Housing & Zoning

Housing policy should serve the people who live here and the people actually coming — every housing type included.

Kirkland is already one of the densest cities in Washington, fourth in the state’s official density table, and it has said yes to decades more growth. This page is a primer: who decides what gets built, what the plan assumes, what the market is saying back, and where the decisions are live right now.

In short:

• Kirkland chose a deeper affordability target than the regional formula assigned and faster rules than the state required. The market has answered some of it: small middle housing is thriving, and the plan’s showcase district sits still

• The city’s own data and its Planning Commission point toward moderation. On September 1 the council declined to move the fee threshold, so the rules adopted in June 2025 stand

• Every housing type counts, including the standard single-family home most Kirkland families actually want

Who decides: the state sets more of the rules every year

• The State Legislature now sets the floor for local zoning, and it raises that floor nearly every session. Middle housing is required in single-family zones (HB 1110, 2023). Parking minimums are capped near transit (ESSB 5184, 2025). Any homeowner’s lot can be split by administrative review (HB 1096, implemented in Kirkland June 2026). Density and 20-year tax exemptions are required near transit stations (3SHB 1491, 2025), and housing bonuses are required on faith-organization land. A state Department of Housing is now being formed. More housing decisions move to Olympia every year, which makes the discretion Kirkland still holds more valuable, not less

• Regional formulas assign Kirkland’s housing target through King County’s planning policies (How Kirkland’s housing target was set)

• The City Council adopts the zoning code. The state’s floor is a minimum, and Kirkland has repeatedly chosen to go beyond it

• The Planning Commission holds the public hearings and shapes recommendations before the council ever votes. In the last year its recommendations have twice pointed toward moderation

• The market decides what actually gets built. No ordinance can force a project to pencil

What “affordable” means, and what the target asks

In official programs, an “affordable” unit is one with a covenant tying its rent or price to a percentage of area median income (AMI). King County’s 2025 limits put dollars on the tiers:

• 30% AMI — about $33,000 for a single person / $47,000 for a family of four

• 50% AMI — about $55,000 / $78,500

• 60% AMI — about $66,000 for a single person

• 80% AMI — about $85,000 / $121,000, more than many Kirkland teachers, nurses and firefighters earn

• Median (100% AMI) — about $110,000 / $157,000

Kirkland’s 2044 target assigns the city 13,200 new homes, and roughly 87% of them are designated for households at or below 80% AMI, including 7,388 at or below 30%. Note what the formula does not count: the standard market-rate family home. The housing type most Kirkland families actually seek earns the city almost no credit against its target. (The full story of how that number was set.)

Kirkland chose to go faster and higher

The record is consistent. At each step, Kirkland went beyond what was required:

• In the regional negotiation, Kirkland supported the allocation option that gave it the largest deeply-affordable target, roughly 2,151 units (about 39%) more at the lowest income tier than the baseline formula

• The 2024 draft Comprehensive Plan proposed reclassifying all residential neighborhoods as “Residential Mixed-Use.” It was reversed in late 2024 after extensive public engagement, proof that public comment changes outcomes

• The June 2025 middle-housing package went beyond the state floor: more units per lot than mandated, parking reductions ahead of the state’s timeline, and a new affordable-housing fee aimed at larger single-family homes. Projects over 2,000 square feet owe 10% of units as affordable, or $15 per square foot on every square foot above 2,000, effective January 1, 2027

• And production followed. Kirkland led the state in middle-housing code, with cottages, ADUs and DADUs, years before the mandates. The city’s own May 2026 data shows middle-housing permits “continue to be very strong, even in challenging market conditions”

Where the fee money goes

The affordable housing fee doesn’t build anything by itself. It goes to ARCH, A Regional Coalition for Housing, which Kirkland and its Eastside neighbors formed in the 1990s. ARCH is worth understanding, because it’s the main mechanism Kirkland has for housing at the income levels its target is mostly made of.

• How it works. Every member city pays into one pool each year, and the pool makes awards to projects across the region. Those awards then draw state, federal and private money behind them. A single city’s contribution is too small to finance an apartment building. As part of a combined award, it moves one. Since 1992 ARCH has put more than $120 million into East King County, funding 110 projects and more than 6,000 homes

• What Kirkland puts in. About $15.1 million since 1999, roughly $7 million of it from the in-lieu fees developers pay instead of building the units on site

• What Kirkland gets back. Twenty-four ARCH-funded projects sit inside the city, holding 1,243 affordable homes. By our arithmetic on those figures, Kirkland has supplied about 13% of the pool and hosts about 21% of the homes, in a city that is roughly 16% of the coalition by population

• Where it goes in a given year. It travels, and in both directions. In the round council approved in February 2026, Kirkland committed $1,261,800 across seven projects. One was in Kirkland. The others were in Bothell, Bellevue, Redmond and Issaquah, and they include 25 permanently affordable three-bedroom homes and 200 apartments with family-sized units. Other member cities fund Kirkland’s projects the same way. Council approves the annual allocation by resolution, traditionally on the consent calendar

Our analysis: a home built in Bellevue counts toward Bellevue’s target and not Kirkland’s, and residents are right to want that said plainly. But the balance runs in Kirkland’s favor, and what the pool buys is the housing the private market does not produce at any price. The 1,243 affordable homes inside Kirkland were paid for substantially by Bellevue, Redmond and Bothell.

The market has answered

• The 700-plus acres around the NE 85th station were the plan’s showcase for concentrated growth. In the city’s own July 2026 memo, the district “has not yet developed into the mixed-use center envisioned by the City.” Staff told council in April: “we have yet to see any significant development be initiated in the Station Area”

• A local builder testified in June 2026 that his projects pencil in Bothell, Bellevue, Redmond and Sammamish, but he cannot make one work in Kirkland

• The demand signal is consistent. Detached family homes draw multiple offers and bidding wars while many new townhomes and condos linger (Seattle Times, July 2026). Buyers keep paying a premium for yards, privacy, room for children and parents, and the chance to build equity

• Within eighteen months of the plan’s adoption, the city adjusted project terms to reality: affordability requirements reduced on the Michaels and Goodwill sites, ownership units allowed up to 100% AMI, pioneer provisions extended to the end of 2029

What’s actually getting built

Kirkland’s middle housing rules are working. Permits hit a record in the year ending February 2026, and the city’s own staff describe production as very strong even in a difficult market.

It’s worth looking at what that production consists of. Of the 663 middle housing units permitted since March 2020, roughly 95% are smaller than 2,000 square feet. That isn’t the market falling short of the policy. It’s the policy working as written, because ADUs and cottages are capped at those sizes by the code itself. Twenty-nine of the 663 are townhomes.

So Kirkland is adding homes quickly and almost none of them can hold a family. Both of those are true, and they don’t contradict each other.

The gap turns up when a family goes looking, because every other path to a family-sized home is closed off in its own way:

• Apartments could supply three-bedroom homes, and mostly don’t. Two recent Kirkland projects with unit mixes in the council packets total 855 homes between them. Nineteen are three-bedroom. One of the two buildings has none

• Detached houses do supply them, at a price. The median new single-family home sold in Kirkland between March 2024 and March 2025 went for $3,098,000

• Townhomes are the one type that delivers family-sized space for less, and Kirkland has permitted 29 of them in six years

Our analysis: middle housing is doing what it was designed to do and doing it well. The trouble is that Kirkland’s housing policy has two different goals inside it, more homes and homes families can use, and only the first one is being met. The city counts units. A three-bedroom ADU and a studio count the same, and a 1,200-square-foot cottage counts the same as a townhome a family of five could live in. When Kirkland says it wants more middle housing, the type it has built the least of is the type that would do the most good.

Moderation is arriving, from inside the process

The correction is coming from the professional layer of the process itself:

• Staff extended the pioneer provisions. Council carved townhomes back into part of the station area (May 2026)

• The Planning Commission recommended “incentives for development rather than added restrictions” in the station area, and recommended raising the affordable-housing-fee threshold from 2,000 to 2,500 square feet

• The city’s own branding consultant told council the station district’s problem is feasibility and zoning, not its name

• And on June 16, 2026, the threshold question reached the council. Ordinance O-4937, the Planning Commission’s recommended 2,500-square-foot line, failed on a 3–3 tie with one member absent. Builders testified that subtracting a garage leaves a 2,000-square-foot home with about 1,700 square feet of living space, too tight for aging-in-place suites or multigenerational floor plans. The other side argued no one has shown the fee chills construction, and that the change would be hard to reverse. Under council rules the ordinance was tabled, and it came back on September 1

What happened then took three votes. Council first amended the ordinance to raise the fee from $15 to $20 per square foot, a compromise meant to accept the higher 2,500-square-foot exemption while keeping affordable housing revenue close to whole. That carried 4–3. Council then voted 7–0 to remove the requirement that staff report back on the fee in January 2028. Then it voted on the amended ordinance itself, and the ordinance failed 3–4. Two members who had just voted to raise the fee voted against the package carrying it, and one who voted against the increase voted for the package. Because the ordinance failed, the amendments failed with it. Nothing changed. The rule adopted in June 2025 stands: $15 per square foot above 2,000 square feet, starting January 1, 2027, which is what staff had recommended all along. The mayor said from the dais, “I think we’re all a little surprised where we ended up.”

The size nobody is building

The packet for that meeting carried the first real measurement of the fee. Staff looked at 185 permits finished between May 2024 and November 2025, including 104 single-family homes in low-density zones. Sorted by size, those 104 homes fall almost entirely into one bucket. Two measured between 2,000 and 2,500 square feet. Five measured between 2,500 and 3,000. The other 97 were larger than 3,000 square feet.

Two houses out of 104. Every permit in that sample predates the fee, which does not take effect until January 2027. The band was nearly empty before the city put a charge on it.

Set that next to the rest of what the city builds. Roughly 95% of middle housing units come in under 2,000 square feet, because the code caps ADUs and cottages there. Twenty-nine townhomes in six years. The median new detached house sold for $3,098,000. Kirkland is building small units it has capped and large houses that price out most buyers, and almost nothing in between.

The fee sits right on that gap. It is charged per square foot above the threshold, not as a flat charge, so where the line sits changes what each size of house costs to build. At a 2,000-square-foot threshold, a modest 2,400-square-foot family home owes about $6,000 and a 3,500-square-foot house owes about $22,500. Move the line to 2,500 and the family home owes nothing while the large house still owes $15,000.

Our analysis: this is why we supported the Planning Commission’s recommendation, and it was never about the revenue. The point of moving the line is to stop charging the one size Kirkland is short of while continuing to charge the sizes it is not. The honest caveat is that changing a cost is not the same as producing a house. Nobody can promise that exempting the 2,000-to-2,500 band would fill it. A fee that is not yet in force cannot have produced evidence either way. We would rather test the higher line than lock in the lower one on the same absence of proof. What the city’s own sample shows is that the missing middle in Kirkland is missing by size, not only by type, and that no current policy is aimed at it.

The staff memo behind that debate recommended keeping the fee structure partly to “counter-balance current market preferences for large, single-family homes that do not support the City’s affordability goals.” In plain terms, the fee is not only there to raise money for affordable housing. By the city’s own description, it also exists to lean against demand for larger homes. Residents can decide for themselves whether that is a job a housing fee should have.

Our analysis: Kirkland went faster and higher than the state required. The market has since answered. And the record, from the city’s own data to its own staff adjustments to its own Planning Commission, is now converging on moderation. The open question is whether the council follows its own evidence. We think growth policy should be moderate, should be checked against how people actually live on a schedule and in public, and should respect every housing type, including the standard single-family home that most Kirkland families seek. The regional formula counts that home for almost nothing, and the fee structure treats it as something to counter-balance.

And to be clear about what we are for: the middle housing Kirkland pioneered, growth concentrated where infrastructure already exists, and incentives that make good projects pencil. The city’s own permit numbers show middle housing thriving here.

On one type we would go further than the city has. A townhome is the only home Kirkland builds that gives a family three or four bedrooms without a three-million-dollar price tag. Kirkland has permitted 29 of them in six years. That is the number we would like to see move, and it is why we keep pointing at townhomes in particular. The small units the code already encourages are working and should keep going. The type that would let a family stay in Kirkland is the one barely being built.

Where things stand (September 2026)

• September 1: the fee-threshold ordinance failed 3–4 after council amended it 4–3. The fee stays as June 2025 set it, $15 per square foot above 2,000 square feet, effective January 1, 2027. Council took no action on where the threshold sits, and the ordinance is not scheduled to return

• September 15: the faith-based housing code reaches council. The Planning Commission held its public hearing on August 27, and the city’s schedule puts the council vote on September 15. The code allows automatic approval and height bonuses on 64 parcels owned by 37 faith organizations. At its August 5 briefing council supported broadening the affordability exchange, where one deeply affordable unit counts as two, so it applies to all required affordable units and not only to the units that earn extra height. This is now the live decision on this page

• Station-area code changes, including a minimum residential density, are on the 2026–28 Planning Work Program

• Citywide parking-reduction code amendments (ESSB 5184 compliance) are coming. The state’s clock is running

• Lot splitting is now live (Ordinance O-4938). One residential lot can become two through administrative review, and the new lot can be sold before anything is built

• Development agreements with affordability components remain in process at Goodwill, Michaels and Houghton Village

What residents can do

The nearest date is September 15, when the faith-based housing code reaches council. Written comment sent to CityCouncil@kirklandwa.gov before then becomes part of the record.

The fee’s own date is much further out. The zoning code requires the planning director to report to council in January 2028 on whether the fee has affected housing development in low-density zones. That report survived September 1 by accident: council voted 7–0 to delete it, but the amendment died with the ordinance it was attached to. A defeated ordinance enacts nothing. So the only look-back built into this policy is still on the books, though all seven members voted for the amendment that would have removed it. A vote inside a failed package is not a settled position, but it does suggest the report has few friends on the dais. If a cleanup ordinance comes back to remove it, watch the agenda.

Beyond the dates, the questions worth asking are the same at every housing decision. Which housing types does this policy favor and disfavor? At which income tiers, for how long? And what current evidence supports the assumption underneath?

Housing decisions are also school decisions, traffic decisions, and tax decisions, made years before they arrive on those bills. (See our Schools & Services, Transit & Traffic, and Taxes & MFTEs primers.)

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