Land Use
Democratic
Democratically Governed Housing Developers in Washington State
Number of Community Land Trusts, Housing Authorities, Public Development Authorities, and other Housing Entities in WA State.
Housing Authority count reflects entities with confirmed founding dates; ~10 additional authorities exist but couldn’t easily be dated.
Key Points
• Democratic land use means governance by the communities housing serves, through CLTs, housing authorities, PDAs, and similar entities, not distant shareholders.
• These entities tend to optimize for community stability and long-term affordability rather than investor return.
• Goal: steady growth in the number of democratically governed housing entities active across Washington State.
What is it?
Democratic land use means prioritizing housing and land use models governed by the communities they serve, rather than by distant shareholders or purely market logic. This includes community land trusts, public housing authorities, public development authorities, and similar entities where residents and communities have a real governance role in decisions about land and housing, not just a consumer relationship to it.
Why Democratic Land Use Matters
Who governs land and housing decisions shapes what gets prioritized over the long term. Democratically governed entities tend to optimize for community stability, long-term affordability, and resident wellbeing in ways that purely market-driven ownership structures are not built to do, since their incentives are not centered on maximizing return for outside investors. This plank is closely related to Solution Diversity, since CLTs, housing authorities, and PDAs are central to that broader provider ecosystem, but it specifically tracks the democratic governance dimension. Growing the number and capacity of these entities builds durable, community-accountable infrastructure for housing decisions, not just more housing units.
Where We Want to Be
The goal is steady growth in the number of CLTs, housing authorities, PDAs, and other democratically governed housing entities active across Washington State, building out the institutional infrastructure for community-controlled housing and land use decisions. This plank remains the least developed of the seventeen, with a single metric reflecting genuine uncertainty about how best to measure democratic accountability beyond entity count. The vision is a housing system with real, durable channels for community governance, where decisions about land and housing are not made exclusively by market actors but include institutions accountable to the people those decisions affect.