Margaret Bunyall.

Aaron Jacobson.

Here.

Gina Medea.

Julia Nolan.

Here.

Ricer.

Here.

Angela Rosman.

Here.

Rodney Rutherford.

Here.

Wonderful.

So tonight we have a study session on faith owned land and then a public hearing on the lot spin splitting amendments as required by state code.

Right now would be the time for anyone in the audience, if online you would like to speak.

This would be about anything but the study session.

If you could please raise your hand.

If you're here to speak about the study session or about the public hearing, there will be a time later to do that.

Seeing none, we will move on to the study session.

All right.

Thank you, Chair Rosman.

So tonight we're gonna have a study session on our affordable housing on faith owned land project.

This one's been on the work program for a little bit starting last year.

As we talked about when we were discussing the work program update, uh progress on this project was a little bit delayed last year as we worked through some staff turnover, but we've got a great team on it now here to share with you some of the background on this project, and then also our initial scoping direction from City Council.

With you tonight for the presentation is our senior planner Scott Guter and our planner Lou Yardley, who is just passed out some maps for you.

Um so they'll be walking you through it, and I'll hand it over to them.

Hi, uh good evening.

Um it's been a little while since I've been uh in front of you, but glad to be back.

And um so uh tonight we're just gonna go over a lot of the what was covered in the staff report.

Um that will primarily be covered uh by Lou.

Uh she will go over a lot of the background research, which we see was heavily involved in, and then I will uh follow up with you know what this means for Kirkland and um and what direction did we hear from council, and then we'll move in to some questions and uh then follow up with uh some discussion uh uh kind of organized around the uh the questions that we have in your meeting packet.

So if you had that open at that time, that'd be great.

Uh with that I'll hand it over to Lou.

Awesome.

Thanks, Scott.

And hello, Planning Commission.

Um, yes, my name's Lou, as Ali and Scott have mentioned, but uh nice to be here and I feel very fortunate to have worked with Scott and continue to work with him on this project.

Um it's very exciting.

And as he mentioned, yes, I'll go over background research, um, kind of best practices based on that research, state requirements, examples, and then he'll jump back into it for um city history and alignment as well as council's direction.

So um to jump right in in 2019, uh the state mandated that cities offer increased density um on faith-owned land and land rented by faith organizations that are proposing a housing project where all units are affordable units.

During this time, the city understood that allowing increased density was required if they were approached by a faith-owned site, but we did not draft any regulations.

Um it wasn't until 2044 comprehensive plan where we formalized policies to address these state requirements.

Um, and that's why you see us here before you today.

Um but in the last legislation um in the last legislative session, the state passed new regulations under House Bill 1859 that allow mixed income development.

So not all units need to be affordable housing units.

So under this updated law, what you see on the screen here requires um at least 50% of the units to be reserved for low-income households that are earning at or below 80% of AMI, or at least 20% are reserved for very low-income households, which um housing costs that which which means that um they're not earning any more than 50% AMI.

Um, as well as another criteria is that the um affordability must be maintained for a minimum of 50 years on site.

Um and the law is effective as June 2026.

So as we're kind of doing this whole project, it does align with when we need to um you know meet those requirements based on the bill adoption.

So for best practices, these were really influenced by the HRNA and APA reports.

And the HRNA report as well as the APA report support a streamlined and administrative approach to allowing increased density on faith-owned land.

This could be allowing double the density of the underlying zone like Redmond does, which you'll see in future slides, or allowing increased FAR and height like Seattle.

Either way, all sites in the same zone are subject to the same standards, and there's no site-specific legislative process.

In addition to the standard regulations, the HRNA report highlights how important permit fee waivers are, as well as establishing support for stakeholders for faith organizations to work with from the project feasibility stage all the way through project completion.

Faith organizations are not usually familiar with development processes and permits, and they also rarely have the financial means to fund a major development project like the ones that we're likely talking about.

So partnering with a stakeholder who can fund the project or finding a stakeholder who can connect them with someone who can is very vital.

The APA report in particular also highlights how housing on faith-owned land aligns with faith organization values of serving community and providing essential human needs.

So by enabling further density on faith-owned land, it gives the organizations opportunity to act on that goal and align with their mission.

Yes, thanks.

So examples from other jurisdictions.