Spokane area officials focus on streamlining permitting to allow more ‘middle housing’

Solving Spokane County’s housing affordability crisis will require cooperation and more options for developers to build in existing neighborhoods rather than adding subdivisions filled with single-family homes, said local housing experts participating in a discussion Tuesday by Great Spokane Inc.

The shrinking availability of land in Spokane County also adds to the problem facing thousands of working families who struggle to afford a home when the median price exceeds their purchasing power.

The median home price for June in Spokane County was $436,250, according to Spokane Realtors. That price is slightly down from last year.

Jim Frank, founder of Greenstone Corporation, noted that the median price for a home in Spokane was about $170,000 in 2017.

“So, this is a new problem in a way and we’re starting to learn to deal with it,” he said. “There’s been a narrative developed … that apartments are the answer to providing housing affordability. The density is the answer to providing housing affordability.”

Frank said he grew up in Spokane’s Garfield neighborhood where homeowners and residents walked to the stores and schools. The neighborhood had a connectivity that developers struggle to recreate.

The panel discussion, which also celebrated changes brought by Spokane leaders who allowed homeowners to subdivide existing structures, focused a lot about “middle housing,” or homes that working families could attain easier than a new home on a large lot in a far away subdivision.

“So if we’re going to have affordable housing, I really believe that we have to have a regulatory framework that makes middle housing easy and permitted … and not have to go through some special processes to get it approved,” Frank said. “And right now, almost every jurisdiction requires some sort of special process to create a walkable, mixed-use neighborhood.”

Working families want to have a home near parks and good schools.

“People are looking for opportunity. And if they don’t find it here, they’re gonna go where they can find it,” he said. “We’re seeing some of that now with really a huge shift in population and housing between Spokane County and Kootenai County.”

Mike Basinger, Spokane Valley’s community and economic director, said that home affordability is the key to all other facets of the region’s economy.

“Simply put, if workers don’t have a place to live, our businesses cannot grow,” he said. “We need to focus our efforts on advancing to match the economic reality.

“The old playbook said that growth required moving outward,” he continued. “Today, we know the greatest opportunities lie within infill.”

Scott Chesney, Spokane County’s planning director, mentioned the competition from Idaho where builders face a much less restrictive set of regulations for building homes.

“There’s no comparison anywhere in the state of Washington where another county has that kind of economic competitive nature next to us,” he said.

Steven MacDonald, Basinger’s counterpart at the city of Spokane, said supporting the local economy must also be part of the equation for solving the home affordability problem.

“We need people to be able to afford the homes and we need high wage jobs and growth here in the region to allow people to have those kinds of opportunities,” MacDonald said.

Chesney agreed. He noted that land availability for single-family homes on a lot has become scarce in Spokane County. As a result, what land remains has become very expensive to develop.

“Let me be very, very clear. The single most important thing for the overall economic vitality of Spokane County is a healthy downtown Spokane,” Chesney said. “If we don’t have those things available to us, the rest of what we’re doing is totally meaningless.”

Michelle Girardot, the CEO of Habitat for Humanity Spokane, said a building spree would not solve most of the crisis facing home buyers.

“Even as we are bringing on more inventory, what kind of inventory is it and how accessible is it for everyday neighbors and community members to be able to step into that economic mobility,” she said. “If we don’t have economic mobility for our neighbors, then we can’t truly have a vital economy.”