Lawmakers just passed groundbreaking bills on parking, TOD, and more.
There's a healthy competition brewing between states that are taking action for housing abundance. But as of May 2025, Washington leads the pack. Its legislature just passed best-in-the-US bills on both parking and transit-oriented development, along with a half-dozen other policies that address the state's housing shortage and resulting affordability crisis in several critical ways.
These wins come on the heels of Washington's legalization of co-living in 2024, middle housing and ADUs in 2023, and an array of bills passed in both years that make it easier to build the homes Washingtonians need.
There's no way to precisely quantify it, but I feel confident making the claim that Washington's cumulative legislation adds up to the most any rival state has yet done- at least for the moment, as competitors nip at Washington's heels!
I gave a preview of Washington's 2025 housing bills in a previous article. Below, I'll run through highlights that illustrate why, together with the previous years' wins, the bills passed this year elevate Washington to best in class. But first, a little more context…
A quick recap of the interstate zoning reform race

The move from local to statewide zoning reform started in California more than a decade ago in response to local government intransigence on allowing more housing. The Golden State has had some solid wins - on accessory dwelling units (ADUs, aka "backyard cottages" in particular) - but messy, high-stakes politics continue to mire progress.

Oregon leapt into the spotlight in 2019 by legalizing middle housing, followed in 2022 by major parking reform.

Washington had its "year of housing" in 2023 with a suite of bills headlined by the legalization of middle housing, and then upped the ante in 2024's "short" session.

Also in 2023, the Montana Miracle eliminated numerous barriers to more homes in Big Sky Country, notably for mixed-use apartments and ADUs. The state just pulled a repeat in 2025, passing strong parking reform and more.

Other states that have passed zoning reforms of various stripes include Colorado, Massachusetts, Arizona, and Hawaii.

If you include north of the border, British Columbia's 2023 package of reforms took the crown for all of North America and indisputably held it- until now that is, with Washington perhaps ahead by a nose! BC's transit-oriented development policy, or TOD, is stronger, but its parking reform is weaker. What's more, it hasn't yet legalized co-living or ended roommate bans like Washington has.
Washington's Housing Billapalooza 2025
SB 5184 caps and eliminates parking mandates
Parking policy IS housing policy: laws that force the construction of too much parking thwart housing by adding cost and taking up space. Parking politics are gnarly however, and before now Oregon was the only state able to enact strong parking reform.
SB 5184, or the Parking Reform and Modernization Act, works differently than Oregon's administrative reform, but it's comparably strong. And we can also add Montana to the list, where the legislature just passed a parking bill modeled closely after Washington's.
Other states - notably California - have passed incremental reforms, typically tied to transit proximity. In contrast, SB 5184 is based on the reality that parking mandates can be detrimental to housing anywhere and everywhere. As my colleague Catie Gould explains,
bill champion Senator Jessica Bateman "flipped the debate from 'WHERE should mandates apply' (geographically) to 'WHEN should mandates apply' (in what circumstances). It worked. Instead of nitpicking over transit service, the conversation shifted to, for example, whether it's okay for excessive parking mandates to prevent a new daycare or senior housing development from opening."
SB 5184 caps minimums for all multifamily buildings - that's duplexes to skyscrapers, townhomes to small apartment buildings - at 0.5 spaces per home and fully ...

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