REALTOR® Advocacy for Housing Supply

In 2023, the Legislature passed numerous new laws imposing new housing-related mandates on cities. In the four-county Central Puget Sound Region (King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Kitsap counties) cities were required to modify their comprehensive plans, and to modify their development regulations which implement the comprehensive plans. Unlike legislative action in other years, the 2023 changes to state law focused on increasing housing supply, with a special emphasis upon:

• Changes to Comprehensive Plans (required to be adopted by December 31, 2024) to accommodate Middle Housing, ADUs, and Unit Lot Subdivisions; and
• Changes to Development Codes & Regulations (required to be adopted by June 30, 2025) for implementing revised Comprehensive Plans, and to address new substantive requirements in state law regarding items such as:
  • Increasing zoning to allow the construction of additional housing units,
  • Ensuring development standards/regulations for new Middle Housing construction are not more onerous than existing requirements for single-family homes,
  • Time limits for cities to complete the review, permitting, and approval of development applications
  • Allowing additional housing units in existing commercial buildings
  • Prohibitions on specific kinds of city standards and regulations regarding new ADU and Middle Housing developments
  • Mandatory exemptions from SEPA, and
  • Clear and Objective Design Review Standards

Many cities adopted the required changes by the deadlines.  However, some cities in King County (and elsewhere in the Central Puget Sound Region) failed to do so, and are continuing the work necessary to satisfy the new state requirements approved in 2023.

Then, during the 2025 legislative session in Olympia, additional housing-supply mandates were also enacted into law. Most of those additional mandates (approved earlier this year by the Legislature) must be implemented over the next 12 to 18 months, although cities are not prohibited from doing so more quickly.

In the meantime, advocacy efforts at Seattle King County REALTORS® during the second quarter of 2025 have been focused on city action to comply with the current deadlines.