I think we'll get started.

And I think we'll begin with roll call.

Gotcha, Alan.

Present.

Ria Heiser.

Here.

Aaron Jacobson.

Here.

Racer.

Here.

Angela Rosman.

Here.

Rodney Rutherford.

Here.

Sandeep single.

Great.

So before we get our meeting started, is there anybody either in our audience or online that would like to speak?

And if so, come up to the microphone.

I don't think we have any items from the audience today, Chair Racer.

Great.

Okay, for tonight's agenda.

We will continue our study session on the 2044 comprehensive plan.

Tonight we'll be looking at the housing element and have a policy briefing.

Great.

Thank you, Chair Ricer.

And so before we get into the briefing, just wanted to give an overview to the commission.

This is going to follow the same format as your previous comp plan policy briefings.

So Scott's gonna give you some background and a little more background on housing than we've provided for the other elements because this one this one is a big one.

Um and there's a lot of important kind of regional context that we want to make sure we're talking about a little bit.

Um and then when we get to the policy discussion, um, we do have those highlighted policies from your packet that we're gonna go through individually.

We want to make sure we get your feedback on those, and then we'll open it up for um any guidance or feedback the commission has on items that we didn't necessarily highlight.

So with that, I will hand it over to Scott for your briefing.

Um wow.

I'm not gonna beef at you here.

Okay.

So um, yeah, tonight we're going to talk about housing, which I'm pretty sure all of you are s really excited to dig into.

Um so um there we go.

Um so the agenda for tonight is to kind of go through a little bit of background as um as Alison has uh uh said, and then we'll uh dive into some more uh a deeper dive into the local input that we've that we've uh received through our community engagement.

Um and then prior to kind of digging into the um the actual policies, the goal policies that we're gonna be looking at tonight.

Um we're gonna kind of talk about the kind of a regional context that we're in um and um things to consider as you're uh can you know as you're looking at these uh draft goals and policies.

And then I will end like always with you know the PC uh the planning commission questions that we posed in your packets and and take your feedback.

So here we go on the background.

So as a um as a reminder, the housing element uh is put in place to kind of guide the uh the housing growth for our city.

Um it has to be framed in the countywide uh context, so like what the regional context is, you know, the economy uh that that surrounds us and the uh housing trends that um that our region is um is undertaking at this point in time.

Um new legislation uh passed in 20 uh 2021.

Uh we were encouraged to before, but now we're required to accommodate.

So uh in the last briefing that I gave you, we um kind of showed a little bit of a breakdown of what that that housing need allocation is, and I'll go over that again tonight.

It also is asking us to address you know the legacy of zoning, um, you know, like patterns of disinvestment that have occurred, um, if any, in certain areas of uh most of the areas of the city, just by the way, um I'm not gonna get into this much here, but most of the city doesn't have a lot of disinvestment.

We have a we're pretty we're a pretty attractive place to have uh to grow and have housing.

Uh but we are asked to identify uh displacement risk and um and prevent any future displacement as well.

Um so here's this uh little slide here that uh kind of takes from takes from our uh um uh uh recent uh um uh presentation that was hosted by Livable Kirkland uh looking at the history of exclusion um up to a certain point, I think it was 1959, I think it stopped.

This the slide kind of takes it a little just a little bit further and kind of talks about the foundation that that city most of the city's growth has occurred under, which after the um after the uh erection of the floating bridge and uh uh uh suburbanization trends, most of our city uh has grown under a low density suburban context.

Um to note that once the bridge was opened, we adopted a zoning code like within two years of the the bridge opening.

And so we've largely um had local rule over the housing context and and its suburban um uh framework for uh well up until the present day.

Um so as of today though, we are um nicely nestled in between two metropolitan cities and a uh and another and a core city, uh Redmond, that all have well drive, including Kirkland drives a lot of our economic growth for the region and uh puts a lot of housing pressures um in this area.

We are now ranked sixth in population in King County and 12th in in the state.

Um we have uh started to manage this growth over the last 20 years by uh designating some urban growth centers to kind of direct where that growth goes.

Um now we're now we're kind of looking at a more of an urbanized infill future.

As you can kind of see this, I know it's kind of probably small, but you can kind of get the gist that we've annexed all the land that we're gonna annex for the city of Kirkland, and we are we are just gonna get denser and denser as we go along.

Um here's a little bit more of the the regional uh look at uh the trends that are going uh that are coming our way in the next you know 20 plus years.