Home in Tacoma final passage

Today is the day.

This evening the Tacoma City Council is poised to vote on the final Home in Tacoma code package. With that event, I thought I would get some reflection down for better or for worse.

It's taken five years to get this far, longer than a presidential term, longer than most people's journeys through high school, and even longer than the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The substance of the package is enormous relative to most items that the Planning Commission and Tacoma's planning department have taken on over the years: 246 pages of changes to the Land Use Regulatory Code. Two phases of work dealing with policy and code with three different consultant teams spanning site design, economic analysis, and environmental review. One health impact assessment. Two new land uses and three new residential zoning districts covering roughly 2/3 of the city. Five new and re-imagined housing types. Addressing at least six new State laws governing housing affordability and density. Over 1,500 comments from the community with three rounds of public feedback just for Phase 2. 32 proposed amendments by the Planning Commission. And 19 proposed amendments by the City Council. 8 pages of recommendations and 27 pages of findings of fact.

Sometimes you have to just take a second and be in awe of all of the work that was put into address one key community need: housing.

What did we get out of it?

The short answer is a lot. The reforms that are a part of Home in Tacoma create a new blueprint for the city's neighborhoods that bears resemblance to what Tacoma looked like earlier in its history before the automobile: denser, walkable, with a mix of uses on the same street, and a higher concentration of destinations within reach. This will result in more children than before being able to walk to school or to a park and for households to have an easier time making ends meet.

In the future, our main streets are more likely to be lined with townhouses and small apartment buildings with corner retail, cafes and spaces for small businesses. Street trees are now mandatory, with additional requirements for tree planting in areas with housing, so residents can benefit from being near the ecological and psychological benefits of trees in a warming world.

New opportunities for housing in established neighborhoods will open up housing ownership to people who have been historically excluded due to redlining and discrimination. These will generally take the form of new duplexes and triplexes and maybe cottage housing in a few select cases. Transit-oriented housing along primary transit streets like 6th Avenue, Pacific Avenue, and South 19th Street will now be the rule rather than the exception, helping to improve the lives of seniors, people with disabilities, and young people getting started with their independent lives. The Planning Commission promoted expansion of transit oriented housing by targeting credits for new housing along with expansion of the Reduced Parking Area near transit.

With all of that we haven't forgotten what is still here and makes Tacoma, Tacoma. The two bonus options for development target affordability and building retention, which help to reduce the likelihood of resident displacement and help to retain the architectural look and feel of neighborhoods, while allowing new development to house new residents. We also included design flexibility to help retain historic structures as small commercial buildings with fewer changes in their sites.

Where the Planning Commission pushed the envelope had to do with two fronts: parking and trees. We sought to loosen the grip that vehicle parking requirements have had on the type of development Tacoma has seen for the last half century and to halt the decline of Tacoma's tree canopy as a result of development. Parking is now preferred to be in the rear of a site and less is required if you're close to transit or if putting in a driveway would remove a street tree or a tree on a property. Also, for small corner commercial in neighborhood settings, we eliminated the requirement for parking. Does this mean that parking may get more difficult as the city transitions to a different way of doing things? Yes, but the tradeoffs are well worth it in the form of more walkability, livability, public health, improved tree canopy and reduced costs for housing and transportation - all of which are shared improvements to the city.

Will Home in Tacoma solve all of our housing and transportation problems? No. As a market-based program, Home in Tacoma will, at its most effective extent support households making 50% of the Area Median Income (AMI), leaving a gap to fill for households with the greatest needs that make between 0% and 50% AMI, but that gap will be much more manageable with Home in Tacoma than without, helping to stretch public dollars for direct housing assistance go farther than they do today. The closely related issues of household housing and transportation costs are also minimized in areas near transit, helping to again reinforce the potential to provide housing for those who need it for those who do not want or cannot drive a car. The whole architecture of the program itself also will support future development of a community land trust that makes permanently affordable housing more common in Tacoma.

There are still needs to address in the form of more transit service to support the growth in the areas where the most change is possible, but more on that later.

I hope you'll join me tonight at Council Chambers to support Home in Tacoma's remaining amendments and final consideration by the City Council.

Where to be?

City Council Meeting at 5:00PM
Council Chambers
747 Market Street
Tacoma, WA 98402

Update

The City Council adopted Ordinance 28986 by a 9-0 vote on November 19th, 2024 at 10:50pm.