2017 Housing Affordability Response Team (HART) Recommendations
Housing Affordability is a critical challenge that impacts every community, serving as the foundational platform for economic stability, public health, and sustainable growth. In 2017, the Washington State Affordable Housing Advisory Board (AHAB) convened the Housing Affordability Response Team (HART) to address the severe supply deficits and market pressures plaguing the state. Driven by a directive from Governor Jay Inslee, this interdisciplinary task force was charged with examining existing systems, identifying regulatory barriers, and proposing actionable solutions to increase the housing stock for all income levels. The resulting 2017 HART Recommendations report remains a vital blueprint for policymakers, urban planners, and developers striving to resolve systemic crises in Housing Affordability.
Understanding the Barriers to Housing Affordability
To craft effective solutions, HART first conducted a rigorous analysis of the root causes stifling residential development. The team identified that as the state economy rebounded from the Great Recession, rapid population growth and historically low vacancy rates created a highly competitive market. While household incomes rose, they failed to keep pace with surging rent and purchase prices, leaving low- and middle-income families with virtually no options in the private market.
The report categorizes the primary barriers into three distinct areas: land use planning, regulatory and permitting processes, and funding mechanisms.
Land Use and the Growth Management Act
Washington’s Growth Management Act (GMA) provides a robust framework for urban planning, requiring local jurisdictions to accommodate projected population growth and plan for diverse housing types. However, HART found that local implementation is often hindered by a lack of resources, unenforceable housing goals, and pervasive "Not In My Backyard" (NIMBY) resistance. Comprehensive plans frequently default to single-family zoning, limiting the production of missing-middle housing types like townhomes, cottages, and Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). Furthermore, the high cost of land and the expense of extending infrastructure to undeveloped parcels force developers to build high-end, luxury units to offset risks, directly undermining Housing Affordability.
Regulatory Hurdles and Construction Costs
The permitting and construction landscape is fraught with complexities that drive up the final cost of residential units. Local impact fees, lengthy environmental reviews under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), and inconsistent permit processing timelines add significant financial and temporal burdens to development. Additionally, state prevailing wage determinations often classify government-assisted housing projects with minor commercial components (like a ground-floor community room) as "commercial construction," triggering much higher wage requirements that severely strain project budgets. A shortage of skilled construction labor further exacerbates these costs, making it financially unfeasible to build affordable units in both strong urban markets and weaker rural areas.
Funding and Finance Deficits
The private real estate market simply cannot produce adequate inventory for lower-income segments without government intervention. HART noted that state funding for essential programs, such as the Housing Trust Fund, has historically been volatile. Without predictable, stable capital, non-profit developers and local housing authorities cannot effectively plan long-term projects. Moreover, local governments often lack the financial tools or incentives to subsidize the gap between the cost of construction and the rent that low-income tenants can afford.
7 Core Policy Recommendations to Improve Housing Affordability
After reviewing over 80 potential interventions, HART utilized a majority-voting process to distill their findings into seven high-impact recommendations. These strategies are designed to create immediate gains in Housing Affordability while laying the groundwork for long-term systemic reform.
1. Fund Local Planning Efforts
Local governments are on the front lines of zoning and land use, yet they frequently lack the staff and financial resources to update their GMA housing elements. HART recommends that the state provide dedicated funding to help cities and counties plan for housing at every income level. By financially supporting local planning efforts, the state can ensure that comprehensive plans accurately reflect demographic needs and include actionable strategies to achieve minimum net urban densities.
2. Standardize and Fund Buildable Lands Assessments
In Washington's most populous counties, "Buildable Lands" reports are required to assess whether actual development densities match comprehensive plan targets. HART recommends standardizing these requirements using modern GIS technology and providing dedicated state funding to complete them. Accurate, standardized data prevents jurisdictions from overestimating their land capacity and forces them to take corrective action when urban densities are not being achieved, which is essential for regional Housing Affordability.
3. Broad-Based Education and Upzoning
Overcoming public resistance to density requires comprehensive education. The report calls for targeted outreach to elected officials, planning staff, and the general public to demystify the financing and entitlement processes. Coupled with education, HART encourages cities to proactively up-zone within their borders to accommodate new growth and reform development regulations to allow a wider diversity of housing types, thereby dismantling the exclusionary zoning practices that historically hinder Housing Affordability.
4. Responsible Regulatory and Statutory Reforms
Small, targeted changes to existing statutes can yield massive cumulative benefits. HART advocates for responsible adjustments to the Project Review Act, the Subdivision Act, and the State Building Code. Specific recommendations include streamlining the environmental review process through SEPA planned actions, reforming impact fee structures to prevent the penalization of smaller, multi-family units, and clarifying prevailing wage rules so that residential rates apply to predominantly residential projects. Lowering these soft costs directly translates to improved Housing Affordability.
5. Stabilize and Expand State Funding Mechanisms
To build a reliable pipeline of affordable units, capital must be predictable. HART strongly recommends making document-recording fees permanent and stabilizing the budget for the Housing Trust Fund. Additionally, the team encourages local jurisdictions to adopt their own housing levies, suggesting that the state could incentivize this by matching local funds. Expanding the Multifamily Tax Exemption (MFTE) program is also highlighted as a crucial tool to incentivize private developers to include below-market-rate units in their projects.
6. Leverage Underutilized Public Property
Land acquisition is often the most prohibitive cost in real estate development. HART recommends that public agencies be required to consider underutilized, publicly owned property as a prime opportunity for social housing. By disposing of surplus land at reduced prices or through long-term ground leases to non-profit developers, municipalities can drastically lower the capital stack required for a project, passing those savings directly to the end-user and enhancing Housing Affordability.
7. Foster Ongoing Collaboration and Research
The crisis in Housing Affordability cannot be solved in a single legislative session. HART emphasizes the need to continue this interdisciplinary work, collaborating with existing work groups to address complex issues like transit-oriented development (TOD), the preservation of aging housing stock, and the recruitment of skilled construction labor. Further research is also needed to understand how to incentivize the development of larger, multi-bedroom units that can accommodate multi-generational families.
Deep Dive into Specialized Financial and Regulatory Tools
Beyond the seven core recommendations, the 2017 HART report provides a treasure trove of technical insights into specialized policy tools that local governments can deploy.
Tax Increment Financing and Community Revitalization
While traditional Tax Increment Financing (TIF) has faced constitutional hurdles in Washington State, HART points to Community Revitalization Financing as a viable alternative. This mechanism allows municipalities to use future tax revenues generated by a development to finance the upfront infrastructure costs required to make that development possible. By socializing the cost of roads, sewers, and water lines, local governments can make infill development financially viable for builders focused on Housing Affordability.
Impact Fee Reform and Utility Agreements
Impact fees, which are one-time charges imposed by local governments on new development to pay for public services like roads and sewers, can disproportionately penalize smaller, multi-family units if charged on a per-unit rather than a per-square-foot basis. HART recommends restructuring these fees to reflect the actual infrastructure burden of a unit. Furthermore, the report suggests exploring latecomer agreements and revolving loan funds to help affordable housing developers cover the massive upfront costs of utility extensions, ensuring that infrastructure expenses do not kill Housing Affordability before ground is even broken.
Preservation of Existing Stock
Building new units is only half the battle; preserving existing affordable stock is equally critical. HART proposes extending property tax exemptions to landlords who commit to maintaining and preserving older, naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH). By offering a "preservation tax exemption" similar to the MFTE, the state can prevent the displacement of vulnerable tenants and protect the baseline of Housing Affordability in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods.
Addressing the Skilled Labor Shortage
The report astutely identifies that regulatory reform is useless if there is no one to swing the hammers. HART recommends increased investment in vocational training and the building trades to replenish a workforce decimated by the Great Recession. Furthermore, they suggest exploring ways to facilitate the construction of modular and manufactured wood homes, which can be built off-site in controlled environments, reducing weather delays and labor costs, thereby improving overall Housing Affordability.
Conclusion
The 2017 Housing Affordability Response Team (HART) Recommendations report stands as a testament to the power of interdisciplinary collaboration in urban policy. By bringing together private developers, non-profit advocates, local government officials, and state economists, the AHAB created a holistic, nuanced roadmap that addresses the crisis from every angle. The document proves that achieving true Housing Affordability requires moving beyond siloed thinking; transportation, infrastructure, environmental review, and zoning must be treated as interconnected components of a single ecosystem.
The methodologies established by HART—specifically the reliance on empirical "Buildable Lands" data and the integration of private-sector financial realities into public policy—serve as a masterclass in pragmatic governance. As urban centers globally face the exact same pressures of population influx and regulatory bloat, the 2017 Washington State framework provides a tested, adaptable template. Ultimately, prioritizing Housing Affordability is not just an economic imperative—it is a moral obligation necessary to build resilient, equitable, and thriving communities for future generations. The ongoing value of this report ensures that policymakers will never have to start from scratch when confronting the complex mechanics of urban supply.