Title
AN ORDINANCE declaring a one-year interim zoning ordinance regulating temporary small house sites; establishing a work plan and directing the executive to prepare a study to address the elements in the work plan necessitating the interim zoning ordinance; amending Ordinance 12196, Section 9, as amended, and K.C.C. 20.20.020, adding a new chapter to K.C.C. Title 21A; and declaring an emergency.
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BE IT ORDAINED BY THE COUNCIL OF KING COUNTY:
SECTION 1. Findings:
A. King County has the authority, under to constitutional police powers, home rule authority, and the Washington state Growth Management Act, including chapter 36.70A RCW, to establish an interim zoning ordinance while the county studies related land use issues.
B. The lack of affordable housing and the crisis of homelessness are being felt in every community in the county. The 2020 point-in-time count, locally called Count Us In, estimated 11,751 individuals experiencing homelessness in King County, representing a five percent increase compared to 2019.
C. The county executive signed a local proclamation of emergency due to homelessness affecting King County in 2015.
D. The county and its regional partners have made numerous efforts to make homelessness rare, brief and one-time, including work through the King County consortium, All Home, the homelessness regional governance efforts and allocation of state and federal funding and through work of the growth management planning council.
E. Despite the regional and local efforts to address housing and homelessness, the county faces a homelessness challenge that requires a more expansive approach to providing safe housing for those experiencing homelessness on temporary, interim and permanent bases.
F. Ordinance 15170 created a temporary use permit for homeless encampments, of which those provisions would have expired January 1, 2015, but Ordinance 17950 extended those provisions through January 1, 2025.
G. King County finds that t...
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