Housing

Important Housing Topics for our Kirkland 2044 Update

The following challenges will need to be addressed with the update to the Housing Element. Many of these challenges are identified in the Kirkland’s Housing Strategy Plan but continue to persist. Goal and policies of the Housing Element also need to be reevaluated to align with best practices in equitable and inclusive planning.

Changing Housing Need

Kirkland has established itself as a vibrant and desirable city to live, work, and play. Our community is also part of a rapidly growing regional job center bringing more people into our city to find work.  Although Kirkland is an immensely livable place, this growth has contributed to escalating housing costs and increased commutes for community members who can no longer afford to live in Kirkland. At the same time our population has become more diverse, older, and our household sizes have decreased.  

Affordability

The issue of housing affordability reaches most people in a community, since the quality of life in a city is tied, to a large extent, to the ability of its residents and local employees to find the kind of housing they desire at a price they can afford. Kirkland will need to address its current and future housing affordability issues to meet the needs of all income levels for our city to continue to thrive.

The following chart shows the number of Kirkland households that are cost burdened. When households spend more than 30% of their income on housing, they are cost burdened and struggle to afford other necessities. Households are severely cost burdened when they pay more than 50% of their income on housing.

Housing Inequity

Our housing landscape reflects market forces, proactive planning for diverse housing, cultural preferences, and a history of discriminatory practices. In the past, racist housing policies and practices explicitly denied homeownership to people of color and limited where they could live. Kirkland’s current housing landscape has some vestiges of these past practices. It is vital that Kirkland address this legacy of inequity by crafting policies to reverse its outcomes and to create a more equitable future. The following chart shows the number of Kirkland households that are cost burdened by race and ethnicity.

Throughout the K2044 Update process, staff reviewed feedback from various meetings, focus groups, and public comments and compiled policy/study issues that staff will consider when updating the elements, in addition to updates that are required and alignment with various City, State, and regional plans. The following is a list of key policy issues for the Housing Element:

• Encourage more middle housing and other creative housing types in compliance with new State requirements;
• Reduce the number of residential zoning districts to encourage more regulatory consistency citywide;
• Simplify development standards, potentially incorporating Form-Based Code principles, to increase predictability and encourage more development;
• Study how to encourage more housing near existing and planned future transit: 
• Compact development: medium to high density (anticipate return of transit-oriented development (TOD bill)) and upper middle housing (up to 12-unit multiplex);
• Eliminating maximum densities (in terms of numbers of units per acre) in multifamily and mixed-use districts (i.e., densities would be governed by building envelopes);
• Study minimum densities for more efficient use of available land;
• Up-zone key residential areas (near transit and to build out 10-minute neighborhoods) to increase housing choices affordable to a wider range of incomes (mixed use/mixed income);
• Rezone or otherwise incentivize the redevelopment of properties owned by religious organizations- to accommodate development of affordable housing;
• Reduce parking requirements to reduce housing costs;
• Anticipate increased density with Community-Initiated Amendment Requests 
• Study city-wide inclusionary zoning requirements;
• Consider transfer of development rights to preserve existing affordable housing;
• Consider City-wide commercial linkage fees to better tie economic growth with housing growth;
• Consider policies that require new detached dwelling units to be “ADU-ready,” especially within large homes or large lots, while ensuring that new requirements do not add significant time or process to the permitting process; 
• Consider policies that require ADUs to be incorporated into newly-built residential projects, and require new detached dwelling unit projects to be designed to accommodate future ADUs; 
• Consider policies that encourage retention of older, smaller homes; 
• Consider policies to provide direct assistance to help low- and moderate income households buy a first home; 
• Consider policies that address displacement of low- and moderate-income households through relocation assistance.