Accountable Port Townsend

The state projects that PT will need to plan for and accommodate 1,648 new housing units by 2045. Yet City Council is pushing a growth plan for 20x that capacity, without any requirements for affordable housing.

Do you support that?

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What We Would Have Lost

PT would have suffered tremendous losses in the now-invalidated 2025 Upzone

In its December 2025 Comprehensive (Comp) Plan Update, the Port Townsend (PT) City Council enacted sweeping changes to its land use policy, referred to here as the Upzone.

For the RII residential zone, which covers much of PT, the Comp Plan Update:

dramatically increased allowable housing density, height, and lot coverage
greatly reduced property line setbacks
eliminated the daylight plane rule that prevented new construction from casting excessive shade on neighboring properties
eliminated the daylight plane rule that prevented new construction from casting excessive shade on neighboring properties

But shouldn’t all cities increase density to create more housing?

Creating more density is important and often necessary, but should be done thoughtfully and strategically. And it is important to recognize that density does not necessarily create more affordable housing. In fact, in many cases it can lead to the loss of affordable housing.

PT’s December 2025 Upzone (now invalidated) ushered in a radical six-fold density increase (from 8- to 48-units per city block) for most of PT with no requirements for affordability. Even cities 60-80 times larger than us, like Seattle and Portland, don’t allow a 48-unit maximum per city block throughout their RII-equivalent zones without affordability restrictions.

Why did PT enact such a radical Upzone?

The current PT City Council believes in land use principles that can be summarized with two familiar phrases:

“Build, Baby, Build” & “Trickle Down”

These phrases capture the essence of the “laissez-faire”, free-market approach to creating housing affordability.

By letting developers build whatever is most profitable for them, City Council wants to enable more multi-unit market rate housing, which for our area means townhomes costing $500,000 or more. These are not affordable for the majority of our workforce, even those in the middle class, and definitely not for the low-income and very low-income folks who are most in need of housing.

What’s wrong with the City’s pro-growth arguments?

The PT City Council believes in land use principles that can be summarized with two familiar phrases:

“Build, Baby, Build” & “Trickle Down”

These phrases capture the essence of the “laissez-faire” free-market approach to creating housing affordability.

The City believes that over time, a glut of new housing will bring prices down – hence the goal of building everything, everywhere, all at once. But this free-market approach only works if the number of buyers or renters coming into the town is limited. In that scenario, housing supply exceeds demand, which causes prices to come down.

But that is not the world we live in. As a resort community with extraordinary appeal in a time of climate change and extreme wealth inequality, a huge number of well-off and even wealthy people will be moving to PT for retirement, often as wealthy climate migrants, or to buy second or third homes (a townhome would be perfect for that!).

Fires are burning throughout the Pacific Northwest; huge rivers and reservoirs are drying up in the Southwest; and the heat is unbearable in the Southeast. Our area is likely to have an endless flow of people looking for housing and willing to pay high prices. This is likely to cause increased demand rather than reduced demand, accelerate land speculation, and force housing prices to rise – not fall. In this scenario, the losers will be our workforce – teachers, nurses, baristas, waiters, shipwrights, artisans, artists, and small business folks. These people are our City’s most treasured resources!

The city also believes that eventually new housing will depreciate through lack of maintenance, thus becoming affordable. That is a slow and unreliable process. If you think depreciation works, check the prices of Victorian houses in Uptown – do you see any that are affordable? And shouldn’t we be trying to save older homes for the purpose of sustainability – not tearing them down?

What growth plan does AccountablePT support?

First, Accountable thinks that the current density limits are drastically in excess of what is needed. The city is far exceeding what the state of Washington requires PT to do. The State Growth Management Act (GMA) requires PT to provide capacity for 1,648 additional units by 2045, thereby housing 2,360 new residents (occupancy ratio of 1.43). Instead, the City’s projects that its new upzone, if built to maximum capacity, would provide capacity for 49,935 new residents in the RII residential zone alone by 2045 – in a town that currently has 10,600 residents total! At no time was there a public discussion of this plan to create far more residential capacity than required by the State. Indeed, the document projecting this enormous capacity was hidden from public view until a legal challenge made it available. This density increase is far too extreme. We believe that the density increase should be rolled back to what was approved by the PT Planning Commission – a four-fold rather than a six-fold increase in density.

Secondly, we believe new multiplexes should have some affordability restrictions. There are many ways to achieve this and other cities have great models for this. For example, one or more units in a building could be restricted for families with low or middle incomes. These restrictions should be put in place before building starts – they cannot be enacted after builders have permits.

Thirdly, new construction needs to come after necessary infrastructure improvements and should be limited if infrastructure cannot meet the needs. Right now, the Upzone requires no infrastructure – in fact, all requirements for off-street parking were eliminated. With a six-fold increase in density, you could easily have four or five times as many cars parked on a city block in your neighborhood when new buildings go up – at a time when most streets have no sidewalks, no curbs, no streetside parking lane, and no shoulders. Imagine what life would be like for seniors, the disabled, children, and cyclists with so many more parked cars lining our streets? People would have to walk in the street in many cases – since we have so few sidewalks and road shoulders will be filled with parked cars.

Fourthly, infrastructure is not just about parking, sidewalks, and paving. It is also about water and sewer capacity. That is a huge topic – we are already running out of swater!! We will cover water and sewer in a separate topic. But water is key – we need detailed discussions about water capacity and how it will be distributed. Developers shouldn’t get automatic rights to all our water!