Contents:
Field Study Findings Report by Virginia MacDonald, MA WWU.
Recommendations for revision of municipal land use policy to encourage the production of entry-level homeownership opportunities through infill development, using strategies of incremental development and community-informed planning.Prepared as partial completion of a Master of Arts in Environmental Studies, Urban & Environmental Planning & Policy by Virginia MacDonald.
Committee Members: Tammi Laninga PhD, AICP (Chair), James Miller PhD, NCARB, & Melanie Bowers PhD
A Note From the Author:
The report itself is 127 pages, with additional pages in the Appendix containing a Glossary of Terms, the draft of policy recommendations that served as framework for my stakeholder interviews, and a full report on the community survey that was conducted. That’s a lot of content, especially for anyone not familiar with the format of academic research. I recommend starting with the Executive Summary on page 11 and the Conclusions and Recommendations section on page 99, then reviewing backwards through the Findings, Literature Review, and Introduction sections depending on the parts that interest you.
Some of the policy recommendations made in the conclusion of this research have already been implemented as new legislation at the state level. In the 2023 legislative session, an extensive package of new bills were passed aimed specifically at supporting affordable housing and infill development. The impact of these new bills ranges from allowing two ADUs on all residential lots within urban zones, increasing the overall number of residential living units on single family lots within specific urban areas, streamlining permitting processes for infill development, and encouraging condo unit development. While the momentum of this newly passed legislation is encouraging, it focuses largely on removing regulatory barriers to building infill and middle housing. There is still an incredible amount of work to do, building the missing middle housing our communities need and expanding opportunity for entry level homeownership.
Download the report as a pdf document:
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the College of the Environment for awarding me a Western Small Grant for the cost to attend the Incremental Development Alliance Small Developer Bootcamp over July and August 2023. The Small Developer Bootcamp provides an online technical training series to support small-scale developers with viable development projects, and coaches them through the financing, permitting and pre-development phases. Participation in this training series allowed me to better understand the technical processes of small-scale real estate development.
I would like to thank Kayla Nygren and Aisha Nygren, recent Bachelor of Arts graduates from Western’s Urban & Environmental Planning department. Kayla and Aisha volunteered with me over summer 2023 as research assistants and worked with me for 4hrs every Wednesday afternoon. They each helped to develop and edit specific sections of this report, as well visual communication, and community engagement materials. I am especially thankful to all the individual stakeholder interview participants who have contributed their lived experiences and professional expertise to this research and for the generosity of your time. I have tried to be diligent in representing everyone’s input.
Positionality Statement
A significant portion of this research focuses on tactics for implementing social justice and racial equity through policy design, and it is important to look at my own position of privilege in the context of this work. My professional and personal background has given me the opportunity to conduct this field study as an embedded community member self-reporting from within the study area. At the same time, I am a member of the dominant socioeconomic and racial group of this region and an outsider when seeking to engage in equity work with people of color, renters, and immigrant communities, whom this project sought to engage with specifically. While this research did not seek to engage specifically with indigenous populations, this research takes place within the ancestral territory of the Lummi, Nooksack, and Semiahmoo peoples. The greater Coast Salish region in which Bellingham is located has been my home for my entire life. I grew up in the nearby cities of Mill Creek and Seattle, and I have been a resident in the city of Bellingham for over 10 years. In conducting this research, I have been able to access personal and professional networks to connect with relevant stakeholders. As a recent staff member of the primary social services agency for the region, it was easy for me to contact and receive consultation from senior staff at relevant organizations and commercial companies. In seeking consultation for critical analysis of my research model, I consulted with BIPOC community leaders already doing equity work in Bellingham – particularly Generations Forward/Family Council, the Whatcom Racial Equity Commission, Northwest Youth Services, the Bellingham Tenant’s Union, Tenants Revolt, the Equity Learning Collective and individual organizers.
As an individual person, I am the beneficiary of generations of consolidated wealth through exclusionary land-use policies and outright racial violence. My father’s maternal grandparents met in an Oregon logging camp and his paternal grandparents operated a stagecoach stop on the Oregon Trail. My mother traces her family origins back to soldiers who fought for the abolition of slavery in the American Civil War, but also soldiers who fought to defend and perpetuate it. I am the direct descent of European colonization of North America, Westward Expansion, cowboys on the open range, and the white settler’s need for “elbow room”. And I am also descended from southern belles and country clubs of the antebellum south, the American Civil War and Jim Crow. Within this constellation of generational & familial privilege, I experience personal marginalization around neurodivergence, gender, chronic illness, and disability. I also recognize that these individualized challenges occur across all racial and cultural identities, often at far higher rates amongst marginalized racial groups due to institutional systems of oppression. My hope is that this research contributes to long-term investments in sustainability, equity and resilience for the peoples currently living within this region. I am grateful for the ongoing input, collaboration, and solidarity shared with me from community leaders and stakeholder participants throughout the process of conducting this research.
