When Permits Protect and When They Price People Out

Rethinking permitting, fairness, and housing affordability in Washington

By Jessie Simmons
The Government Affairs Desk
Category: Housing

Permits are often treated as a neutral background feature of housing policy, something necessary and largely unquestioned. When housing costs rise, the conversation usually turns to zoning, interest rates, labor shortages, or material prices. Permitting rarely makes the list.

That omission matters. While permits are intended to protect public safety, the way they are applied today increasingly shapes cost, delay, and feasibility, particularly for homeowners, remodelers, and small housing projects. The problem is not that permits exist. It is that the system no longer consistently matches the burden of permitting to the actual risk being regulated.

Why permits exist and why that history matters

Permits emerged for good reasons. Early building regulation responded to real dangers such as fires, collapses, unsafe tenements, and construction practices that endangered entire communities. In that context, pre approval and inspection saved lives, and no serious housing advocate would argue otherwise.

That historical justification still applies in many cases. But the construction ecosystem has changed dramatically. Today, most residential construction already operates within a framework of statewide uniform building codes, licensed contractors with professional liability, engineered materials with embedded safety standards, insurance underwriting, lender requirements, and civil remedies when something fails. In many cases, risk is already managed before a permit application is ever filed.

Despite this, permitting systems often operate as if every project poses the same level of public danger. That assumption no longer reflects reality, and the mismatch shows up in housing costs.

A simple fairness test

One useful way to think about permitting is to ask a straightforward question: who else is at risk if this work fails?

Permits add real value when failure creates risk for people who did not consent to the work, such as neighbors, tenants, or the general public. They add far less value when risk is contained to the property owner who chose the project, hired the contractor, and already bears legal and financial responsibility.

This distinction matters because imposing high friction processes on low risk work raises costs without delivering meaningful public benefit. Over time, those costs accumulate and become part of the affordability problem.

Where permits clearly earn their keep

There are categories where permitting remains essential and appropriate. Multi family and public occupancy buildings require oversight because occupants did not choose the builder and failures can cascade quickly. Major structural modifications that alter load paths or seismic systems carry risks that are not easily visible after the fact. High energy or hazardous systems such as gas piping, large electrical service, elevators, and boilers pose dangers that extend beyond a single household.

Permits also play a critical role when projects connect to public infrastructure or affect environmental systems with off site impacts, including floodplains, wetlands, shorelines, and steep slopes. These are collective risk scenarios, and oversight in these contexts protects both public safety and shared resources.

Where permits mainly add cost and friction

There is another category where the value case is much weaker. Interior remodels that do not alter structure, like for like replacements of roofing, siding, windows, or fixtures, small accessory structures, low decks, patios, fences, and many owner occupied single family improvements generally pose localized and visible risks. Licensing, insurance, and liability already apply, and failures do not meaningfully endanger the public.

In these cases, permits rarely prevent harm. What they do add is fees, delay, uncertainty, redesign cycles, and consultant costs. Those burdens fall hardest on modest projects and incremental housing improvements, which are among the most affordability sensitive forms of housing investment.

Washington’s system: strong foundation, weak calibration

At a structural level, Washington has a relatively strong permitting framework. Uniform building codes reduce fragmentation, and the contractor licensing system provides real accountability. The issue is not the existence of permits. It is how broadly and uniformly they are applied.

Across much of the state, low risk residential work enters the same review pipelines as complex new construction. Small projects often bear disproportionate compliance costs, while staff time is spent reviewing activities with minimal public risk. Review queues lengthen, and projects that genuinely require scrutiny move more slowly as a result.

The system remains legally defensible, but it is increasingly misaligned with modern construction realities.

The quiet admission: exemptions already exist

Most jurisdictions publish long lists of permit exemptions, and those lists matter more than they appear to. They quietly acknowledge something important: not all construction requires pre approval to be safe.

Exemptions exist because risk is low, impacts are private rather than public, other systems already manage safety, or the cost of review exceeds the benefit. In other words, risk based thinking already exists inside the system.

The problem is that exemptions are treated as narrow carve outs rather than as a statement of principle. Thresholds are often arbitrary, guidance varies, and homeowners must navigate complexity to prove eligibility. That preserves friction even where permits are not required.

Discretion: necessary, but poorly structured

Permitting already relies heavily on discretion. Permit technicians and inspectors regularly make judgment calls based on site conditions, legacy construction, and practical safety considerations. Used well, discretion can prevent absurd outcomes, account for site specific risk, and keep older housing viable.

But when discretion is informal and unstructured, it becomes a source of unfairness. Outcomes vary by reviewer. Guidance shifts from counter to counter. Risk averse defaults quietly expand regulation. Uncertainty grows, and uncertainty is expensive.

This disproportionately affects homeowners, small remodelers, and cost sensitive projects.

Nexus and proportionality as a missing lens

Land use law has long recognized two basic fairness principles. Nexus requires a real connection between a requirement and a legitimate public harm. Proportionality requires that the burden imposed be proportional to the impact being addressed.

These principles are most often discussed in the context of impact fees and exactions, but the logic applies just as clearly to permitting. When permits impose significant cost or delay without a clear connection to public risk, or when the burden exceeds the harm being prevented, affordability suffers.

Exemptions implicitly acknowledge this reality, but the principle is rarely applied transparently or consistently.

Thurston County and Olympia as a case study

Thurston County and the City of Olympia are not extreme outliers. They are professional, well run jurisdictions that reflect broader statewide patterns. They provide clear public guidance, publish exemption lists, adopt consistent codes, and employ experienced staff.

They also illustrate the limits of the current system. Small projects face outsized process burden. Safety messaging often exceeds actual risk. Discretion operates informally rather than structurally. Permitting friction discourages maintenance and incremental housing improvements.

This is not a question of bad actors. It is a question of system design lagging behind reality.

The affordability impact no one budgets for

Permits do not just cost fees. They cost time, carrying costs, consultant expenses, redesign cycles, deferred maintenance, and lost housing opportunity. These costs compound over time.

The result is higher prices and reduced flexibility, not because construction is unsafe, but because low risk work is regulated as if it were high risk. That outcome is regressive and avoidable.

What a fair and reasonable system could look like

A modern permitting framework would not eliminate oversight. It would align oversight with actual risk.

That means clear by right categories for low risk residential work, permit by exception rather than universal pre approval, structured and documented discretion instead of informal judgment, early resolution of high cost or high delay conditions, post construction enforcement where appropriate, and distinct pathways for homeowners and remodelers versus new construction.

Most of these tools already exist in fragments. The challenge is integrating them into a coherent system.

Why this matters now

Housing affordability will not be solved by any single reform. But it will not be solved at all if systems continue to impose disproportionate friction on ordinary housing activity.

Permits should protect the public where risk is shared and failure is catastrophic. They should step back where risk is private, visible, and already governed by modern safeguards.

That distinction is not anti safety. It is pro fairness and pro affordability.

The real question is no longer whether permitting matters to housing costs. It is whether we are willing to recalibrate a system that quietly shapes them every day.