The state told Seattle to allow more homes. Seattle said sure — and kept a hand on every dial that decides whether any of them actually get built. This is Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today: the discretionary knobs tucked inside HB 1110 — parking, fees, permit timelines — plus a surprise number from the SPD staffing report. the source writes:
Brief Summary of Second Substitute Bill Requires certain cities planning under the Growth Management Act to authorize minimum development densities in residential zones. • Establishes requirements for middle housing development regulations. • Requires the Department of Commerce to provide technical assistance to cities in implementing the requirements and to develop model middle housing ordinances.
So this is the source document — the House Bill Report on HB 1110, the 2023 law that made a lot of Washington cities allow duplexes and townhomes where detached single-family used to be the only option. And read it closely: it requires cities to authorize 'minimum development densities.' Minimum. The state set a floor. It didn't set a ceiling on how creatively a city can make building that density miserable. Right, and look at the back half — Commerce has to write model ordinances and hand-hold cities through it. The state knew cities would drag their feet so hard they'd need a template. The bill text says 'requires.' Not encourages, not please start a process. Requires. So when Seattle's still workshopping a roadmap three years later, that's a choice. And the floor-versus-ceiling piece matters because everything Seattle controls lives in that gap — parking, fees, permit timelines. We'll get into those specific knobs later this hour. The law sets the minimum, and then it basically dares the city to meet it. This one's from Seattle:
This report describes a revised proposal for updating Seattle’s Neighborhood Residential zoning, including visualizations of potential outcomes. Neighborhood Residential currently represents Seattle’s lowest-density residential zoning and consists primarily of detached homes. We published an initial proposal in March 2024.
This is the city's own HB 1110 implementation memo — the Neighborhood Residential update. And the timestamp matters: updated October 2024. Eight months old. It's a beautiful table of contents. Affordable housing bonus, stacked flats, corner stores, off-street parking, trees. Everything a missing-middle believer could want — at least on paper. Eight months, Sarah. The state mandate is live, the city wrote up its own roadmap, and we're still asking whether a shovel hits dirt. Show me the permit count, not the proposal count. And look where they buried it — off-street parking, fees, tree rules, all in the back half under 'additional changes to development standards.' Come on. That's where the choke points are. Which is exactly the gap. The HB 1110 report we just hit sets the floor — the state says you have to allow it. This document is Seattle deciding how grudgingly to say yes. Right. The mandate can clear Olympia and still get jammed up on page twelve, in the parking section, where Seattle keeps every lever it's legally allowed to keep. Okay, so the state basically told Seattle, 'you must allow duplexes, triplexes, the whole missing-middle menu' — but does City Hall still have enough knobs and levers left to quietly strangle the thing before anyone breaks ground? Yes — that's where the fight is right now. HB 1110 sets the floor: cities have to allow certain housing types. But they still get a lot of discretion over the conditions attached to those permits. Parking is the obvious one. PubliCola's Erica Barnett reported that Seattle's just-adopted comprehensive plan still includes mandatory parking requirements in residential zones, which adds cost and can limit what physically fits on a lot. Permitting is another. Even after the city adopted the new zoning rules in late June 2025, the Seattle Times noted that steep borrowing costs and sluggish market conditions already had developers hesitant, so any extra friction at the permit desk hits harder than it would in a hot market. And Urbanform pointed to the subtler lever: knowing the city has to allow four units per lot isn't the same as knowing which lots can actually support four units. That parcel-level math — shaped by tree canopy rules, setbacks, and lot-coverage limits — is where a lot of the gatekeeping happens. Legal appeals can jam it up too: the Washington Court of Appeals sent parts of Seattle's growth plan back for re-review in mid-2026, which Land Use Committee Chair Eddie Lin said will 'significantly delay' the next phase of zoning changes, including 30 planned neighborhood centers. So if mandatory parking is still on the books after all this, is that actually legal under HB 1110? That's the fight to watch. HB 1110 limits how cities can regulate middle housing, but those limits only matter once someone challenges a specific rule. And litigation takes time — the Court of Appeals delay around Seattle's plan is already proving that. Watch whether Council Member Lin's proposed overhaul of the city's land use appeals process passes, because that procedural reform could decide whether these implementation fights take months or years. Here's Greg Doss at West Seattle Blog:
SPD’s original 2025 Staffing Plan assumed 120 hires and 105 separations, which are fully funded in the 2025 Adopted Budget. SPD is now planning for between 12 and 49 additional hires and seven fewer separations in 2025.
Here's the number that's been missing all week — SPD Q1: 43 actual hires against 31 planned, and 20 separations against 27 projected. Net 19 ahead of plan. That's a scoreboard. Same city, same council, same mayor's office we just spent three segments watching slow-walk HB 1110. When Seattle decides to count something down to the unit, it can. So where's the housing dashboard? Slow down — it's one quarter, Devin. Greg Doss is revising the annual projection to somewhere between 132 and 169 hires. That's a wide band for a victory lap. And context matters: Seattle had roughly 1,339 fully trained officers in early 2020. They're around 980 now, per West Seattle Blog. Beating a deflated plan by 19 doesn't refill a 350-officer hole. If Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily helps you stay oriented, consider subscribing wherever you listen. And if you have a moment, leave a review — it helps other people find the show.
You'll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can go straight to the source and read more.
That's Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.