Port Townsend Planning Department and Jefferson County Department of Community Development, Port Townsend, Washington

We analyzed demographic, employment, income, housing market trends, and special population housing needs.

We interviewed builders, realtors, lenders, and non-profit sponsors to determine their opinion on current trends, their products and proposals, and their interest in participating in housing solutions.

We inventoried a variety of innovative housing solutions currently being conducted or proposed within the region, state, and nation to determine effective prototypes of interest to Jefferson County housing market prospects.

We developed a detailed action plan to provide:

• Education and mentoring services about finance, purchase, maintenance,

• Development code revisions to achieve minimum density, performance based design, low impact site development, fee-in-lieu dedications, impact fees, transfer development rights, manufactured housing, pre-approved building plans, and progressive building/permit fees,

• Affordable housing density incentives and/or quotas,

• Infrastructure priming and innovations including use of interim community drain fields, progressive connection fees, and capacity allocations to affordable projects

• Financial incentives including differential taxing rates, limited and shared equity lending, cooperative and co-housing,

• Rehabilitation programs using shared and/or limited equity mortgages and sweat equity,

• Competitive RFP packaged development projects using targeted sites and prototype project design and development examples.

We vetted the proposals with the public using a mail-out/phone-back survey of registered voters to determine priorities and support for a proposed countywide housing levy for capital formation.

The participants used the action plan proposals to form a Housing Action Planning Network (HAPN) and initiate a countywide affordable housing levy proposal.

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