Puyallup City Council postpones adoption of housing action plan
Puyallup councilmembers voted on Tuesday to postpone the adoption of the Housing Action Plan — a plan that looks to address affordable and diverse housing needs in the city — until the next city council meeting on Sept. 14.
The Housing Action Plan has been underway since last year, said Katie Baker, planning manager for Puyallup. The plan does not make any changes to existing policies but rather provides the city a road map to “increase housing supply and diversity,” she said during the council meeting.
The plan emerged from a grant the city received in fall 2019 from the state Department of Commerce, which resulted from the passage of House Bill 1923. The bill looked to encourage cities to take steps that would increase residential building capacity and affordable housing. Cities had the option to apply for grants and receive up to $100,000. That’s the amount Puyallup received.
“Many cities across the state took advantage of the grant opportunity,” Baker said during the city council meeting Tuesday. “Some worked on code amendments, but many other jurisdictions also worked on housing action plans unique to their community.”
The Puyallup plan details a combination of high-priority strategies and second-priority strategies. Some of the high-priority strategies include revising existing zoning provisions as well as rezoning certain areas of the city to implement more diverse housing types.
The housing production in the city is “falling short” of what it will need when the population grows by 2035, Baker said. There are 17,531 housing units in the city as of 2019 — it would need 7,853 units more by 2035, according to a PowerPoint presentation that she showed councilmembers.
A majority of housing units in the city are single-family, Baker said. Sixty percent of homes are single-family while 30 percent are triplexes or fourplexes, according to the presentation. The remaining 10 percent are mobile homes, duplexes and buildings that house five or more families, such as apartments.
Second-priority strategies include building attainable housing on surplus or city-owned land as well as adopting tenant protections and support. Creating an affordable housing bond or trust fund is also another second-priority strategy.
A Washington state law allows cities to repurpose vacant or unused land or public property to develop affordable housing. The plan would suggest that Puyallup identify and maintain those spaces.
Housing trust funds, on the other hand, are “a flexible source of funding,” according to the plan, that can be established by the city to address housing priorities and needs. The plan doesn’t give specifics but would suggest the city find a source of revenue and decide how the funds are disbursed.
Housing costs are increasing faster than people’s incomes, Baker said. As of 2016, 32 percent of households in the city pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing, according to the presentation.
On June 3, a draft version of the plan was issued for public review and comment, according to a memo from Baker to the Council. The city received over 100 responses, and most of the feedback shared a common thread: the need for more diverse and affordable housing.
Most councilmembers during the meeting acknowledged the merits of the plan while others voiced some concerns about the plan, such as not having enough representation from members of the community. The council voted 4-2 to delay the adoption of the plan until the next meeting.
Deputy Mayor John Palmer, councilmembers Cyndy Jacobsen, Dean Johnson, and Jim Kastama voted to delay. Mayor Julie Door and councilmember Ned Witting voted not to.
Kastama said due to COVID-19, the plan did not get as much public input as it should have. He said he was concerned that the “expert panel” that was included in the formation of the plan didn’t have enough Puyallup representation.
“You did not have, on that expert panel, people from neighborhood groups representing the current citizens out there in the neighborhoods … who want their neighborhoods protected,” Kastama said during the meeting.
The panel includes representatives from the Tacoma-Pierce County Affordable Housing Consortium, Habitat for Humanity and the Puyallup Tribe. Other groups include the Puyallup Area Aging in Community Committee and the Puyallup Homelessness Coalition. A list of the panel members can be found on the second page of the plan.
Johnson said during the meeting the plan is a good starting point but is still “unbaked.” The plan does not show outcomes or timelines that would help the city reach certain goals, he said.
The plan provides the city a list of ideas and tools that they can pick from, Deputy Mayor John Palmer said. The plan also goes hand in hand with the city’s comprehensive plan, he said.
“I think the tools in here are very reasonable,” Palmer said during the meeting.
Witting said the city has a crop of young people that graduate from local high schools and colleges. Having this plan can make the city stronger by allowing more people to buy affordable housing units, he said.
“I am a big advocate of homeownership,” Witting said during the meeting. “Strategies that generate more houses that are more … affordable is all good to me.”
This story was originally published September 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
