Threatened By Rising Housing Prices, Some SeaTac Homeowners Fight Back
SeaTac housing isn’t cheap. The median rent in the city surrounding the Seattle-Tacoma airport is more than $2,000 a month, according to one real estate website. That’s in King County, where median home prices are around $625,000.
This makes mobile homes some of the few affordable housing options in the area, Marketplace reports.
The land those mobile homes are on could be worth a lot more to the owners if it was developed into apartment complexes or hotels, leaving families — about 9,000 households — at risk of homelessness. But some mobile home owners have found an option that could let them stay.
They’re banding together to buy the land their homes are on.
Residents of Duvall Riverside Village, a mobile home park in SeaTac, formed a non-profit organization to collectively buy their land. They now pay dues to the non-profit, and run the park along with a board of directors, allowing homeowners to make their own financial decisions about park management.
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Tacoma City Council moves forward with zoning changes
The next phase of Tacoma’s attempts to address housing shortages will soon be implemented, as the Tacoma City Council has voted unanimously to adopt the second phase of the Home in Tacoma zoning package.
The package of changes to city zoning standards aims to create more opportunities for different types of housing across the city, including by allowing more units to be developed on a standard city lot.
Next phase of housing, zoning changes being considered in Tacoma
In season four, episode 19 of the sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” actor Bradley Whitford plays a city council member in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. Whitford tells Amy Poehler’s character, Leslie Knope, “City council isn’t about making everyone happy. In fact, every decision you make is going to make a lot of people very unhappy.”
Right now, the Tacoma City Council is considering a set of planning commission recommendations under the second phase of Home in Tacoma, the housing action strategy the city has been implementing over the last few years.
Northwest tribes receive millions in funding for new housing
An aerial photo shows the competed infrastructure of the Northeast neighborhood in Taholah with 59 lots for future homes. Federal grants are often a portion of larger tribal housing projects.
