Lake Stevens panel recommends narrow edits to 2024 comprehensive plan to meet state emergency-housing analysis requirement

The Lake Stevens Planning Commission on Feb. 5 voted to forward a recommendation to City Council to amend Ordinance 11-88 with the narrow edits shown in attachments 1 and 2 to the adopted 2024 comprehensive plan.

Senior planner David Levitan told commissioners the changes are largely technical edits and one additional analysis requested by the Washington State Department of Commerce. "With the proposed changes shown in attachments 1 and 2, we are now fully compliant with the Growth Management Act," Levitan said.

The commission’s recommendation follows Commerce’s request that the city add a quantitative analysis of emergency-housing need to its land capacity analysis (LCA). Levitan said the revised LCA shows the city must demonstrate capacity for 304 emergency-housing beds over the next 20 years and that the city’s commercial and mixed-use zones contain roughly 74 net acres of residential capacity. Using Commerce’s assumed-density method (the guidance’s "option B"), Levitan said the city would need about five net acres of that capacity to meet the 304-bed estimate.

Why it matters: the Growth Management Act changes enacted after 2021 (referenced by planners as House Bill 1220) and Commerce guidance require jurisdictions to show they have both the zoning capacity and the code provisions that would permit emergency, transitional and permanent supportive housing. Planning staff told commissioners the comp-plan edits are limited to the attachments in the packet and do not reopen the whole plan.

During the hearing commissioners asked for clarification about the analysis method, whether the Commerce examples are sized for larger cities, and how the state’s regional AMI (area median income) figures are applied. Levitan repeatedly distinguished between emergency housing (short-term facilities and shelters) and permanent supportive housing (longer-term units with wraparound services) and said the required demonstration concerns capacity in zoning and development standards — not proof that such projects will be built.

Planner Levitan summarized the implementation steps commissioners can expect in 2025: amend the development code (including Chapter 14.40 on permissible uses), add clear-and-objective development standards where required, and address items listed in tables in the packet (identified as table 5 and table 6) as part of a housing-implementation code package. He said staff will work on the code changes next year and that the city is allowed to regulate health-and-safety standards consistent with state law but cannot effectively prohibit the uses Commerce required cities to allow.

No written comments were received before the hearing and no members of the public testified either in person at City Hall or virtually during the Feb. 5 meeting, staff said. The Planning Commission voted to close the public hearing and then to forward the recommendation to City Council. City staff told commissioners the council is scheduled to hold its corresponding public hearing on Feb. 25.

Next steps: City staff will transmit the Planning Commission recommendation and revised attachments to City Council for its Feb. 25 hearing. Staff also said it will return to the commission in 2025 with code-amendment proposals and a public-engagement plan for the housing-implementation work.