I am trying to fill out the how we grow survey and it won't proceed beyond the first two questions.

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I am very concerned about the direction we're going. Out in the county, trees are coming down and huge parcels of land are being replaced with mowed lawns and single family mansions. Nobody is constraining this. Meanwhile, the City of Bellingham has many neighborhoods with modestly-sized homes as well as a neighborhoods with huge lots and large homes. If the city treats all neighborhoods with the same rules, then the pattern of the rich maintaining huge lots with huge homes and the rest of the people living in downsized accommodations will continue. More people will move out to the uncontrolled County, and the neighborhoods that become less livable because they are too dense and lack parking will be even less desirable.

What do people need? That depends on individual stories and our phases of life. Rentals and communal housing works well for some. Small homes work for others. People with larger families need larger living spaces. The elderly often need in-home care. How can we design our cities to support these different needs.

Our parking needs aren't going away, and with the growing adoption of EVs more people need garages with L2 chargers inside.

Please consider desirability. If you allow a neighborhood to sell their home to a developer who will tear it down and replace it with a fourplex, will the changes made reduce the value of the homes next door? If you don't handle safeguarding the neighbor from an increase in noise and traffic, it will. This shouldn't be allowed without serious compensation.

Regarding parking, reducing parking minimums and moving parking to under ground/under building may be worth it in the long term. Freeing up more lots for housing and business. While under ground/under building parking is more expensive over time it will free up more space for more a diversity of building types and allow for more of them, increasing tax revenue per lot. A key to the success of this may be the city, builders and financiers working together to ensure the buildings we need are built.

Focus efforts on building a variety of housing types. We are in a housing crisis and we can no longer afford to prioritize speculative investments and parking lots over housing people. Right now there is a major shortage of middle housing. Bellingham is full of diverse social and economic backgrounds and that will only continue to be the case in the future. We need housing units that can fit the needs of all of those backgrounds. Homes that individuals and families can right size into are extremely important (duplex, triplex, townhomes, live-work, courtyard). Not everyone needs or wants an apartment or single family home. We should reduce height restrictions on the downtown core and other designated urban villages. On top of all of this we need to guarantee that affordable units are included with the majority of new developments. Affordability needs to be baked in otherwise we can't hope to solve the housing affordability problem.

Turning open space into surface parking on private land turns neighborhoods into parking lots. Clustering housing and arranging parking areas is key to preventing all our land from
becoming hardened surface. Large trees must be allowed space, and this can be accomplished only by limiting size of houses/footprint and clustering. Continuing the single family form just in smaller pieces-a driveway and parking, house maxed out for sites is going to create unlivable and unsustainable environments. Row housing, courtyard condoes and other forms need to be considered rather than the diagrams that show smaller cut up areas that will inevitably have smaller setbacks (no space or more parking in remaining spaces).

Owner occupancy also needs to be considered as speculative ownership always results in less desirable outcomes for neighborhoods as profit, not livability is the driving factor. A reasonable example are the 60’s era condoes on N Forest St. This provided secure housing but has not been repeated often. Clustered small housing efforts are also rare but should be pursued on larger lots. We should be raising height limits downtown and in Urban villages, and penalizing speculative locking up of properties (Macs, parking lots off Meridian, PH former Joe’s site, empty downtown sites etc) instead of destroying historic building and open space.

Hi. I was not able to attend but had a question about the Parking plan. I looked at the survey and didn't see something I was thinking about as an answer.

Is there any thought to keeping or even INCREASING parking requirements, but then eliminating street parking to make more room for bikes, bus lanes, larger sidewalks, etc. If we could move cars off the street and onto private residential/commercial property it would do a lot for the mobility of the city as a whole.

I'm confused about how eliminating parking spots on property is going to allow us to reduce parking spots on streets to make room for bike lanes.

Yes there should still be single family housing on larger lots. Providing a variety of housing means exactly that, and one type is traditional single family neighborhood. Some people prefer to have more space and less noise. It needs to continue to be an option Bellingham

Excited to learn more about your plans.

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