Elements Of The Week: Land Use & Housing

WEAN's Housing Takeaways

• ADUs are not affordable housing: Island County lacks the enforcement capacity to enforce deed restrictions and affidavits to create affordability housing, as a policy, through Accessory Dwelling Units (whether attached or detached). The proposed 5-year affordability timeline for these units could create a rental bubble that would burst and worsen housing instability. Additionally, counties are prohibited by state law from stopping land owners from selling Detached ADUS as condominiums, which threatens fragmentation of rural land and violates rural zoning standards, if two ADUs per lot are allowed, as currently proposed. 
• Rural clusters as defined are illegal: Rural clusters, as currently defined by the Comprehensive Plan draft, challenge established legal standards against urban-scale development in rural zones. RCW 365-196-425 (5) (b)(iii): “ If a county allows bonus densities in a rural cluster, the resulting density after applying the bonus must be a rural density.” They also ignore a hard-won 30-year precedent of compromise between developers and environmentalists by slashing lot size minimums from 20 to 5. 
• Housing requires infrastructure: The County must concretely plan for infrastructure for sewage treatment and water needs in LAMIRDs, while adding multi-family dwellings and supportive housing in these areas. 

WEAN's Land Use Takeaways

• Lands valued for ecosystem functions are not identified or protected by mapped land-use designations within this element. Lands valued for ecological and climate resilience are conflated with lands for extractive use and are currently rendered administratively invisible by the mapping in this element. 
• Language has been altered to be less protective, increasing legal risk. Protective verbs like ”ensure,” “prohibit,” and “achieve” have been replaced with “evaluate,” “consider,” and “review.”
• Protective policies have been entirely removed from the plan, due to a claim of redundancy with Island County code; however, the code is required by law to be updated to reflect the plan, effectively eliminating these policies altogether. Instead of redundancy, we have the potential for erasure. The Comprehensive Plan is the foundation upon which Island County must be revised and sustained. Removing policies in this manner is dangerous and potentially unlawful. 

Submit Your Public Comment

Submit your comments to Island County on the Housing and Land Use Elements. 

Written comments can be submitted:

• Via the comment forms on the Island County 2045 website under the "Draft Comprehensive Plan" and "Draft Code" tabs.
• Via email: CompPlan@islandcountywa.gov.
• Via mail: Planning & Community Development, 1 NE 7th St, Coupeville, WA 98239.

Verbal comments can be submitted:

• At any Planning Commission meeting (in person or online)
• At Board Tuesday Regular meetings (in person or online)

See the Island County Agenda Center for upcoming meeting information.

Up Next: Climate and Natural Resources

This Wednesday, January 14, both the Board of Island County Commissioners and the Island County Planning Commission will meet to discuss draft Climate and Natural Resources elements of the Comprehensive Plan. The Wednesday BOCC workshop is open to public attendance but not to public comment. The public may comment orally at the start of the Planning Commission meeting that evening.

• BOCC Meeting, January 14, 2026, at 10:30 am. See agenda here.
• Planning Commission Meeting, January 14, 2026, at 6 pm. See agenda here.

Read the drafts, attend these sessions, and share your comments with the county.