The Land Use & Environment Committee met on September 21, 2026 to discuss home-based business code amendments, tree protection measures, development code updates for climate implementation, and middle housing infrastructure policy. After public testimony and deliberation, the Committee voted to send the home-based business amendments back to the Planning Commission, endorsed staff's tree protection guideline changes with additional emphasis on large trees, reviewed the scope of climate code updates, and deferred a decision on middle housing utility requirements to a future meeting.
Hello everyone. Welcome to a special early in the day land use and environment committee. It is Friday, September 18th, 2026. I'm here with my seatmates if they want to introduce themselves. My name is Robert Vanderbilt. I'm the chair. Clark Gilman. Paul Barrent, member of the land use committee. All right. Now that we've gotten through roll call, uh, can I get approval of tonight's agenda? I uh move uh the adoption of the agenda for tonight's meeting. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right, we have an agenda. Public comment. Let's do in person first and then online. Do we have any on in person? All right. Uh we have uh Courtney Nevitt. And if you want to just public comment right here. Yeah. And uh green is on is uh is live, so if you push the little button and it should go green. Okay. Hi. Hello, committee members. Good afternoon. Um my name's Courtney Navan. I live in the South Capital neighborhood. Um, and as you know, the South Capital neighborhood is really the opposite of a knot in my backyard neighborhood. Uh, for example, it's I mean, it's really the kind of neighborhood that city planners across the country or state that they're trying to promote. For instance, in the front of our house is a large apartment building with over 60 units across from us in the alley. We have a three-story apartment building with a number of units. We have at least uh three duplexes down the street. We have a um we have renters and owner-occupied homes with neighbors with varying occupations and financial resources. Some full-time residents have businesses, which is great. Some full-time residents are students. Other residents work at the Capitol in various capacity, including as lobbyists, also great. This kind of community has always been part of our great friendly, welcoming neighborhood community. The takeover of homes by non-resident corporation is a relatively new phenomenon. Two homes directly adjacent to ours, which until the last two years were occupied by families and now essentially office buildings, standing empty for most of the year. We see no one there except during the session when our alley, which is the only access to our garage, is clogged with anonymous cars. Another once family occupied home several houses down, just have the yard paved for a parking lot. These houses, once sold to businesses, never come up for sale again. They are simply traded with other businesses. For example, a house two houses down was simply included as part of the purchase agreement for a lobbying business several years ago. Please do not make this practice easier with new rules. Businesses are not people. The entities that own these houses do not care about our community, and in most cases are based outside of the Olympia area. Empty houses owned by companies have no stake in our neighborhood, no stake in our community, or the people who live here.