Staff proposes removing 'rooming house' from code; co‑living standards to apply in multifamily areas

Planning staff proposed deleting the older “rooming house” definition and related standards from the Anacortes municipal code and relying instead on the newer state-required co-living housing category in multifamily and higher-density zones. Libby Grage said the co-living definition closely tracks the uses formerly described as rooming houses, and that state law and the city’s multifamily provisions mean co-living should be permitted where multifamily is allowed.

Commissioners discussed how state law treats single-family houses and certain recovery or Oxford-style houses, noting that state protections can mean shared living in a single-family house is not subject to the same restrictions as an institutional group home. Grage said staff would remove the rooming-house term from the draft code and ensure other code references (including the word “boarder,” which only appears in the rooming-house definition) are cleaned up.

No vote to adopt text occurred Oct. 1; staff will revise the draft code to delete the rooming-house definition and related standards and return the edited draft in the Oct. 22 packet.