Last month, the city of Spokane approved plans for a project called the "Spokane Six" — a six-unit apartment building that will be built on a lot currently occupied by a single-family home on South Grand Boulevard, a block from Manito Park on the South Hill.
Visually, the building's design is simple and unassuming — but its implications for the future of housing in Spokane couldn't be more dramatic.
Matt Hutchins, an architect with the Seattle-based CAST architecture firm that designed the building, describes it as a "traditional, simple box."
"There's a traditional vernacular in American residential design that is sort of blocky, big eaves and detailed porches," Hutchins says. "It feels very much like it could have been built in the '20s or in the '40s."
Sixplex buildings like the Spokane Six are common in Spokane's historic Browne's Addition and Cliff/Cannon neighborhoods. But those buildings are almost all close to 100 years old. During the latter half of the 20th century, Spokane and many other American cities passed zoning laws that prevented those housing types from being built in most neighborhoods.
That's what makes the Spokane Six so notable. The design itself may be simple, but up until just two years ago, it would have been impossible to build.
OPENING UP THE CITY
The Spokane Six is only possible because of a sweeping set of zoning changes passed in 2022 and expanded last year that made it legal to build multifamily housing in all parts of Spokane previously restricted to single-family homes — dramatically expanding the types of housing that are possible to build.Now, two years hence, the zoning reforms have prompted a major uptick in permit activity. As Spokane's population continues to grow, projects like the Spokane Six aim to help address the housing shortage by allowing multiple families to live in a space previously occupied by one.
The Spokane Six is designed to fit on any traditionally sized housing parcel, so once the first one on Grand Boulevard is finished, Hutchins' firm hopes to build more across the city.
"Our goal is to essentially bring back a housing type that we haven't seen a lot in the last 100 years," Hutchins says.
The Spokane Six is an example of what's become known as "middle housing."
It's a category that includes duplexes, triplexes, townhouses and other small, low-intensity developments that sit in between single-family homes and large apartment buildings.
Middle housing serves a lot of people's needs and is "generally more accessible, a little bit more affordable and a higher quality of living than a big apartment building," Hutchins says.
Middle housing is often referred to as "missing" because decades of zoning policies have limited where it can be built, instead emphasizing single-family homes.
In Spokane and other cities, advocates have long argued that these restrictive zoning policies constrain housing supply and are a driving force behind America's housing affordability crisis. Populations grow, after all, and people need places to live.
Spokane's housing shortage reached a fever pitch at the start of this decade. A report from the Spokane REALTORS found that, between 2016 and 2021, the proportion of the city's employed population that could afford a median-priced home had decreased from 70% to just 16%.
In 2022, city leaders responded to what the city's planning director described as a "desperate need for housing" by passing an interim emergency law called "Building Opportunity and Choices for All," or BOCA.
BOCA dramatically reshaped the city's zoning laws, making it legal to build duplexes, triplexes and townhouses in all residential parts of the city.
"It just opened up the whole city to the type of development that we wanted to build," Hutchins, the architect, says. "Instead of competing for multifamily sites with other townhouse builders, we were able to essentially just buy a single-family house and replace it with something that is, granted, a little bigger than a single-family house, but fits in the neighborhood."
BOCA's zoning changes went much farther than other Washington cities and was praised across the state for taking a bold, innovative approach to addressing the housing crisis.
"I think Spokane is being more ambitious than most other larger cities in Washington," says Ryan Packer, who writes about housing and other issues for The Urbanist, a Seattle-based news site. Packer visited Spokane last month to learn more about the city's housing and transportation policies.
In February, Gov. Jay Inslee visited Spokane to present the city with a "Smart Community Award" for its efforts to tackle housing affordability with BOCA.
"There is no community in the state of Washington that has understood this better and done more about it than Spokane," Inslee said.
In 2023, the state Legislature passed a law similar to Spokane's that requires Washington cities to allow missing middle housing in residential areas. The state law allows for sixplexes in any residential area near transit.
In November, Spokane made BOCA permanent with a new law that goes even further than the state — allowing for six units per lot in any residential area.
"I think Seattle and a lot of the jurisdictions around Seattle are resting on their laurels a little bit and assuming that the growth they're seeing is going to continue to be sustainable without making zoning changes," Packer says. "I think Spokane is showing that the alternate pathway is getting out ahead of these things and opening up more opportunities."
Spokane's housing reforms appear to have prompted a major uptick in permits issued for duplexes and other missing middle housing types. But sixplexes like Hutchins' Spokane Six project remain rare.
There were zero sixplex permits issued in 2022, and only two in 2023, says Brian Walker, a spokesperson with the city. The two permits issued in 2023 were part of Greenstone's Garden District project near the intersection of 29th Avenue and Southeast Boulevard. Greenstone is the developer behind Kendall Yards in the West Central neighborhood.
"We weren't trying to shock the neighborhood into the future, we were trying to build a simple, sensible, affordable project that makes sense anywhere in the city."
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Another developer applied to build a sixplex in 2023 — for a project called Khinda Townhouses on a lot off North Division Street in North Spokane — but it is still under review. Initial building plans for the Spokane Six were approved in March, but the project is waiting to be issued building permits.
Hutchins hopes the Spokane Six will show that the model is feasible and will create a path for more sixplex development.
"As a way of adding housing to existing neighborhoods, it's just a great template," Hutchins says. "We wanted to illustrate how it could be a successful development opportunity, and Spokane was the right place to do it."
GENTLE DENSITY
When finished, the Spokane Six will be flanked on both sides by existing single-family houses. The sixplex will be "slightly bigger," Hutchins says, but will still fit the overall neighborhood feel.Proposals for new apartments in residential areas are sometimes met with pushback from residents concerned about parking, traffic or "neighborhood character." But Hutchins hasn't heard any backlash so far. ("Knock on wood," he says.)
"We weren't trying to shock the neighborhood into the future, we were trying to build a simple, sensible, affordable project that makes sense anywhere in the city," Hutchins says.
A map of units permitted under BOCA shows that new middle housing developments have largely been spread evenly across the city, and that no single neighborhood is set to be dramatically altered by the zoning changes.
"I think it's clear that Spokane is disproving a lot of the talking points around what happens when you legalize these types of housing," says Packer, with The Urbanist. "You don't see transformative, traffic-inducing neighborhood change. It's really more of a slow build."
The Spokane Six will be three stories tall, with two units per floor. The units will range between about 990 and 1,000 square feet. Rent for two of the units will be below market rate, due to the project receiving the city's multifamily tax exemption, which gives developers a property tax reduction to incentivize affordable housing.
The sixplex design offers several advantages over larger apartments, Hutchins says. Instead of just one wall being open to the outdoors, the sixplex will have windows on three sides of each unit, allowing every room plentiful views of the outdoors.
"This is just a much more livable scale," Hutchins says.
Each of the six units will have two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining room, living room, kitchen, laundry area, and a porch with enough space for a table or seating — essentially an extension of the apartment, Hutchins says.
The other big advantage of the design, Hutchins says, is that the building is still compact enough to allow for a parking space for each unit — and a shared backyard.
PERMIT BOOM
Hutchins says the process of development in Spokane has been a breeze compared to Seattle, where his firm also works."The planning departments and permitting, they're much more approachable and accessible," Hutchins says. "When we had issues, we were able to connect with reviews directly, which was quite empowering."
In Seattle and some other cities, Hutchins says there are often issues with the various departments that review projects being siloed, or separated, from each other. Not in Spokane.
"One of the great things about Spokane is there's an acknowledgement that they have a housing affordability crisis, and they're being proactive about solving it," Hutchins says. "I think that's helped to break down barriers between departments."
Hutchins says BOCA is a great example of Spokane trying to address the problem, and that he thinks it's why the city broke so many permitting records last year.
In 2023, the city issued 1,340 residential building permits — the highest number on record since 1995, and a 56% increase over the prior four-year average.
Of the total residential permits, 984 were for multifamily units. The previous record for multifamily units permitted in a year was 506 in 1996.
The city also permitted 37 duplexes last year, which translates to 74 residential units. That's more than the previous four years combined.
Spokane still needs a lot more housing. The state Department of Commerce estimates that Spokane County will need to build nearly 71,000 units by 2044 to meet population growth.
Mayor Lisa Brown says the challenge of adding more housing was a major topic of conversation during her recent trip to Bosie, a city similar in size to Spokane that has also struggled with housing shortages.
Brown says her transition team made several recommendations about how to encourage housing development, and that she plans to make an announcement soon about changes to permitting processes and incentive structures that she hopes will streamline the process.
"We want more housing downtown, but also in our neighborhoods," Brown says. "We think there's more that we can do." ♦
