Spokane zoning reform has made it easier and cheaper to add rental housing almost anywhere in the city: since 2022, Spokane has allowed multiple units on residential lots, dropped density caps on most lots, eliminated parking minimums citywide and paired those changes with tax incentives for new apartments. For owners of existing buildings, the result is a city where new competing supply is easier to build, while a new state rent cap limits how fast rents on older buildings can rise.
This guide walks through each change in the order it happened, using the city’s own ordinance pages and permit data, and then looks at what the shift means for anyone who already owns apartments in Spokane.
The starting point: a housing emergency in 2021
The current wave of changes traces back to July 26, 2021. On that date the mayor issued a Housing Emergency Proclamation, and the City Council adopted Spokane’s Housing Action Plan. Both framed housing supply as a shortage to be addressed through code changes and incentives rather than one-off projects.
The Census Bureau’s QuickFacts profile estimates 230,783 residents on July 1, 2025, an owner-occupied housing rate of 58.8% for 2020–2024 and a median gross rent of $1,215. Roughly four in ten occupied homes are rented, which is why the rules governing where and how rental housing can be built matter so much here.
BOCA: the 2022 interim ordinance
The first major step was Building Opportunity and Choices for All, or BOCA, adopted as Ordinance C36232. According to the city’s Building Opportunity and Choices for All page, the City Council held a public hearing on July 18, 2022, and the ordinance was expected to take effect in August 2022.
BOCA was an interim measure, but it was broad:
- Duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes became allowed citywide in residential zones.
- Attached houses, or townhomes, became allowed on all residential lots without a cap on units, except in the Residential Agriculture zone.
- Additional bonuses applied in designated Centers and Corridors.
The ordinance drew attention beyond Spokane. In a May 2023 city story noting recognition of the interim ordinance, a co-chair of the Washington chapter of the American Planning Association described it as “allowing all residential properties to develop up to four dwelling units per property.”
The residential-zone provisions of BOCA expired on December 18, 2023, after being extended. The Center and Corridor bonuses remained available until June 18, 2024. By then, permanent rules had replaced them.
Building Opportunity for Housing and HB 1110
The permanent rules came through the Building Opportunity for Housing amendments. The city’s Building Opportunity for Housing project page states that City Council approved the text amendments on November 20, 2023, under Ordinance C36459, and that the code changes took effect January 1, 2024. The city’s announcement noted that the regulations “also implement requirements from HB 1110,” Washington’s 2023 middle-housing law.
What changed on residential lots
The city’s summary of the amendments lists several shifts that matter for anyone building or buying in a residential zone:
- No lot density maximums for lots smaller than two acres.
- Reduced minimum lot sizes.
- Increased building heights, with reduced front and rear setbacks in some zones.
- No parking requirement for residential uses within half a mile of a transit stop.
A temporary four-unit cap and later fixes
On December 14, 2023, Council approved an emergency ordinance to limit the number of units in the R1 and R2 zones to four, describing it as temporary while the state refined its middle-housing law. A follow-up package of amendments to the Building Opportunity for Housing code passed unanimously at a January 27, 2025 public hearing and took effect March 6, 2025. Anyone underwriting a specific R1 or R2 lot should read the current code text for that zone, because the rules have been adjusted several times since 2023.
Parking minimums and building heights in 2024
The next set of changes came on August 12, 2024. At that meeting, Council passed three ordinances that bear directly on apartment development, according to the August 12, 2024 legislative meeting record:
- Ordinance C36556, covering Center and Corridor development and parking regulations, passed 4–1. Local reporting described it as ending minimum parking requirements citywide.
- Ordinance C36552, setting maximum residential heights and open space standards for multi-unit housing, passed 5–0.
- Ordinance C36548, creating a sales and use tax deferral program for affordable housing, passed 5–0.
Parking is often the binding constraint on small infill apartment sites. A lot that could physically hold 12 units but only had room for eight parking spaces used to be an eight-unit lot. Without a minimum, the number of units is set by the building envelope and by what lenders and renters will accept, not by a parking ratio in the code.
The tax side: MFTE and sales tax deferrals
Zoning tells a builder what is allowed. Spokane’s incentive programs change what pencils.
The multifamily tax exemption
Spokane overhauled its Multi-Family Tax Exemption program under Ordinance C36243 in August 2022. Under state law, RCW 84.14, the exemption removes the value of new residential improvements from property taxes for a set period. The city’s Multi-Family Tax Exemption page describes three terms:
- An 8-year market-rate exemption, allowed only within the Spokane Targeted Investment Area, which the city defined as 34 low-income census tracts.
- A 12-year exemption, available citywide, that requires income- and rent-restricted units: 25% of units for projects of 4 to 11 units, and 30% for projects of 12 or more.
- A 20-year exemption, the longest term the program offers.
Outside the targeted tracts, in what the city calls the Affordable Housing Emphasis Area, only the 12- and 20-year options are available.
Sales tax deferrals
In February 2023, Council passed Pavement to People, Ordinance C36357, aimed at development on downtown surface parking lots. The city’s announcement said it “waives the sales and use tax on new construction” for qualifying projects, with at least half the units kept affordable for 10 years. The city’s current incentives page lists the program as Parking 2 People and describes it as a sales tax deferral of about 9% for projects of two or more units. It also lists a commercial conversion deferral for conversion projects of four or more units.
2025 fee proposals
In July 2025, Mayor Lisa Brown announced a further set of proposals aimed at affordable housing production. According to the city’s July 7, 2025 release, they would let certain affordable housing projects defer up to $150,000 in building and street obstruction permit fees, set rules for waiving General Facilities Charges under state Senate Bill 5662, and rename the city’s 0.1% housing sales tax fund as the HEART Fund. These were proposals at the time of the announcement, and their details apply to income-restricted projects rather than market-rate apartments.
What the permit numbers show
Rule changes only matter if they produce buildings. Spokane’s permit data suggests they have. In a February 2024 city report on record residential permits, Spokane said it permitted a record 1,340 residential units in 2023, including 984 multifamily units, excluding conversions. For comparison, the city permitted 470 multifamily units in 2022, and the previous multifamily record was 506 units in 1996.
The 2023 figure is notable because it arrived the year after BOCA took effect and before the permanent code was in place, which suggests developers moved quickly once the interim rules made more sites eligible. Multifamily permits that year were roughly double the 1996 record.
Middle housing is a growing but still minority share. City permit data reported by the Spokane Journal of Business shows 140 middle-housing units permitted in 2024 out of 1,394 total, about 10%, with middle housing accounting for 17% of residential permits in 2025.
Larger projects continue as well. In Kendall Yards, Greenstone Corp. has proposed a 200-unit apartment building at 1175 W. Summit Parkway, reported at roughly $70 million and under city review as of mid-2026.
How Spokane zoning reform lines up with 2025 state laws
Spokane moved ahead of the state on several fronts, and the Legislature has since caught up. The Municipal Research and Services Center’s summary of 2025 planning legislation describes several bills that took effect July 27, 2025:
- SB 5184, the parking reform act, applies to cities and counties of 30,000 or more. Where parking is still required, it caps the requirement at 0.5 off-street stalls per multifamily unit and 1 per single-family unit, and it bars parking requirements for homes under 1,200 square feet, affordable and senior housing, and buildings changing use. Jurisdictions of 50,000 or more must comply by January 27, 2027.
- HB 1491 requires cities to designate station areas around qualifying light rail, commuter rail and bus rapid transit stops for higher-density housing, with minimum floor area ratios and a multifamily tax exemption program offered in every station area.
- SB 5558 ties the deadline for middle housing, accessory dwelling unit and design review updates to each jurisdiction’s periodic plan update.
Because Spokane already removed parking minimums citywide in 2024, SB 5184 mostly locks in a direction the city had already chosen. Its practical importance for Spokane owners is that a future council could not simply restore high parking ratios. The middle-housing deadline in SB 5558 also ties back to PlanSpokane 2046, discussed below.
The state rent cap changes the math for older buildings
While local rules have made new supply easier, a state law has changed how fast rents can rise in existing buildings. Washington’s 2025 rent stabilization law, codified at RCW 59.18.700, limits increases in any 12-month period to “seven percent plus the consumer price index, or 10 percent, whichever is less.” It took effect May 7, 2025, bars increases during the first 12 months of a tenancy and is set to expire July 1, 2040. The Washington State Department of Commerce announced that the maximum allowable rent increase for 2026 is 9.683%.
The exemptions in RCW 59.18.710 are where development and rent regulation meet:
- A unit whose first certificate of occupancy was issued 12 or fewer years before the rent-increase notice is exempt.
- Public housing authority, nonprofit and tax-credit housing are exempt.
- Some owner-occupied duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes are exempt, but not when the owner is a REIT, a corporation or an LLC with a corporate member.
In plain terms, a new building delivered in Spokane in 2026 can set and raise rents without the cap for its first 12 years, while a 1970s walk-up across the street cannot. Reporting on the law also notes that notice of an increase is now 90 days, up from 60.
What this means for Spokane apartment owners
Taken together, Spokane’s rule changes point in one direction: more housing, built more cheaply, in more places. For owners of existing apartment buildings, that has several practical consequences.
Competition from new supply
When parking minimums and density caps disappear, the cost of building competing units falls, especially on infill lots near transit and in the 34 tracts where the 8-year market-rate tax exemption applies. Owners of older buildings near those areas should expect new product to set the top of the local rent range, with older units competing on price and location rather than finishes.
Redevelopment value of the land
The same changes can raise the land value under an existing building. A small, older apartment building on a large lot, or a property with an oversized surface parking lot, may now have redevelopment potential that did not exist before 2022. That optionality is part of what a buyer looks at, and it is worth knowing about before setting a price. Our apartment building value calculator can help frame the income side of that comparison.
Rent growth is capped, expenses are not
The RCW 59.18.700 cap applies to any building more than 12 years past its first certificate of occupancy. Taxes, insurance and utilities are not capped. Owners who planned on large catch-up increases after a renovation now need to fit them within the annual limit, which in 2026 is 9.683%.
A simple example of the cap
Consider a unit in a 1985 building renting for $1,200 a month. Under the 2026 limit of 9.683%, the most that rent could rise in a 12-month period is about $116, to roughly $1,316, and only with the required notice. A unit in a building first occupied in 2020 is outside the cap until its 12-year window closes. Over several years, that difference can shape how buyers compare older and newer properties in the same neighborhood.
Questions to answer about your own property
Because the rules now vary by zone, location and building age, a short list of facts about a specific property goes a long way:
- What zone is the parcel in, and how many units would current code allow on it?
- Is it within half a mile of a transit stop, or within one of the 34 Spokane Targeted Investment Area tracts?
- When was the building’s first certificate of occupancy issued, and when does that make it subject to the state rent cap?
- Is there excess land or surface parking that a buyer might value as a development site?
What comes next: PlanSpokane 2046
Spokane’s next periodic comprehensive plan update, required under Washington’s Growth Management Act, is due in 2026. On the city’s PlanSpokane 2046 page, the city reports that Council approved a preferred alternative on May 18, 2026, that the draft plan’s public comment period ran from August 7 to October 2, 2026, and that a Plan Commission hearing is tentatively set for early November 2026. In July 2025, the city cited a goal of 22,359 new housing units by 2046.
The comprehensive plan sets the land-use map that future zoning has to follow, so it is the next place where decisions about density in Spokane’s centers and corridors will be made. For a wider view of how Spokane compares with other cities in the state, see our Washington market overview, and for local pricing context, visit our Spokane market page.
