Ideas to streamline permitting for housing in Bellevue have near unanimous support

Between three-fourths and nine-tenths of adults resid­ing in Belle­vue sup­port a range of ideas to stream­line per­mits and pro­ce­dures for hous­ing devel­op­ment projects in the city, a poll recent­ly con­duct­ed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and the Belle­vue Hous­ing Research Coali­tion has found.

The most pop­u­lar of five ideas — remov­ing unnec­es­sary approvals and make the per­mit­ting process more straight­for­ward — was endorsed by 85% of respon­dents, with the least pop­u­lar idea — low­er­ing per­mit fees for afford­able hous­ing projects — still got the sup­port of 79% of respon­dents, or near­ly eight in ten. 

The Belle­vue Hous­ing Research Coali­tion — a project of NPI, Com­plete Streets Belle­vue, the Sight­line Insti­tute, East­side For All, and the Hous­ing Devel­op­ment Con­sor­tium (HDC) — set out this past sum­mer to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how peo­ple in Belle­vue feel about the local hous­ing mar­ket and pro­pos­als being stud­ied by city staff and the Belle­vue City Coun­cil to make it eas­i­er for peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton’s fifth largest city to find attain­able and afford­able homes.

We released our ini­tial find­ings on Sep­tem­ber 12th and a sec­ond set of find­ings last week. Today, we have more illu­mi­nat­ing data to share.

These fig­ures clear­ly demon­strate that there’s scant oppo­si­tion to the ideas for sim­pli­fy­ing the per­mit­ting process that city staff and con­sul­tants have been con­sid­er­ing as part of the city’s “Next Right Work” hous­ing strat­e­gy update.

Col­lec­tive­ly, these “Next Right Work” ideas received aver­age sup­port of 80.20%, or eight in ten Belle­vue res­i­dents sur­veyed. That’s about as close as you can get to una­nim­i­ty in a city as large and diverse as Belle­vue is.

Here’s the ques­tion we asked and the respons­es we received:

QUESTION: Please indi­cate whether you sup­port or oppose each of the fol­low­ing poli­cies about per­mits and pro­ce­dures for hous­ing developments.

IDEAS & ANSWERS

Remove unnec­es­sary approvals and make the per­mit­ting process more straightforward

Sup­port: 85%		Oppose: 10%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	5%
52%	32%	7%	3%	———

Reduce per­mit turn-around time for afford­able hous­ing and/or hous­ing projects

Sup­port: 80%		Oppose: 15%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	5%
55%	25%	8%	7%	———

Sim­pli­fy zon­ing changes for projects that cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant addi­tion­al hous­ing and oth­er pub­lic benefits

Sup­port: 79%		Oppose: 15%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	7%
49%	29%	9%	6%	———

Sim­pli­fy Belle­vue’s land use code where it adds dif­fi­cul­ty, costs, or exces­sive time to devel­op­ment, to opti­mize hous­ing production

Sup­port: 78%		Oppose: 14%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	8%
45%	32%	6%	8%	———

Low­er per­mit fees for afford­able hous­ing projects

Sup­port: 79%		Oppose: 16%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	4%
53%	26%	8%	8%	———

Our hous­ing-focused sur­vey of 475 Belle­vue city res­i­dents was in the field from Mon­day, August 15th, through Fri­day, August 19th, 2022.

The poll was con­duct­ed entire­ly online for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and its part­ners by Change Research. It has a mod­eled mar­gin of error of 5.2%.

Fol­low this link if you’re inter­est­ed in a detailed primer on the survey’s method­ol­o­gy along with infor­ma­tion about who took the poll.

Before we asked this or any oth­er ideas ques­tions, we offered an open-end­ed prompt to our respon­dents, which read as fol­lows: What do you think the Belle­vue City Coun­cil should do to make hous­ing more afford­able?

More than one respon­dent explic­it­ly brought up permitting.

One, a Cougar Moun­tain / Lake­mont home­own­er in their senior years, summed up the sen­ti­ments of the vast major­i­ty who would lat­er enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly respond to the ideas in the ques­tion shown above by opin­ing: “The first thing that comes to mind is for a build­ing per­mits to be issued much quick­er than currently.”

They added: “I also think they should change zon­ing in many areas espe­cial­ly around com­mer­cial areas to allow more units and high­er high risers.”

A younger home­own­er between the ages of eigh­teen and thir­ty-four in Bri­dle Trails agreed: “Stream­line devel­op­er per­mits for high den­si­ty housing.”

Stream­lin­ing per­mits and pro­ce­dures may sound like a no brain­er — and our polling cer­tain­ly con­firms that the vast major­i­ty of Belle­vue res­i­dents think it is — but the City Coun­cil needs to take action if these “Next Right Work” ideas are to leave the draw­ing board and ben­e­fit peo­ple want­i­ng homes in Bellevue.

If you haven’t yet seen our pre­vi­ous find­ings from this sur­vey, you can learn about the first set of find­ings here and the sec­ond set here.