Sammamish residents got a chance to voice their opinion about housing in the city at an April 25 open house.

The event was held to gather feedback on Sammamish’s Home Grown project, a plan for city goals regarding housing policy and strategy.

Home Grown’s purpose is to inform the implementation of policies that appear in the upcoming update of the Comprehensive Plan’s housing section, which was last adopted in 2006. The city adopted and updated the Comprehensive Plan in 2015, and now the housing plan must be updated as well.

Senior planner Doug McIntyre said the open house was the first informal method for the public to engage in the topic after work began in September 2017. Sammamish staff and planning commissioners attended the event to talk to the public and answer questions. The city also held an online survey between March and April that drew almost 500 responses, McIntyre said.

City staff are looking to “bring the housing plan up to speed, respond to a lot of the growth that we have seen, try to identify the gaps we have and ways we can help the supply meet the demand,” McIntyre said.

So far, feedback received has identified affordability of housing as a large issue, but not the biggest concern for citizens. McIntyre said concerns about housing fitting in with the established neighborhood character was the top issue from all of the feedback received. He also heard from residents whowant to but have had trouble trying to downsize.

“We had really good conversations with a couple folks … They love Sammamish and they’ve been in the community since the (1970s), but they had a really large home and wanted to downsize and the smaller housing sizes are just not there,” McIntyre said. “They want one-story living, something smaller that they can live out their lives in. There might be some of that, but if you find it, there is a ton of competition and it’s just as expensive.”

As staff collects feedback from citizens they are working with the city’s Planning Commission, which is the lead advisory body for the project, on a draft plan. McIntyre said the draft plan should be complete by July. Once it is finished and receives a recommendation from the commission, the plan would appear at a council meeting for approval.

“Starting in September we are planning to start with City Council,” McIntyre said. “By the end of October or November, hopefully we have an adopted plan.”

The next joint planning meeting with the Planning Commission and Human Services Committee will be held on May 24 at City Hall, he said. The city plans to hold another open housing in the coming months, but a date has not been chosen yet.

“It’s a really important document,” McIntyre said. “We are really trying to be transparent about how we are implementing our policy. This is a really good example, we are taking the policy how it is written and telling them how we are turning it into action.”

More information on the project is available on the city’s website under the Community Development department’s current projects section.