Duplexes, fourplexes or sixplexes will soon be legal in nearly every neighborhood in nearly every city in Washington, after the state Legislature passed ambitious legislation last week overriding cities’ power to restrict land to single-family homes only.

But the new rules will not apply to some of the state’s wealthiest neighborhoods — such as Broadmoor in Seattle and Innis Arden in Shoreline — which will be able to continue to be enclaves of single-family homes even as surrounding areas open up to new development.

Under the newly passed House Bill 1110, which awaits the signature of Gov. Jay Inslee, any city in Seattle’s suburbs, regardless of size, must allow at least duplexes throughout. The same goes for cities statewide with over 25,000 people. Cities with more than 75,000 people, including Seattle, must allow at least fourplexes.

Exempt from those requirements, however, are homeowner associations and other “common interest communities” that have internal contracts or documents governing their zoning rules. Common interest communities include both sprawling planned developments and smaller subdivisions and condos.

Because homeowner associations and common interest communities have preexisting, legally binding contracts regarding their zoning rules, the Legislature can’t change those, said Rep. Jessica Bateman, D-Olympia, the bill’s lead sponsor.

“We can’t go back and retroactively change the conditions that have been signed into in those legal documents,” Bateman said.

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Hugh Spitzer, a University of Washington law professor, said lawmakers didn’t have much choice.

“You cannot have a law that impairs, reverses, messes with a contract between private parties that was legally entered into at the time,” Spitzer said. “So people can put restrictive covenants on their properties and you can’t have a law that comes in and wipes that out.”

An exception is when a law is needed to protect public health and safety, he said. For example, a law requiring fire escapes could trump a homeowner association contract that bars them.

“My guess,” Spitzer said, “is that the common interest communities and various groups concerned about this said, ‘You’re going to have a fight on your hands if you do this, under impairment of contracts,’ so the drafters [of the law] just said, ‘Fine.’”

But the Legislature has, both in the past and this year, passed other laws telling homeowner associations what they can and cannot do.

A bill passed this year, awaiting Inslee’s signature, prohibits common interest communities from barring child care centers on their grounds. In 2018, the Legislature passed sweeping legislation concerning common interest communities that, among other things, barred them from prohibiting American or Washington flags, political signs and solar panels.

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HB 1110 is the flagship piece of a major legislative push this year to increase housing development in Washington, specifically “middle housing” options like duplexes, town homes and backyard cottages that provide more housing units than single-family homes but are smaller than apartment buildings.

The state Department of Commerce estimates Washington needs to build an additional 1 million homes over the next two-plus decades to keep pace with population growth.

In a committee hearing on an early version of the bill, Dean Martin, a representative of the Washington State Chapter of the Community Associations Institute, which represents homeowner associations, expressed concerns that the bill “would violate existing covenants” and could also violate the state and federal constitutions.

The bill does explicitly bar homeowner associations from making new contracts or agreements to try to prohibit duplexes and other kinds of middle housing. But it only applies to future agreements, those enacted after the law becomes effective. It is silent on preexisting agreements.

And, because the law is scheduled to go into effect in mid-July, there could still be about three months for enterprising homeowner associations to enact new restrictions to limit middle housing.

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Seattle neighborhoods such as Broadmoor and Sand Point Country Club, where tony homes are surrounded on three sides by a golf course, will be able to continue to be single-family only. So will neighborhoods like Blue Ridge and Windermere, where single-family homes look out on panoramic waterfront views.

Jason Kelly, a spokesperson for Seattle’s planning and community development department, said the city does not have a comprehensive list or database of homeowner associations in the city.

In Seattle, and across the country, many homeowner associations were created a century ago for the express purpose of excluding racial and religious minorities.

For instance, Blue Ridge (typical home value $1.4 million, per Zillow), which occupies a corner of Northwest Seattle between Puget Sound and Carkeek Park, was created on land purchased by William Boeing, the founder of Boeing. In 1938, Boeing filed documents with King County to establish “protective restrictions” on the 467 properties in the neighborhood.

“No person other than one of the White or Caucasian race shall be permitted to occupy any property,” the restrictions read, in part.

Broadmoor (typical home value $3.3 million), a gated community nestled along Washington Park Arboretum, was created with restrictions that barred its 393 properties from being used or occupied by “any Hebrew or by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay or any Asiatic Race.”

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These are the same communities that today won’t be touched by middle housing, which supporters of HB 1110 say can diversify neighborhoods by providing options at different price points.

James Gregory, a University of Washington history professor and the director of the Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project at UW, has spent nearly two decades cataloging such restrictions and Seattle’s history of segregation.

“I don’t know whether the authors of the bill understood the tragic aspect of the founding of many of these HOA communities,” Gregory said. “Many HOAs were developed for the purpose of racial exclusion, among other protections, and fiercely enforced racial exclusion.”

At the entrance to Sand Point Country Club, near the shores of Lake Washington in Northeast Seattle, signs warn about “the risk of bodily injury from errant golf balls” on the community’s private roads. But the risk is mitigated for residents by the majestic evergreen trees, manicured sand traps and sweeping lake views.

Longtime resident George Bulloch, whose house sprawls across a double lot, said he’s glad the neighborhood’s rules can insulate his street from denser housing and accompanying problems, like traffic.

That’s part of what he and his wife paid for when they stretched to buy their home in the private community 36 years ago, said Bulloch, 66, arguing it would be wrong to “change the rules” after the fact.

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Rachael Hogan, taking a stroll just outside the community’s fenced perimeter, sees things differently.

“That’s bogus,” Hogan, who lives nearby, said about the carveout. “There’s always a loophole. It’s always like that. We’ll do density everywhere else, except the rich.”

Every neighborhood in Seattle should allow more housing, because “sprawl is actually affecting our forests,” she said.

Walking down the same street, Christine Throckmorton said she also supports the push for more housing.

“If that’s what we have to do to get more diverse, I’m for it,” said Throckmorton, 61, whose children can’t afford to buy homes where they grew up.

Ideally, country clubs would be subject to the same rules as surrounding neighborhoods like hers, but lawmakers are right to move ahead anyway, she said. “Maybe they can work out the unfairness later,” Throckmorton said.

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The issues are not exclusive to Seattle.

Nate Daum, economic development program manager for Shoreline, said the exemption in HB 1110 could keep much of the city’s western section off-limits to middle housing.

That’s because The Highlands (typical home $3.5 million) and Innis Arden (typical home $1.9 million) neighborhoods, which extend along 40 blocks of Puget Sound shoreline, are governed by homeowner associations. (Innis Arden once barred the use of its 376 properties by “any person or persons not of the White or Caucasian race.” That restriction remained on the books, although invalid and unenforceable, until 2006.)

“I would be surprised if they don’t” have rules that exclude multifamily housing, Daum said.

“Lots of lawyers live in those neighborhoods,” he added, suggesting that residents are likely paying attention to HB 1110. “It won’t take them long to figure this out.”

The issue isn’t exclusive to HB 1110, Daum added, saying more modest subdivisions with restrictive covenants have slowed development in areas around the light-rail stations set to open soon in Shoreline, near Interstate 5. Though the city has upzoned the areas to allow town houses and apartment buildings, multiple projects have been delayed by such rules, he said.

In some cases, a property owner can’t eliminate the restrictions without buy-in from a certain percentage of other owners in the same subdivision, Daum said, arguing that the covenants are making it harder for developers to address the housing shortage in cities like Shoreline.

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“The number one limiting factor” in the areas around the light rail stations has been “the parcels that have these restrictive covenants on them,” he said.

Bateman said the bill was modeled after similar legislation in Oregon, which also did not apply to preexisting homeowner associations. She said legal analysts told them they could not apply zoning changes retroactively to existing contracts within homeowner associations.

“It’s frustrating,” she said. “My goal has been how do we systematically increase that housing capacity as quickly as possible.

“There’s more work to do, I think, in the future looking at the utmost authority that we could potentially change these conditions.”