Dana Harbaugh and Kim Sample: Mandates threaten downtown Spokane’s historic housing, residents

By Dana Harbaugh and Kim Sample

Spokane’s downtown is built on historic character, adaptive reuse, and housing that remains attainable because it already exists. That is why, while well-intentioned, a new proposal within the city of Spokane to create mandates for cooling systems within housing units risks doing real harm to the very residents and neighborhoods it seeks to protect.

Protecting residents from extreme heat is essential, but the proposed mandate overlooks a basic truth: Many historic downtown buildings cannot be retrofitted to meet modern cooling standards without prohibitive reconstruction. The problem isn’t the goal; it’s the inflexibility of the mandate.

Downtown Spokane’s housing stock is unique. Many apartment buildings were constructed between 1903 and 1925 and later preserved through costly historic rehabilitation. These buildings make up a substantial portion of Spokane’s naturally affordable housing inventory. Unlike newly constructed apartments, they often lack the electrical capacity, ductwork, structural openings, and mechanical systems necessary to comply with a new requirement that every bedroom maintain temperatures at or below specific points.

Retrofitting these properties is not a simple matter of installing air conditioners. Compliance could require buildingwide electrical upgrades, rewiring, apartment reconstruction, new thermostatic systems, and ongoing maintenance costs that many older buildings cannot physically or financially absorb. For many owners, especially those operating older workforce housing with modest margins, the math simply does not work.

And that matters because Spokane is already struggling with a severe housing shortage. The city faces an estimated homeless population of 2,000 to 2,500 people, with many more residents living on the edge of displacement. At a time when every existing housing unit matters, policies that risk removing apartments from the market deserve serious scrutiny.

The cooling mandate also does not exist in isolation. Earlier this year, the Washington state Legislature passed SB 6200 that prevents landlords from unreasonably restricting the installation of portable cooling devices by tenants. A flexible option that ensures rights for tenants while realizing the cost of nearly impossible to meet mandates.

The cost of replacement of cooling systems already runs higher than national averages in Washington state, before accounting for historic preservation complications. Meanwhile, property owners are already navigating rising costs from Washington’s Growth Management Act which drives up the cost of developable land, increasingly stringent energy codes making construction more expensive, electrification mandates that drives up capital costs, and the state Clean Buildings Act. The Clean Buildings Act alone is estimated to cost roughly $4.50 per square foot to comply with. For a 100,000-square-foot downtown building, that can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional expense before a single cooling upgrade is considered.

Layer enough mandates together, and eventually preservation becomes impossible.

Downtown Spokane cannot afford to lose existing residential inventory. Historic apartment buildings provide critical entry-level housing for service workers, seniors, students and residents living on fixed incomes. Once those units disappear, they are almost impossible to replace at comparable affordability.

That is the real danger here. If compliance costs become too high, owners may be forced to sell properties, reduce reinvestment, increase rents, or convert residential units to other uses. In the worst cases, buildings may simply become financially infeasible to operate as housing at all. The likely result is not more affordable housing, but less of it.

Spokane should pursue practical, collaborative solutions that improve cooling access without threatening the viability of historic housing. Incentive programs, targeted grants, utility assistance, and flexible compliance standards would help residents far more effectively than imposing a one-size-fits-all mandate with no meaningful funding source attached.

Compassion and practicality are not opposite. Humane housing requires both. If Spokane truly wants to protect vulnerable residents, it must avoid policies that unintentionally reduce the very housing supply people depend on. The most important thing we can do right now is preserve and expand housing opportunities downtown. Creating new mandates that make those homes harder to preserve, and ultimately harder to afford, does not support a safer, healthier city.

Dana Harbaugh lives in Spokane and is the chair of the Downtown Spokane Partnership Board of Directors and CEO of NAC Architecture. Kim Sample lives in Spokane and is president of Black Realty Management, Inc.