The Housing Toolkit:
Housing Tools and Ideas for Local Jurisdictions
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| The Housing Toolkit has been designed as a community based response to the region's housing challenge. It was developed by citizens, architects, planners and builders to provide tools that cities and towns around the county can use to encourage affordable housing. The resources contained in the toolkit are all locally focussed, offering individual neighborhoods and communities the opportunity to adapt them to their own specific needs.
Table of Contents
I. Gaining Community Acceptance: Best Practice Options for Housing in King County
This report presents "Best Practice Options" on ways to gain community support for housing strategies and to achieve local housing goals. The options in the report response to key values and concerns held by citizens about housing and the concerns and ideas of housing practitioners working in King County.
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>>View report: Best Practice Options for Housing in King County (220 KB .doc)
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II. Regional Housing Project: Focus Group Summary
The Regional Housing Project is a growth management implementation project funded by the Washington State Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development. The Regional Housing Project seeks to identify specific housing actions and strategies, tailored to the needs of the local communities, building upon the constructive and critical input of citizens, residents, neighbors and all representatives of the housing industry. In order to implement the Regional Housing Project, the GMPC has hired a consultant team led by Bay Area Economics (BAE) that includes Pacific Rim Resources (PRR) coordinating the public outreach efforts and Makers Architecture and Urban Design providing graphic materials. This report has been produced by PRR to summarize the public outreach effort performed to solicit public opinion and attitudes.
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>>View report: Regional Housing Project: Focus Group Summary (2,908 KB .pdf)
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III. Affordable Housing Incentive Programs and Regional Finance Pools
The Affordable Housing Incentives Programs report profiles and analyzes the economic implications of voluntary housing incentive programs which can be implemented by local jurisdictions to encourage new affordable housing development. Programs include, density bonuses, reduction in required parking stalls, etc.
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>>View report: Affordable Housing Incentives Programs
(144 KB .pdf)
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The second paper in this section, Regional Finance Pools, provides additional information on regional financing pools for housing development. Public entities often need to fund acquisitions or small projects where costs are not high enough the make stand-alone, public financing cost-effective. However, through a credit pool, local government agencies can take advantage of economies of scale by sharing the costs of issuing bonds or other debt instruments and securing a lower interest rate. Regional credit pools have been used to lower the cost of issuing debt to finance local capital infrastructure projects such as water, sewer, and road improvements.
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>>View report: Regional Finance Pools (23 KB .doc)
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IV. Housing Policy Papers (GMPC, December 1999) and Housing Retreat Reports (GMPC, June 2000)
The three issue papers, along with the Executive Summary, provide a snap shot of the current housing situation in King County. The papers specifically address:
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- housing production,
- the affordability of existing housing, and
- efforts by local jurisdictions to comply with and meet the goals of the Countywide Planning Policies.
As a follow up to the findings presented in these three papers, the GMPC hosted a Housing Retreat in the spring of 2000. The purpose of the Retreat was to discuss and explore ways to increase housing production and affordability. One of the outcomes of the Retreat was to look at the issues of parking, accessory dwelling units and wood frame constructionas ways to increase housing production and affordability. The Shared Parking, Accessory Dwelling Units and Wood Frame Construction issue papers presented here, provide information and model ordinances for jurisdictions to consider and incorporate.
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>>View reports:
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V. Stakeholders Model Practices
The Stakeholders group is made up of representatives from the development and finance sectors involved in housing production. The Stakeholders group has been asked by the GMPC to research and provide model practices that address affordable housing production. In November of 2000, the Stakeholders Group presented their Housing Stakeholder's Model Practices paper to the GMPC which summarized their work on five topic areas: Accessory Dwelling Units, Cottage Housing and draft ordinance, 120 Day Project Review, 5-story Wood frame Constriction and Infrastructure and Impact Fees Assessment. Future papers on model practices developed by the Stakeholders group will be made available at this Web site.
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>>View report: Housing Stakeholder's Model Practices
(115 KB .doc)
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APPENDICES
APPENDIX A: GMPC Housing Retreat, Spring 2000
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APPENDIX B: Housing Status Report on GMPC Retreat Action Items, Survey Results (June, 2000)
APPENDIX C: Regional Housing Project Focus Group Transcripts (185 KB .doc)
APPENDIX D: Regional Housing Road Map (200 KB .doc)
APPENDIX E: Countywide Planning Policies (320 KB .pdf)
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