Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson will announce a new executive order this week hoped to accelerate affordable and market-rate housing production by speeding up permits and creating a new task force.
The order aims to shorten project timelines by streamlining the city’s permitting process. It creates an interdepartmental team across municipal utilities and housing agencies to coordinate approvals and eliminate bureaucratic delays.
TODAY’S TOP STORIES
The order also launches a Housing Production Task Force with members from communities affected by city housing policies. This advisory group will craft recommendations to increase home construction, support community-based and non-profit developers, prevent displacement, and attract residential development to Seattle.
The new effort from the administration follows Wilson’s executive orders from her first year leading City Hall including an order to improve transit flow on Denny Way and another to speed the creation of new and larger tiny house village shelter facilities in the city.
According to data from the Department of Construction & Inspections, Seattle’s permit review times under city control currently take about twice as long as targets. Large multifamily projects take 374 days to reach permit issuance against a 180-day goal, while middle housing takes 117 days compared to a 60-day target. Across smaller projects — including single-family additions (64 days), pre-approved DADU plans (60 days), and commercial alterations (58 days) — reviews consistently take roughly two months instead of the city’s 30-day benchmark.
Love to see this! The only quibble I have is that 180 days as a goal for large multifamily is still absurdly long. Obviously it would be a big improvement over the current 374 (!!!!!!!!), but six months is still insane. If this is a short term goal that we can adjust in a year then great. The other 30 and 60 day timelines should be able to get down to below a week if we can remove most subjective reviews and just make everything fully objective and by right.
Agree 100%. Six months goal to approve a permit is ridiculous. Especially with modern technology. Feed the permit application to your AI model of choice, and check if the permit meets building codes, zoning requirements, etc. Then manual review of course, as AI can get stuff wrong. But it would massively accelerate vs doing it all manually. Building permit approval should be a fairly trivial exercise.
I really don’t understand this logic, you want to run all building applications through programs known to add random hallucinations to documents and then trust the same folks already struggling to keep up with the workload reviewing all of that looking for errors they don’t know to anticipate? Sure, sounds super efficient 🙄
What I would like is to run an AI analysis of workloads in those positions ten years ago versus today? Are the employees being asked to handle greater numbers of permits than they were in the past? Or is the permitting process itself, potentially bogged down by increasing regulation, more complicated and therefore more time consuming? Looks like the Mayor has decided the latter is the problem. Good luck to her.
The data on total number of permits is available on the SDCI website, they went from handling hundreds of applications to thousands of applications per year! I don’t think FTEs kept anywhere near that pace, although I’m sure regulatory creep and the Seattle process are part of it too, I hope the task force is successful and hopefully finds ways that can streamline the process more broadly.
“Are the employees being asked to handle greater numbers of permits than they were in the past?”
That has been the case for most of the past several years. Regulations have been cut.
which city regulations have been cut? i think i’ve missed seeing that list
Examples: shift from full design review to administrative design review on many projects, application of SEPA review to fewer projects.
And most recently, elimination of the right to appeal projects before the Hearing Examiner.
Don’t forget to streamline the SDOT review that is always a part of the building permit process. Highly dysfunctional and a major drag on getting things permitted. I swear to you it can take 6 months to gain permission to use a ladder on a sidewalk for one day to paint a piece of trim. Nobody is working and nobody is accountable at that department. Bring back in-person building permit review for direct negotiations in front of real people who are accountable please at both SDCI and SDOT.
Add Seattle City Light to the list of obstacles.
” I swear to you it can take 6 months to gain permission to use a ladder on a sidewalk for one day to paint a piece of trim.”
2-3 days max in my experience.
More luxury apartments for rich people to displace those who can’t afford anything anymore yayyyyyyy. Even income restricted units are too expensive. The real issue is there’s too many rich people to slow down demand. Infinite demand equals infinite inflation.
Yeah…The rich get richer.
They buy up the homes and rent them or flip them.
or maybe it could equal more supply? except we outlawed that. hopefully other changes in addition to this will make it legal to build more housing again.
From The Urbanist, 1/16/24:
“Seattle’s housing production set a new record in 2023, producing 12,853 new homes, according to data from the City of Seattle. This is the most homes built since at least 2005, the furthest back we have recent records, and a 21% increase over 2022.”
Permitting requirements must already be pretty lax if that much illegal housing is being built.
that’s 2023, most of which was permitted in 2019 or prior. what are the numbers for 2024, 2025, and 2026 so far? from the permits issued from 2020-2024?
Okay, 2024:
Seattle sets a housing record, and other sleeper stories from 2024
https://ourcommunitynow.com/P/seattle-sets-a-housing-record-and-other-sleeper-stories-from-2024
Okay, 2025:
https://downtownseattle.org/2026/01/dsa-releases-2025-year-end-development-guide/
The numbers of permits applied for or issued and the number of total units (since some were completed before the end of the year) were probably larger.
dude in 1931: “uh, the stock market is up big in 1928, i don’t know what this whole concern is about”
Show us the legislation that you think made housing construction illegal.
The City has actually been removing barriers to housing construction (they don’t control construction loan rates or nationwide trends in tech sector hiring).
Careful what you wish for. You’re gonna get your slowdown in demand real soon now. Bigtime.
Let’s hope so. Slower demand, lower prices, lower interest rates, chains of poverty loosen, poor people can breath a little easier.
Wait? There’s infinite rich people?
Finite rich people with infinite demand which is why the consumer economy continues to show growth and interest rates remain high – demand continues to be out of regulatory control. This all means 90% of the American population suffers just because there’s 10% who can spend, spend, spend.
so all new people who have moved into new housing over the last decade are top 10% of income in the country? world? that is simply not true.
How about the city allowing deve9to purchase properties and then tear them down? Atropine least 5 within a few blocks of where I live on Capitol Hill. Empty vacant lots, formerly homes to probably a hundred people. City should tax the hell out of this kind of BS.
The work to streamline permitting and work across departments is nothing new, the last two administrations have been working on this with modest improvements. Honestly, mid-level staffers at the are the biggest barriers. The ethos is to “protect the city” not to be solutions oriented towards housing.
The task force will not help housing production for years based on this timeline, and I suspect it’ll produce much the same set of recommendations that are already floating around. Her team lacks the political will to act on NOW. I’d like to see her team do ANYTHING for housing that shows urgency and also do the mid/longer term work that the task force might daylight. So far the non-shelter housing work has been council based, and almost entirely long-term. Show so leadership here, Wilson team!
“I’d like to see her team do ANYTHING for housing that shows urgency”
Like what? IMO she’s all over it…
Why didn’t the last two get anything done? Because they raided the Jumpstart taxes to pay for their wants. Which is why they lost the election.
I’d be curious what you define as “all over it” with respect to housing, not shelter. The Housing Opportunities Legislation was a Harrell bill that just ran out of time. CM Lin has worked on some long-term stuff, and the Mayor on shelter, but no one has pushed urgent solutions that impact the now.
I also didn’t defend the last two administrations, though they did make solid inroads for housing developers to get permits and deal with interdepartmental issues. It wasn’t sexy headline making work, but there was grunt work happening. And while I supporting funding for affordable housing, more Jumpstart money isn’t going to fix what is terribly broken right now in terms of policy and operations.
“And while I supporting funding for affordable housing, more Jumpstart money isn’t going to fix what is terribly broken right now in terms of policy and operations.”
Really? Is that because Bruce stole it to pay for cops we have not hired yet? So basically it’s a net $0 right? So why even have a Jumpstart tax right?
Stop trying to pump up Bruce and the failed public relations approach.
Cops and more cops and surveillances and more surveillances like kiosks etc. THAT was Bruce’s plan. “Housing”? He erased off the map the residential centers near him and donors. Cram it all onto Capitol Hill and Northgate and anywhere but NIMBY.
Today? NIMBY is dead forever. Tiny homes are springing up. Red tape being cut for developers. Raise taxes for the infrastructure and administrative maintanence.
Bruce was cut taxes. Reduce minimum wages.
Whatever man…Either you do not know or you are obtuse trying to make your point. I am not that dim.
Gotta love the tacit admission that limiting SEPA review and appeals won’t meaningfully increase housing supply.