28-01-2025
This Pierce County city raised the cost to build bigger homes. 1-bedrooms got cheaper
Some builders are upset about a change the city of Sumner just made that charges them per bedroom, instead of a flat fee, in an effort to help develop the city's parks.
Local governments in Washington state can charge builders one-time impact fees to help pay for services that will have to increase to keep up with that growth, such as roads and schools. Sumner charges developers a park-impact fee to help build more parks for the additional residents new homes bring.
The City Council voted 6-0 at its meeting Jan. 21 to change that fee to charge per bedroom.
The Building Industry Association of Washington said in a news release that the fees are 'astronomical' and that the change is 'stifling housing affordability.'
Kurt Wilson, a local builder with Soundbuilt Homes, said in the release: 'People need homes first. Then we can talk about how to fund new parks. Once people own a home, they may be able to afford an incremental tax to build more parks.'
City spokesperson Carmen Palmer said the change is part of a new state requirement, passed by the Legislature in 2023, that says such fees have to 'reflect the proportionate impact of new housing units, including multifamily and condominium units, based on the square footage, number of bedrooms, or trips generated, in the housing unit in order to produce a proportionally lower impact fee for smaller housing units.'
Sumner chose the per-bedroom approach. Other local cities chose to go by square-footage, she said.
'Following our Housing Affordability Action Plan, this new fee structure incentivizes developing smaller units instead of large homes,' Palmer said in an email. 'Four-bedroom new build homes tend not to be the most affordable when they hit the market. People needing affordable housing look for smaller units and ADUs, and these new fee changes actually help those get more affordable.'
A five-bedroom home used to pay the same fee as a tiny home, Palmer wrote, 'even though the overall cost of the homes, and their impact on infrastructure, would be likely different.'
She acknowledged that the fees have doubled for a home with four or more bedrooms, but she pointed out that it's a different story for smaller homes. The fees for a two- to three-bedroom home saw about a 15-percent increase, and the fees went down for a zero- to one-bedroom home, she said.
She gave the example that a one-bedroom house used to pay about $3,527. This year it will pay about $3,369. A four-bedroom house paid about $3,527 last year. Now it pays about $6,738.
'The new fee structure charges based on number of rooms, whether the new development is single-family or multi-family,' Palmer explained in an email. 'That means a 2-bedroom apartment pays the same as a 2-bedroom house; both pay less than a 5-bedroom house.'
Council Members Barbara Bitetto, Pat Clerget, Pat Cole, Andy Elfers, Greg Reinke and Matthew Kenna voted to pass the new fee structure. Council Member Carla Bowman wasn't at the meeting.
'Parks are really important, especially as we start developing more concentrated, smaller lawns for families,' Bitetto said at the meeting.
Her two grandsons don't have a large yard, she said.
'They need to get out and run, and so to have a park within a reasonable distance is really important,' Bitetto said. 'I think as we move forward and we need more density in our population, we have to continue collecting funds, especially on new development.'
Council Member Elfers said that he had a good discussion with the Master Builders Association and understood that they were opposed to the new approach to fees. He also said he thought the change was fair.
'Parks are obviously important, and I think it makes sense to charge the fee based on the number of people that are going to use the parks,' he said. 'Having a big family, I understand that it adds more of a fee to a bigger house. Four-bedroom houses or three-bedroom houses pay a lot more, but I also know my kids use the park a lot more than someone with a studio apartment.'
The city needs more parks, he said. With the move from a flat fee per house to charging based on size, he said the fees aren't increasing significantly.
Palmer told The News Tribune that the city works hard to bring in grants for its parks projects, which often require matching funds. Impact fees help with that, she said. The fees can't be the only source of funding for a project, she said, according to state law.
'As we increase housing of all types, particularly smaller units or multi-family units that are more affordable, many of the new housing types do not have yards to enjoy or recreate,' Palmer wrote. 'This makes investment in new and existing parks an important part of building a community that is healthy.'
Wilson, the local builder, told The News Tribune in a phone call that he wasn't aware of any projects builders are considering in Sumner that would be stopped by the change.
'I'm not going to stop building because the fees go up,' he said. 'We're just taking more people that have the American Dream of owning a home in Sumner' out of the market.
He said Sumner is the first city in the South Sound that he's aware of to take a per-bedroom approach.
'It's frustrating to see the fee structure now disincentivizing, through higher fees, the construction of three- or four-bedroom homes,' he told The News Tribune.
City staff at the meeting Jan. 21 told the council that Puyallup and Edgewood both base their fees on the square footage of a home.
'Across the board in the Puget Sound, we continue to see school, traffic, park, fire, these different fees either coming about that don't already exist, or being raised,' Wilson said.
Those fee increases affect the region's housing crisis, he said.
'We're trying to provide attainable housing in the marketplace,' he said. 'That continues to get more and more difficult as regulations and fees continue to ratchet up.'
Washington state, especially the Puget Sound, needs more housing, he said, noting that the state Department of Commerce projected in 2023 that Washington needs 1.1 million more homes in the coming 20 years.
'We're staring San Francisco right in the face,' Wilson said. 'Bedroom by bedroom is not the best way to do this.'
The BIAW release said the group is asking lawmakers in Olympia to limit increases to impact fees and to make them more transparent.
'It's easy to say: 'Tax growth,' but in the end, it's exacerbating our housing crisis in the Puget Sound jurisdiction, as fees and regulations continue to restrict growth,' Wilson told The News Tribune.
Palmer said the city did a budget survey last year and that 'managing growth' was one of residents' top priorities.
'We do not want to charge so much in impact fees that new development is not tenable, yet we also cannot give new development a 'free pass' to use all the services that existing residents are expected to pay for alone,' she wrote. 'We must consider the affordability of all our homes, not just the new ones.'
