Letter to the Editor: LFP officials respond to article on housing policies

To the Editor:

As elected officials for the City of Lake Forest Park, we would like to reply to the misleading article on our community’s housing policies that appeared recently in the Shoreline Area News. (see article here)

Lake Forest Park is a small and welcoming city of approximately 13,630 residents and is relatively completely built out. We are an environmentally sensitive area, with several streams, many steep ravines, and a substantial tree canopy that mitigates carbon emissions from the two major State highways that run the length of our city, and provide health benefits to our community and neighboring cities.

Lake Forest Park is overwhelmingly residential, with very limited commercial space, which means that we are dependent on property tax revenues to fund basic city services. Under state law, property tax revenue growth citywide is capped at 1% per year, which provides the city only about $34,000 a year to keep up with rising costs. 

We are currently dealing with a substantial gap between our basic operating expenses and these modest revenues, which barely cover annual increases in employee health insurance costs. With a population density of 3,839 per square mile, Lake Forest Park is similar to adjacent Kenmore, despite having significantly more critical areas and tree canopy.

Lake Forest Park does not have the revenue to build its own affordable housing. Unlike Bothell, the city has no vacant land to donate for housing. Still, we have incentivized affordable housing through our zoning code. 

For many years, Lake Forest Park zoning has:

• Required new multi-family housing to include affordable unit(s), along with tax incentives for affordable units.
• Included flexible provisions for Accessory Dwelling Units, designed to support multi-generation housing and housing diversity.
• Provided for supportive housing, including a number of existing adult family care homes.
• Allowed capacity of many hundreds of new residential units at Town Center and Southern Gateway, exceeding the regional growth targets allocated to our city under the Growth Management Act and King County Countywide Planning Policies.
• Allowed construction of homeless facilities at a location along Ballinger Way.

In addition, our community has been actively exploring opportunities for affordable home ownership, not just rental housing, with a local community land trust. But this first requires locating and funding a suitable property in our built-out community – something we are seeking.

Our new Comprehensive Plan (and zoning regulations later this year) go even further. Lake Forest Park’s new Comp Plan was timely with adoption in December of 2024 and is in full compliance with new state laws and all King County policy guidance. 

The Comp Plan:

• Eliminates single family land use designations pursuant to state law, so that each lot in Lake Forest Park now can have up to 3 living units.
• Encourages multi-unit and mixed-use development near planned or existing transit stops and along transit corridors.
• Encourages many types of “middle housing” – two or more living units on one property that can be attached, stacked or clustered.
• Paves the way for these living units to be rented or sold individually, which has the added benefit of increasing generational wealth.
• Explores alternative models for housing, especially multi-generational arrangements such as home shares.

Lake Forest Park is privileged to have an engaged, active, and welcoming community. Every city has its unique environmental and affordable housing challenges, so every city’s solutions to both issues will not look the same. 

We appreciate this opportunity to share our commitments to affordable and attainable housing, housing diversity, and quality of life.

Sincerely,

Tom French, Mayor
Lorri Bodi, Deputy Mayor
Tracy Furutani, Council Vice-Chair
Lake Forest Park WA