This meeting of the Kirkland Planning Commission is called to order.

Let's start with a roll call.

Karen Jacobson?

Here.

Gina Medea?

Here.

Julia Nolan.

Here.

Rice or Angela Rosman.

Here, Redney Rutherford.

Here.

And with the majority of commissioners present, we have a quorum and may conduct business.

The next item is, let's see, I believe it's items from the audience.

Yep.

Is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak?

If you would like to speak online, please click the raise hand button.

And if we see anyone interested, do we have anyone who have no sign-ins?

So if there's no one interested, then we can go ahead and continue on with the next item on the agenda, which is our study session.

Two study sessions, in fact.

The first briefing on co-housing co-living housing code amendments.

And like to go ahead and get us started on that.

All right, thank you, Mr.

Chair.

So tonight we have your first briefing on the co-living housing code amendments.

This is another one of those state uh legislation implementation projects.

This one we had a little bit longer for.

Um we have until the end of the year, and with you tonight for your presentation is our associate planner Martha Rhubart.

She's gonna walk you through it.

Thanks, Allison.

Good evening, Commissioners.

I'm Martha Rubart, a planner with the city.

Um, and I'll be presenting today on the co-living housing code amendments.

So today's presentation is um a briefing on the code amendment project and approach for minimum compliance with State House Bill 1998 for co-living housing.

Um I'll cover what co-living housing is, its benefits, um, an overview of existing allowances in Kirkland, an overview of the state mandated requirements for co-living housing, the staff um recommended amendment approach for minimum compliance, um, staff recommended public engagement approach, um, and then the next steps for the project, and I'll end with questions for planning commission.

So, first, what is co-living housing?

It is a residential use type that contains rentable lockable rooms for independent living and sleeping space.

Um, and they have a shared kitchen for the units and either a shared bathroom or individual bathrooms within each room.

Um co-living housing is beneficial for many reasons.

It provides market rate affordable housing located in desirable neighborhoods with good access to schools, jobs, and transit.

It's a good option for seniors, for people in the general workforce, and um for people seeking a rentable room without the typical setup of a large house with roommates.

Um it also fosters um social connection and combats loneliness with the shared living spaces between the sleeping units.

And you can see here figure one is an example layout for a unit with um sleeping space and then a bathroom within the unit.

Um, and then figure two is um an image of an example of the shared kitchen space.

So currently the city allows for a very similar use to co-living housing under the name residential suites.

Um residential suites has pretty much the same setup as co-living housing with the independent sleeping units and a shared kitchen and/or a bathroom.

Um they are only permitted in select zones in the central business district, totem lake and station area zones, and they're subject to um strict development standards, including minimum and maximum unit sizes, minimum common living area size, strict parking analysis requirements, green building standards, and ground floor retail requirements.

So this use will need to be amended to comply with the state bill.

So in 2024, the Washington State Legislature passed House Bill 1998, which requires cities to allow co-living housing as a permitted use on any lot that allows at least six multifamily units based on the underlying zone.

And staff has confirmed with the Department of Commerce that when overlapping this regulation with the middle housing code amendments, the co-living housing allowances will only apply to the lots that get six middle housing units by right per code, which are only the lots within one quarter of a mile of a major transit stop.

So most of the areas that could develop co-living housing under the bill are in medium and high density residential and commercial zones.

The bill also requires that cities don't count co-living sleeping units as more than one quarter of a dwelling unit for density calculations.

So that means if a lot could develop seven dwelling units with the underlying zoning, they could build up to 28 co-living units if the other development standards can allow for that.

The bill also requires that cities don't impose room dimension requirements, and that cities don't require a mix of unit sizes or number of bedrooms in a co-living housing development.

It also requires that co-living housing not be subject to any more restrictive review process or development standards than would apply to any other residential uses in the zone.

And the bill requires that sewer connection fees for each co-living sleeping unit may not be more than a half of the cost for a typical dwelling unit.

And there are also provisions for affordable housing and parking that I'll go into more detail with in later slides.

But this is kind of just the highlights of the requirements.

The full list can be found in the gap analysis and the staff report for this briefing.

And the existing residential suites use does not comply with any of these regulations listed here.

And the deadline for these code amendments is by the end of the year, December 31st, 2025.