Tacoma seeks to boost ‘missing middle’ housing construction with new program
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- City starts January 2026 pilot to help boost more middle-housing development
- Pilot concentrates reviews under a dedicated team and aims for streamlined cycles
- City will invest in pre-approved townhouse plans, report midyear and assess outcomes
The City of Tacoma’s Planning and Development team hopes a new streamlined permit process will bring more of what it calls “middle housing” to Tacoma.
Middle housing is what’s considered between single-family homes and larger multifamily apartment sites — think condos/townhomes, for example.
Middle-housing development has been a goal of Home in Tacoma as part of the city’s rezoning implemented this year to encourage more affordable types of housing.
A faster and more efficient permit process is the city’s focus, with the pilot program running from January 2026 to January 2027.
The pilot program, according to a city news release, targets residential projects with seven to 20 units, as well as townhome subdivisions consisting of 10 to 20 homes.
The city’s Planning and Development Services director, Peter Huffman, discussed the project and what led to its development in a recent interview with The News Tribune.
“The city manager came to me and said, ‘What do you think of ways to try to facilitate middle housing?’ ” he told The News Tribune. “I got together with my staff, and we looked at some models that we have currently in permitting for what we call residential development, which is six units or smaller — so ADUs, duplexes, triplex … and we’ve had some great success with that.”
Figures presented at council’s Sept. 30 study session showed accessory dwelling units and detached accessory dwelling units leading the way in new permits at that time.
The department decided to expand its residential work as a pilot program “and see if we can do that same approach on 20 units or less,” he explained.
Key components include a dedicated staff group and consolidated review authorities.
“We would have different authorities from different departments, public works, environmental services, consolidated under my management to this team to try to streamline some of the review processes,” Huffman explained.
A “consistently prepared applicant program” is anticipated to launch late summer.
“That would be a program where, if you have an applicant who comes in and their plans are complete and accurate, (then) there’s a different review process for them to expedite their review,” Huffman said.
The program aims for two review cycles, each lasting four weeks, he added.
By the end of the year, the project aims to have pre-approved townhouse building plans available. According to the city’s release, “By providing pre-vetted designs, the city aims to reduce engineering and design costs for developers while significantly shortening review times.“
“We currently have pre-approved plans for detached ADUs,” Huffman told The News Tribune. “We’re just taking a model that we currently have in place and expanding it to larger projects of 20 units or less.”
The plan calls for reporting back to the council midyear on the results, with another presentation the following January “to talk about next steps,” he said.
‘Learning process’ with missing middle permit program
Huffman noted that one of the main goals of the pilot is to get projects to two review cycles.
“The first review cycle would be four weeks, and then the second review cycle would be another four weeks,” he explained. “Obviously it depends on how the applicant responds to our comments, but our hope would be to get these middle-housing permits through this program out in two review cycles, and then try to understand if there is a need to go into three review cycles.”
Staff will explore whether issues, as they come up, are city related or external regarding communications with the customer, or whether it’s related to the code.
“It really is a learning process here for a year,” he added. “We’re going to really track a lot of this data (and) just try to better understand if there are issues with the system, whether it be code clarity of authorities that review and other issues. This is going to really daylight that, so we can have that conversation internally with our partners at TPU, public works, environmental services, as well as the council and the city manager.”
“It really is an exercise of trying to understand how we can get this middle-housing type built in the city of Tacoma.”
For more information, go to the city’s Middle Housing Streamlined website.
