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Home in Tacoma, House Bill 1110 and You

Tacoma is hot on the heels of HB1110 so we found a lot of great progress to share for how they are proceeding with implementing middle housing legislation as discussed last month. Home in Tacoma is the name of their plan documents, you can read more about it here.

The timeline for things being updated is very reasonable, far better than expected. Here’s what they are currently saying for implementation:

Tacoma is already a leader here from what we can see, as they have not only already developed an interactive Home in Tacoma (HIT) interactive GIS map for reference, extensive one-page style summary sheets of the proposed zoning changes (link here), but they also have DRAFT code language. That’s the real deal for us designers as without the real code in hand (or draft code, second best thing we can get), we’re purely speculating. Tacoma has a LOT of great info here which tells us that they are both serious about making Home in Tacoma a real thing and they also are making sure their vision for how it will happen is clear and distinct. Summary overview of the various housing types they are encouraging is below:

We plan on diving into the new code and seeing how it plays out on real sites very soon. We are already looking at sites for clients who were already eagerly awaiting the new zoning code to see what their options are, so now we have something to discuss. From the looks of it, many portions of the code are density-friendly, but be aware that tree canopy and open space, always concerns, are now stricter in their requirements. First glance as well is that multiplex buildings, the small apartment building typology as described above, have some dimensional limitations that may make utilizing it efficiently a challenge. Time will tell.

We’ll continue watching Tacoma to see how they progress with the Home in Tacoma Plan and let you know when there are new developments.  We’ll also keep going on reviewing the new codes and share findings of a site or two once we get some practical working examples. Thanks for reading!