You are needed now! Join your neighbors to help Keep Seattle Livable!
- Wallingford Urban Village Community Design Workshop
- Tuesday January 17: 6:00 – 9:00 PM. (Come late if you have to. Showing up really matters)
- Hamilton International Middle School, 1610 N. 41st Street
- Hosted by Councilmember Rob Johnson
We’ll explore clear and meaningful ways to be a part of decisions about our neighborhood. We still have time to stop forced “upzoning” that will hurt Wallingford and surrounding areas. Don’t delay, it’s up to us to guide this process.
Here are the basics of what “Keep Seattle Livable” means:
- Retaining our current zoning (which allows for plenty of development)
- Keeping affordable rental prices and property taxes
- Protecting our local small businesses
- Preserving yards, parks, trees and sunlight
- Preventing massive developments next to houses
- Providing for concurrent infrastructure investments with Impact Fees
Come and learn what the City is not telling you here: http://www.wallingfordcc.org. Use this interactive MHA web map to see how the proposed zoning changes will affect you. http://seattlecitygis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=6aafeae86b1f4392965531c376489676
We hope to see you on Tuesday, January 17 at 6:00 PM. Bring your friends and neighbors to see what the City is up to and have your voice heard before it is too late!
Do we rehash the old arguments again? We already failed in “keeping affordable rental prices and property taxes” by the way, partially contributed by all the other demands listed. And really property tax is just a small fee for existing owners to pay for their impact. Asking developers to pay impact fees while asking existing owners to have lower property taxes is just asking the public to double subsidize home owners that already saw huge wealth increases from the properties.
Property ownership is not a birthright. It’s a right granted by the society as a good way to create incentives to maximize utility. Market mechanism is another social tool like that, and the price of the property reflects how much people are will to bid for a land, therefore reflects the potential utility that can be generated by that land. It’s possible people can buy a land early with lower price when few wants it, and then only use it for low utility generation even after the land became desirable later. That’s where we are today. Wallingford is now a highly desirable place, but a lot of lands are still owned by people who purchased at much lower price. Single family house really isn’t the way to extract the most use out of the land, so keeping single family houses in Wallingford means the opportunity cost for the society is not small. Property tax is the way for the society to get compensated, and it creates an incentive for people to give up their low utilization ways of using the land.
We need a state income tax. We are one of seven or eight states without one. Property and sales tax is not the fair way to go. Regressive.
How about charging property tax on the delta of current value vs. purchase value? That’s not regressive.
Please remember that higher property taxes raise rents, too. Landlords pass along the higher costs to their tenants. And there are plenty of homeowners who are on limited budgets. Seattle voters have historically voted to tax themselves with levy after levy, but it raises the price of everyone’s housing. Not just the homeowners who are rich pay the increase.
Yes, and the even more reason why density is the way out, and keeping things as is would be a dead end for affordability. San Francisco and the whole bay area already taught us that lesson.
“Property tax is the way for the society to get compensated, and it creates an incentive for people to give up their low utilization ways of using the land.”
Translation: Property taxes shouldn’t merely be about revenue, they should be used to force people out of their homes. Have you been comparing notes with Rob “encourage more turnover “Johnson, TJ?
As for your assertion that “Asking developers to pay impact fees while asking existing owners to have lower property taxes is just asking the public to double subsidize home owners…” You have it exactly wrong. Unlike Seattle, which gives developers a free ride, most cities charge impact fees. To, you know, pay for their IMPACT. I can’t stand Bellevue, but at least they got it right when it comes to impact fees. Why should people who already live here subsidize developers who come in, destroy their community, and then move onto the next victim? We get nothing out of it in return, because they sure as hell aren’t building affordable housing. If more infrastructure is necessary to accommodate a development, the developer should pay for it.
It’s not enough for you that we have are forced to subsidize every department in the city forcing HALA down our throats? We also are forced to subsidize your annoying urbanist think tanks and developer front groups like Sightline and “Seattle for Everyone” with taxpayer funded grants. And we just doubled the housing levy, to subsidize affordable housing.
What you advocate is no different than making us subsidize new sports stadiums for billionaires and $9 Billion dollar tax breaks for Boeing. Because when you give billionaires and multinational corporations a “break,” someone else has to make up the difference.
Of course property tax is also a tool to force people out of their homes, when they are not utilizing their homes in a way optimized for the society. We don’t maintain the communities in Detroit that got destroyed by the decay of car industry, why are we forcing communities to stay the same with the rise of the software industry? Your “keeping the community” idea is a fake one anyway. Remember the story of two retired nurses being forced out of Wallingford due to the doubling rent? That’s a result of not having enough housing units and the newcomers pricing out the original residents. How is that not destroying the community? I have a few friends that could have bought into the neighborhood just five years ago and can’t afford it now. They are still renting and would have to leave the neighborhood if they buy. How is that not destroying the community. Your goal is to maintain the life of existing homeowners. Please just say that. Don’t pretend it”s for the good for anybody else other than that small group, which I am also a member of. I know all about the benefit of keeping things as is, but I just think that’s a bad option for the society.
“That’s a result of not having enough housing units and the newcomers pricing out the original residents.”
Tell that to the father of my daughter’s best friend. He currently pays a very affordable rent in a “naturally affordable” rental home a few blocks away from us. However, he just found out that his rental will demolished and replaced with a 4 story building. You’re a smart guy, so tell me: do you think those units will be affordable to him, whether before or after HALA passes? Oh, but it’s all for the “greater good” and making sure that land is utilized “in a way optimized for the society,” right? Same goes for your friends. If they happen to be renting in an older, naturally affordable house or building, you can say bubye to them, too.
You and the rest of density-at-all costs crowd can post all the sources you want from The Urbanist, Crosscut, and Sightline, I really don’t give a damn. Because while you’re all congratulating each other on how smart you all are, the policies you push benefit only the developers, while negatively impacting real people. The very people you profess to be concerned about.
Those units will not be affordable to him, because it’s so so so hard to do new projects in Seattle, with so many regulations and so many review procedures, that the only few projects we see are expensive. The way to have some projects being cheap is to have a lot of them. Banning new buildings wouldn’t have saved the people you talked about. All those “rent doubled in a year” stories are all from those kind of settings where the owner realize the area is in such a high demand and he can double the rent and still easily find new tenants. The solution just has to include density for the case you sited.
And negatively impact real people is surely always there. It’s a lie to pretend policies are always about having everybody wins. There are always somebody who lost. It makes much more sense for Wallingford homeowners like us to “suffer” a bit from lifestyle change, since we’ve already enjoyed great wealth increase from the properties we owned. You can pretend whatever you want, you know you and I are not the reason for the wealth.
So hard to do new projects in Seattle? If you don’t believe what we’re telling you, open your eyes and look around. Look up – more cranes here last summer than San Francisco and New York combined. Wherever you’re getting this stuff, you’re being fed a lot of baloney.
The Wallingford residents who really suffer “lifestyle changes” (?) from increased Ballard-ization, will be the ones he’s talking about, renters with modest incomes who will be forced out when old rental stock is replaced with new.
TJ knows that what will be built here won’t be affordable. Like he said about the father of my daughter’s friend, “There are always somebody who lost.” TJ simply wants to force us out of our homes and make us suffer, period.
The ideal case for me is for Wallingford to be consist of mostly row houses and condos. And really, I find it amusing that people talk about having more green space or what not had ignored the idea I proposed several times for that: how about converting half or even a third of Wallingford into parks and forestland, while putting six-story condos on the rest of the land? That case you have way more green space then what we have, while you can fit way more residents also. People aren’t going to support that idea because the love of green is just an excuse not an goal.
San Francisco and New York are also cities with tons of regulations. Not sure why you use those as reference point. They don’t help your argument. If anything, San Francisco is exactly the city we should avoid to be turning into.
Without HALA to induce developers to kick in for affordable housing, and without a housing levy to build affordable housing outside the “free” market, what other option would this father have?
What we have today–what has kicked your daughter’s best friend and her/his father out of their house–is the status quo, which is basically what you’re arguing for.
Your assumption here is that the household is below the qualifying income threshold for these programs (and not much below, or the cost is again out of reach.) Could be, but it would not be my assumption.
Today developers (in your words) can “destroy [our] community” without any requirement to build any affordable housing. And today (to summarize your words) we were forced to “doubled the housing levy”.
Without HALA, Seattle is changing. Why are you opposed to regulations that require developers to kick in for affordable housing?
And without a housing levy, and without HALA, how do you expect there to remain any affordable housing, or for any new affordable housing to be built?
“without HALA, how do you expect there to remain any affordable housing, or for any new affordable housing to be built?”
I don’t expect any affordable housing to built in Wallingford WITH HALA. either, And neither does the city, for that matter.
If Wallingford can build up more, it will help affordable housing, even if not by adding the unit directly in Wallingford. For example, the build up in South Lake Union means many Amazon folks can live there, otherwise some of them would have to live in Wallingford, squeezing out people with income lowering than them, and then that in turn would have Wallingford people forcing Lake City people to move to Kenmore.
There is more than one narrative about HALA and the up zones & there is more than one opinion about density in Wallingford.
Not everyone in Wallingford agrees with the aggressive and regressive opinions of the WCC.
Please share your definition of “aggressive.” And how do you feel about the sort of pro-urbanist commentary produced by, for example, Josh Feit in Seattle Met – does that qualify as neighborly?
“Please share your definition of “aggressive.”
If the WCC’s intention for the design of its signs was to foster a calm, rational, inclusive and welcoming environment for dialogue on all how people might work together to increase housing affordability, (including, say, those who live in tall buildings or feel that aspects of HALA would make the city more livable for them), I suggest it missed the mark.
“…foster a calm, rational, inclusive and welcoming environment for dialogue…”
Yeah, Margie. Take it from Mr. Race Baiter himself.
“Take it from Mr. Race Baiter himself.”
Also, too, ad hominem attacks on people are aggressive.
Bryan, for the past year, all you’ve done is engage in ad hominem attacks by inferring that anyone who happens to not to toe your party line on HALA is a closet racist. That’s exactly your intent every time you trot out your nonsense about “exclusionary zoning.” I, and others, have repeatedly asked you to stop, and yet you persist in it.
So if you think I’m being aggressive, too bad. You don’t get to come here and threaten our home and call us names without expecting some pushback.
Accurately using a phrase the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the NAACP, legal dictionaries, normal dictionaries, literally thousands of court cases and law review articles, and essentially all civil rights organizations agree on is not an attack, even if folks don’t like the phrase.
(It is also, obviously, not calling anyone names.)
I believe the design of the signs reflects the feelings of the designers about the proposed rezones, and if you read the lettering, the signs specifically call out the REZONES, but I am not a WCC spokesperson and you are not “jaws”.
So speaking of “calm, reational, inclusive, and welcoming environment for dialogue” – how do you feel about writers like Josh Feit? Seattle Met has printed a number of pieces by him – very personal, not issue based, adolescent venom aimed at people who don’t share his stance on issues.
I can honestly say I’ve never devoted any thought to forming an opinion of Josh Feit.
I’m in agreement with TJ – as someone who’s been living in the community for 8 years, I’m disappointed by this opposition to desperately needed upzoning.
As I understand it, the event on Tuesday is a city-run workshop/focus group, in which the city is seeking the input from invited participants who hold a range of perspectives. As a public meeting, everyone is of course free to observe.
The WCC invite does appear to mischaracterize the nature and format of Tuesday’s workshop. I do hope that all my Wallingford neighbors will be respectful and not disruptive during this workshop.
Don’t be surprised to see a lot of city hall booster “observers” who don’t live in Wallingford. I don’t think we have anything to gain by being disruptive, but we’ll be there.
Respectability politics. That’s what Paul Chapman is all about… when it suits his narrative.
Yeah, the WCC is so disrespectful and disruptive to his perspective, that whenever Paul shows up at one of their meetings, they throw him out on his ear. Oh, wait….
No one is talking about tossing out anyone, hayduke, whomever you are.
I’m just hoping that Wallingford can be respectful and not disruptive. There are more views in this neighborhood, and more views in Seattle, than those held by white older landowners like me (and presumably you, as I’ve seen almost no one at any WCC meeting other than older white landowners, though as you don’t reveal your identity I cannot be sure).
You mean you don’t know who I am? Many people here know who I am, it’s not like I’m actively trying to keep my identity a secret. I thought you would have figured it out by now. I know who you are, and while I haven’t introduced myself to you, we’ve actually crossed paths many times. If I see you tonight, I have no problem introducing myself to you.
And yes, while we disagree, my introduction at least will be cordial.
There certainly is a variety of viewpoints. I don’t believe there is a single “older white landowner” viewpoint or a single renter viewpoint. It’s too bad the city administration doesn’t want to listen to the whole range, thus the carefully controlled HALA events.
Paul and Bryan are always pushing the narrative that it’s just rich white homeowners who are anti-HALA, when in fact many renters and minority homeowners oppose it too. I understand they don’t care about the concerns of white SF homeowners, but why won’t they consider the feelings of those they claim to advocate for?
There was actually a great OpEd last summer in the Seattle Times that made this point:
http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/why-dont-we-ask-single-family-neighborhoods-if-theyd-like-more-density/
I am 100% for WCC holding it’s own meetings, and pushing an agenda in them. In fact, they did so about a week ago.
I am also 100% against anyone disrupting a meeting that is intended to solicit feedback from a broader range of people than who attend WCC meetings.
“I am also 100% against anyone disrupting a meeting that is intended to solicit feedback ”
As happened, multiple times, during last night’s event. Embarrassed for the neighborhood.
I would rather it didn’t happen, but … maybe you need to get out more. Along with the diversity of age, background and means that we enjoy in Wallingford, you have to expect some diversity in self-control, perspective and general standards of behavior. If a few people – really very few out of hundreds – holler during presentations, and that sours you on Wallingford, well, you weren’t going to like us anyway. I’m not making any excuse for those people, I’m just saying Wallingford doesn’t need to make any excuses for itself – it was magnificent.
I accept your general applause of civic engagement, but let’s be honest about aggressive behavior – which that was – it was from 100% one side of the debate. That’s going to have a chilling effect on who feels they can participate, because people also have a diversity of levels of comfort, feelings of safety, and what they see as acceptable standards of behavior.
Your “let’s be honest” comment is clearly an aggression directed at me. How can I ever participate in the same way in this forum under the cloud of this effrontery?
Look, it was a tiny minority. I bet you have better than the rudimentary grasp of probability it would take to think about the likelihood of any of them being (in your usage) “urbanists.” Staff handled it fine – it’s their job, not yours or mine. If more than 0 people in the crowd were knocked out of action by this, that was probably just as well – such fragile souls should stay at home and bombard the comments section like TJ.
Oh please Bryan, enough with the crocodile tears. You’re constantly harping on your “exclusionary zoning” meme to imply we’re conspiring to keep certain others out, and your YIMBY friends get their kicks saying that those of us who dare stand up for what we believe is best for our families and neighborhoods are selfish and privileged and are all about “white power” and keeping Wallingford a “white single family neighborhood.” And I’m not saying it was you but one of your pals has been going around with their cute little “Nimbyism=Racism “stickers. Tell me how that is “respectful” and encourages dialogue? Maybe the “agressive behavior” you speak of is a reflection of the neighborhood getting fed up with the crap your side trots out on a daily basis.
And really, the only so-called “aggressive behavior” I witnessed last night was directed at the panel, and not at the YIMBY’s in the audience. I actually had some reasonable and civil conversations with a few from your side. However, I was also one of the people who shouted at the panel to answer the question of why were no neighborhood people asked to be a part of the process when they did the “Grand Bargain.” Why did I? Because the city made the calculation to deliberately exclude us from a top down process to dramatically change the neighborhood we call home, and Sara Maxanna refused to answer. We have a right to answers, Bryan. Whether it’s Murray dissolving the city’s relationship with neighborhood councils that have been here for 30 years, or the HALA drafters sneakily changing the zoning definitions to include another story or two, we have been fed line after line of utter BS.
So pardon us if some of us decide we’re not going to obediently sit by, smile and keep quiet when the powers that be decide they want to run roughshod over our neighborhood. You might be “embarrassed” by Wallingford, and I’ll say it again: go live downtown with all the density you desire if you hate it here so much; you won’t be missed. But I, for one, am damn proud of my neighborhood for standing up and speaking out.
Question: Can we all agree that behavior that disrespects other human beings who are trying to speak and wastes the time of everyone who came to hear them speak is bad?
Apparent Answer: NO!
#neighborhoodcharacter
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it isn’t clear to me that everyone came to hear Sara Maxana speak.
My hope is that someone will video the entire thing – I’d like to see that “range of perspectives” and “invited participants” fully documented. Sounds like another carefully orchestrated and scripted production designed to produce the predetermined outcome. Not what is usually meant by a workshop.
You can read all about it here: http://www.seattle.gov/hala/calendar?trumbaEmbed=eventid%3D121882525%26view%3Devent%26-childview%3D
That’s just an announcement. not useful.
In brief retrospect, I want to commend the organizers for providing the means for everyone who showed up to participate. And commend Wallingford residents for sitting “cheerfully” through an hour and a half indoctrination in what many of us regard as bogus propaganda, so that everyone could participate. And commend each table for putting it together, particularly the larger tables with no “facilitator” that seemed to be better organized than the smaller facilitated tables. I love Wallingford.
Retaining our current zoning and Keeping affordable rental prices and property taxes are diametrically opposed to each other considering current market forces in the seattle area. Our city is growing, rapidly, and that means more demand for housing, so unless there’s a bump in supply, we’re in for higher prices. Clinging to this absurd notion that we can continue to remain single-family and stay affordable is living in a fantasy land.
There has been a bump in supply! Seattle actually has an enormous, beyond record-breaking number of new housing units scheduled to open in 2017, within current zoning – and in some parts of the developer community there’s a clear feeling that MHA, if it survives their legal challenges, will slow that down. Don’t buy the eyewash they’ve been selling you, zoning isn’t the issue, and MHA isn’t a real solution.
and there’s been a big bump in population too. Since about 1990, population has been growing, and is now growing at the rate we had until the Great Depression and then between WW2 and 1960. In other words, yes! Supply has increased! And so has demand.
The way to reduce housing price still keeping the same zoning and everything is to find ways to force Seattle economy to go down. We need companies like Amazon to reduce employment. We would need to make Seattle overall less attractive. Maybe put a polluting chemical plant in Gasworks?
…or maybe raise business taxes and/or initiate requirements that businesses (and their grossly over-paid executives) share some of their billions to support the infrastructure all their employees are using?
We briefly had an employee head tax here, repealed by Nickels in the 2009 slump. It was legal, but reportedly complicated and only $25 each. Require it only for employees receiving more than $100K, raise it to something less trivial and graduated per income, and you could start recovering some money to get this growth paying for itself, without troubling the small time businesses that hated the old tax.
And use the money to do that? Subsidize the property tax and the rental price of current residents? How does that idea help keeping the neighborhood as is? How does it stop housing price to go from $650k to $1m? I am not against that idea, but it’s not really related to the topic discussed here.
i was replying directly to your statement:
“to find ways to force Seattle economy to go down. We need companies like Amazon to reduce employment. We would need to make Seattle overall less attractive.”
Seattle is extremely attractive to businesses because we let them walk all over us, from a civic perspective. If they were asked to pay their fair share, Seattle would be less attractive to businesses and it would be a “way to force Seattle economy to go down.”
Ergo, directly “related to the topic discussed here.”
And a far better idea than putting a chemical plant at Gasworks.
Oh, for that your method would do nothing. Seattle is extremely attractive to business NOT because of what you said. If that’s the concern, these businesses would have been setting up in Texas or North Dakota. The reason they are here is because they can convince talents to work in this nice city. This is the same reason why many competitive companies are moving their offices from Silicon Valley to San Francisco, and why Microsoft got offices in downtown Seattle, downtown Bellevue, as opposed to keeping everything in Redmond. Top tech companies are in San Francisco and Seattle despite the higher cost to operate there, not because of it. Companies that would care about what you said would be second tier companies. Same reason for the recent influx of Chinese money into Seattle real estate market: Chinese found Seattle to be a nice place to live, same as how their money flooded Vancouver. So the “solution” is to make Seattle not a nice place to live.
Meh, I don’t agree. Most people from elsewhere think of Seattle as a cold, rainy, depressing backwater full of serial killers and washed up grunge bands with a second-rate art and cultural scene.
Compared to when I first moved here, few of the newcomers have any interest in the outdoor amenities around the region.
Companies moved here because it was cheap (relative to the Bay Area and other employment hubs), there were lots of business-friendly incentives from the state and local governments, and it is strategically located with a port. People go to live where the jobs are, jobs don’t move where it’s “a nice place to live.” Since there are people living in every climate (meteorological and cultural) in the country, this is self-evident.
Real estate is bought up because it is a sound investment, not because of anything to do with being a nice place to live. Many foreign investors in real estate do not live in their properties. (I stayed in an AirBNB in Vancouver that was clearly an investment property where no one lived. This was in Kitsilano, where the housing would be very needed.)
p.s. Are you aware of the population of Texas? Plenty of people find it a nice place to live. And Austin has the same high-tech growth issue that Seattle has.
Along with the business friendly incentives, I think “no income tax” may help. But a lot if it’s just “following the herd.” If we could get a new hot spot going somewhere else, they’d rush off, and maybe people who really wanted to live here could afford to.
If you want to make Seattle affordable for all those who want to live here, then you definitely should support high density, since there are tons of people who want to live here but couldn’t. All the African Americans that lived in Central and had to move to Kent. All the weird people who loved the old Capitol Hill that have to move away. All the hipsters that can’t afford to move to Seattle but really want to. Again, as you guys hijacked the meaning of “livable”, you are trying to hijack the concept of “who really want to live here”.
Sure, look at all that wonderful ugly boxy density they’ve added to Capitol Hill and the CD. All that “affordability” it created worked out marvelously for the people who lived there, hmmm? All those minorities and artists and hipsters are really enjoying those fancy new townhomes and condos.
What you called ugly obviously is in great demand, therefore the high price. And the reason for not having affordability is because not enough were built. You are using the same argument of how people blamed Obamacare for increased health care cost. Actually health care cost has been increasing a lot before Obamacare, and the trend didn’t change much after Obamacare. People were priced out of Capitol Hill before all those built up, and built up were actually reactions to the increase in price. The increase in price signaled demand, therefore developers considered it worthwhile to invest.
“What you called ugly obviously is in great demand…”
Of course it’s in great demand, by wealthy young techies. Which, by the way, means developers will opt to pay the fee and continue to build market rate there. The longtime residents you claim to represent sure haven’t been demanding it. And your assertion that “the reason for not having affordability is because not enough were built” is absurd. Ask some of those African Americans who moved to Kent if they believe if you build even more of those expensive, ugly boxes if they’ll eventually come back to the CD. They’ll laugh in your face.
Many of them will move back, and more others will move in, if we have tons of ugly boxes, so many that some of them would be cheap. How else do you think other cities around the world work? Cities by default are not supposed to satisfy demands of low density housing. And cities that don’t have enough housing for demand will have slums. That’s what Seattle is getting with all those tent cities.
” if we have tons of ugly boxes,”
Wow, so our city is turned into a landscape of ugly boxes. Sounds awesome.
But hey, I’m sure the junkies tenting it by the I-5 off-ramps will finally get clean and sober and find a job to pay for their new cheap housing, right?
Tons of ugly boxes would turn Seattle into Paris maybe? Yeah, it’s not bad. I don’t think Seattle will grow enough to be as dense as New York or Tokyo.
The junkies are a different issue. Are you just trying to blame all the social ill for zone up? As I said, that’s just a wrong way to look at things the same way many people misunderstood Obamacare: they somehow assumed all health care ills are from Obamacare, and somehow the system before that would solve the issues. You shouldn’t bring up any social ill that’s already not solved by the current system as an excuse to be against the new system. Zone up only means better affordability and more accessibility through increased supply.
In both New York and San Francisco, there are homeless people with full time employment. People living in the slums of big cities around the world are typically employed also. Affordability is a path to solve that issue, not to solve the issue of people with other causes of homelessness.
According to your hero of HALA, Mayor Murray himself, 80% of our homeless are heroin addicts. I’m pretty sure they aren’t working full time.
And if you follow the Brexit news at all, you’ll see how criteria for replacing London as a financial hub includes things like having good restaurants and good entertainment options. Seattle now has a much much bigger food scene, with the outdoor entertainment options always excellent. The general art scene here isn’t bad also, and ticket price for events like Bumbershoot has skyrocketed also. THOSE are factors important for companies like Google expanding in Seattle.
Almost 10,000 housing units are supposed to open in 2017. That’s 27 housing units a day (historically Seattle has built 3 units per day). The most recent numbers I could find show we have about 40 people moving here a day. But since an average of 2 people live in each housing unit, that’s only needing 20 housing units a day. Look around, we are building plenty of housing!
I’m going to argue that with the absolutely record shattering building that’s been going on, once all of those units open we won’t have a housing shortage. But why do we still feel the crunch? Because none of the new luxury apartments are affordable. Density alone is not going to bring down prices anytime soon. Has Ballard gotten cheaper? Downtown? South Lake Union?
What we have is a lack of affordable housing and a growing income disparity. I don’t think upzoning is the best way to fix that. Upzoning is not the only solution to affordable housing. We need to step back and look at the numbers and not just base our decisions on rhetoric.
I’ve shared this before. There are other solutions to affordable housing:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1687633-community-housing-caucus-report.html
And we’re also seeing a large number of people moving into Seattle, we’re back to population growth rates like we saw during the baby boom years and before WW2. Without homes for these people, prices will continue to skyrocket. Thus we need to continue to build, preferably without displacing all of the small businesses on our mixed use land areas (like we’re seeing on Stoneway).
And today there are no methods we can use to leverage any of this development for affordable housing. Developers build luxury because there is no requirement they do otherwise.
Yes, density along is not going to bring down prices anytime soon, but can you imagine what the price would have been without the Ballard and South Lake Union built up? Can you imagine how many of those people living in Ballard now would then be living in Wallingford and crowd out even more current residents?
And yeah, we are kind of “solving” the problem by having some of the poorer people moving out of the city. We did that so much even Tukwila condo are seeing huge hikes in rent and Kent now has some sort of housing issue. A teacher’s salary today is not easy for living in Wallingford, and I guess we don’t mind if they have to all commute in for more than an hour a day just so we can keep the Wallingford housing as is.
Everyone who is interested in affordable housing should read the document above that Susanna posted. These are solutions for affordable housing, not developer-driven market rate apartments which the density people seem to be satisfied with. Density for density’s sake is no solution at all when there are many other solutions which provide low-income residents with livable, affordable solutions. Everyone should be concerned with the community as well. Not just with squeezing as many people as possible into the most efficient use of space. That might be a badge of honor for engineers and architects, but I suspect that most people are looking for a space that can become a home, with friendly neighbors and local amenities that foster community. I know that the Urban advocates of the New Urbanism claim that their plans for mixed income buildings do foster community among people of different incomes and backgrounds. But there is little or no professional research evidence to support this. In fact there is more to disprove this theory. If you want article citations, I’m happy to provide them.
Does anyone know the projected opening dates for the building on Stone/45th just past T-mobile? How about the large buildings in process on stone & 38th?
I attended the workshop last night and was confused by the lack of support for the upzones. I disagree with the proposed Wallingford urban village design, but I expected to have the opportunity to hear from neighbors who sincerely support it. I spoke with quite a few other attendees from different tables and everyone said the same thing: table participants were skeptical of the upzones and in agreement that this is overall a bad plan. Did anyone else attend and have a different experience? Was there a special table for supporters?
Yes – one of tables all the way at the north end had several recognizable supporters and seemed to be busy with their work, so I suppose the whole table was aligned that way. It wasn’t what I expected, but it’s a good plan. The division over this is deep, and that just gets in the way if you’re trying to elicit design ideas from a group.
You shouldn’t be confused by the lack of support for the upzones, Kaydee, or that table participants were skeptical of the upzones. Most neighbors don’t support it, and we’re skeptical for good reason. And yes, there was a table that was about 100% urbanist.
We had a useful discussion at our table. It started with people saying they didn’t want changes and moved to looking at exactly how we wanted changes to happen. I felt like we got some great ideas out by the end of the night. I spoke to two of the organizers/consultants and they seemed really burned out and not open to ideas and questions (we were friendly). That was the disappointing part.