“When Spokane leads, the state follows,” said Council President Breean Beggs.
On Monday night, Spokane City Council adopted a package of interim zoning rules which establish the city as a nationwide leader in re-legalizing housing. After years of debate, task forces, Council hearings, and focus groups, it is now legal to build a duplex, a triplex, or a fourplex anywhere you can build a single-family home in the city.
The rules actually go further than the package briefed in The Urbanist earlier in the month, after amendments during the legislative process. When everything shook out, the final package:
- Allows duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes anywhere you can build a single-family home;
- Removes unit limits on townhomes and rowhomes;
- Reduces the required lot width to 36 feet in single-family (RSF) zones;
- Reduces the minimum lot size for attached homes to 1,280 square feet;
- Decreases and in some cases eliminates parking requirements near transit, and increases bike parking requirements to compensate;
- Allows developers to round up in their density calculations (for example, if calculations yield 5.2 units allowed, you can now build six instead of five)
- Applies new design standards similar to the city’s standard design requirements to all of these new unit types.
It’s a bold, transformational package that forms the biggest change to our city’s Comprehensive Plan framework since it was first adopted in the late 1990s. While growth will still be concentrated in certain areas, it will be allowed across the whole city, which will increase housing diversity in existing neighborhoods, like Garland, West Central, and Lincoln Heights. In the long run, this will improve housing affordability and choice.
