Photo by Michael Whitney.
MONROE — On July 30, the City Council discussed the need for more affordable commercial and residential housing.
According to a 2020 census, Monroe had 21,266 available housing units. It is projected that by 2044, housing will be increased to 26, 276. The question that has to be asked is: How is this housing going to look and where is it going to go?
City Administrator Deborah Knight hopes that the council will agree that this part of the comprehensive plan is vital to the housing and job market of Monroe.
“What was being presented to the council was a reality check over the types of housing and the housing marketing that is currently present in Monroe,” Knight said. “The city of Monroe has gotten a population and job allocation and we now have to figure where those people are going to move into our community because we can’t grow the area that we are in.”
Before the Growth Management Act of 1990, towns in Washington were able to sprawl, or convert green space into housing to accommodate the wave of Californians moving to the state. The act defined the differences between urban and rural areas in order to prevent sprawling.
Now, there is little green space available within Monroe.
Knight said the solution for this could be to redevelop existing areas and grow upwards. One option is for developers to look at parcels of one-story buildings with sufficient parking in the commercial zones to redevelop these into mixed-use housing.
The hope for developers is that the city will be able to provide a significant financial incentive to commercial property owners. Eventually, private property owners will have to decide to sell their land or develop the property themselves.
“We have to accommodate people and jobs and this is the way to do it,” Knight said. “The next step is turning that vision into actual regulation for developers in 2025.”
Although there is already a need for more housing, this comprehensive plan will take time. If it gets approved to move forward, changes will start to become visible within five years of the plan being implemented.
“It really is going to become a patchwork of redevelopment that occurs over time in response to market forces and in response to the availability of properties,” Monroe’s Economic Development Coordinator Patrick Doherty said.
He emphasized that redevelopment is a process, and will take the effort of not just the city, but private property owners and developers as well.
“It is really all about letting the private market work its magic,” he said.
The deadline for the City Council to finalize its comprehensive plan is Dec. 31, 2024.
