There was plenty of yelling at Monday night’s meeting about Middle Housing, but one of the topics where people expressed their sheer frustration most intensely was the question of homes that are being used for co-living.
This is currently not allowed in Bellevue, so residents have complaints where the rules are not being enforced, and their neighbors have a dozen or more cars parked all over, with an out of state absentee property owner, etc. Since the state passed a law to allow co-living in 2023 (HB 1998), we know we will have co-living, and we have until December 31st to finalize the rules around it. This would not apply to all areas of the city; just where six units are allowed by right.
The Middle Housing LUCA, for which City Council is having a crucial meeting on May 13th (Tuesday next week), seems likely to expand the areas where six units are allowed by right significantly. Based on the requirement of HB 1110, parcels within a 1/4 mile walk of Link and current and future RapidRide stations would be allowed to have 6 units by right, whether the last two units are affordable or not. The city is proposing to go beyond that to allow 6 units by right for areas that are 1/2 mile walk from those Major Transit stations, and also create a perimeter around Downtown, Crossroads, Eastgate, Factoria, Bel-Red, Wilburton, and East Main that would allow 6 units by right as well.
For the parcels that allow 6 units by right or are in mixed use areas, owners may create any of these four co-housing types starting in January 2026.
1) House retrofits
This is the most straightforward way to add households to existing homes. You just need to put a lock on the bedroom doors, and bedrooms already have to be at least 75 sqft, with at least 50 sqft per person living in it. There would be a shared kitchen, shared bathrooms in some cases, and possibly other shared living spaces, but it seems likely that living rooms and dens would also be converted to be rentable.
2) Intentional co-living
This should be a premium lifestyle option for people who are looking to build communities with like-minded people they enjoy socializing and eating with. The units inside these could include a variety of studio, one bedroom, two bedroom, and three bedroom homes, but they would always share a kitchen. I’ve heard there’s sometimes a private chef. Given the huge amount of effort people put in to try to find the community, raise funding, and create their ideal homes, and how much people talk about this, successful communities are strikingly hard to find.
3) Purpose-built, dorm-style nanohousing
Seattle has a good example (The Karsti), which has 52 units on a 5000 square foot lot. A typical unit might be 180 or 220 sqft, and there is a shared kitchen. It is similar to Bellevue’s microhousing typology, but those are up to 320 sqft each and would have their own kitchens. If I were a young person who didn’t cook, I could see this being a fun lifestyle; it would depend very much on the personality of the property managers and the vibe of the other residents. This is naturally affordable to households in the 35-55% income level range without any subsidy, and the building would also qualify for affordable housing incentive programs like MFTE tax relief. The Karsti looks nice because it was designed by Neiman Taber, but there’s no guarantee it wouldn’t be done to a low standard instead.
4) Boutique hotels
I think there will be some really fun places to stay as a result of these co-housing rules, but they may be structures that the neighbors didn’t expect.
The main characteristics of co-housing are that each unit is lockable, not have their own kitchen, and possibly share bathrooms as well, and unless Bellevue goes to the trouble of conducting a traffic study, they will not be required to have parking within a 0.5 mile walking distance of a major transit stop. The definition of major transit stop under HB 1998 is more expansive than for Middle Housing (HB 1110) or ADUs (HB 1337); it includes bus lines that have 4 hours per day of 4x/hourly service or more.
In areas that are farther from transit, one parking spot would be required for every four units, if Bellevue follows the legislators’ vision when we produce the Co-Living LUCA this fall. It’s possible that we could be more generous to the developers and exempt them from parking in additional areas.
Because Bellevue seems likely to pass generous Middle Housing rules, these co-living structures can be built 10 feet closer to the front setback, 10 feet closer to the rear setback, and wider as well (the change to the side setbacks depends on the neighborhood’s zoning). The increased FAR levels allowed via Middle Housing will probably mean structures about 2-3x as large as allowed for single family homes, so the structures will be bigger overall, potentially allowing a huge number of the co-living units. If Bellevue chooses the state minimum for the Middle Housing LUCA instead, we might have the same setbacks and structure size as a single family house, significantly limiting the impact of the co-living model.
If a unit is converted from a single family home, the walls between the units are unlikely to meet fire code for this type of tenancy.
Presumably the Middle Housing rule about 300 sqft of parking/unheated storage bonus space per unit that doesn’t count against FAR would not apply to these, and it’s not clear yet if they could have ADUs on the parcel in addition to the co-living structure(s). I think it would allow a tiny home development, with free-standing structures and a separate facility for kitchen and bathroom facilities, but that would not be an optimized use of the space.
It would be possible to sidestep this question for the areas that are not required to allow six units by right under HB 1110, while still getting the added density for Middle Housing. We’d need to create a new de minimis fee-in-lieu (I’ve proposed that it be $10,000 per unit) for the fifth and sixth units in areas that are outside of the 1/4 mile walking distance from major transit, but within the 1/2 mile, or inside the 1/4 mile walking distance from the countywide and regional growth centers mentioned above.
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