An answer to the vexing problem of housing shortage has been hiding in plain sight. Empty massive field shops, vacant strip malls and parking tons dot many native city and suburban landscapes. Let’s be trustworthy: Ready for a retail renaissance in an age of Amazon Prime is a idiot’s errand. As a substitute, blighted industrial property ought to have an opportunity to change into vibrant blocks of housing.
Washington state lawmakers have an opportunity this 12 months to assist unleash this potential. Senate Bill 6026, launched by state Sen. Emily Alvarado, D-West Seattle, legalizes residential improvement inside most industrial zones in cities and counties throughout the state.
It’s a strategy to reimagine that crumbling blacktop as somebody’s rooftop.
The issue is stark and acute. Washington state has missed the purpose of housing its inhabitants by more than 142,000 houses, based on a 2025 evaluation by Up For Development, a coverage group. However somewhat than surging, housing permits dropped to their lowest quantity in additional than a decade, based on the state’s Financial and Income Forecast Council.
“At exactly the time we have to construct as quick as we will, we’re stepping into the other way,” stated state Lt. Gov. Denny Heck, who has spearheaded Gov. Bob Ferguson’s efforts to stimulate housing manufacturing within the state.
Two earlier payments in final 12 months’s session made comparable makes an attempt to allow housing at underutilized commercial properties. Whereas each efforts failed, lawmakers tasked Heck’s workplace with investigating the answer. After surveying builders, mayors and different housing advocates, his workplace found 9,000 units under development around the state, in native jurisdictions already pursuing housing in industrial zones.
In a state the place land is coveted, the selection of the place to develop is rarely straightforward. Chopping into greenbelts, upzoning single-family neighborhoods or changing industrial lands are choices that always “face important trade-offs, dangers and political opposition,” the lieutenant governor’s workplace report says.
Changing industrial areas in simply King, Pierce and Snohomish counties may produce as much as 675,000 new items of housing, based on a recent report by marketing consultant Peter Calthorpe, a famend California-based city planner and architect.
The advantages abound from turning blight into burgeoning new communities. As industrial properties usually lie alongside present utility corridors, cities and counties needn’t construct pricey infrastructure to attach the brand new housing. There’s usually a bus line passing by that may assist these new residents, lowering visitors and carbon emissions. And the completed product would considerably improve the properties’ assessed worth, giving a brand new income to the cities and counties the place they’re situated.
The invoice’s first hearing is Friday earlier than the state Senate’s Housing committee. This one needs to be a slam-dunk. Growing the state’s housing provide is an pressing want. Inside a broader disaster that has few options in the way in which of low-hanging fruit, this effort ought to command a bipartisan following. Lawmakers ought to move SB 6026 and provides decaying industrial corridors a brand new raison d’être — and most necessary, a brand new place for folks to stay.
