The Comprehensive and Scalable Starter Home Production Plan:
Opening doors to homeownership in Washington state.
Neighborhood roots. Financial security. A deep sense of belonging. Homeownership nurtures each of these. But buying a first home—the start of a remarkable intergenerational journey—is out of reach for many. The crisis is real, and it is complex.
Network weaving and systems change, at the heart of Civic Commons’ work, offer the path to a solution.
The purpose
Washington state has created groundbreaking public policy that helps low- and moderate-income households achieve their homeownership dream. But that good news came with a caveat: more homebuyers means an even bigger gap between the demand for affordable housing and its supply. Civic Commons was awarded public funding for creation of a plan capable of closing that gap by targeting every factor affecting production of affordable for-sale starter homes across the state.
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When the groundbreaking Covenant Homeownership Account and Program was established by the Washington State Legislature in 2023, there was an immediate acknowledgement that the success of this program would be dependent on increasing the supply of quality, affordable for-sale starter homes.
In response, the legislature approved funding to be distributed through a request for proposals (RFP) issued by the Washington State Housing Finance Commission (WSHFC). Civic Commons was awarded funding in September 2024 for development of a Comprehensive and Scalable Starter Home Production Plan (“the Plan”) and two implementation guides, the Ecosystem Playbook and the Demonstration Program Playbook (“the Playbooks”).
the difference
The Comprehensive and Scalable Starter Home Production Plan (“the Plan”) and two implementation guides (“the Playbooks”) focus exclusively on homeownership. They offer a roadmap that is simultaneously innovative, data-based, comprehensive, and practical. Another key differentiator is the roadmap’s impact-network approach to solving both the technical and adaptive challenges that perpetuate this crisis.
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Technical challenges are solved with expert input. Adaptive challenges must be solved collaboratively by everyone involved. Both affect the starter home crisis.In the context of the Plan, adaptive challenges encompass many entrenched cultural elements that heavily influence the expectations and behaviors of developers, buyers, funders, policymakers, and industry competitors. These challenges create barriers that perpetuate the starter home shortage and prevent systemic solutions.
Impact networks are uniquely capable of solving complex, systemic problems. They’re formed when separate members of an ecosystem come together around a shared priority (like the shortage of affordable for-sale starter homes) and center the work of building and tapping into the power of ecosystem relationships to produce results far greater than the sum of individual efforts. These connections—not a formal structure or authority—hold the network together, and their breadth and depth give an impact network its unique capacity for comprehensive solutions. The Plan and Playbooks use an impact network model to engage the entire housing ecosystem—including the private sector, communities statewide, and Washington state executives, legislators, and agency leaders—in systemic change.
The roadmap
The Plan offers actionable recommendations for increasing production of for-sale starter homes affordable to households with low and moderate incomes. All were shaped by community input and respect for neighborhood character. The recommendations focus on four pivotal levers of change: land and development, policy and regulation, financing, and workforce. The Ecosystem Playbook maps systemic changes essential to responding to the complex, interwoven challenges that have blocked previous efforts to solve this crisis. The Demonstration Program Playbook is a guide to rigorous, real-world pilot tests.
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The Plan and both Playbooks emphasize off-site methods in the production of various housing types, including single-family attached or detached (including townhouses, duplexes, rowhouses, stacked flats, and cottages), multi-unit condos, and cooperatives. In addition to its impact on production of affordable for-sale starter homes, off-site methods have the potential to generate powerful positive ripple effects by paving the way for its use for other housing types, such as multi-family rental and permanent supportive housing.
Click thumbnail to view the playbooks below:
The Call to Action
The Plan and Playbooks offer an actionable roadmap. But to deliver on its potential for transformation, the roadmap must be fully implemented. Incrementalism, long the habit and norm, must be a thing of the past. Picking and choosing will not suffice.
All stakeholders must work together to:
①
Establish a time-limited, multi-sector Project Management Collaborative, functioning like a crisis task force, to guide execution of the recommended actions across the entire ecosystem.
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Activate a starter home construction ecosystem that adds to the production of conventional stick-build construction, optimizes standardization, and fully supports the adoption of complementary off-site construction methods.
③
Incentivize engagement of the private sector by engaging its lenders and developers as partners vital to building and financing production of homeownership units affordable to moderate-income households (with annual household incomes between 80 percent and 120 percent of area median).
④
Conduct a multi-site demonstration program that monitors and evaluates each step of a newly designed housing ecosystem, from project conception through construction, to document the value proposition of the proposed approach.
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The Plan and Playbooks contain testable hypotheses and actionable recommendations framed by the following thesis statements:
In order to produce new homes affordable to low- and moderate-income households, these homes will need to be a maximum of 1,499 square feet in size and furnished with basic amenities (generally understood as a starter home).
In order to produce these starter homes at scale, the entire ecosystem must lean into standardization as a practice.
In order to standardize the starter home product, these homes will have common/repeatable design elements, building components, and systems. Starter home products will include thoughtful provisions for future energy saving and efficiency enhancements (solar ready, etc.) as well as the adaptability and flexibility of space that allows for potential expansion.
In order to standardize starter homes, repeatable and replicable practices must be in place in key areas across the starter home ecosystem, including design, workforce development, policy, and resulting regulatory modifications. This will:
a. allow for expedited permitting for off-site construction because of standardization.
b. include funding programs from financial institutions that align with off-site construction development timelines.
c. rely on public, private, and philanthropic funds to offset the cost premium for early phase projects prior to industry adoption of standardized starter homes.
d. require a workforce that can deploy standardized off-site methods.
In order to site homes in rural, urban, and suburban communities across the state, differences in the typology must be considered. For example, urban settings may dictate multi-unit structures while detached homes might be suitable for rural areas.
In order to drive the adoption of off-site products, end buyers must not be able to discern if the home was built by incorporating off-site practices. It must be purely a value-added “means and methods” decision by the builder/developer.
the cornerstone
Full implementation of the Plan and Playbooks requires a transformative approach that has never been initiated before in Washington state. The first step is the creation of a temporary, multi-sector crisis task force in the form of a Project Management Collaborative (PMC). A PMC would offer critical expertise, operational structure, and ecosystem integration. It would be powered by existing people resources and new, short-term private resources until its work becomes embedded in aligned organizations and agencies.
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The PMC would be responsible for:
overseeing the implementation of the Plan and the recommendations of the Playbooks.
determining final details for the PMC membership, governance, decision-making and staffing, as well as scheduling the rollout of activities.
fostering effective subnetworks of ecosystem players in four key focus areas: land and development, policy and regulation, financing, and workforce.
establishing a centralized, transparent data infrastructure that tracks key for-sale housing production metrics and supports innovation and accountability.
conducting outreach and education to raise awareness of the urgency of this matter and to mobilize public will behind actionable steps outlined in the Plan.
providing inspiration and encouragement by marking key achievements and sharing promising practices.
Quick Links to Resources
The Team
Civic Commons assembled a project team led by Black Home Initiative network partners who had been working on the starter home issue for some time. The collective experience, expertise, and professional connections of the project team and its key contributors spanned the full starter home ecosystem.
Project team members
Michael Brown
Civic Commons
Reggie Brown
Louis Rudolph Homes, 1DROP
Genevieve Hale-Case
Green Canopy NODE
Kris Hermanns (Project Lead)
Civic Commons, Black Home Initiative
Aaron Holm
Helix
Matt Hoffman
Maul Foster & Alongi, Inc.
Jeff Klein
Community Financial Health Consulting
Marty Kooistra
Civic Commons, Black Home Initiative
Patience Malaba
Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County
Aaron McGrath
Community Volunteer
Annelise Osterberg
Community Volunteer
Adam Rohde
Rohde Consulting
Group COntributors
Brian Abramson
Method Homes
Ron Barca
Wolf Industries
Nicholas Carr
Washington State Office of the Governor
Bambi Chávez
Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County
Mark W. Dean
Community Volunteer
Adam Fuchs
Community Volunteer
Darrin Griechen
Green Canopy NODE
Michone Preston
Habitat for Humanity of Washington State
James Rolph
Washington State Office of the Lieutenant Governor
Christina Rupp
Washington State Construction Center of Excellence
Joshua Schaaf
7Gen Components
Teri Stripes
City of Spokane Valley
Maul Foster & Alongi Graphics
Sapwood Advisors
We would also like to thank the 82 professionals that participated in one or more of the following: the For-Sale Home Production Symposium held at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, the Workforce Development Work Session held at Renton Technical College, and the Off-Site Financing Work Session held at the Renton office of Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King & Kittitas Counties.
And finally, our gratitude to Seattle Foundation for ongoing support.
If you have any questions about the Plan and Playbooks, please reach out to Kris Hermanns, Project Lead, at k.hermanns@civic-commons.org.