In January of this year, the Wallingford Community Council convened a meeting to educate the neighborhood on changes to zoning and housing policies that could have drastic effects on our neighborhood and our city. I attended, as did many others (around 200 were in attendance). At this meeting, I asked the person next to me, “What is an Urban Vi
llage?” (Keep reading if you have had the same question).
Since that meeting I have dived in with both feet (which at times includes following the mayor around with a sign and balloons) but also includes getting past all of the city’s propaganda and trying to figure out what the heck is really going on.
I wanted to share what I’ve uncovered with all of you. Pardon me if you’ve read this before; I did make a similar post on Nextdoor a while back. But I am hoping to continue sharing housing information with you here on Wallyhood, and so I thought it would be best if my first post started with some background (with a little bit of commentary thrown in). I hope you find this information worth your while…
In 2015, Mayor Ed Murray convened a 28 person volunteer panel to develop the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA). The recommendations are starting to be voted on by City Council piece by piece.
HALA has some good points, like tenant protections against rent hikes in apartments that are not properly maintained, but a main focus is to increase density in our city to address the lack of affordable housing, i.e. more buildings, bigger buildings. Last year the mayor also made a “Grand Bargain” with developers. The agreement is that the developers will be required to provide affordable units in their residential buildings or pay into a fee and the city will build those units. In exchange, the developers have been promised upzones, i.e. increased heights and changes in zoning to allow for increased density. For commercial developments they pay a Linkage Fee. It is called this because the fee is linked to upzones. This is a large part of how the mayor plans to make the city a more affordable place to live.
Let’s look at the details. In exchange for upzones, new multifamily residential developments will be required to set aside two to five percent of their units as affordable in Downtown and South Lake Union, and five to seven percent in the rest of the city.* “Affordable” is defined as affordable for residents earning up to 60 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI) and the units are required to stay affordable for 50 years. According to the HALA website: “In 2015, 60 percent of AMI is $37,680 for an individual and $53,760 for a family of four.” Two to seven percent is small compared to other cities with similar programs that require developers to set aside around 10 to 30 percent of their units as affordable. If the goal really is to provide more affordable units, it seems the perfect opportunity to do so would be the development boom that is happening right now in Downtown and South Lake Union. These areas are close to amenities and jobs and transit. Is two percent affordable units really acceptable?
If we look outside of Downtown there are also many concerns. Throughout the city, there are areas that have been designated as Hub Urban Villages and Residential Urban Villages (although often lumped together by city officials). These are the areas that are considered closer to transit, amenities, have walkable shopping areas, etc. They are also major targets for growth in HALA. Originally there was a consideration to upzone all single family neighborhoods in Seattle to multifamily zoning. When this was met with much public opposition, it was scaled back to urban villages, albeit with fuzzy or expanding boundaries. A current proposal is to upzone all single family neighborhoods inside hub and residential urban villages to multifamily. A large area in the center of Wallingford is designated a Residential Urban Village, including about 700 single family homes.
Is this upzoning really necessary? If we look in the Seattle 2035 Development Capacity Report, it states in the summary on the first page: “Based on current zoning, DPD estimates that the city has development capacity to add about 224,000 housing units.” It is important to note that development capacity is not a maximum capacity that could be built with current zoning but instead refers to the expected amount that would be built given current trends. In other words, with current zoning we could actually build more than 224,000 housing units. On the HALA website, Mayor Murray states he has a goal of adding 50,000 units in 10 years. The projected population growth for Seattle is 70,000 housing units (120,000 people) in 20 years.
So with current zoning we have plenty of room to meet those goals. So really, the main reason to upzone is the Grand Bargain because developers are not required to include affordable units or pay a fee until the upzones are in effect. Upzoning the neighborhoods is not necessary to meet the mayor’s goal of housing units, it is not necessary to accommodate the projected population growth, and it is not even for the improvement of the neighborhoods. It is because of the deal the mayor made with the developers.
The City’s answer to this is we still upzone the urban villages because they are close to amenities, good schools, transit and jobs. So let’s look at this. We already mentioned how Downtown and South Lake Union epitomizes this (all except for maybe good schools) but they are required to contribute the lowest percentages.
Here in Wallingford, waiting as several full buses pass people by is a frequent complaint. There was a large transportation levy passed last year but we are not on a projected light rail line so it is unclear what improvements in transit service we can expect. Yes, we have a modest and quaint walkable shopping district. We have very few jobs here. Yes, we have good schools. But they are over capacity and underfunded.
And while we are on the subject of over capacity, can we take a minute to talk about our antiquated sewer system? Did you know that there are signs at Lake Union near Gas Works Park that read: “WARNING Possible Sewage Overflows During and Following Heavy Rain.” Seriously?!? In case you still have questions, the raw sewage that comes from your toilets mixes with street runoff that is going directly into Lake 
Union untreated during and after heavy rains. These are called Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) and there are many throughout the City. There is a pipeline that is planned to fix this problem in Wallingford, but it is not scheduled to be completed until 2025. Many of the areas around the City that drain into a CSO correspond to areas that Mayor Murray wants to upzone. We are concerned about plans to upzone without concurrent plans to update our infrastructure, an infrastructure which is already over burdened. The State Growth Management Act requires that growth has concurrent investment in infrastructure. And federal law includes the Clean Water Act. The City appears to already be in violation of these laws and plans to upzone despite its noncompliance.
We are also concerned about the loss of trees and grass and dirt, which clean our air and our water and reduce street water runoff. Mayor Murray and the Sierra Club have given speeches saying that HALA is green because by concentrating the growth in certain areas it protects other areas. I say, more cement is not green. Green is green. We are the Emerald City not the Concrete Jungle. Is Seattle ok with less stringent environmental guidelines and fewer environmental reviews for developers? Is protecting our trees important to us?
Parking is another commodity that will become scarce if the mayor’s vision is realized. The argument is that $30,000 to provide an onsite parking space is too expensive for the developer, especially if they are going to provide affordable units. However we must ask this question, if the developer is reducing his costs by not including parking in the building, is he passing that savings on to the resident and offering the unit at an “affordable” rate? Or is he still pricing the unit at market value and just increasing his profit margin? The City is already decreasing parking by allowing bike racks and parklets to occupy spaces on public streets and they have been renting public street spaces to car share companies. The City seems intent on having people abandon their cars. More difficulty parking on the street hurts many groups including: handicapped persons, elderly, families with small children, workers who use their vehicles (landscapers, house cleaners, caterers), etc. Not requiring developers to include parking increases the developers profits and decreases the livability of our City.
One more piece of this puzzle is Seattle 2035. Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan is a roadmap for urban planning over a 20 year period. We reached the end of that 20 year period for our first Comprehensive Plan, so the mayor has undertaken to write another one, which will be the 2035 Comprehensive Plan. A draft report was recently published by the mayor’s office. Some of the themes include: upzoning single family zones and small lot development, decreasing available parking, removing protections for trees, and stripping neighborhood plans of authority. In essence, the new Comprehensive Plan would make it easier for the mayor to implement HALA. The mayor’s plan is being presented to City Council in pieces, they will then have the option of amending it before it goes to a vote.
HALA and the Seattle 2035 Comprehensive Plan are still works in progress for now but they are on a fast timeline to become law. They have good parts, but we can do better. Seattle should be on the cutting edge of equitable housing solutions and environmental leadership. We should be asking questions to ensure that HALA and the Seattle 2035 are the best that they can be so everyone benefits from these policies.
- Are the developers the main group that benefit from HALA?
- Does HALA actually make our city more affordable?
- Will for-profit developers really be the ones to fix our affordability crisis?
- Should the City sell bonds to pay for low income housing?
- Should the city repeal the Multi Family Tax Exemption (MFTE) which has given over $200 million in tax breaks in 10 years to developers? Could we do more with this money?
- What about the older, more affordable units that were demolished and the people in them who were displaced? Are we even gaining more affordable housing than we are losing?
- Why are the developers only required to set aside 2 to 5% affordable units in Downtown and South Lake Union and only 5 to 7% affordable units in the rest of the City? Why are these numbers so low?
- Is there any guarantee that upzoning will result in affordable housing being built in Wallingford?
- Can Wallingford expect improvements in bus service with upzoning?
- Will schools get more funds and more space in areas that are upzoned?
- Why are we removing protections for trees?
- How can we upzone areas that already have raw sewage overflowing into our waterways? Shouldn’t this be fixed before any upzones can be discussed?
- Are there protections for solar panels to prevent shadowing from large developments?
- Why are we not charging the developers Impact Fees? Impact Fees can be used to fund schools, parks, transportation and Fire/Safety. Impact Fees are charged in many other cities including Yakima, Edmonds, Everett, Bellevue, Spokane, Kirkland, etc.
- The mayor wants to double the Housing Levy to help pay for HALA. Will tax increases for homeowners be used to fund tax breaks to for-profit landlords and for-profit developers?
- Does upzoning in exchange for affordable units and fees have the potential to upzone a neighborhood for the wrong reasons?
- Why are we upzoning when we already have so much development capacity with current zoning?
- Why are neighborhood plans being stripped of their authority in the Comprehensive Plan? This would allow upzones anywhere City Hall determines (likely at the request of developers) without neighborhood input, which is not ok.
TAKE ACTION!
Write Mayor Ed Murray: http://www.seattle.gov/mayor/get-involved/contact-the-mayor
Write the City Council, remember all members will vote: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Sign up for City Council agendas. Attend a meeting and sign up to make a public comment. Recommended agendas to sign up for & meetings to attend:
- Full Council
- Planning, Land Use & Zoning
- Affordable Housing, Neighborhoods & Finance
*The HALA website http://www.seattle.gov/hala/about states: “The second part of the “Grand Bargain” calls for a Mandatory Housing Affordability program for new multifamily developments, requiring five to eight percent of units be affordable for residents earning up to 60 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI) for 50 years.” However it has been verified by Geoffrey Wentlandt ([email protected]) that the percentages are actually two to five percent for Downtown and South Lake Union and five to seven percent for the other neighborhoods. Mr. Wentlandt has stated that the information on the website is out of date. There have been requests made to update the website with the correct information but as of this writing it has not been corrected.
Thank you so much for writing this up. I know we have a few folks on here who are very driven to support HALA and Seattle 2035 and it would be very interesting to hear their answers to your list of questions at the end. Again, this write up is very nice of you to have done.
Thanks and I love it that you sent it on to the Councilmembers.
Yes, thank you!
Great job Susanna!
Thank you for this thoughtful, clear and well-written article. I also want to thank you for all the time and effort you have given to the Wallingford community by advocating for our neighborhood. I have seen comments on Wallyhood get negative in the past- please do not get discouraged if they do. We all want to address the affordable housing crisis in Seattle and we want to do it in a thoughtful way. I admire your tireless efforts to address how HALA will impact this community and our city. Grateful to have you as a neighbor!
Well put, Susanna and excellent questions for HALA to answer. I would only add that the surge in traffic congestion, even in the neighborhood, has made it much more difficult to drive and to walk without the fear of getting hit. Think of the cost of all this extra traffic that our public transportation systems are not keeping up with now and how it increases costs in time, money, and insurance every day for everyone. I would like to see some proposals for a Slow Growth Movement that will put a break on much of this building until an adequate transportation and other infrastructure can keep up with it — without having to wait for 20 years. I’m still trying to figure out where the “livability” comes in for HALA.
Thanks for this thorough article! Another concern I have about loss of parking and transit is that not all of our citizens can walk or ride bicycles. Bus stops are already further apart which becomes a hardship for those with small children and physical disabilities. Let’s not just cater to high-tech, high-income earning individuals at the peak of their careers and physical health.
For those who object to what is being developed in Seattle and more specifially in our neighborhood: Now is the time to look for, find and support someone you think will do a good job of representing our interests and implementing well thought out plans for a liveable Seattle. Don’t wait until an election is upon us to start the process.
You are absolutely correct, Abigail!
Our community needs to start vetting potential candidates to replace Councilmember Rob Johnson, who has been utterly disinterested in accountable neighborhood planning.
Time to find someone that will respect their constituents more than developer/business PAC campaign contributors.
I’d vote for Susanna!
I thought I knew a lot about HALA, but this is still very helpful. I’ve kind of already given up on my opinion as a homeowner being at all persuasive. I don’t have the developer dollars. If everyone in the neighborhood donated $1,000 to Ed Murray, maybe.
Having said that I think it is our job to force the city to accommodate the increased density they propose with better transportation and civic resources. I think we can have density *and* parks. I think the more apodments you have the more necessary it is to have public park space. I would put these things in as requirements to upzone if possible.
HIghly recommend that folks check out the site: http://www.700milliongallons.org/rainwise/ , regarding targeted sewer overflow basin areas in North Seattle. The city’s Rainwise program exists to keep rain water out of the sewer system NOW, and uses your taxpayer dollars to do so. The presentation that they do at the libraries and community centers is very eyeopening about how you and I as property owners and renters contribute to this problem, and what we can do about it NOW, not by complaining about it until 2025. Get in on being a part of the solution even if it’s just moving one drainspout off the grid.
Yes, please consider a rain garden, especially if you are in an area that drains into a CSO! Thanks for this link.
“Are we even gaining more affordable housing than we are losing?”
That’s an important question, and to my knowledge one that the city doesn’t try to answer, despite their talk about their “data driven” policies. Their numbers simply do not include affordable market rate housing, effectively treating that number as 0. Which could turn out to be self fulfilling prophesy, unfortunately.
Wow, thank you so much for this comprehensive article, and for all the monumental work you, Miranda, Donn, Toby, and so many others are doing in analyzing and sharing information on this issue. I am so grateful for the reasonable, intelligent and steadfast way you and others have been able to consistently represent the interests of this neighborhood, as well as so many others in Seattle.
As a renter in one of the older “mom and pop” apartments still left in Wallyhoodland, we have endured 10% rent increases each of the last several years that have and are driving my husband and me – fixed income seniors – to look far afield for somewhere else to live. But guess what – there is nowhere left in Seattle, unless you count an apodment, which I consider an abomination to the human spirit. We have not cared about being owners, but have wished to live simply, cheaply, independently and mildly. This is no longer possible here.
This is really what I’m most afraid of, that as Wallingford heats up, we’ll lose people like you, and my close neighbors who are also renting with modest incomes. Urbanists talk a good line about bringing market rates down by adding supply, but not likely in the real world, and after all the talk about equity etc. it’s going to be affluent techies from one end to the other. I understand some reports are coming in that rent isn’t going up as fast as it has been, and we may be getting to a peak in the cycle, hope that’s true.
The supply-side theorists admit that it takes 40 to 50 years for new apartments to “trickle down” by aging into affordability. Right now, the many motel-style units built in 1961 for the World’s Fair are at risk for being displaced.
Actually, those old apartments were completely affordable when they were built. My husband and I lived in one off Whitman but got booted out, not because my husband was black, but because our first son was due and no children were allowed.
The irony for us now, of course, is that those many modest, shaggy carpeted (but roomier), used to-be-affordable older apartments are and have been escalating their rents to keep up with the soaring rents around them. All this building of tiny boxes and tearing down of trees and setbacks and greenspace and the gentle, aesthetic character of this neighborhood has nothing to do with affordability and everything to do with money money money.
I am honored that you name me for helping inform people; thank you.
My late night short addition to Susanna’s really well done piece:
Elections matter! The Weekly has documented how our victory with district council elections (Charter Amendment 19 in 2013) was undermined by Vulcan et al.—http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/963302-129/how-amazon-and-vulcan-bought-their
The City’s report with the data and graphs is available here: https://caseyjaywork.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/2015-election-report.pdf (It’s also on the SEEC web site along with past election reports: http://www2.seattle.gov/ethics/elpub/archive.asp.)
The attached map shows who voted for Johnson; Eastlake, U District, Wallingford and East Fremont, not so much. It’s funny how the neighborhoods who supported Johnson the most are those with the wealthiest people and the most SF zoning, and where reside the voters least likely to be impacted by any of the City’s land use proposals. Irony, thy name is HALA.
Well said. Yes, it is interesting how those who call those of us who question the goals and effects of HALA “NIMBY’s,” when they don’t have to worry about HALA in their own back yards.
Up-zoning itself is only the first step to affordable housing. To make housing cheaper, you have to have more of them. The reason why HALA type of policies will not be delivering enough is because cities like Seattle has too many restrictions and review processes that slow down the generation of new units. Since it’s so hard, whenever developers do bother going through the process, they’d prefer to have units with high profit margins.
Already having the capacity within current zoning rules does not mean houses would be rebuilt to that capacity, exactly because of this reason. Honestly the best solution is to rebuild most of the communities with reasonable easy access to downtown ( like Wallingford) into mostly 4-8 story condos, and build the high capacity public transportation to support these areas. That’s what most big cities around the world look like.
That’s not gonna happen in Seattle, and Seattle is going to be like San Francisco where only pretty rich people can live in. Seattle school teachers and what not will all live in Kent or Monroe.
Thank you Susanna. Very well said. Your article represents that one can be a strong proponent of affordable housing, yet question the Mayor’s proposals for upzones in the Residential Urban Village.
It is unlikely that newly-built housing can ever be more affordable than existing older homes and mom-and-pop apartments because the cost of new labor, new materials and developer’s profit is added to the cost of the demolished property.
Also, retaining older homes, rather than demolishing and building new, is usually the “greener” approach because no waste is generated, trees are saved, and the energy cost to produce new materials is not incurred.
If we define affordable housing as rents of $1,000 or less affordable to people making 60% of area median income ($18/hr.) or less, there is no way new construction can be affordable without regulations, setasides, tax credits or other subsidies. We can’t wait for it to age 40 or 50 years to be actually affordable. We have to preserve as many of our older affordable units as possible.
This is one of the best critiques of HALA I have ever read. HALA is one heck of a Grand Bargain if you’re a corporate developer. Otherwise, it is a recipe for gentrification, displacement, endlessly rising rent and loss of neighborhood character. The massive U District “Tech Hub” upzone is a poster child of all these problems, but other neighborhoods including Wallingford and Ballard are under great strain too as huge amounts of growth are poured into them without the city collecting impact fees to pay for the impacts of rapid growth on public services including transportation, schools, parks, community centers, and police and fire services. Many other cities in Western Washington collect impact fees without any noticiable adverse effects on development. Seattle must do so also instead of continuing the city’s magical thinking that growth pays for itself. Requiring only 2-5% affordable units per building is a slap in the face to the 50% of Seattle households that earn earning half or less of the median income, or $~35,500, in fact it is a recipe for saddling renters with a massive cost burden that can rise at any time, since landlords are free to increase the rent as much as they want and generally far in excess of the rate of renter wage increases. Allowing developers to pay a fee in lieu of including affordable units in new buildings is a recipe for displacement of renters who used to live in affordable housing that gets knocked down and replaced by very expensive market rate housing. It can take many years for new affordable housing to be built off site, as exemplified by the Plaza Roberto Maestas housing project at El Centro de la Raza on Beacon Hill, which took eight years for design, permitting and construction because funding had to be assembled from many sources, as will be the case with use of these fees in lieu. Many of the new low and middle income buildings will be constructed many miles away from neighborhoods in which former tenants were living, some of them in neighborhoods they have lived all their lives.
Seattle needs to stop thinking and acting as if the private housing market can solve our affordable housing crisis. It never has, and never will. The city could enact equitable tax policies, impact fees and issue bonds to build PUBLICLY financed housing where the PUBLIC owns the land in perpetuity (not like SHA, which sells off public land whenever it feels like it, as in the breathtaking giveaway at Yesler Terrace, where the new owner, Vulcan, gets away with merely replacing the 461 existing units and is permitted to build thousands of market rate units and at least one luxury hotel on what used to be PUBLIC land), and rents are effectively controlled. Only through permanent PUBLIC ownership of large amounts of land for low and middle income housing can Seattle ever have any hope of achieving long term affordability and livability for its citizens. I suggest that the target percentage should be at least 25% of the total housing stock.
Thanks all for the nice comments. I’m not going to lie, I was a little worried the discussion might turn ugly. So it was very reassuring that it did not. As much as it would be nice, I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. My main motivation is that people are informed so their decisions can be made on facts, not rhetoric. If you’re well informed and polite and disagree with me, I’m ok with that (but of course I’m happy when you agree with me, too!)
I’m a renter who has been displaced by a lack of housing in Seattle. I’ve lived in Seattle for 40 years. Now we are commuting an average of 3 hours a day. How is pushing people into 3 hours daily commutes Green or Humane?
The first thing I would do is redraw the illustration – those two big buildings? Full of happy people. Single people, couples, single parents, young families. People with cats, people with dogs.
2nd. Old cute multiplexes that are being torn down. Of course they are. This is not a result of upzoning, but of the fact that our zoning has throttled our ability to provide housing. Thus, the only place that someone can expand housing is in the cute older multifamily buildings.
3rd. For the life of me, I’ve never understood the resistance to converting single family houses into a house with a small apartment and / or a backyard cottage. Those are wonderful housing options. For someone with a child – you can live in a neighborhood and have a backyard! I understand the emotional resistance to the bigger buildings, but converting houses seems like such a win win.
4th. The supply side thing. Supply side economics is entirely different from increasing housing units (increasing supply) when there aren’t enough places for people to live. 4000 people a month are coming into Puget Sound, attracted by our thriving economy. Do you really want the people like me who have lived in Seattle to be pushed out to the far suburbs with inadequate sidewalks and three hour commutes for my partner? It’s easy to mentally discount me as some bad neighbor you had, but I can tell you that our neighbors on our old block cried when we moved. We were so touched and, well now I feel all sniffly.
5th The trees. Midsize apartment buildings and backyard cottages attached to a house that is also rented out do not destroy the tree canopy. When I was 6, my family live in an apartment in a lovely 3 story stone building. It has lovely big shady trees, as tall as the building. I google street viewed it – the lovely trees are still there, happily shading on a summer day. But every tree saved in the city limits will soon grow back, but will cost many trees on lots in King or Snohomish counties, lots that are cleared for sprawl and increased car use. This is not Green. We can build backyard cottages and small multi family far faster than building the new light rail.
6th More housing won’t make prices go down because it takes 30-40 years. That is not correct. Sorry Sarajane, but it isn’t. We don’t have enough housing for the people coming in. The people with more money will get the housing in Seattle, the people with less money will be pushed out. One friend is now in Renton, taking 3 buses to get to her job in Seattle. Another couch surfed for two years until he qualified for housing for older folks. More housing built will allow the people with more money to move into the newer housing rather than competing with their more dollars for the older housing. Individuals are being displaced, we need to work on what to do to keep them housed. But we are still actually building more affordable units than we are tearing down – that is a wonderful thing!
Remember, one tree cut in Seattle will grow back, it will save 10 in greater Puget Sound, and it will allow people to do more with their lives than just commute.
That covered a lot of ground! Just to get one perhaps minor point clear, I don’t know anyone who’s against mother-in-law apts or backyard cottages. Maybe those people exist, but I’ve heard a lot of complaints about other things but not that, specifically.
We’re building more affordable units than we are tearing down? I personally doubt that very much, I think the Displacement Coaltion has it right and it’s the other way around, but as far as I know the data is very thin. No one knows what every renter is paying.
In the end, it comes down to what kind of growth makes sense. I believe we are starting to see – at the academic level anyway – that the concentrated urban growth that has been a fundamental principle of planning for the last generation or two can be carried too far, and there’s a limit at which it ceases to work. Cities can’t afford the infrastructure. It’s at its worst here where incoming employers that generate the growth, aren’t paying for the costs. When the problems that come with this growth spurt have taken their toll and Seattle doesn’t have it any more, they’ll run off to some other nice city and we’ll be left with a city of aging Ballards. There’s no way this can end well, and perhaps the best we can do is make sure it ends soon.
what kind of growth makes sense At the global level, ‘no growth’ is the only kind that makes sense. To understand why and how knowledge of this basic thermodynamic truth has been suppressed from the public discourse, read this book (available at Seattle Public Library): https://seattle.bibliocommons.com/item/show/3078928030_collision_course
At the local/regional/national level, growth in combination with increasing inequity leads to the results you spell out. And worse: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615
Donn,
Greg Hill, who, to his credit, has very capably served at the helm of land use policy on behalf of the WCC for more than two decades, is opposed to DADUs. He told me so himself following the initial WCC HALA meeting in January. When I asked him why he said he didn’t want a DADU shading his vegetable garden. I think there is far more resistance than you are aware of.
The issue with the current DADU policy is that it is too restrictive and, as a result, very few are being constructed. Other cites, such as Vancouver, have successfully addressed this by reducing or eliminating parking requirements as well as the owner occupancy requirement. They did so despite the same neighborhood resistance as we are seeing here in Seattle and it’s worked out just fine – no parking crisis and no city wide destruction of neighborhoods by unscrupulous developers. Just more DADUs being built….a lot more. In fact, it’s spawned a small industry of very capable DADU (they call them laneway houses) design build firms doing some very nice work.
These revisions are opposed by most folks active in the WCC. If we are in favor of DADUs we should pursue policy revisions that encourage them to actually be constructed. Otherwise, I would argue, we are opposed to them by default.
OK, I can’t see inside anyone’s head, and in the end I’m not sure it matters – whatever Greg’s opinion may be about backyard cottages, he has had plenty of opportunity to push for making them illegal, and that isn’t how it’s coming out at this point. O’Brien’s list of ADU policy changes is seriously flawed, and if we have to be for them all or against backyard cottages period, then I guess the latter it shall be, if you insist.
And even with the proposed changes, backyard cottages are numerically a side-show – expensive and bulky compared to mother-in-law apts, which will continue to be much more important for housing availability.
And if there’s resistance now, with only a few hundred backyard cottages in the whole city, let’s try for thousands! And in a hurry, so this and all the other big pro-development initiatives can breeze through in this heavily publicized “crisis.” We can repent at our leisure over the next few decades.
Donn,
It’s not a crisis for you or me as we’re pretty well set. However, as someone who teaches kids at the UW who graduate with $90K of debt and starting salaries at $40K and would like to live and work in the city I can tell you it’s a crisis.
These are bad times for a lot of people, but that isn’t the definition of “crisis.” The massive influx of people here is a phenomenon brought on by the city and mega-corporations, and they will continue to do it as long as it’s profitable. The temporal condition of a crisis doesn’t apply here.
It’s a phenomenon brought on by the fact that people want to live here just as you and I have chosen to do. I’m not one to defend large corporations but the corporations are here because it’s a desirable place to live, not the other way around.
It’s less about being a ‘crisis’ than it is one of what we want the city to be and who can afford to live here.
Yes: “what we want the city to be and who can afford to live here.” HALA recommendation SF2 would help by restoring open zoning to places like Wallingford: https://realitybasedhousing.net/2016/05/22/support-hala-reco-sf2-open-zoning-for-affordability/
Thank you for your polite response. I’m sorry if my post gave you the impression I am happy with neighbors like yourself being displaced. I definitely am not. But I feel that erasing neighborhoods and replacing them with new, luxury buildings increases displacement and worsens the problem. Let me try to address a few of the concerns you mentioned. You may not agree with my responses, but I hope you can at least see my point of view.
“Zoning has throttled our ability to provide housing.” I would not agree since Seattle DPD stated: . “Based on current zoning, DPD estimates that the city has development capacity to add about 224,000 housing units and 232,000 jobs, a sufficient amount to accommodate the 70,000 households and 115,000 jobs the Countywide Planning Policies assign to Seattle for the next 20 years.”
I did not really talk about backyard cottages in this article, but for the record I am fine with owner occupied lots that include either a mother-in-law apartments or backyard cottage.
“But every tree saved in the city limits will soon grow back, but will cost many trees on lots in King or Snohomish counties… one tree cut in Seattle will grow back, it will save 10 in greater Puget Sound” I don’t really understand this argument. A tree may take 50 years to grow to maturity so trees do not “soon grow back.” And I simply reject the notion that cutting trees here is ok because it will save trees over there.
“4000 people a month are coming into Puget Sound” Can you please tell me where this figure comes from? If that were true, then that would mean we should expect an additional 960,000 people in 20 years. But according to the DPD’s projections, it is estimated that the population will grow by 120,000 people (needing 70,000 housing units) in the next 20 years.
“But we are still actually building more affordable units than we are tearing down” Again, could you tell me where are the numbers to back up this statement?
Again, I am not happy when anyone is displaced. That is why I would like us to develop affordable housing solutions that do not increase the rate of demolition of older, more affordable housing. Upzoning I believe would increase the rate of demolition and displacement. Councilmember Lisa Herbold has been advocating preservation of affordable housing, which I support. I would also like to look at things like the Multi Family Tax Exemption (MFTE) that has given over $200 million in tax breaks to developers. There’s a lot of details with this, which I won’t get into now since this response is already long. But upzoning is not the only option.
O’Brien’s new cottage legislation…I thought this was interesting… http://www.kplu.org/post/seattle-city-council-member-o-brien-proposes-changes-encourage-more-backyard-cottages
Thanks! articles like this represent the new media model – superficial coverage, hope the comments uncover the real issues. It’s helpful to know where they pop up.
Thanks!
Susanna, you are doing a tremendous job both with this article and the notes you post on Facebook. I appreciate your energy and thoroughness of your posts!
Further to my earlier post, I had a very cordial discussion with a representative from Mr. O’Brien’s office today. I encouraged them to respond to the points raised here but I focused on three key points:
1. Expressing my support for the fact the city is taking a thorough and deliberate approach to planning the future of Seattle. We may all disagree — and even disagree strongly — among ourselves and with the city on aspects of HALA, but take a look at cities that don’t take the time and care to address planning and affordability and you’ll perhaps have a bit more appreciation for what we are going through now.
2. I am concerned about getting everything to move at close to the same time around infrastructure. That means transportation and things like sewer lines. We can’t eliminate parking/add backyard cottages and not add buses. We can’t build a bunch of density housing and have old sewer pipes. In my opinion, this will be critical to “make or break” for HALA’s success.
3. Too often, the term “neighborhood character” is demonized as a NIMBY term. It isn’t always about racism or classism. To me it means not losing cherished buildings like the Guild 45 cinema or having the corner of Meridian and 45th look like 15th Ave and Market in Ballard. It means choosing exterior finishes that truly relate to the neighborhood and not landing some “borg” box in the middle of Craftsmen houses.
I didn’t get the sense that there was a lot of disagreement on the part of Mr. O’Brien’s office. I was not given pollyanna answers and I feel like I was listened to. It was an engaging and good discussion. I hope all of you feel empowered to reach out, too. Am I thrilled with everything about HALA? Nope. But I feel less like our Council member is deaf to concerns and may even share some of mine. Thanks!
Thanks for sharing this! This is the kind of well considered and balanced assessment we need. I completely agree that WE (city leaders and neighbors alike) should be proud that we are having this conversation at all. Most cities don’t have the political backbone or mutual respect to do so.