The city of Tuk­wila, Wash­ing­ton, locat­ed in King Coun­ty south of Seat­tle, is pur­su­ing a new tran­sit-ori­ent­ed hous­ing and devel­op­ment plan that will attempt to trans­form the area around its Link light rail sta­tion.

As report by Andrew Engel­son for the Urban­ist, Tuk­wila received a $100,000 grant from the state of Wash­ing­ton to cre­ate the “Tran­sit-Ori­ent­ed Devel­op­ment Hous­ing Strate­gies Plan,” pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2021. The plan sets an ambi­tious tar­get of adding 4,200 new homes in 20 years.

“The report issues rec­om­men­da­tions for pol­i­cy changes in three areas: increas­ing den­si­ty of hous­ing, pre­vent­ing dis­place­ment, and improv­ing infra­struc­ture near the sta­tion,” accord­ing to Engel­son.

“Poli­cies the report rec­om­mends that could increase den­si­ty include tax exemp­tions for mul­ti­fam­i­ly projects with afford­able units and cre­at­ing devel­op­ment require­ments that encour­age homes with more bed­rooms. Design rules are also scru­ti­nized, such as reduc­ing required recre­ation­al space and step back require­ments. Most con­tentious may be a pro­pos­al to halve park­ing min­i­mums per unit. Park­ing min­i­mum require­ments would go from 2.0 to 1.0 per dwelling unit in High Den­si­ty Res­i­den­tial zones.”

The source arti­cle, linked below, includes details on how the city is already mov­ing for­ward with the plan. As report­ed by Engel­son, sev­er­al afford­able hous­ing projects are already under­way in walk­ing dis­tance from the city’s light rail sta­tion.