind of monthly or quarterly meetings yeah I mean I I don't really want to be um a poster child for this conversation right now but I literally am so so you know getting out bid on every single thing we've we've offered on this year has been a little bit frustrating but I think Mike your point is really valid that if we're trying to plan for a certain income

um are we doing it right right I think a challenge we often have is that the the numbers we get from the Census and any other areas we can get them from give us charts like this but when you start digging into you know okay 120 plus Ami that could be folks who paid off their mortgage ages ago and so they're doing just fine but someone who would be that same family today who hasn't yet bought in might not be able to afford that and so I think there's a lot of nuance there and a lot of kind of stories that people have to tell about their own struggles that we've been hearing and really digging into into to understand where those barriers are Beyond just you know numbers on a bar chart yeah and not even people that paid their mortgage off it could just be you know the huge number of us that refinanced right before things went from 3% to 8% you know it's just you know every any given City Block You've got people in you know what look like the exact same housing style that could be in drastically different Financial situations based purely on the interest rates so it's yeah it's it's the charts make it look like it's easy to figure out it's there's no way to make it work so it's just do our best and and make sure that the the plans reflect our best intentions um cool I would like to remind everyone if you have questions if think of things tomorrow or feedback you're welcome to email staff at any time this is not the end of the road um it is it is 9:30 I'm thinking probably wrap up

um any final pressing feedback or questions for staff before we adjourn this has been great long presentation I know there's a lot of meat behind it a lot went into making that um super informative um really appreciate all the hard work that's going into it and the late nights I know you guys were out last night too uh at squal so um yeah really appreciate it and thanks everyone for attending tonight um if there's nothing else to add any final updates scheduling or other we we don't have anything currently scheduled to get back in front of you um you will probably be hearing from us before August though on just on some more information topics to so that we don't have to do maybe quite such a deep dive in one night the next time we're in front of you so we'd like to get in the habit of kind of bringing topics forward to get you up to speed on things so great well with that we will adjourn good night everyone I don't see the director here thank youall all right good night [Music] for