S-4678.1
SUBSTITUTE SENATE BILL 6015
State of Washington
69th Legislature
2026 Regular Session
By Senate Housing (originally sponsored by Senators Bateman, Frame, Gildon, Liias, Lovelett, Nobles, Salomon, and Shewmake)
READ FIRST TIME 02/04/26.
AN ACT Relating to permit-ready residential building plans; amending RCW 43.22.460 ; adding a new section to chapter 43.22 RCW; adding a new section to chapter 36.70A RCW; creating a new section; and providing an effective date.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:
NEW SECTION. Sec. 1. The legislature finds that Washington continues to face a housing shortage at all income levels. According to the department of commerce, the state must add more than 1,000,000 homes by 2044 to meet projected population growth and housing needs. Local permitting activity for both single-family and multifamily housing has declined in recent years, and permitting timelines frequently exceed state standards, adding cost and uncertainty for builders and homebuyers alike.
The legislature further finds that complex and inconsistent local design standards and permitting processes can add substantial cost and delay to new housing development, particularly for small builders and for missing middle housing types such as duplexes, triplexes, stacked flats, and townhomes. The legislature finds that providing preapproved permit-ready residential building plans and model ordinances can shorten permitting timelines, increase predictability, and support local implementation of state housing goals. Factory built housing can further reduce time and cost to build and should be supported through a consistent statewide framework so that plans can be more easily used across jurisdictions. It is therefore the intent of the legislature to facilitate increased housing production and predictability by creating a state-approved program for permit-ready factory built housing and exempting qualifying projects from local architectural and aesthetic design requirements unrelated to health and safety.