King County officials have made several changes to the agenda of Thursday’s meeting and additional meeting dates since this story was first published. The Land Use, Housing and Community Health subcommittee will meet at 6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 15, at the Penny Farcy Building. The latest agenda says the group will discuss Community Business Zone Amendments in the Vashon Town Core, P-suffix Amendments, a Vashon Highway Rural Design Special District Overlay and accessory dwelling units in Vashon Rural Town. The same subcomittee will meet again Jan. 10 and discuss affordable housing and zoning at that time. A new meeting for the full Community Advisory Committee has not yet been announced.

A citizens’ panel addressing the island’s lack of affordable housing as part of a King County long-term planning effort is slated to make recommendations regarding zoning and the creation of accessory dwelling units at a meeting this Thursday.

The Land Use, Housing and Health subcommittee has been meeting monthly since spring, participating in the county’s process to develop a Community Service Area Plan for the island, an update to Vashon’s previous Town Plan. The final version, to be completed by June 1, will be folded into the county’s Comprehensive Plan, which will guide the county’s development and capital improvement decisions over the next 20 years.

The subcommittee’s agenda for Thursday’s meeting — which is open to the public but is a working meeting for the group — includes several items related to housing and land use. Topics include the possibility of supporting and encouraging the “upzoning” of parcels of land within targeted areas near town to allow for greater density; creating incentives for property owners to develop accessory dwelling units on their land and the establishment of a special district overlay that would require developers to set a aside a percentage of a project as affordable housing for a set number of years.

Also on the agenda is another plan for creating affordable housing, drafted by community members outside the county process, which islander Martin Baker presented to the subcommittee last week. The plan calls for building 10 affordable dwelling units annually in Vashon’s town core.

The subcommittee, which may not get to all its agenda items on Thursday, will likely make one recommendation on some items and two or three on others, giving the community options, said Bradley Clark, a planner with the county who is leading the process. The subcommittee will bring its recommendations to the full advisory group next month.

The issues the seven-member subcommittee is tackling have long been difficult ones on Vashon, where affordable housing is increasingly scarce, but where many also worry about over-tapping Vashon’s limited water supply and harming its rural character. A meeting last week drew some 40 people and was frequently contentious.

“We want to provide housing for people who deeply need it and not use up all the water and not ruin the character of the island,” said Kim Goforth, an architect and member of the subcommittee. “It is really, really hard.”

As part of this process, subcommittee members say they have consulted an array of King County specialists on a variety of topics, as well as board members of Water District 19, which provides water for Vashon town and the nearby surrounding area. Additionally, the county hosted a public meeting in October, which more than 100 people attended and weighed in on the possibility of expanding the town core and upzoning portions of the larger “rural town” area. Because of comments at that meeting and feedback received afterward, the subcommittee has dropped some ideas all or in part, including expanding the town core.

Clark said subcommittee members have different views on how best to proceed but also have important areas of agreement, including that more affordable housing is needed for low- and moderate-income islanders and that it should include a variety of housing options.

“The real issue is the ratio of those things, deeply affordable units to moderate units, and how much energy and incentives should this plan put on those,” he added.

Clark noted that the subcommittee will not prescribe how many new affordable “dwelling units” should be built on the island, but he believes the majority of the group would support the creation of 120 to 150 additional housing units added over the course of the next 10 years for people making 80 percent of the area’s median income (AMI) and less. Currently, 80 percent of the AMI is $48,500 for one person and $69,500 for a family of four. Regardless of what is built, Clark said development would be limited by resources and infrastructure.

“It is 100 percent controlled by water, waste water and road capacity. Everything has to go through those filters,” he said.

Chris Szala, a member of the subcommittee and the executive director of Vashon HouseHold, said he believes the addition of 100 housing units would change Vashon’s rental market, which housing advocates say is high priced and insufficient for demand.

“If we could put that in circulation, some of the trailers would go back to $400 in monthly rent instead of $900,” he said.

Proponents of some of the measures the subcommittee is considering caution that there is no guarantee any zoning changes would result in the development of new housing, since housing projects require a nonprofit, private property owner or commercial developer to carry them out and cannot be mandated. Still, they say, allowing higher density zoning in some areas could make larger projects pencil out for developers when smaller projects wouldn’t, increasing the chances for the creation of housing. Some also say an increase in the number of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) — sometimes called mother-in-law apartments — would also help address the housing crisis on Vashon. ADUs would diversify Vashon’s affordable housing stock and would be easier to develop, since they can be built without requiring an additional water share under District 19 rules. New water share are currently unavailable because of a waiting list that could stretch as long as six years out.

And finally, they say that inclusionary zoning, the practice of designating some units as affordable within a larger project, could be a useful tool, potentially adding different types of housing and income diversity to the island’s housing stock. Szala noted that King County could stipulate that projects need to keep a percent of their housing affordable for as long as 50 years, addressing concerns some have raised that such zoning might produce affordable housing for only short a time.

However, while many people agree that more affordable housing is needed on the island, many islanders have taken issue with the work of the group, concerned that too much housing could stress island resources, particularly water, and detract from the rural nature of the island.

Concerns along those lines were reflected in the proposal Baker presented last week. He drafted it with Frank Jackson, a member of the Groundwater Protection Committee, with input from many other islanders, several of whom were appeared to be in attendance at the meeting.

Baker is the former deputy director of Seattle Public Utilities and chaired the sewer and water subcommittee for the 1986 Community Plan and co-chaired the 1996 Town Plan. Following last week’s meeting, he said he became involved in this process because he was worried about the analysis he was seeing, particularly regarding upzoning and expansion of the town boundary. He also noted that he and others he has been working with care about the issue of affordable housing and want to see more of it on the island, but would like to see pursue a different model. He added that the island’s long-range planning has always pursued smart growth principles, including limited density, a distinct rural town and protection for the island’s rural resources and character.

“We have to be very careful when talking about zoning or density … so those things are protected,” he added.

With those concerns in mind, as well as Vashon’s limited water, Baker and Jackson drafted their proposal for developing 10 affordable dwelling units per year in the town core, using county or state incentives, such as reduced property taxes, direct subsidies to owners to keep rents affordable and priority given to water shares for affordable housing.

Baker noted that the plan represents “something that is not in place today, but could be put in place through the county if we organize.” According to a draft of the plan Baker provided, housing units would be built more quickly and predictably than with the county’s upzone, which they say would benefit private developers, and units would remain affordable — not subject to the time limits of inclusionary zoning covenants. Additionally, if “affordable” housing were defined as for people who make 60 percent or less of the AMI, the proposal would focus on the people the plan is intended to help and could be implemented in an incremental way, with adjustments made as needed.

“We have to do this within our island set of limits, and once those limits are surpassed, we have lost what everyone treasures,” he said.

The county will hold two meetings open to the public in the coming month regarding housing and land use as well as the broader Community Service Area Plan. Both of them will be working meetings, but the last 20 minutes will be set aside for public comment. A public forum on affordable housing — not yet scheduled — will be held at the end of January or the beginning of February. A public meeting on the proposed final draft of the Community Service Area Plan is slated for March.

Clark noted that since spring, the majority of public engagement has been focused on the 15-member Community Advisory Group and developing the skeleton of a plan. Moving ahead into the next three months, county officials will present more specific details to the broader Vashon-Maury community and want to hear from as many different islanders as possible.

“A strong community plan relies on the ideas of and involvement from citizens across the full spectrum of ages and interests,” he said.

The Land Use, Housing and Health meeting will meet at 6 p.m. at the Penny Farcy Building this Thursday and again Jan. 10.

For more information, talk to a community advisory group member or email Clark at Bradley.Clark@kingcounty.gov. See also the county’s Department of Permitting and Environmental Review website.