Housing Action Plan

The City of Spokane Valley is growing. To be proactive, the city has assessed its housing stock to ensure it's meeting the needs of our growing population. Assessing our needs helps us plan for and encourage the development of a variety of housing options that are affordable for people of all incomes.

Housing Action Plan (PDF)

Housing Action Plan Appendices (PDF)

Background

The Washington Legislature passed E2SHB 1923 in 2019 to increase residential capacity in cities across Washington. The bill emphasized the need to increase housing supply for all income levels, and encouraged cities to prioritize the creation of affordable, inclusive neighborhoods. In early 2020, the city applied for and received a grant from the state Department of Commerce to develop a Housing Action Plan consistent with E2SHB 1923.

A Housing Action Plan (HAP) (PDF) is a policy document and implementation guide. Washington state law requires that HAP strategies encourage construction of a greater variety of housing types and housing at prices that are accessible to people with a wide range of incomes.

Plan Adoption

The Spokane Valley City Council adopted the Housing Action Plan (HAP) on June 1, 2021. The HAP provides the city with a set of clear, actionable strategies to meet current and future housing needs. The development of the plan included robust community engagement using surveys and interviews to connect with and listen to residents, workers, businesses, non-profit organizations, service providers, and other key stakeholders. The community engagement coupled with data from the housing needs assessment and policy and regulation review, produced strategies aimed at increasing housing in the city. The HAP organized the strategies and in implementation plan around three broad goals:

• Preserve existing affordable housing and prevent displacement
• Increase market-rate and affordable housing supply throughout Spokane Valley focused on zones that support multi-family and missing-middle housing types
• Increase housing options and housing choice

Each of the above goals includes a number of implementation strategies that can be reviewed in the HAP available at the link below. Each strategy brings benefits, drawbacks, different levels of impact, and tradeoffs. The strategies provide options to assist the city in fulfilling housing needs across the spectrum of different household incomes.