KITSAP REGIONAL COORDINATING COUNCIL PRE-APPROVED ADU PLANS

The Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council has posted on their webpage they have begun work on coordinating for pre-approved ADUs plans for Kitsap County, as well as the cities of Bainbridge Island, Bremerton, Port Orchard and Poulsbo.

Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council Pre-Approved ADU plans

The Pre-Approved plans will ideally help speed up the planning, permitting and construction process so the applicants can use it as soon as possible.

I like this approach to add ADUs and help incentivize their utilization. Making them more approachable, like an online shopping process where you just click and the purchase is done and the item is on the way, makes sense.

It seems like four plans are available now, with an additional two more plan sets coming later.

I’d like to see one of those set plans be a 2 ADU unit, ideally stacked for those lots in Kitsap County UGAs (Urban Growth Areas) that allow up to two ADUs per lot. Some of the lots are constrained in footprint size, and building up is a great way to address this.

True Built Homes Shasta Model, which can be configured as a two story ADU.

While this is a step in the right direction for helping applicants utilize ADUs, I still feel strongly about cities, counties and governments using a tax abatement program for ADUs for a set period years, such as 5 years for one ADU, or 10 years for two ADUs. They could make the requirements for earning this abatement be something like the ADU has to be rented out at or below fair market value, and if that requirement is not met the remainder of the tax abatement time period is forfeit.

I am looking forward to seeing more density and value added from ADUs.