Background:

Growth Management Act.

The Growth Management Act (GMA) is the comprehensive land use planning framework for counties and cities in Washington. Originally enacted in 1990 and 1991, the GMA establishes land use designation and environmental protection requirements for all Washington counties and cities. The GMA also establishes a significantly wider array of planning duties for 29 counties, and the cities within those counties, that are obligated to satisfy all planning requirements of the GMA. These jurisdictions are sometimes said to be "fully planning" under the GMA.

The GMA directs fully planning jurisdictions to adopt internally consistent comprehensive land use plans. Comprehensive plans are implemented through locally adopted development regulations, and both the plans and the local regulations are subject to review and revision requirements prescribed in the GMA. In developing their comprehensive plans, counties and cities must consider various goals set forth in statute. These goals include:

Urban Growth. Encourage development in urban areas where adequate public facilities and services exist or can be provided in an efficient manner.
Housing. Encourage the availability of affordable housing to all economic segments of the population of this state, promote a variety of residential densities and housing types, and encourage preservation of existing housing stock.
Public Facilities and Services. Ensure that those public facilities and services necessary to support development are adequate to serve the development at the time the development is available for occupancy and use without decreasing current service levels below locally established minimum standards.

Counties that fully plan under the GMA must include a plan, scheme, or design for different types of land use areas, including Urban Growth Areas (UGAs)—areas within which urban growth must be encouraged and outside of which growth can occur only if it is not urban in nature. Planning jurisdictions must include within their UGAs sufficient areas and densities to accommodate projected urban growth for the succeeding 20-year period. In addition, cities must include sufficient areas to accommodate the broad range of needs and uses that will accompany the projected urban growth, including, as appropriate, medical, governmental, institutional, commercial, service, retail, and other nonresidential uses.

Planning Enabling Act.

The Planning Enabling Act, originally adopted in 1959, provides the authority for, and the procedures to be followed in, guiding and regulating the physical development of a county. The Planning Enabling Act provides for the creation of departments, commissions, and planning agencies, and further describes the procedural functions of each. Under the Planning Enabling Act, counties may adopt comprehensive land use plans.

Mobile Homes and Mobile Home Park Subdivisions.

Under Washington's Manufactured/Mobile Home Landlord-Tenant Act, the terms "mobile home park subdivision" and "manufactured housing subdivision" mean real property, whether it is called a subdivision, condominium, or planned unit development, consisting of common areas and two or more lots held for placement of mobile homes, manufactured homes, or park models in which there is private ownership of the individual lots and common, undivided ownership of the common areas by owners of the individual lots.