SPOKANE, Wash —
City leaders have deemed Spokane's housing supply an emergency crisis.
“Housing effects everybody," Spokane City Planning Director Spencer Gardner said. "Somebody has a child, a brother or sister, a parent who is concerned about their housing situation.”
Through a July council-approved ordinance, city planners have created the 'Building Opportunity and Choices for All' pilot program.
“Working through a lot of the code problems we knew builders were running into we discovered that our regular process was just too slow," Gardner explained. "But in an emergency, we need to make fast action in order to address the problem. So this interim ordinance allows us to make some of those changes immediately.”
Tuesday, the city hosted an open house at the Central Library for people wanting to learn more about the housing program.
In the audience were realtors, architects and prospective property owners.
When considering the project’s one year timeline, some raised an eyebrow to the possibility of seeing actual builds within the year.
“At the architecture firm that I work at, almost every project we work on his was in the works for at least two years, sometimes five years, some of them have been in the works for over 10 years," Saul Hansen, a revit technician with Bernardo Wills Architects said. "And so to get something turned around in a year, is pretty tricky. That's a tall order. And so everyone that was sitting there kind of spoke to that, like, 'how is this going to work? Is there going to be streamlined approval processes to help get a bigger window?'”
Gardner said over the next year, there might not be a lot of shovels going into the ground, but one of the goals of the program is to lay down the foundation towards more permanent housing codes that include multi-family options.
“At the end of the one-year period, in July of 2023, we will have done the necessary work through community outreach, through talking with builders through going through the process that set out in city code to then make those permanent changes,” Gardner said
Currently, the ordinance and program are set to expire at the end of next July with potential to extend an additional year.
The city will be hosting two more open house meetings. Wednesday at 5:30 p.m at The Hive. and Thursday at 5:30 p.m. over Zoom.
The city has also created tax-exemption incentives to encourage more multi-family home developers. Eligibility requires certain location, pricing and four or more units of housing, which would include fourplexes.
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