We wanted to share some of the excellent progress made at the Bellevue City Council meeting on July 5th regarding our "Next Right Work" housing efforts.
First, please click here letter that was submitted in advance of the meeting to give a quick overview of our advocacy work and policy positions.
At this meeting, the Bellevue City Council unanimously voted on next steps for the Next Right Work (NRW) Affordable Housing initiative. Specifically, Council voted to advance three items for more immediate scoping and action for Bellevue’s critical housing attainability efforts.
These include:
– Removing barriers to micro-apartment permitting and construction
– Allowing higher Floor Area Ratios (or unlimited FAR or DU per acre) for residential developments within form/height limits
– Reducing permitting fees for affordable housing projects
Additionally, City staff will begin project scoping to determine their ability to tackle or accelerate the following items:
– Simplify the permitting process and expedite permitting with specific time goals for processing
– Encourage middle-housing solutions such as DADUS, ADUS and Duplex, Triplex, Quad-plexes, including mechanism for separate ownership
– Conduct a staff capacity analysis which considers the utilization of outside resources to address other priority housing policy reforms on an expedited basis
Notably, the proposal to accelerate commercial linkage fees was removed from the NRW action scoping items and will be revisited at a later date. Overall, this is a huge accomplishment for the PLUSH Committee after months of engagement and advocacy efforts!
We are grateful to the City Council for their determined leadership on these issues; and to the City’s staff and their consultant, A-P Hurd, for their extra efforts in moving these proposals forward.
For more information, click here for more information about the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce’s PLUSH Committee.