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Montana’s Housing Miracle Strikes Twice May 12, 2025

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Bipartisan efforts won a string of bills for more homes, lower costs, and less red tape for Montanans - with lessons for other states.
Something big is brewing in Big Sky Country: an ongoing bipartisan revolution in housing policy.
In 2023 Montana passed an ambitious package of land use reforms, making it easier for the state to meet its growing demand for housing. This year the legislature's cross-partisan pro-housing caucus kept its foot on the gas and passed an even more ambitious package of changes to the rules that have contributed to the state's housing shortage.
The most significant reforms won't take effect until 2026, but other states would do well to study Montana's strategy for success.
An end to overbuilding parking lots
House Bill 492, introduced by Rep. Katie Zolnikov (Republican, Billings), sets a high bar for other states pursuing parking reform. Beginning in October 2026, any home smaller than 1,200 square feet in Montana's ten largest cities will be exempt from costly local parking mandates. Because more than 80 percent of apartments and condos in the United States are already smaller than 1,200 square feet, this effectively means that multifamily buildings in those cities will no longer be required to have any particular number of off-street parking spaces. HB 492 also exempts small detached homes, all deed-restricted affordable housing, assisted living homes, and daycares. And it strikes down excessive parking mandates in many smaller cities, giving property owners there almost as much flexibility over how many parking spaces they need.
This is a major change for many of Montana's fastest growing cities such as Bozeman, Missoula, and Whitefish - all of which currently require one to two parking spaces for every home. It's hard to understate the potential impact of HB 492. A recent study found that eliminating parking minimums alone can boost new home construction by 40-70 percent. In the future, Montana may go further. HB 492 originally set limits on parking mandates for other commercial uses as well. While these were removed from the bill in committee, legislators indicated they'd like to reintroduce the idea in a future legislative session.
Taller buildings, double-wides, condo lawsuits, single staircases, and more
Where HB 492 concerns what builders can do on the ground, Senate Bill 243, introduced by Sen. Ellie Boldman (Democrat, Missoula), looks upward. The bill overrides local height restrictions to allow buildings up to six stories in downtown, industrial, and "heavy commercial" zones. ("Heavy commercial" zones are not defined in the bill; however, the sponsor's floor speeches indicate it's where "commercial uses cluster" and not "standalone corner stores in the middle of a single-family neighborhood.")
Several narrower bills are tackling other obstacles to housing construction:
First is SB 133, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Greg Hertz (Republican, Polson), limits the impact fees that cities charge developers, which increase the cost of construction. Specifically, it eliminates administrative fees, caps fees growth to inflation, and limits the imposition of fees to infrastructure projects that are directly linked to a proposed development.
Hertz also successfully ran bills to limit construction defect litigation (SB 143) and transfer decision-making on historical preservation permits from volunteer-run boards to professional city staff (SB 214).
Next is SB 252, introduced by Sen. Dave Fern (Democrat, Whitefish), requires cities to treat manufactured homes on equal footing as stick-built construction.
SB 532, introduced by Sen. Forrest Mandeville (Republican, Columbus), allows one ADU by right on parcels outside cities. (Hertz's SB 528 from the prior session legalized ADUs within cities.)
Finally, SB 213, introduced by Sen. Daniel Zolnikov (R-Billings), puts Montana among states such as Connecticut and Washington that are re-legalizing single-stair residential buildings. SB 213 orders new ru...

Whatcom County Eyes a Prime Election Upgrade Apr 11, 2025

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Proportional representation would deliver fairer representation for voters countywide.
Can your voice be heard if you're in a small red bubble in a blue sea? Or if you see yourself as one of a handful of blue flowers in a field of red?
In most of Cascadia's governing bodies, the answer is no. In the region's prevailing winner-take-all elections, whichever side gets the most votes wins all the power. This system unfairly overrepresents the biggest group of voters, even if that group is just a hair larger than any others, and even if it makes up a plurality and not the majority of voters.
But Whatcom County might be headed for a better model - one that offers fairer representation for everyone.
Whatcom voters recently elected a charter commission to review the county government's founding document, which sets the basis for local laws, much like a constitution. One option the commission might consider--- proportional representation.
Proportional representation, where leaders are elected based on their proportion of votes, offers a slew of advantages over other methods of electing governing bodies. District lines disappear, so there's nothing for special interests to manipulate via gerrymandering. Elected leaders are more motivated to serve all their constituents, not just their base voters or those in their district. And voters enjoy a more stable government solving their problems from one term to the next, even as district-by-district views change and people move around.
Whatcom County currently has seven county councilors, five elected from single-member districts and two elected at large, county-wide. It's a system that has delivered a mix of representatives for now, balancing the often more conservative rural voices with the majority more liberal population based mostly around Bellingham.
Unfortunately, it's not likely to continue to deliver fair results over time, and it's not as responsive as proportional representation. Single-member districts rely on sensitive mapmaking decisions, and they tend to ace out voters from smaller groups in winner-take-all elections.
Why should Whatcom voters care? And why might the charter commission consider changes to the county's government and election systems? Below I take stock of the challenges that the current single-member districts and first-past-the-post voting system pose. As ideas progress, I'll chart out more specific opportunities the county may choose for fairer representation of all Whatcom voters, wherever they live.
With single-member districts, the mapping lines define the government
To craft a representative governing body, mapmakers had to draw Whatcom County's five district boundaries carefully. Very carefully.
Partisan vote distributions from the most recent presidential election illustrate this point. Across the county, 61 percent of voters chose Vice President Kamala Harris for President in 2024, and 36 percent chose Donald Trump.
To make the seven-seat county council mirror that partisan breakdown, mapmakers would want four or even five of the council seats to be held by Democrats and two or three by Republicans. The two at-large council seats can be assumed to be reliably liberal, because the county's majority voting bloc gets to select both of those seats. So, to balance the whole council, the five districts ideally would collectively elect two Democrats and three Republicans.
District mapmakers succeeded in achieving this breakdown - for now. In Whatcom County results from the November 2024 election, Districts 1 and 2 are solidly blue: the precincts in those areas voted mostly Democratic. Voters in District 4 mostly chose Trump, and Districts 3 and 5 are mixed: they lean blue in national elections but tend to elect Republican-aligned local candidates.
But the mapmaking team probably agonized a great deal over many options to get to these districts. Line drawing is important enough that three of the eight subsections in the elections article of the current Whatc...

Republicans Skeptical, Democrats Divided on Election Reform Apr 02, 2025

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Understanding the partisan split on nonpartisan electoral upgrades. ...
In an era where everything from electric vehicles to candy mascots seem to divide Americans largely along partisan lines, there's one thing voters across the country agree upon: the political system isn't working well. Unfortunately, if 2024 election reform measures in Cascadia are any indication, there isn't a similar consensus on how to fix government dysfunction - at least not yet.
Partisanship played an undeniable role in defeating Idaho, Montana, and Oregon reform proposals (as well as a near miss in Alaska) last year. Democrats and Republicans seemed to approach election reform in different ways: Democratic regions showed higher support for reform than Republican areas, but Democratic leadership was officially neutral across blue and red states. Republicans, on the other hand, were more likely to oppose electoral revamps across the board.
While 2024 was not a permanent setback for the movement, reformers will likely need greater support across both major parties to win-over the public at large. Sharing stories of election reform's real-life benefits and expanding its use at the local government level can bring in more voters and usher new reform champions into positions of power.
Election reform divided voters along partisan lines more than other issues
In 2024, election reform opponents in Alaska put Ballot Measure 2 before voters in an attempt to repeal the state's model system of unified primaries and ranked-choice general elections. Alaska's cast vote record, which allows the public to view data on how voters filled out their ballots without exposing personal information, reveals that 83 percent of Harris supporters voted to keep open primaries and ranked choice voting, while only 19 percent of Trump voters did the same - a difference of 64 percentage points. (Unlike reform measures in other states, a "no" vote was the pro-reform stance; opponents voted "yes" to repeal.)
In other words, for the most part, Ballot Measure 2 split voters along partisan lines. The measure was slightly less polarized than explicit partisan contests such as the statewide US House seat. However, significantly more Trump voters supported Ballot Measure 1 (to increase the minimum wage).
Other non-election ballot measures across Cascadia showed a similar pattern. Traditionally liberal issues outperformed electoral reform measures even in conservative-leaning states, and it wasn't only because they ran up the score in the more liberal areas. Non-election measures such as Montana's CI-128 (to enshrine in the state constitution the right to abortion) beat election reform by five or ten points in counties and districts across the entire political spectrum.
The subject matter could have exacerbated the uniform dip in support. Election reform is unfamiliar to many voters, who are often wary of casting their vote for a concept they don't fully understand. Anti-reform messaging breathed oxygen on the flames of uncertainty. Across ideological lines, opponents advanced the notion that electoral reform (particularly ranked choice voting) would be confusing, costly, slow, and/or unnecessary.
Across states, Democratic support differed, and Republican areas aligned
Oregon and Idaho provide further clues on how partisanship splits support. In Oregon, counties with high proportions of Democrats (measured by Harris vote share) showed somewhat less support for reform than similarly Democratic counties in Idaho. In other words, Oregon Democrats were likely less reform-inclined than their counterparts across the state line.
Take Blaine County Idaho, and Washington County Oregon, for example. Both voted about 32 percent for Trump in the presidential race, but 60 percent of Idaho's most Democratic county supported election reform while only 49 percent of the suburban Portland Oregon county did the same. A similar phenomenon appears in Teton County Idaho, compared with Clackamas County Oregon...

Washington Housing Bills to Watch in 2025 Feb 17, 2025

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More than two dozen bills aim to unlock great neighborhoods, greater affordability, and less red tape for Washingtonians.
Washingtonians from Spokane to Sequim, Washougal to Wenatchee, are struggling to afford homes and rents in their communities due to a deep housing shortage. While recent years' laudable legislative actions have begun to relegalize more homes, in all shapes and sizes, it will take years of dedicated effort to make up for decades of stunted homebuilding in cities and towns. It will also take a series of smart policy upgrades to correct for all the restrictions that have outlawed anything but the most expensive kind of housing in the residential neighborhoods of Washington's cities: single-detached houses on their own exclusive lots.
Legislators are considering numerous bills in Olympia this year to do just that. Below Sightline catalogs the ones we're watching and, in many cases, weighing in on. The first several are our highest priorities for the 2025 legislative session.
Washington residents interested in supporting these bills can subscribe to the Homes4WA emails for action alerts and informational resources.
Sightline's priority bills
Free communities from costly parking mandates | SB 5184, HB 1299
Sponsors: Sen. Bateman, Rep. Peterson
Parking mandates are local governments' requirements that every new home or business come with an arbitrary, pre-determined number of parking spaces. From bowling alleys to churches, daycares to moth breeding facilities (yes, really), these excessive prescriptions drive up the cost of new homes, businesses, and community resources at a time when Washington urgently needs more of all of these things. It writes sprawl into law and makes it harder to build the great neighborhoods and Main Streets people love in their communities.
The Parking Reform and Modernization Act would cap residential and commercial mandates and provide full parking flexibility for projects like daycares, senior housing, affordable housing, and other building types that need it most. To be clear, the bill does not bar anyone from building as much parking as they like as part of their project. Rather, it returns these decisions to the people investing in their communities, whether a homeowner, homebuilder, or entrepreneur, who are best positioned to know how many parking spaces they need for their dream to succeed.
Incentivize transit-oriented development with smart funding tools | SB 5604
Sponsor: Sen. Liias
Transit-oriented development (TOD) is a strategy of building more homes near transit hubs so people can live closer to and more easily access the places where they work, learn, and recreate. Pursuing this strategy in Washington in particular would make the most of the state's large public transit investments in recent years.
With these benefits in mind, SB 5604 would establish several new ways for the state to incentivize TOD. But unlike typical TOD bills it does not address zoning at all. For new housing developments in transit station areas, it would create special property tax abatements, sales tax exemptions, lower excise tax rates, and reduced impact fees, along with associated affordability requirements. It's designed to complement TOD zoning, existing or future.
High interest rates and construction costs have made apartments difficult to finance, and future permitting has plummeted in cities throughout the state. That's why SB 5604 focuses on helping housing development pencil. It doesn't rezone because that's not the limiting factor at most major station areas in Washington metros.
Legalize abundant, affordable apartment homes near transit | HB 1491
Sponsor: Rep. Reed
Similar to Washington's 2024 TOD bill, HB 1491 would legalize larger apartment buildings near major transit stops, with stipulations that some of their units meet affordability mandates - known as inclusionary zoning (IZ). Setting statewide minimum standards for multifamily zoning near transit is a key piece of the TOD puzzl...

Ending Subsidies for New Gas Hook-Ups Can Save Cascadians Millions Feb 17, 2025

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Line extension allowances are on their way out, and regulators can finish the job.
Line extension allowances - the term of art for the utility customer-funded subsidies for new gas pipes - are finally, slowly on their way out of Cascadia. This is thanks to regulators who recognize the contradiction of, on the one hand, utility customers subsidizing the proliferation of carbon-intensive gas infrastructure and use, and on the other, utilities' obligations to reduce their carbon emissions over time - to say nothing of the general need to protect customers from the high costs of future stranded assets and bloated energy bills.
On January 1, 2025, two Washington state utilities, Avista and Puget Sound Energy (PSE), fully eliminated costly line extension allowances - a first in Cascadia. And Oregon regulators have put Avista and NW Natural on a schedule to ratchet down their allowances annually and ultimately eliminate them in 2027. Similar phaseouts are in the works for Cascade Natural Gas's gas infrastructure subsidies in both Oregon and Washington.
Still, regulators have not yet done away with the line extension allowances offered by the 11 other gas utilities across Cascadia, including three in Oregon and Washington. And as more customers every year choose to reduce their gas use or go fully electric, for financial or health or climate reasons, they're leaving a shrinking number of customers on the hook for paying off those gas pipe extensions over time. Plus, new evidence suggests gas utilities that are getting rid of line extension allowances may have overcharged customers already, on the order of millions of dollars in excess of allowed amounts.
Regulators across the region can do away with these costly subsidies to obsolescing fossil fuel-based systems once and for all (something California regulators did in 2023). And they can do one better by investigating utilities' possible overcharges to customers to fund these subsidies.
The old logic: Endless gas expansion, funded by ratepayers
Line extension allowances, as Sightline wrote about in 2023, were once a good deal for both new and existing gas customers - that is, before the world learned of the incontrovertible evidence about the climate and health hazards of burning gas in homes. Without the subsidies, a developer or homeowner could expect to pay thousands of dollars to connect their building to a gas distribution pipeline. So, regulators allowed utilities to subsidize the cost of installing new gas service lines, a cost utilities then recouped by adding them to their "rate base."
Financing these subsidies though a rate base works like a home mortgage. Every month ratepayers pay back to the utility some of the original investment plus an interest charge (i.e., profit for the utility). Once the investment is fully paid off (say, in 50 or 60 years for a gas service line), the amount ratepayers have paid is many times the original subsidy amount. In Oregon and Washington, the total cost of line extension allowances over the depreciation life can be four to ten times the initial subsidy price.
In Oregon and Washington, utilities will roll into the rates they charge their customers roughly $91 million in costs for gas line extension allowance offered in 2022-23 alone. Sightline estimates that figure balloons to more than $570 million over the new pipelines' "book life" when accounting for utility profits, taxes, and operational and maintenance expenses. In British Columbia, FortisBC padded its rate base with an estimated C$139 million in line extension allowances in 2022-23, which will cost British Columbians more than C$1.5 billion over the 60-year book life of these assets.
Historically, existing customers of a utility benefited from this arrangement, even though they were footing the bill for the subsidy. That's because more total gas customers meant further spreading out the costs of maintaining expensive pipeline infrastructure, which lowered everyone's bills.
But as ...

Washington’s Bills to Safeguard and Upgrade Democracy in 2025 Feb 17, 2025

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State leaders are considering measures to allow ranked choice voting and turnout-boosting even-year elections, protect voting rights, increase language resources for elections, and more.
Washington State leaders are pursuing democracy and elections upgrades that would improve representation across the broad array of Washington communities, boost voter turnout for races large and small, streamline administrative processes for running elections, and offer more diverse candidate choices to advance the priorities of everyday Washingtonians.
The legislature has considered many of these issues in previous years, including Sightline's priorities of ranked choice voting and moving to even-year elections. This year, they might finally become law.
Smoothing the path for local governments wanting to adopt ranked choice voting
Washington state law prevents local jurisdictions from changing their election code.1 This restriction means that they can't use methods like ranked choice voting, if they wish to do so, or that they're very constrained in its application.
Yet cities and other districts are pursuing ranked choice voting anyway. Seattle voters adopted it in 2022, for first use in the city's primary election in 2027 - a workaround of the state law that requires top-two general elections. Multiple districts (such as plaintiffs in Yakima County) have requested ranked choice voting as a remedy for voting rights violations under the Washington Voting Rights Act, which the Washington State Supreme Court affirmed as an option in the June 2023 decision Portugal v. Franklin County. Other places are looking to charter commissions or other pathways for adopting the voting method.
Ranked choice voting is coming to Washington regardless of additional legislation. Why? Because voters want it, along with the bevy of benefits they see it delivering elsewhere, including less negative campaigns, more focus on the issues, and the neutralization of the "spoiler effect."
The state legislature has an important opportunity to serve Washington voters by helping local jurisdictions wanting to make the ranked choice switch to do so smoothly. HB 1448, the Washington VOICES (Voting Options, Implementation, Compliance, Education, and Standards) Act, sponsored by Rep. Gregerson, would clarify state law to provide local governments a clear path to adopt ranked choice voting (again, only if they wish to do so; the bill does not require adoption anywhere) and set guidelines for implementing and educating voters about the reform. The legislation would improve efficiency and consistency for local election administrators while ensuring that voters can access this improved election method to make their voices heard.
Boosting voter turnout by allowing local elections in high-turnout years
State law in Washington currently requires cities and towns to hold their regularly scheduled elections for local offices, such as mayor and city council, in odd-numbered years, when voter turnout rarely rises above 40 percent. Turnout in even-numbered years, in contrast, is often double that of odd-numbered years, including for local races. What's more, national studies have shown that voters tend to be better represented by leaders elected in even years.
HB 1339, sponsored by Rep. Gregerson, would amend the state's election code to allow cities and towns to hold regular elections in even years if they choose, rather than just benefiting from high turnout in even-year special elections like Seattle's recent council race. This change creates the option for more local governments to follow the example of King County, whose voters approved a switch to even-year elections in November 2022. Voters in the state's largest county will soon enjoy fewer campaign cycles to track and leaders who have won support from more of their constituents.
This bill would go a long way toward ensuring that local electeds share residents' values and priorities when making decisions that impact everyday life...

The 4 Big Reasons Why States Should Ditch Parking Mandates Feb 17, 2025

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Parking reform unlocks more homes and great neighborhoods, while cutting red tape and excess asphalt, sprawl, and pollution.
Cities, towns, and jurisdictions around the world are adopting a powerful reform that accelerates homebuilding, eliminates red tape for small businesses, reduces pollution and sprawl, revitalizes downtowns, and streamlines permitting - at zero cost to the taxpayer.
That reform? Eliminating parking mandates - local governments' arcane and unfounded requirements that every new home or business come with an arbitrary, pre-determined number of parking spaces. These requirements hamstring local builders and business owners, drive up rents and home costs, and write sprawl into law. It's time to return these decisions to the people investing in their communities, whether a homeowner, homebuilder, or entrepreneur, who are best positioned to know how many parking spaces they need for their dream to succeed.
In Washington state specifically, the legislature is considering a bill to do just that: the Parking Reform and Modernization, SB 5184 (companion bill HB 1299).
SB 5184 would cap excessive parking mandates both for residential and commercial construction, restoring people's ability to decide for themselves how many parking spots they need, instead of the ratios some city planner wrote down back in, say, 1963. It would also give full parking flexibility to project types that need it most, like repurposing existing buildings for cafes or apartments and building more middle housing and affordable housing, daycares, and more. (Read the full Sightline Institute explainer of the Parking Reform and Modernization Act here.)
Communities considering parking reform for themselves can look to the many other jurisdictions that have already enacted it for a view into what they can expect in a world with fewer parking mandates, including:
More homes, in all shapes and sizes, from backyard cottages and duplexes to apartment buildings and affordable housing
More great neighborhoods, with creative reuse and preservation of historic buildings, smart sharing agreements for existing parking, and even conversions of parking lots to new communities of homes and shops
Less unneeded asphalt and the pollution, deadly "heat islands," and long-lasting sprawl that come with it, paving over nearby farmland and open spaces
Less red tape and costly delays for builders and city staff alike
More nimble adaptation to modern parking-lite conveniences like online shopping, remote work options, and ride-hail apps
More money in local budgets for everything from firefighting to libraries, after-school programs to parks, and other community priorities
Sound too good to be true? Read on to learn more about the power of parking reform.
1. More homes of all shapes and sizes
More middle housing, like backyard cottages and fourplexes
Even one parking spot can render a backyard cottage impossible to build. A study out of Kent, Washington, for example, found that 85 percent of residential properties didn't have room to add an additional parking space that local rules mandated owners to have if they wanted to build a backyard cottage.
In 2023, Washington legalized accessory dwellings along with other middle housing options like fourplexes. But unless the property is near a major transit stop, homeowners still have to meet local parking mandates, whether or not they want or need the parking.
Since neighboring Oregon implemented its sweeping parking reforms in 2023, middle housing is sprouting up that would not have been possible under prior parking rules. One project, Grant Street Grow Homes, in Eugene, Oregon, was able to add four backyard homes without demolishing the existing primary house only because no off-street parking was required. The new homes are now selling for $96,000 each to qualified buyers.
The Grant Street Grow Homes are far from outliers in the Beaver State. In Portland, 79 percent of homes permitted since the 2021 middle housing reform ...

The Next Big Thing in Low-Cost Housing Feb 17, 2025

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Meet MDUs, a low-cost, fast-build, flexible solution for more homes now.
Communities across Cascadia face a dire shortage of homes that is driving up prices and rents for everyone. From seniors wanting to downsize and age in place, to young people starting out and seeking apartments near their jobs, to families needing more space and nearby schools for their kids, people across the region need more homes, in all shapes and sizes, to suit their various stages of life, price points, and preferences.
Leaders in Washington state have listened to their constituents and answered by passing numerous bills to legalize or re-legalize more kinds of housing, earning 2023 the moniker "the year of housing" and 2024 "the year of housing 2.0." Among these measures was one to boost the construction of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) - also known as backyard cottages, in-law apartments, or bonus homes.
ADUs have been a key element of adding "gentle density" in neighborhoods across the state, but their costs can still prove prohibitive. Enter: MDUs, or "mobile dwelling units" - a much less expensive, more flexible, and faster-built option that could be another integral tool in the toolbox for bringing much-needed homes online fast for Washingtonians. (We're using the term "MDU" in this article to align with a legislative proposal concerning this housing type in Cascadia. Elsewhere, they're known by terms including "tiny homes on wheels," "movable tiny homes," and "vehicular residential facilities." Same general idea, though.)
And Washington wouldn't be blazing any trails if it legalized this housing form. Other jurisdictions, from Oakland, California, to Portland, Oregon, have done so in recent years and seen a modest but meaningful uptake in their construction.
Below, Portland-based Kol Peterson, an early proponent of MDUs, and Sightline Housing and Cities Senior Director Dan Bertolet answer common questions about them. Peterson's general contracting company, TinyHookups LLC, specializes in electrical and plumbing hookups installation for MDUs and has installed them for about 25 properties in the past few years, making these homes a reality for more of his neighbors.
What are MDUs?
A mobile dwelling unit, or MDU, is a movable home with utility connections located on a residential lot that also has a conventional home. An MDU could be a tiny house on wheels, a campervan conversion, a park model RV, or a standard RV. MDUs are a very inexpensive form of housing that can be rapidly deployed. MDUs address a gap in the low end of the cost spectrum that no other housing type can fill.
Why do we need state legislation for MDUs?
Most jurisdictions have tight restrictions or outright bans on the use of MDUs as legal residences. Washington state has a pressing need for more housing - especially homes that can be created quickly and that are affordable to lower-income residents without the need for public subsidy. Legislation is needed to set statewide standards that will enable homeowners to add MDUs to their properties predictably and safely.
What would Washington's proposed MDU bill do?
SB 5332 would legalize one MDU on any residential lot that already has a primary dwelling on it and is located within an urban growth area. Consistent with standard regulations in RV parks, it would require locally permitted connections to the MDU for water, sewer, and electricity but would not require any permitting or inspections of the MDU itself.
How affordable are MDUs?
MDUs with full bathrooms and kitchens sell for anywhere from $10,000-$200,000 and are commonly available new and used throughout the state. Connections for sewer, water, and electrical, plus site preparation, typically cost in the range of $15,000. For comparison, stand-alone accessory dwelling units (ADU) typically cost $250,000 to $500,000.
How quickly can MDUs be deployed?
Once the infrastructure has been installed, an MDU can be set up in as little as a day or two. Getting the utility connect...

Washington Bill Would Cap Excessive Parking Mandates Around the State Feb 17, 2025

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More trees, senior living, daycares, and lower-cost housing for Washington cities and towns - and less pavement.
In 2023 Washington state adopted a raft of bills unlocking more home choices, at more affordable prices, in cities and towns across the state. It was hailed as the year of housing.
The 2025 legislative session could be the year of parking reform, with the promise of taming rents and housing costs, curbing sprawling development, and prioritizing things communities want, like trees, affordable housing, senior living facilities, and daycares, rather than unneeded pavement.
Last week, Washington state housing affordability champion Senator Jessica Bateman introduced the Parking Reform and Modernization Act, SB 5184. The bill would cap how many parking spots local governments can require for new homes and commercial buildings, and give full parking flexibility to a set of building types that need it the most. The bill also has a companion in the House of Representatives: HB 1299, sponsored by Representative Strom Peterson.
Commonly adopted in the 1950s and '60s, parking mandates prescribe a pre-determined number of parking spaces for every new building, assigning unique quotas for hundreds of different uses, from churches to bowling alleys, butterfly breeding facilities to daycares. These regulations increase construction costs, outlaw traditional main streets and historic neighborhoods, block building conversions from one use to another, and make entire properties impossible to build on simply because they lack space for a sprawling parking lot. What's worse: many of those mandatory parking spots end up sitting empty. Despite the ubiquity of highly specific parking mandates in local permitting, city officials rarely know where the numbers originated but must enforce them nonetheless.
This legislation would set a new course by creating consistent statewide standards to unlock more opportunities for homes and small businesses alike. And to be clear, it would not ban parking: builders would still be free to include as much parking as they decide they need.
The bill is scheduled for a hearing are the Senate Housing committee on Friday January 24th.
What the bill does
In short, SB 5184:
Caps residential mandates at 0.5-1 parking space per home
Caps commercial mandates at 1 parking space per 1,000 square feet
Provides full parking flexibility for building types that need it the most
Applies everywhere in Washington, towns large and small
Expands existing transit exemptions for housing
Does NOT place any restrictions on how much parking people can build if they deem it right for their project to succeed
Caps residential mandates at 0.5-1 parking space per home
In the past two years, the Washington state legislature has legalized granny flats, fourplexes, and co-living buildings statewide. But outside of a tiny portion of urban residential lots near frequent transit that those bills exempted, excessive parking mandates continue to undercut home building.
In Pasco, for example, the rules require two parking spots for every apartment. In Marysville, code mandates six parking spots for a duplex. Meanwhile, nearly sixty percent of Washington renter households only own one car or no car at all.
To keep unnecessary parking mandates from hindering much-needed new homes and affordability, SB 5184 would prevent towns and cities from requiring more than 1 parking space per home. Counties and non-code cities would allow even more flexibility, with caps set at 0.5 parking spaces per home. This latter ratio would apply to larger cities, including Aberdeen, Bellingham, Bremerton, Everett, Seattle, Richland, Tacoma, Vancouver, and Yakima.
Allowing builders to go below one parking spot per home enables natural "unbundling" in multifamily buildings. When there are fewer spaces than homes, owners have to charge for parking separately, and that lets tenants who don't want a parking space save money on total rent. Single-detached houses in thos...

Worried about Infrastructure Costs? Then End the Apartment Ban Feb 17, 2025

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Allowing more homes, in all shapes and sizes, makes it easier and cheaper for communities to tackle infrastructure challenges.
Editor's note: Sightline Institute is co-publishing this article with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. View its version here.
The costs of public infrastructure are becoming the go-to excuse for restrictive zoning policies in British Columbia. These policies effectively ban apartments on most residential land and reserve it exclusively for low-density housing like detached houses.
As one newspaper headline put it, "Density is coming to BC municipalities. Leaders don't know how they'll pay for it." On its surface, the objection to density on infrastructure grounds may sound reasonable, but it gets things backwards.
As researchers and good planners have long understood, it's far cheaper to build and maintain public infrastructure to service denser forms of housing than it is to service low-density sprawl. It's one of those intuitive truths that is also borne out by decades of research.
Imagine the infrastructure needed to service 100 homes in an apartment building compared to 100 houses in a low-density suburban development. When homes are farther apart, they require longer pipes, wires, and roads to connect them, raising costs. And spreading out homes farther from important services and amenities increases the demand on transit and roads.
British Columbia undoubtedly needs to invest more in public infrastructure both to replace aging assets and to support new construction that alleviates existing housing shortages. This includes investments in new and upgraded sewers, water pipes, power lines, rapid transit, roads, libraries, schools, and hospitals, which both cities and senior governments must contribute to funding.
But housing density is not the problem. Indeed, by imposing low-density zoning, cities have been making the challenge of paying for infrastructure harder, not easier.
Infrastructure concerns: The new exclusionary zoning?
The well-known infrastructure cost savings of density still aren't reflected in the land use planning policies enforced by cities in Metro Vancouver. In fact, since the provincial government enacted legislation prodding municipalities to reform zoning and allow more housing, some municipalities and housing opponents have claimed that more density would add to their infrastructure woes.
In the lead-up to the October provincial election, the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) warned that, in light of provincial housing legislation, "costly upgrades to water, sewer, and roads are required to expand capacity and enable the creation of new high-density housing."
What new housing opponents don't say is that when cities use restrictive zoning to block apartments on most of their land, they steer new housing disproportionately into low-density suburban development - with higher infrastructure costs.
Others have warned against new housing on the premise that we have a shortage of schools and teachers for the next generation. This could be an excellent argument to hire more teachers or to build more schools, but it is a dubious argument against much-needed housing. Some may simply be disguising an argument against population growth as an argument against density.
The infrastructure gap is real, but apartment bans make it worse
Cities are flagging a real issue when they raise infrastructure concerns. Canada has a widely recognized infrastructure deficit owing to decades of underinvestment. At the low end, it's estimated that Canada has an accumulated infrastructure gap of $150 billion; at the higher end, up to $1 trillion. In British Columbia, UBCM estimates that "over $24 billion in core infrastructure alone needs to be replaced within the next ten years."
But to tackle that infrastructure deficit and address the housing shortage, ending apartment bans and allowing denser housing is a critical part of the solution, including cost-effectively building out the necessary s...

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