2025 Comprehensive Plan

The Bellingham Plan 2025 is the City’s required update to its Comprehensive Plan under Washington’s Growth Management Act (GMA). Every ten years, cities must outline how they’ll accommodate population growth, housing, jobs, transportation, and public services over the next 20 years.

 

For Bellingham, that means planning for growth through 2045—deciding where new homes can be built, how much land will be zoned for different uses, and how infrastructure will be funded. The Plan is meant to serve as the city’s long-term blueprint: balancing housing supply, affordability, environmental protection, and public investment.

 

Why It Matters

On paper, the 2025 Plan is about “growth management.” In reality, it’s about how—and whether—Bellingham grows at all.

Every assumption in the Plan affects real people:

• How much housing will actually be allowed on buildable land

• What types of homes can be built (single-family, duplex, apartments)

• How parking, fees, and infrastructure are handled

• Where future annexations will—or won’t—happen

 

The City’s version projects population and housing growth that defies economic logic: counting land it hasn’t annexed, doubling housing needs without addressing affordability, and proposing “policies” with no measurable outcomes.

 

What We Found

Real Issues reviewed every housing and land-use section of the 2025 Plan.

 

Here’s what stands out:

• 48 housing policies, zero measurable results.

• “Housing by Income” chart shows nearly all of the development in the next 20 year, 95%, will be multifamily rentals—locking in existing shortages.

• Annexation avoidance: The City counts growth capacity in unincorporated UGAs it doesn’t control.

• Parking and fee increases are disguised as affordability strategies.

• Public accountability is missing—there’s no annual tracking or reporting schedule.