While the HALA proposal to rezone single family in urban villages was withdrawn, many other HALA proposals are on track. At 9:30 AM today the Seattle City Council is discussing the HALA proposal for multi family tax break incentives. At the Wallingford Community Council HALA is pretty much regarded as the end of the world, but the political establishment is united behind it.
Murray and O’Brien are the chief architects, with both District 4 candidates acting as strong backers. Rob Johnson tweeted: This 5th gen Seattleite thinks the only way my 6th gens can afford to live here is by implementing #HALA. Michael Maddux says: The Grand Bargain from HALA is a wonderful development.
We figured a vote on the specifics of HALA would be interesting as a setup for upcoming debates between the candidates (more to come later on the topic of debates). Below are the HALA plans straight from the mayor’s office, edited down to focus on the facts:
Double the Seattle Housing Levy: Doubling the voter approved Seattle Housing Levy to $290 million will build and preserve thousands of quality, affordable homes. This property tax levy has been approved five times by Seattle voters over 30 years. The Housing Levy creates affordable housing with services to support at-risk families, seniors and people with disabilities, providing rental assistance to prevent homelessness, and preserving housing to prevent displacement of long-term residents.
Loading ...Upzones in Exchange for Mandatory Inclusionary Housing: A Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program ensures new residential developments include affordable housing units and a Commercial Linkage Fee ensures commercial developers contribute funds for the production and preservation of affordable housing.
Upzones in proportion to these requirements would be provided. The City will devote a greater amount of land to multifamily housing, particularly in areas near transit, services and amenities. Boundaries of Urban Villages will expand to reflect walking proximity to amenities. Increased height limits and modified building and fire codes would further increase the economies of wood frame multifamily construction and lead to more affordable housing options for families. (Note: This proposal includes upzoning 45th from 4 to 6 stories but no longer includes rezoning of single family homes in the Wallingford Urban Village area.)
Loading ...Streamline City Codes, Permitting Processes, Design Review, and Historic Review: The City will integrate and coordinate permitting processes across all departments (DPD, SDOT and utility agencies). Additionally, the City will streamline its codes. Through legislation, the City will change Design Review and Historic Review to continue their important functions in a way that is more predictable, efficient and considers the impacts of the decisions on the cost of housing.
Loading ...Reduced Parking Requirements For New Construction Near Transit: The City will reform its parking policies to support housing affordability and access by: (1) clarifying the definition of frequent transit service to reduce parking requirements in transit areas; (2) reducing parking requirements for multifamily housing outside of Urban Centers and Urban Villages that have frequent transit service; and (3) ensuring that parking mandates are not reintroduced in Urban Centers and Urban Villages.
Loading ...Expand the Multifamily Property Tax Exemption Program (MFTE): If developers provide 20 percent low- and moderate-income housing in new developments then the City provides a partial property tax exemption for up to 12 years. In 2015, when the program expires, the City will renew and expand MFTE to all multifamily areas, allow all unit types to participate in the program and incorporate a new incentive for building larger units so that families have more affordable housing choices throughout the city. This issue is what city council is looking to advance today.
Loading ...While there’s other action items as well, they aren’t as controversial. Are you opposed to any of these policies but a supporter of the Murray, O’Brien, Maddux, or Johnson? How do you explain their position if so? If you are opposed, what ideas would you like to see advanced to help with housing affordability?
I wouldn’t be too sure these are the only controversial elements. At last week’s meeting they adopted language to the single family accessory dwelling unit stuff, that talks about relaxing ownership requirements and allowing more units, in a way that has the potential to turn out a lot like multifamily. O’Brien says it’s about clarifying that they won’t be looking at triplexes etc. We’ll see.
The upzoning and height limit increases are the real problem. It can make sense to redraw zoning, and change height limits, but they aren’t doing it where it makes sense, they’re making wholesale changes to areas all over the city, to appease developers in return for apparently some promise that they won’t take the city to court over affordability provisions (note that of course not all developers were party to this, so not sure it means anything at all.) Plenty of these areas have hardly been developed at all, let alone to their full potential, but now they’ll be made even wider and taller. What will we do when the developers raise the alarm again in 5-10 years, draw the zones even wider? This problem isn’t going away, and we need a sustainable approach to it, not developer give-aways that foster haphazard development. The political establishment appears to have learned from McGinn’s mistake – you don’t want to be that guy who was against the tunnel, it sucks to lose even when you’re right.
Where’s the story about Wallingford non-upzones? It’s news to me that there’s any concrete plan regarding specific locations.
Thanks Donn- The idea as I’ve heard it is that building height limits will be going up, but that single family will not be touched aside from ADU and DADU modifications. You raise a good point that ADU and DADU modifications could make for an end run around the “no single family upzones” commitment, particularly removing the requirement that home owners make the changes. There’s a potential for developers to use the new code to buy up single family homes, tear them down, then replace them with lot-maximizing ADUs and DADUs that are effectively multifamily housing. It could be argued that’s a good thing if it supplants the creation of lot-maximizing McMansions, but it could also be argued it’s a bad thing if it accelerates the destruction of older homes. I should have included the issue in the vote…
But, about this: “no longer includes rezoning of single family homes in the Wallingford Urban Village area”?
The map had rezoning from 40th to 50th, on the west side of Wallingford, and the story I thought was “next council will sort out the details.” They have a new map?
That map is why I’m opposed to HALA. I live in that potential rezone.
Which map do you speak of?
This one?
http://2035.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/wallingford-sf-zones.pdf
(reposted) I’m not sure, Alan, but that’s probably the one. So in addition to high rises, now we can look forward to a big bunch of newcomers with nowhere to park?
Just following up on this – yes, that map. The agenda items for a council committee meeting this afternoon (2:30 Oct 5) include a map that matches that, titled “Implementation Areas.” Areas in light yellow are SF, and within the boundary they’d be converted to multifamily under this “grand bargain” deal.
I would like clarification about the term “Streamline City Codes, Permitting Processes, Design Review, and Historic Review”. Would this involve adding more personnel to handle the backlog of permit applications that already exist, or eliminate those pesky codes that prevent builders from erecting structures that can’t be accessed by firefighters, either by street access or by height and building structure?
I understand that at present, the city’s codes and processes are a hodgepodge of layers of reactionary rules applied at one decade or another, often in arbitrary and contrary ways. I also understand the forces that want to reduce or eliminate many regulations that work for the greater population’s good. EX: which central public library’s plans by a celebrated architectural firm LACKED handicapped access and exits?
Tread carefully, kids. History is not kind.
What do you suppose this means – “change Design Review and Historic Review to continue their important functions in a way that is more predictable, efficient and considers the impacts of the decisions on the cost of housing.”?
Could that be anything but “pull whatever teeth they have left”?
Whenever you hear the word “streamline” when it comes to codes and regulations, be very skeptical. It’s typically harmless sounding Republican/developer speak for “let’s do away with those pesky rules that protect the environment, public safety, and the greater good.”
I’m not sure, Alan, but that’s probably the one. So in addition to high rises, now we can look forward to a big bunch of newcomers with nowhere to park?
Parking: It fries me that our street in east W’ford is increasingly used as a park and ride for bus commuters, soon to be light rail users too. A way needs to be found to address this unfair down streaming of costs.
ADUs, etc: Wonderful solution imho, as long as they’re exclusively OWNER OCCUPIED. Permitting multiple renters in SF zoned properties with a non-resident owner is an upzone. We’re surrounded by houses with MIL units where the owner has moved on and now rents out both units separately. There have been no problems so far, but its an illegal use, enforceable to complaint. Not so with the city’s misguided decision to allow 8 unrelated persons to occupy a residence without requiring an owner in residence. Bad things happen at these boarding houses, ask neighbors and the police department, ATF, FBI, etc. and we have no recourse.
I’m sorry to interject, but just because 8 people who live in a house are unrelated doesn’t mean that there will be increased problems. I happen to be a mid-30’s gal who is in no position to own a house, unmarried, and working a professional full-time job. It is my preference to rent houses with peers of mine that are in a similar demographic, which does mean that 5 or more of us are unrelated, and the home owner doesn’t live with us. We care for the lawn, provide free landscaping for the owner, most of us are pedestrians and do not own cars. We act as neighborhood watch for our block on Wallingford and organize community events, including the Night Out Event. We live in Wallingford because we love the walkability of the neighborhood, the frequency of community events, the fact that neighbors look out for each other, the personality of Wallingford that makes it stand out against Fremont and Ballard, etc.
Just because people live in a more communal environment does not mean that they bring the quality of the neighborhood down. Just because us mid-30’s live together doesn’t mean you will have to inform the FBI.
Single, unmarried people without children do enjoy small, quiet neighborhoods as well.
I’m in the same boat as you, J.Westgrin. That was a really offensive comment made by Chrismacknz.
You’re absolutely right. And with house prices going the way they are, we will see more professional people having to share housing – who can afford to buy in Wallingford any more?
Thanks for universally decreeing us to be deadbeat delinquents, simply because we don’t happen to have been born 20-years ago and so could buy a house in Seattle for less-than-a-soul and happen to enjoy the communal, social living experience. We happen to all be employed, hard-working adults who want to be able to walk/take transit/ride bike most places.
Nuisance law, not zoning law, is the proper remedy for folks “doing bad things” regardless of how many people live in what kind of home.
That’s a crude instrument, though, that prevents the worst abuses but stops there. If you haven’t called the police on your neighbors, does that prove everything is OK? No.
At the moment I’m not sure I hate this particular proposal. At least it does seem to pretty clearly addressed to affordability/availability. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any potential down side, though, and if you care about single family neighborhoods I don’t think you can settle for “if it gets bad we’ll just call the police.”
@Donn nuisance law includes civil remedies too.
By comparison, using zoning law to outright ban categories of home types or living arrangements simply on an assumption they are bad strikes me a the epitome of a much “blunter” instrument – particularly since as I suspect most of us have experienced a typical family of four in a detached single family home can be as much of a nuisance as anyone else!
On the other hand, if we do it on the basis of long experience with those home types or living arrangements, then we’re being realistic.
FYI, what’s at issue here is a proposal to allow conversion of homes into multiple rental units. Any house can be rented out, now, and don’t think there’s any effective restriction on who the renters may be. The proposal would make for a very different situation, where the occupants would not only not be related in family terms but also have no collective relationship, and it would be more permanent.
@Donn even if I hadn’t grown up in a family of renters, I would still reject naked classism as a sound basis for public policy.
Ugly.
I find you anti-renter bias repulsive.
Sorry I can’t afford a house — or was born too late to afford one even on my very reasonable income — but that doesn’t mean my family and I are any more likely to cause problems.
But I suppose your attitude is sadly typical amongst many of my neighbors.
There are renters all over Wallingford, and it isn’t a problem. We have great renter neighbors. I can’t tell for sure who you’re talking to, Doug, but I can’t find anyone here showing any clear evidence of anti-renter bias, and I guess charitably assuming you aren’t just incapable of reading this stuff with full comprehension, I rather have to assume you’re deliberately twisting it. I do have a bias against that crap.
Wallingford’s zoning should be restored to what it was prior to the 50’s downzone that allowed the mixture of single family detached homes, duplexes, small apartments and row houses (e.g. http://www.theurbanist.org/2015/08/28/fridaygram-wallingford-rowhouses/ ) in the neighborhood.
It’s funny how these 30-somethings say they can’t afford to buy a house when I see them going to bars and restaurants every night of the week when I nearly 50 don’t live that way, that’s how I got a house. You have to be willing to make sacrifices and some people clearly think they should be able to live the high life AND they deserve a house too.
Oh, and for those of us that own, yes there may be some small exceptions to the situations of multiple people living in dwellings, but saying “if it become a problem then call the police and ask for enforcement of nuisance laws” is ridiculous. North Seattle has a policing problem, a lack of enough police and investigation into crime. Unless an extreme act of violence has happened, they don’t come out, so as a single family homeowner I prefer to avoid being in this situations in the first place.
@Leel;k – Let me guess, you probably also think that you can still pay for college tuition by working a summer job?
Nuisance law is civil not criminal.
It’s really stunning that folks haven’t cared enough to make the slightest effort to even learn what alternatives to zoning people out are.
I might be a little too raw to be commenting on this right now. I’m a renter who is losing my home a week from now because the rent has been increased by just over 50% in the last 5 years (and -surprise!- my income has remained stagnant.) As a renter, the market in Seattle right now is brutal. Brutal. Renters, the young, and those of us who don’t have fancy tech jobs with fancy tech salaries are being squeezed out of the city. Seattle is the next San Francisco, and it’s heartbreaking for some of us.
So, hearing a bunch of privileged NIMBY homeowners complain about parking is just not something I have the bandwidth to handle right now.
@Kellie Sorry to hear that
“What I think of HALA” is that while the recommendations are better than nothing, they don’t go far enough, fast enough to help enough people right now nor to stop our trajectory toward being as un-affordable as San Francisco.
And the fact that many people in Seattle seem to think that’s either not a problem or in fact a good thing is indeed heartbreaking – that’s exactly the right word.
Kellie, do you believe that renters are the only ones dealing with rising costs? That property owners are somehow immune? For example, my valuation just went up 80K this year. In fact, it even went up during the worst of the recession. Which is odd, because we didn’t do any remodels or additions during those years. Funny how that works. And of course, the same holds true for rest of us property owners. And if you have a landlord, they have to pass on the cost somehow. I’m sorry for what’s happened to you, but that’s a part of the reason why.
And on top of the rising taxes that result from that, now our mayor, SDOT, and others want us to approve more and more levies, increasing the rate of property tax. For example, they want another BILLION dollars just for the streetcar, not to mention the rest of the boondoogles and god knows what else. Who is pushing for all these projects? Your developer friends. That’s right, when people like yourself advocate for special favors like increased density without regard for parking and the necessary infrastructure improvements, you’re a developer’s best friend. Here’s a thought: How about we start making the DEVELOPERS pay for improvements if they want to argue it’s so important to make room for newcomers, rather than those of us who already live here.
Finally, if the fact that I value having a nice neighborhood and a good quality of life for my family, friends, and neighbors makes me a selfish NIMBY, then I wear that label proudly.
News flash, Hayduke: I already live here too.
I’m sorry that it might be hard to park your car, and that you could now sell your property for an astronomical amount more than you paid for it, if you decided to. That must be really hard for you.
@hayduke Did you really just complain about the “problem” that doing nothing enriched you by more than the net worth of half the US population in one year? I really hope this post was a joke.
The supposed value of my house isn’t doing me any good. Cash in, and … what, move to Spokane? Don’t want to live in Spokane, been here all my life and expect to stay a while longer. At least a decade or two (when bubble has burst, and the cheesy apartments along Stone Way will have deteriorated and the surrounding neighborhood along with them.)
So…
Single family exclusionary zoning, which I assume you support…
…is enriching you by constraining the supply of homes in a desirable neighborhood (on paper or not, it’s still real asset value)
…forcing people who want to live here out
….preventing anyone not already here or rich to ever be able to own anything
….preventing construction of (say) a duplex or row house nearby that your could downsize into by tapping some of the value you’ve accumulated in your SFH simply by being born before folks like Kellie…
And you feel aggrieved?
Ah, OK.
BK, I don’t know who you are, but thank you for being a really good neighbor today.
@Kellie I’m one of the evil tech people ruining everything.
But I believe that if you have been privileged beyond anything you ever imagined, you should at least be kind.
I can appreciate that. That gives me hope for the “evil tech people.” 😉
Also? I AM advocating for infrastructure improvements, and I don’t have any developer friends. Trust me, developers are not making my life easier right now, either.
And I don’t consider the right to continue existing and working (and yes! Even contributing!) in my city and my neighborhood a “special favor.”
it is utterly absurd to characterize rising property values as a negative thing. that’s the primary benefit of owning vs. renting: we pay money into an investment, with a ridiculous ROI, and have unearned wealth that renters don’t have, even if they pay the same each month as our mortgage payments. even if we choose not to cash out, we still have that equity. and the increase in taxes doesn’t come close to the increase in equity.
if you think having your property value increase over time is a hardship, try living in a place where your property value decreases. like the rust belt.
i for one welcome and embrace all my renting neighbors and shared housing dwellers. i lived in shared housing until i was able to buy my house.
Rent is going up faster than property taxes.
Also, another way of looking at it is you made $80,000 with no effort whatsoever. Sure, you’re not able to cash it out right now, but you certainly will at some point. Especially if we halt any additional construction of housing for folks who are moving here regardless.
Boo hoo. Move to another city and state….we live in a HUGE very mobile country. I lived in some cities I didn’t love because they were affordable and then saved up to live in the city I wanted. If you can’t swing it, the intelligent choice is to go where you can.
THE WORLD DOESN’T OWE YOU.
That sucks. I think we all know you aren’t exaggerating at all, you aren’t alone in this situation and it’s a crime.
But will giving stuff away to developers solve this problem and bring rents down? No. The affordability problem is real, and HALA has some attempts to do something about it, but it’s also a smokescreen for developer prizes. If that works, the cynical prediction is that they’ll have an incentive not to fix the problem, so they can keep using it the next time they want concessions from the city.
I’m fully aware of how lucky I am to be an owner. If that means I’m privileged, OK, but we aren’t going to be neutralized by some “urbanist” myth about evil single family misers sucking the life out of the great city that Seattle could be, if only we could give away enough to satisfy the density fairy. The point is simply, we should design policy with the sole intention of arriving at a specific vision of a better city, not just “more.”
I agree. Developers are not the ones we should be trusting to solve this whole problem. However, it’s a HUGE problem and we need to do SOMETHING to solve it. Thank you for not being one of the homeowners who sit around complaining about how renters are lazy criminals (I’m looking at you, person upthread who feels the need to call the FBI on those scary renters in the neighborhood) simply because we aren’t able to to time travel back to 20 years ago and buy property here while it was even remotely affordable.
I am definitely in favor of greater protections for renters in the form of controlling the ridiculous inflation of housing costs, to avoid greed-based gouging (for example, what I’ve experienced with my building’s property management.) I’m also very much in favor of encouraging and facilitating the creation of more MILs and ADUs that can increase density without destroying the character of old neighborhoods. And I’m screaming for serious investment in extensive improvements to our city’s mass transit systems. Because transit IS linked to this problem, but I don’t seem to hear anyone talking about it in this context.
OK, bringing a couple threads to the top that had run out of room in the right margin, because this is going to be a lengthy response to a set of talking points that you’ll read all over the place, the same verbiage as if out of a cookie cutter. It’s aimed at paralyzing the potential opposition before it gets started, trying to make home owners look bad and feel guilty.
Yes, I support single family exclusionary zoning. I guess – “exclusionary” is one of those talking point words, but is there any officially sanctioned sort of housing that isn’t exclusionary, in this city? Try to get into a rental with a felony conviction – might be easier to buy a home. Normally we just say “single family”, when we’re not trying to make it a slur on someone’s character.
Yes, on paper it’s “enriching” me. Only in Wallingford would that be a moral stain, but I plead innocence. OK, there’s that paper wealth, and indeed historically the wealth of middle class depends on home ownership, but we know that in reality we aren’t generally benefiting from this mess. Any ideas for reducing the market cost of housing will be enthusiastically received – if they don’t come at the expense of quality of life in the city.
No, I don’t buy the notion that single family zoning is to blame for forcing people out of Seattle or preventing them from living here. “Criminal”, I’ve read that – criminal single family zoning. Like if we were responsible, we’d tear down our wasteful single family homes and arrange to have apartments lining every block, until there’s room for everyone in North America to move here. The problem is, the Seattle they’re moving to would disappear.
Get out and walk around our neighborhood. We have apartments and condos, commercial districts, and a lot of healthy, somewhat historical single family. Look at the work that goes into the public/private interface as you walk along, look for things of beauty or of whatever interest. I don’t know what you’ll see, but what I see is a vastly richer, more engaging landscape in the single family neighborhoods. The people living in these houses, and the communities they form, are even more valuable. This is my Wallingford, my Seattle, and it’s worth defending. Seattle is more than just a big, expandable hive of people.
Even so, if we could strike a blow for affordable housing by increasing supply, and bring back the old rent levels that would let Kellie stay here, then it would be worth talking about. That isn’t what’s going to happen, though. The 1000-plus units coming in over here on the west side of Wallingford aren’t doing it, and more 1000s aren’t going to do it either. We aren’t going to build our way out of this, it’s an unsustainable ambition. We’ll trash the city if we try to – and then the bubble will burst for sure. The only real answer is for people to find places to live – and work – where there’s room, even if increasingly that means not in Seattle. The city’s housing stock will continue to grow, but we don’t need to roll over to the developers to make that happen.
I’m with you on this. I think, if people want to pay reasonable rent and yet still live within the city, we should focus on areas that perhaps NEED and WANT such development. Think of all the weeded over, vacant lots in our city, much of it is actually in prime real estate. And if some industrial areas/brownfields could be rezoned for that, that’s another option. The Interbay area comes to mind.
“The only real answer is for people to find places to live – and work – where there’s room, even if increasingly that means not in Seattle.”
Your best advice for this predicament is for anyone who can’t afford a $650,000 single family house to just leave?? As if we are simply in the way and don’t deserve to be here anyway? That I should just shut up and move 20 miles north, and wedge myself into the increasingly problematic commute traffic, because that’ll solve everything for everyone? Or maybe I should just bend over backward on your behalf to quit my career, leave my entire life behind, and move to Spokane to start over? Would YOU do this?? Pardon my french, but screw you, too, Donn. Your suggestion is truly offensive and insulting.
Do you know how many of those “1000-plus units coming in over here” people in my demographic can afford now, vs 5 years ago? Basically none. Go spend 5 minutes scrolling the apartment ads on Craigslist. You can find a really awesome 200 square foot “micro-studio” with no kitchen for around $1000. It’s absurd. Truly. So, we’re in agreement: the kind of development that’s being added is not solving the problem.
“The people living in these houses, and the communities they form, are even more valuable. This is my Wallingford, my Seattle, and it’s worth defending.”
Do you know what, Donn? This is MY Wallingford, and MY Seattle too. I love the character of this neighborhood as much as you do. I walk around all the time, and still appreciate that I have been lucky enough to live in such a beautiful and comfortable part of the city. That’s why I’ve spent this many years here. I don’t ever want the single family homes torn down, even though I have no hope AT ALL of ever having one here. They’re beautiful. They’re the reason I chose Wallingford instead of an area like Belltown. But back when I moved to this city, this neighborhood was accessible to me, and it isn’t anymore.
I’ve been a good neighbor here. Long term. I am your neighbor, Donn. (For another week, anyway.) People like me are also part of this neighborhood, and we deserve to be here just as much as you. You will see us attending neighborhood events, patronizing local businesses, exercising, having families and friends, walking dogs, getting to know our neighbors. Being good citizens. Working hard. Living. Just like you.
Your property values growing without you having to do anything isn’t a moral stain. Your unwillingness to acknowledge that privilege, to acknowledge that you ARE benefiting from that in ways that aren’t available to someone like me, and your refusal to care about your neighbors instead of telling them to GTFO if they can’t get that kind of equity for their efforts, is what’s a moral stain here. You can do better.
Like I said, if we could make it work for you by upzoning, then it would be worth talking about – because we do care. I don’t know you, but some of the neighbors I care about most rent, and their precarious existence here is a real concern. But we don’t care enough to make meaningless sacrifices and still see you have to live in Marysville.
It’s an acutely personal problem for you, and nothing I can suggest is going to help. You’re right, commuting from outlying areas is not an answer that serves us well at all, it only contributes to our problems. Honestly what I mean is that we’ll start to get out of this mess if and when the bubble bursts and highly paid workers have no reason to be here. Housing is expensive here because affluent people are buying it, and it will get better when they move on.
And there are parts of HALA that really may do some good for affordable housing, and separately there are interesting ideas going around about rent stabilization etc. No argument with any of that, may it turn out to help in some way.
What a foolish thing to say, that us homeowners are ‘benefiting from increased property values’ we are not. Not if we don’t plan to sell, we just pay more and more property taxes even once our homes are fully paid off.
@Leel;k – everyone plans to sell, unless possibly if you’re a vampire and will live in the house for the ages. Even if you don’t benefit directly from higher prices, your kids/estate will.
All zoning is exclusionary to use (i.e., “residential,” “industrial:).
“Single family exclusionary zoning” is exclusionary to form: it mandates that on any lot, the only allowable form is a single family detached house.
“Land near jobs” is expensive. If you lock up land near jobs in plots of land where only one single family detached house is allowed, homes will be affordable only to the rich.
If you restored Wallingford’s zoning to what it was when most of Wallingford was built, we would allow duplexes, triplexes, stacked flats, row houses, small apartment buildings, ADUs.
Finding a home in Wallingford would be more affordable.
The ratio of units to consumers controls price: rental rates in DC went down this year because a ton of apartments were built. Rent increases in old buildings in Seattle also came down lot because so much bright shiny new units came online.
Seattle has more than enough capacity to moderate prices through supply: some areas like South Lake Union will have high rises. Some areas zoned 65′ should go to 85′ or 40′ to 65.’
And historically anomalous single family exclusionary zoning–under which the diverse Wallingford you seem to enjoy could not have been built–should be utterly abolished.
When will this building boom moderate prices? The up-zoning and height increases in the HALA “grand bargain” are pretty near a sure thing, given the general apathy of the electorate, so let’s assume that happens. When can we expect to see those moderated prices?
Or do we have to go all the way, abolish SF zoning as you propose, and then we’ll have affordable housing? What do we get for a guarantee? The reality is that we won’t see any moderation in prices, because as long as this bubble keeps growing we’re going to attract more newcomers, and if nothing else current climate trends make this very likely. Affordability gains from overbuilding here will be short term at best, but my opinion is that you won’t see them at all. If that was the point, we’ll have done it for nothing.
As for the notion that Wallingford isn’t a historically single family neighborhood … people who live here can look around and see for themselves.
@Donn The two most expensive urban housing forms are single family detached homes and high rises. So yes, it is a 100% absolute guarantee that a Seattle with more homes like the grandfathered duplex at the end of my block, the row houses at 48th and Densmore, the Mari-Don and the Wallingfive will be more affordable than one with fewer.
That would be plausible if there were some relatively fixed supply of potential newcomers, but it isn’t that way. We’re already adding housing units at a frantic rate, and prices continue to rise. Anything short of truly drastic measures will quickly be swamped by attendant effects on the bubble – and in a rather sloppy interview I read with position 7 council candidate Deborah Zech Artis, she points out that it’s increasingly hard to finance overbuilding when the banks perceive a glut of new construction, so even if we were willing to commit to drastic measures it isn’t clear our eager developers could actually follow through. We need another solution, because we can’t build our way into affordable housing.
You are exactly right….Ballard has been through a condo boom and have prices for housing decreased? NO, they have only gone up. Where is the guarantee that developers (who don’t pay their fair share for infrastructure and more) won’t continue to gouge renters? There isn’t any….so instead of renters simple-mindedly saying ‘we must build more housing’ and it will then magically become affordable are living in dreamland. All you will end up is lots of high priced housing in a neighborhood you will no longer be excited to live in as the character is gone to build your non-affordable housing by tearing down vintage homes with character.
@Leel;k – One, Ballard hasn’t really been through a condo boom, it’s been through an apartment boom (it seems condos are unpopular right now). Two, the apartment boom actually has started moderating rents. Remember that the population of Ballard is far higher than it was in the past, so there’s much more competition for scarce housing, so that rents are moderating at all is impressive.
“Afford it or get out”
thanks buddy
Kelli I think you are yelling at the wrong person. There is no good way to build ourselves out of this predicament. In fact, the neighborhoods targeted for the most growth are not surprisingly the very neighborhoods with the loveliest amenities, cared for homes and gardens, proximity to town and good schools. There is no solution for you (or for me) because we cannot afford anything being built or being rented anywhere in the city, most especially here in Wallingford.
I think Donn may be simply saying that the more density is forced upon these neighborhoods, the less lovely they become – not because the people who rent or lease are not nice and interesting people, but because the neighborhood intensifies significantly with increasing density. The character and pace change. It is an equation with a predictable outcome. I travel a lot locally. It is truly happening all over but most certainly in those special places where generations of homeowners have invested their families.
Seattle has become an extremely attractive place for well-educated, savvy, ambitious and wealthy people. It is sort of gentrification on steroids. Wallingford, Fremont, Capitol Hill, Eastlake etc were not fancy pants places: they were affordable neighborhoods for often creative, alternative, oddball, interesting, other-thinking people who were able to establish engaged, bright, thoughtful, aesthetic neighborhoods. Stratification is not healthy for anyone. The density scheme now interjects curb to curb cubes that are wildly overpriced and barren of green and growing things in place of homes while posturing as an affordable fit for the neighborhood.
Sigh. Jobs.
People don’t move for homes, they move for jobs.
You can pretty much perfectly predict the # of newcomers (or outgoers) of any urban area by the growth (or decline) of jobs. That tells you exactly how many units need to be built to maintain affordability (or fail at it, like San Francisco and now us).
Sigh back at you. People move for a whole host of reasons. People stay for a whole host of reasons. Economics is one big part of the picture, but environment, education, politics, etc. etc., are also a big part of the picture. Our country and our global community are facing an unprecedented chasm between those that got and those that got naught, and this chasm is reflected even in the most local circumstances. And them that’s got don’t give a crxp about the rest of us.
@walkinroun Sure, but conveniently “jobs” are almost perfectly predictive of the exact number of units of housing that need to be built to provide affordability in a city.
It is an easily solvable problem, except for the fact that restrictive zoning favored by “those that got” prevents if from happening (see: San Francisco, and now Seattle).
How do we arrive at this number of jobs? I agree that jobs are the primary source of the problem, but I would like to see what the limit for those jobs is going to be, so that we can tell how many units will do.
Well, BK, that is where I don’t think you are getting this. All the neighborhoods that were affordable are no longer affordable, especially to low income and middle income people. Upzoning single family neighborhoods will not change this, it will only change the neighborhood. The new units will not be affordable except to higher income people, even the teeny tiny boxes that masquerade as places to live.
Seattle has lost huge numbers of low income housing because of the influx of higher income people – many of whom are, it is true, coming here because the corporation they work for is located here. However, many of the single family homeowners hanging on to the last shreds of their neighborhood are not “those that got”. They are very often middle income people who bought their homes years ago, invested time and effort into their neighborhood, and deserve to enjoy the benefits of their labor.
Because I may not be able to live here much longer does not mean that these precious neighborhoods should host high density because some rich people who own huge corporations want to live and work in this beautiful city. In no way is this an easily solvable problem, unless you are extremely wealthy or want to live in a box.
We absolutely can build ourselves out of this, and we should have started 10 years ago. The problem we have now is simply that the population of Seattle is growing faster than the housing stock. That the new housing is not affordable certainly is a problem, and one the city ought to solve. HALA isn’t perfect, but it certainly is a start.
What if the population growth continues, say for the next 30 years, and for all the construction there still isn’t plenty and it still isn’t affordable? Will we look around and say, well, at least we got a more wonderful city out of it?
I reckon those of us who value trees and such won’t, but the odds that anyone will like what we’re getting will go up a lot if we start making growth pay for itself, rather than trying (unsuccessfully) to fund the necessary infrastructure improvements out of the general tax base. Ballard-ize my neighborhood and then make me pay for it? Not if I can help it.
I’m not necessarily opposed to a growth tax/impact fee, but it’s worth noting that growth /is/ paying for something in the city. Publicola reports that sales tax revenue within the city is up 35% from 2010, compared to 22% for the rest of the state:
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2015/9/23/fizz92215
Newcomers are paying that tax just like old-timers.
It’s also worth pointing out that the second most important thing for raising children is stable housing (after stable parents). A yard is nice, but lots and lots of children are raised in apartments/condos without yards and they turn out just fine. Do you really think that all the children of NYC are failing because they don’t have a yard?
Let’s make sure that every person in Seattle can get affordable housing. It doesn’t have to be luxurious (no yard required). Let’s just start at getting people a place to come home to at night, where they can eat and sleep.
Great, they’re paying sales tax along with the rest of us.
The problem is that sales tax supports infrastructure maintenance, and maybe a little growth here and there. When we’re faced with enormously expensive infrastructure upgrades, we either need big levies (“Move Seattle”) or we just can’t pay for them and they won’t get done. Growth puts serious financial burdens on the city, while developers etc. walk away with big profits and the mayor “studies” impact fees rather than imposing them as other cities around here have done. These fees are subject to state limitations that prevent them from really solving the problem, but it’s the least we could do.
“We absolutely can build ourselves out of this”
This is absolutely not true. Point to one large city in North America where growth over the past 50 years has increased affordability in the urban core. We live in a state with the most regressive tax structure in U.S., we have passed the point of peak wealth per capita at the same time as wealth and income inequity increase, and we have utterly failed to require concurrency for new development (discussed well by Jmo.Seattle). There is no way more growth under our current governance will solve Seattle’s growth created problems.
The ratio of “people seeking homes” to “homes” determines price.
That’s why a bed in a bunk bed in San Fracisco rents for $800 a month now (too many seekers, too few homes) while there are vast numbers of vacant homes Detroit is bulldozing because they are worth $0 (too many homes, too few seekers).
It’s a balanced equation, changing either seekers or homes does the trick for affordability.
Vancouver is an excellent example:
https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-vancouver-bc-rent-trends/
One bedroom goes for average of 1405 CAD (1049 USD) and two bedrooms for average of 1716 CAD (1281 USD):
https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-vancouver-bc-rent-trends/
Vancouver is far more built up than Seattle, and they’ve largely kept out of a housing shortage.
That’s right. It’s the same principle as adding highways or lanes does not build our way out of traffic, in fact studies show it increases it via, “If you build it, they will come” Same with housing, build more and you encourage more people to move here and thus are in perpetual cycle where there is never enough and it remains pricey.
@Leel;k – So what’s your idea then? Kindly ask Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, etc. to please move on?
When highways or lanes are added, the same number of drivers make more trips.
When units are added, the same number of families do not occupy more homes.
People move for jobs, not units. Otherwise not building units would have stopped people from moving to San Francisco (hasn’t) and units being free would’ve stopped people from leaving Detroit (didn’t).
Road building adds more users, it makes auto oriented development work. People don’t need to live near work, they don’t need to shop near home, because we built the road infrastructure and we keep building it (e.g., 6 lane 520.) It’s a limiting factor, it’s just simpler than the housing situation because it’s about the only limiting factor. Housing is a limiting factor for growth. Far from the only one, but … do you think people haven’t stopped moving to SF? If SF had magically been able to accommodate everyone who wished to live there, we’d see a lot less growth here. Spokane, Boise etc. benefit from our steep housing prices, you can pay someone $100K and it’s a lot of money, not live-in-your-car wages.
Just a couple of cites to works that I believe help inform this conversation:
www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/local/
http://www.amazon.com/Collision-Course-Endless-Growth-Finite/dp/0262027739
Hear, Hear
The biggest HALA issue for Wallingford is the upzoning, because the low-rise shopping on N 45th is going to be replaced by a condo canyon. That’s not NIMBYism, it’s economics. The mandatory inclusionary zoning recommendation (described by the mayor as the “heart of the deal”) adds about 2 extra floors of height in urban villages like Wallingford, in exchange for a requirement that about 6 percent of the development is priced for low-income tenants.
What that will look like: the block with Bottleworks in the heart of Wallingford could go up to 85 feet, and even higher if incentives are tapped (it is currently about 1.5 stories, but zoned for 65 feet). Given the option of cashing in on a doubling or tripling of property value under HALA, I bet most of the strip will flip in the next 5-10 years to a corridor that looks a lot like NW Market & 15th NW.
That probably means losing lots of the independent businesses, because rents in new developments are usually much higher. Personally, I hate the idea of trading a neighborhood mainstay like City Cellars for another *%#& cell phone store. I’m also concerned that the functionality of Wallingford – hardware stores, cobblers, barbers, bookstores – will be gentrified into another strip of $13 martini joints with five dog groomers.
But like I said, I’m not a NIMBY. Density is inevitable because Seattle won the global economic lottery, and I feel terrible for the millennials stuck with $30k in loan debt and 15% rent increases every year. The city should do something to address housing affordability. If the HALA upzoning element is intertwined with concurrent planning – particularly proactive transit adds, not the years-late adds that finally went after South Lake Union becamse intractable – and if you add impact fees to pay for park improvements and more schools, I could be okay with HALA and the upzoning.
My concern, after watching City Hall for a decade as a journalist, is that City Hall seems much more interested in keeping the housing advocates and developers from chewing each others heads off (which means big citywide upzones in urban villages) than listening to the neighborhood. We’re the ones who will have live with the consequences. The only way for neighborhoods to not get screwed in this process is to speak up, loudly, during the district election process. – Jonathan
Ironically, it appears to me that at this point the most outspoken support for neighborhoods where it matters, is coming from at large position 9 candidate Bill Bradburd. The problem we have downtown is not just that money counts, it’s a whole establishment that’s been backed by that money for a long time and doesn’t forget when you cross them. O’Brien just barely escaped McGinn’s fate – they came in riding big popular opposition to the tunnel deal, but the voters eventually swallowed the tunnel propaganda and left them out there alone – and he knows better than to pull anything like that. Our position 4 candidates do too. In the electorate’s present state, only a troublemaker like Bradburd is going to try to draw on that kind of support to fight something where the establishment has a financial stake.
O’Brien is putting incremental ‘up zoning’ of SF per HALA proposal back on the agenda: http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2015/9/25/single-family-zones-back-in-the-mix
O’Brien is running District 6 and Wallingford is in District 4; I think Johnson v Maddux is more important for Wallingford voters since Bradburd has a very uphill challenge against the well funded, establishment-endorsed Gonzalez.
Since the author seems to have tuned out and isn’t answering questions about this, do you recognize where this might have come from: “… no longer includes rezoning of single family homes in the Wallingford Urban Village”? As far as I know, urban village upzones are still in the package everywhere, and in any case there aren’t any final decisions – the mayor can take stuff out, O’Brien can put it back in, but it’s just talk at this point either way. Council decisions next year could go any way they choose.
The only public record that I’ve found is that the mayor said single family rezones were out, O’Brien agreed, but O’Brien is pushing increased ability to do ADU / DADU modifications to single family. See here, as others have pointed out:
http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2015/9/25/single-family-zones-back-in-the-mix
The zoning envelope for single family buildings will remain unchanged, but that there will be more opportunities to house multiple groups in “single family” homes. All the official info on upzones in urban villages after June 29th that I’ve found focuses on non-single family residences.
Anyhow, at this point, the real truth is being decided by O’Brien’s HALA committee. If anybody is following O’Brien’s committee closely and has info to offer please let us know:
http://www.seattle.gov/council/committees/HousingAffordability/
OK, thanks. The potential changes come from two directions. 1) changes to the map, and 2) changes to the code. The Urban Village thing is about changing the map, so west Wallingford from 40th to 50th is no longer SF – “upzoned.” That’s VERY likely to happen unless it meets strong, organized opposition. Then there are changes to the SF code, as you mention, where the devil is in the details and it’s some ways down the road.
Thanks Donn, I’m no land use expert, this helps. If somebody is zoned single family and is outside the urban village, then gets absorbed into an expanded urban village, how does their zoning change? I’m poking around on the Web and not finding clarity.
I’m no expert either, but I don’t expect any changes to the urban village boundaries. The developer give-away is to upzone SF that is within those boundaries. They drew a large boundary around the retail area, including a lot of SF, and I understand at the time that was explicitly not for zoning purposes, but they make the rules. The upzoning – along with increased height limits – are the “grand bargain” payoff to the developers, and in principle they’re committed to doing this in order to get a rather modest amount of below-market units. In practice, they’re bound to redraw the zone map, but might not strictly follow the village boundaries, which really weren’t designed for that purpose.
OK, I just spoke with O’Brien’s representative and got some clarifications. Here’s the key points:
– In 2015 no zoning changes to single family are being discussed
– In mid-2016 changes to urban village boundaries are scheduled for discussion
– The possibility of rezoning single family to low rise will be discussed in 2017 including conversion of 6% of single family to low rise, in urban villages and near transit
I’ll write a clarifying post when I have all the info.
The Mayor pulled back from getting rid of single family home zoning citywide, but that plan remains in effect for SFH in ‘urban villages.’ I supposedly live in one of these ‘urban villages’ even though I live on a quiet completely residential street….not much urban about it.
So if you are in an ‘urban village’ WATCH OUT
Bear in mind that Murray’s retreat on SF codes – and O’Brien’s subsequent restoration of some of that stuff – are all just talk at this point.
Not to underestimate the obstacles to making this happen, but with real widespread and determined opposition, these proposals could turn out very different. As the Westneat articles in the Times showed, there’s plenty of potential there.
Banned in Seattle’s single family zones (story is from Miami). “What I think of HALA” is that it should allow these all over the city…
…Schrieber attempts to make the townhouses affordable …by designing flexible, two-unit urban townhouses of 1,800 square feet. The ground floor is a complete 600-square-foot one-bedroom, one-bathroom unit, measuring about 18 feet wide by 34 feet long …the one-bedroom units would rent for about $1,250 per month. Offset against the $1,950 monthly payments, the net cost to the buyers would be only $700 (plus insurance and tax), which would let them live in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,200-square-foot two-floor townhouse…
The buyers gain flexibility and economic resilience. They might choose to live in the ground-floor unit and rent out the townhouse for about $2,000. If later they have children or earn higher incomes, they might choose to absorb the first-floor space into one larger unit for themselves,…They might choose to have elderly parents live in the first-floor unit, assisting with child care, or being assisted by their children…
It sure seems to me these boosters of density must be getting paid by their word count on local neighborhood comment threads, with a little bonus for smooth sounding retorts. Why in the heck would someone who lives here trash SFZs and promote more adus and townhouses and high density housing units? It only makes sense if you smell the money, because it sure ain’t because they care about the little people.
To be fair, I have run on a bit myself.
You have to recognize that money can make things happen, and we’ve seen some paid advocacy here on occasion, but for me at present we’re looking at something that’s more in the “acolytes of the Stranger” vein. That’s how it’s been referred to here before, but for a clearer picture, refer to “The Urbanist” (despite the name, appears to be mainly about Seattle) or “Seattle Met.” It’s a faith-based movement in some ways – faith that high residential density etc. is going to live up to promises and create an urban paradise. All you have to do to be a member of the club, is believe, and they do, with missionary zeal.
There’s that, and then there are people who are getting chewed up in this mess, and sometimes that comes out as bitterness directed at home owners, which is understandable, even if as far as I’m concerned it’s wrong.
The professional development boosters use all this and more, and they know what they’re doing. Most voters have no idea what’s going on, and the few who do can easily be confused by all this stuff.
Ad hominem much?
@walkinroun
Why?
Because at a time when there is as you say a “chasm between those that got and those that got naught” jobs are a thing to be celebrated, and helping people live near good ones is something every decent human being should embrace.
Single family exclusionary zoning makes living near jobs harder or impossible for those who aren’t either already her or rich.
It enriches people who already own homes (myself included). But I personally value “not causing unnecessary pain for other human beings” over enriching myself.
Once again, taking out single family exclusionary zoning is not going to increase affordability. The people who will be able to live in the housing contemplated by this change will not be poor or middle income families. Many of those folks, especially since the recession and the enormous, escalating loss of affordable rental units and low income housing, have already been forced out of Seattle. They will not be able to come back.
It will, however, damage some of the really special neighborhoods we have left here. The places most on the front line are, of course, those closest to downtown. But there are many other neighborhoods that are and will feel the impact of this loss throughout the city: most families who live and work in Seattle want to and do live in single family homes.
Some of the homeowners on my block recognize that even if they can sell their longtime home for a bundle of dough, there is nowhere they can or want to go with that dough that provides the community and quality of life they enjoy and wish to continue to enjoy here. They are not rich people and never were. Families need space and yards and green growing things. These are family zones, where children are grown.
What do you contemplate for families? Can a family live comfortably in a one bedroom unit in your basement? Will their kids be able to play in the back yard or will that be reserved for “Granny’s” tiny house? Is single family housing now an impossible dream in a “successful” city? What in the world will ever make that possible again? The chasm is widening and providing high priced cubes for tech workers is not going to change that. In fact, it only widens it.
What will happen, and what is already happening, will be the loss of yards and gardens, places that provide respite, places that still host wild things. We will become more crowded. The lines everywhere will be longer. The parks will become nearly impossible to access. Traffic will become unbearable. Costs for everything will increase. The strain on our infrastructure will continue to increase – our demands for water, power, waste disposal, etc. It is hugely ironic to me that the group of people who have been and are the most likely to ensure the liveability of this city – families – are being targeted by this zoning proposal.
@walkinroun If you are comfortable living your life according to the principle that the interests of people who “are sitting on a small fortune of home equity but prefer that nothing change” has equivalent moral weight to those of people who “have no choice but to leave and will never be able to own anything” I doubt anything I say here will change your mind about zoning.
Home equity doesn’t mean anything to me as a homeowner as I don’t want to move. I bought my house planning to stay, so it’s BS that you act like I am somehow benefiting. Yes, I prefer nothing change as I didn’t just buy a home, I bought into a neighborhood that I really LOVED and invested in updating my fixer upper as I didn’t expect to be in a position where I was villainized for being a homeowner who doesn’t want my neighborhood destroyed. I don’t owe anyone anything, I made sacrifices to own a home, other people can do it and stop whining.
You can’t assert moral principles without establishing some reasonable certainty about what we’re doing. We could say this is like a “lifeboat” ethical dilemma, but it isn’t anywhere near that clear – no one can tell us how many people will need to be accommodated or any of the other parameters. We can cast slurs too – you’re a stooge of the developer interests, eh? But I feel pretty confident that anyone who’s been reading walkinroun’s posts over time here will recognize an exceptional concern for others.
Fewer people will be accommodated with exclusionary single family zoning. More will be through restoring Wallingford’s prior to 1957. That is certain.
And here there is a clear and present choice: to support change that will mean that there are fewer people “who have no choice to leave and will never be able to own anything” –or to defend the status quo that means there will be more.
I hope you will note I simply described the positions as I understand them. I will accept a correction if there is one. And I cast no aspersions on either one as being cruel or naive. But just because you brought it up, let me quote something in the context of the anguish–heartbreak–we heard from someone being forced out of this neighborhood in this same discussion thread we’re one: “We will become more crowded. The lines…will be longer.”
“The lines will be longer.”
I will cast no aspersions, but if “waiting in longer lines” alleviates some human heartbreak–yeah, sign me up. 100% crystal clear.
Yes, all the things that will go sour are trivial, compared to the suffering of someone whose obscenely high rent has gone past what they can support. What we’re saying, though – over and over here – is that we can’t put an end to that by building more. Rents are not going to go down, because as more people squeeze in, there will be more jobs and more people behind them. Seriously. So as long as we pursue this strategy, the things that go sour will keep going sourer, and the suffering will be the same. Pointless sacrifice.
Until the herd stampedes off in some other direction and the bubble bursts. Then we’ll have relief on rents, but also a mess on our hands that depends on how far we let it get.
liveableballard.org describes our position 4 candidate Rob Johnson as a “zealous proponent of runaway growth”, and maybe he’d like to respond to that, but that term does represent what we’re talking about. Boosters like to tell you that “growth is coming” and we can’t stop it, but we can. Not literally an end to growth, but runaway, unsustainable growth, no, we don’t have to accept that, and the sooner we pull the plug, the fewer people will get chewed up in this housing crisis. In the short term, it will be ugly, but it’s already ugly anyway.
Well I feel as if we’ve jumped the shark here, but I’ll leave it at this: if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. And if building units of housing could attract jobs, the city of Cleveland would build a shitload of apartments and become San Francisco.
in case anyone hasn’t figured this out yet, “donn” is the self-appointed patriarch of this blog. He is the decider of whether we are worthy posters or just shills, plants, or simply incapable of critical thinking. Generally, if you disagree with his position, you fall into the latter category.
– If you show compassion toward the homeless and downtrodden, you are a shill of Ed Murray.
– If you support public transportation, bike lanes, some additional affordable housing options, you are a plant for big developers.
– If you are more progressive/liberal than he is, you are an “acolyte of the Stranger.”
That’s right, you could not possibly have come to these positions through critical thinking or accrued wisdom.
If you are clearly an independent, critical thinker but you still disagree with donn or his sycophants, he will attack your use of language. If you don’t use the historically proper albeit archaic usage of every word or phrase, he will use it against you. His mansplaining knows no limits.
He doesn’t know when to make his point and shut up and let other people talk. He sits in judgment of you. He already knows everything, so he knows whether you are Right or Wrong. There is no possibility that he will ever deign to learn from others or allow for a give and take discussion.
It’s really too bad, because he seems to have some good thoughts and ideas. He just needs to learn how to share the floor, have an open mind, and be less condescending.
“donn or his sycophants” – I like that! But take it easy on them, it isn’t a very rewarding job.
By the way, I’m celebrating this recognition of my special ascendant glory by making the moon go dark this evening, so don’t miss it, 7-8 PM.
I love living in Wallingford and I am lucky to have arrived before the housing madness hit the roof. I don’t want to walk along a dark corridor on 45th with towering blocks of boring high rises. It’s a disgrace that rents are sky rocketing and the only winners here are the developers who are being given free reign to fleece anyone who wants to live near their place of work. People are moving to Wallingford because it’s a great neighborhood and it won’t be great if we tear down all the houses and build on the lovingly tended gardens.
Exactly. So many of the posts are trying to make us SFH owners the bad guys, we aren’t. The whining renters should be venting at the developers. Who is raising your rents? Me as a homeowner or the developer who built your apartment where the price is astronomical? Direct your ire to the real problem.
Oh, have a heart. I’ve rented and been shuffled about. My very first place for a few weeks in this city was a notorious motel off Aurora (didn’t know any better and it was affordable). Some of us were lucky with timing. I rented apartments in a 1950’s built building and in an old, old house (now one of those 4 plexes) in Ballard. The rent was cheap because these places were old and were managed by actual owners. Those places are gone. You can still find some of these older, cheaper rentals, but they are further out on Greenwood toward Shoreline and Lake City Way. They don’t last long when they come on the market. You can see it’s a matter of time when these places will be replaced by new builts and people who can’t afford the new price will move again and again. I wish people would drop the argument that building more will mean cheaper. It doesn’t. New homes, new condos, new duplexes, new apartments are expensive. Just ask the renters. I learned this helping friends and family members move boxes and furniture this summer.
Growth isn’t kind to the working poor, retirees, and the middle class. Vancouver, a city with far better planning (transportation) foresight is a good example of this. Vancouver collects impact fees and builders haven’t stopped building (there’s unavoidable sprawl). HALA needs impact fees. The best we got was 25% set aside from developers to build “affordable housing” for more tax breaks. It’s the same old, same old. That’s not an answer. $200,000 for semi-permanent tent cities like the one off Dearborn all over this city. The RVs and car living popping up alongside portapotties everywhere is now the new norm. Yet somehow there’s a $5 million plan for Pronto bike. Yeah, try riding from Lake City DT on a pronto bike daily. Better wish for more El Niño years and drought to get ridership up during winter months. This is what they call smart growth?
New apartments are expensive, because the strong restriction on building new housing means anything that got built have to be expensive ones so the expensive lands and licenses they got would be worth it. If there is no building restrictions, you’ll see tons more new buildings, including much cheaper ones. It’s not that single family house owners are bad guys. It’s the rules that intend to preserve large area of single family house that are making housing expensive. Low density housing in big cities are luxuries, and single family housing rules are basically protecting luxuries.
It sure is. You can add new apartments, new condos, new homes, new apodments, new schools, new stadiums, new seawall, new town homes, new parklets, new min parks, new bike lanes for Pronto bikes, and new street trolleys to your luxury list too.
I think people get it’s expensive to be here. Living in Seattle is becoming a luxury.
And it doesn’t have to be a luxury. Seattle population density is like one eighth of Paris, which is a city with very few high rises. We are intentionally making living in Seattle a luxury by insistence on single family housing.
Why would it be “dark corridor”? You might not like it, but more condos and apartments would make the street brighter not darker. The lower the density, the darker it is.
TJ, I’m a very lucky, old woman. I finally made it to the city of lights. Better late than never. Paris restricts its building height and Parisians have been debating height restrictions for a while now. But yes, its charm certainly lies in its 5-6 story buildings, wide Blvds. and narrow streets. Families live in Paris suburbs. The poor are corralled in the outer ring areas as well. At least it has decent buses, trains, and subways to get around. I don’t know – a city full of rich people, tourists, well off expats and students, and those lucky enough to inherit apartments passed down generation to generation. Is that where Seattle is heading?
Even if you were a minor deity and wipe out all SF homes in Seattle and build new 6 stories and divvy us all up in charming arrondissements (with a boulangerie every 4 blocks I hope), it’ll still be an expensive place to live.
Seattle is going the way of Vancouver and San Francisco. Redmond and Bellevue, the new Pao Alto and Mountainview? Even if that is its future (I doubt it’ll be mine on fixed income), you are right, there’s a lot here to work with. I’m not against building up or more mother in laws, but it has to show care to current neighbors. Building tall in such a way you don’t block out light, building with load/unload delivery space and with parking so you are not causing more parking woes in a neighborhood with parking issues show a commitment to building a livable city. These little things matter alongside tackling transit. I can never understand why buildings aren’t more set back from sidewalks with a bit of green/hardscape space, especially on busy corner lots. Vancouver has many commercial and residential buildings with this design and the landscaping adds charm and connectivity.
It’s also hard to take city planning seriously when it doesn’t address major infrastructure issues like sufficient schools and all the back logged maintenance of roads/bridges/sewer/utilities in this rather young city. It’s as if this city is waiting for the big 9.0 or something catastrophic to make these things happen.
Seattle is heading toward a place no poor people can live in, because of all the building restrictions and the insistence on single family houses. “Caring for current neighbors” really just means “maintaining the property value of existing owners so they can sell high to somebody rich in the future”. It’s a fact that if we want to let more people enjoy neighborhoods with good access to many nice things, we just need to have higher density in those places. And yes, that would mean taller buildings that could block somebody’s sunlight or view.
She’s talking about the developer give-away that will raise height limits to 85 feet, along an east/west street. These buildings would cast a shadow over 100 feet at noon, now (Sep 30.) Winter solstice over 250 feet. That tends to cut down on light. The absurd contrast with existing buildings illustrates the nature of this deal: we haven’t come anywhere close to running out of space to build, within current restrictions.
Not getting direct sunlight isn’t dark, or by that standard Seattle is simply a dark city. If you want to find dark corridor, go outside the city and see the low density suburbs with nobody walking in the streets at night. And availability of places to built isn’t really based on how many places are allowed to build up. Many places that are allowed to build up aren’t available on the market. If the whole Wallingford is allowed to be razed and rebuilt and housing re-distributed, I am sure we don’t need to raise the limit to 85 feet. We can just rebuild everything to be townhouses.