Miles Pollard and Camilla Cort: Washington can do more to help state’s families afford housing

To many young families, Washington state is a desirable, yet difficult place to plant roots due to climbing prices. Some point to increasing interest rates and construction costs, but that’s not the whole story. The existing onerous zoning and permitting process plays a large role in the current housing affordability crisis.

State policymakers should address the lack of affordable housing by proposing prudent, pro-family policy reforms like Texas, aimed at expediting the permitting process, decreasing housing costs, and making homeownership more attainable for their residents.

In 2025, House Bill 1096 was signed into law. This bill focused on increasing middle housing, like duplexes and townhomes through lot splitting, for families across the state.

With this bill, residential zones in cities subject to existing minimum density laws are required to simultaneously approve both the lot splitting and residential permits. Additionally, only an administrative review process (to ensure compliance with building codes and the like) occurs without a public hearing. If a lot meets the stated requirements, the city must approve the split.

Effectively, property owners can get approval to split their lots and build more housing at the same time. This greatly speeds up permitting and helps increase the supply of affordable housing, giving families a foothold in the housing market.

While HB 1096 is a step forward in pro-family housing policy, Washington still suffers from a lengthy permitting process. According to the Washington Center for Housing Studies, total government regulation costs make up about 29.5% of the cost passed onto a home buyer – about 6% more than the costs faced in other states. Additionally, the average timeline for approval is over six months, adding an estimated $25,000 to the cost of each residence and pricing out 55,000 people from the opportunity to own a home.

Allowing third party permitting and imposing timeline requirements for approvals could help solve these delays, Texas passed similar legislation in 2023 requiring city review within 45 days and allowing third-party approval following that window, greatly speeding up permitting.

The last legislative season is not the first time state lawmakers attempted to address permitting delays. In 2023, the Washington Legislature added requirements to the Local Project Review Act aimed at increasing transparency and speeding up the permitting process. However, the results have not been promising.

Construction permits took 81% longer than allowed by law, and subdivision permits were delayed nearly 200%. Notably, the Act’s recently imposed deadlines were not legally required in 2024 to allow time for permitting to adjust. Still, the inability of jurisdictions to meet the new deadlines is concerning.

These reforms come at an important time considering that Spokane, Tacoma, Vancouver and Yakima were deemed unaffordable by the Washington Center for Real Estate Research. This problem extends to both renters and buyers, as the state is ranked the 11th most expensive state to rent in. Meanwhile, a median income-household in Washington state has only 61% of the income needed to afford a median-priced home.

Following in the footsteps of Texas’ pro family housing policies, existing and future regulatory reform could have a meaningful impact on the affordable housing problem in Washington state. Alongside these prudent reforms, increasing middle housing options like townhomes would allow young families to gain a foothold in the housing market.

Unfortunately, permits for middle housing in 2024 were less than one-third of the projected need for housing units to serve this income level. Pro-family deregulatory measures can be a major step forward in increasing permitting for middle housing.

With the right policy reforms, the Evergreen State can promote flourishing families by letting them put down roots in their great state and sow the seeds of lasting prosperity.

Miles Pollard is a policy analyst for economic policy in the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation. Camilla Cort is a member of Heritage’s Young Leaders Program. Both live in Washington, D.C.