Rob Johnson represents Wallingford on city council and is ushering HALA through the council as land use chair. This is a follow up to our January interview with him. Topics include Limiting Demolitions, Wallingford Neighborhood Planning, HALA Leaving Car Centric Communities Untouched, Transportation, Developer Impact Fees, The HALA Split on City Council, ADU / DADU Triplexes, and Meeting Rob in Wallingford.
Q1- Limiting Home Demolitions: The main concern with HALA is that upzones will drive redevelopment that happens too quickly, destroying livability while the transformation happens and forcing residents to either sell out to developers or live in a construction zone, then be surrounded by concrete walls (case study: Ballard). It seems that HALA could be enhanced and this concern could be addressed if there was a mechanism to auction off a certain number of demolition permits on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis. The auction would not only generate funds, it would discourage and leverage the replacement of modest homes with modern mcmansions. While not in developer interests, the folks at [email protected] were encouraging of the idea and the city’s legal department said they could work, either fitting into MHA or as a separate measure. Seattle is changing, but that does not mean we must destroy livability while change takes place.
Do you support demolition auctions or any other mechanism to control the rate of demolition in Seattle?
A1: The City does charge for demolition permits, but it is legally limited to the cost of issuing those permits as per RCW 82.02.020. Legality aside, I would be open to discussing it, but on first glance I am not sure how that type of program would fit into the HALA framework or goals, which is to create more housing at all income levels.
Q2- Wallingford Neighborhood Planning: In our chat in January, you said the reason that Wallingford is being upzoned by HALA is because it has “amenities”, but you offered no specifics. We have zero neighborhood elementary schools and must bus our kids out of the neighborhood, a middle school overflowing with portables, no community center, no access to light rail even planned, raw sewage outflows that are tops in the city, and a couple small parks that turn to mud due to overuse. There’s a plan to open Lincoln High School back up but it won’t have a sports field, so the plan is to use Lower Woodland Park for student athletics. Our only meager amenity seems to be a few lousy bus stops on clogged 45th street, bus stops that are to become “rapid” in name only.
Seattle used to be a model for the country on how democracy could work from the bottom up with neighborhood planning. In the best examples the community would be brought together to create maps that defined plans for transportation, land use, and parks, then as funds became available those plans were developed, but out neighborhood plan hasn’t been updated since 1998. Will you empower Spencer or HALA folks or the Department of Neighborhoods to work with our community to draw up a new map for investments in our neighborhood?
A2: Throughout the engagement at the workshop in Wallingford earlier this year and the citywide open house event held in Ravenna, staff from multiple city departments and ongoing projects have been available and seeking input on those issues. As a city, we regularly update and prioritize projects through implementing plans.
Many of these specific infrastructure projects are outlined in departmental development and implementation plans including the Parks 2017 Development Plan and Gap Analysis Update, transportation modal plans like the Seattle Pedestrian Master Plan and Transportation Master Plan, as well as SPU Stormwater Management Plan.
Seattle Public Schools also maintains a series of Continuous School Improvement Plans to set forth strategies to improve the quality of our existing schools as well as investments in updates to existing and creation of new facilities through the Building Excellence Program (BEX), the most recent BEX IV was approved in 2013. Improvements to Lincoln High School and Hamilton International Middle School were included in the suite of major projects within BEXIII and BEXIV, totaling over 160 million dollars. As a part of this work, SPS has identified the need for additional K-5 capacity in Northeast Seattle, resulting in the new facility for the Thornton Creek School at 7712 40th Avenue NE.
I believe that DoN is working very intentionally to expand their outreach and involvement with the community. Initiatives like the Community Involvement Commission and the Renter’s Council exemplify an innovative approach by the department to amplify many different voices throughout our city. Our three Community Engagement Coordinators will also be out in the communities, meeting with neighbors, assisting with groups, and serving as liaisons to provide the essential link to government, and to respond to your questions and concerns. The Community Engagement Coordinator for the North Sector (including D4) is Laurie Ames, and you can reach her at [email protected] or 206.684.0320.
Q3- HALA Leaving Car Centric Communities Untouched: Last time we chatted we offered you a mechanism to upzone and redevelop elite, car centric country clubs like Broadmoor, Sand Point, and the Seattle Golf Club. You said that those areas and all other car centric communities in Seattle are ignored by HALA because they “do not have any, or very few, of the community assets needed to support growth.” A private, luxury golf course obviously lacks public amenities, but when a country club is redeveloped, there is space for new schools, transit, and parks. The square footage of those golf courses are comparable to existing urban villages and new development is exactly what developer impact fees were designed for, so there is already a mechanism to pay for schools, parks, and transit. Retrofitting places like Wallingford that currently lack amenities will be much more expensive and disruptive.
Strictly from an urban planning perspective, it seems we should be looking to create more urban villages at a human scale and transform car-centric neighborhoods instead of tearing down the urban villages we have now. Can you articulate how our most wealthy, car-centric neighborhoods need to change going forward and how you are going to make that happen?
A3: As you know, the City instituted the Urban Village strategy as a way of accommodating growth, to prioritize our investments in transit, parks, community centers and to support small neighborhood business districts. As you mentioned in Q2, there are still investments that need to be made in our existing urban villages. Creating more urban villages would only spread our resources thinner, and would actually decrease our ability to provide those investments in existing Urban Villages, like Wallingford.
Q4- Transportation: On the recent find it, fix it walk in Wallingford, several long standing transportation issues were raised, and I’m hoping you can speak to their progress. First up was adding medians and crosswalks to Green Lake Way between Aurora and 50th. That stretch is a long neglected, 5 lane, 1660 foot wall that splinters the neighborhood and that SDOT has refused to add crosswalks to despite district council prioritization because not enough people are running across traffic lanes right now. Second up was crossing I-5 on 45th by bike, an investment that is demanded by the language of Move Seattle by the time U-District light rail opens but that we have not seen any plans for. Third, the Mayor was told of the challenges we face with getting Waterway 20 re-opened for public access to Lake Union. It is now illegally occupied by the Harbor Patrol. We are waiting for the city to sign a lease prepared by DNR that would transition the waterway back to the public. The Mayor was clear in stating all three of these neighborhood concerns should be addressed, but there hasn’t been any visible follow through since the find it / fix it walk, raising concerns that this is more empty promises from an ADHD city government. Can you clarify status on these projects and provide follow through?
A4: My office has asked SDOT for a status update on these three projects and we are still waiting for a response back. Given the extremely high volume of requests that SDOT receives, I expect a response within the next few weeks. I will share any information on these projects as soon as I have it.
Q5- Developer Impact Fees: Speculative redevelopment packs in more people without providing any funds for the new schools, transit, and parks required to support them. Developer impact fees are the state approved mechanism to collect these funds. When we last chatted in January you mentioned a specific implementation plan for developer impact fees in Seattle was supposed to completed last year by the mayor and that you would follow up with him. Can you clarify the status of that report and the possibilities for developer impact fees going forward?
A5: There is staff at the Office of Planning and Community Development who is working on an assessment of impact fees, but I do not have an estimate of when that work will be completed.
Q6- The HALA Split on City Council: In the recent U-District upzone debate Mike O’Brien attempted to bump the rate of affordable housing from 9% to 10% (M1 to M2), but as land use chair you joined 4 of the 7 council members to oppose this change while also expanding the area to be upzoned. It is interesting to see this split on city council developing over HALA. How would characterize this split, and do you endorse current M1 / M2 designations for Wallingford or want to see changes like what happened in the U-District?
A6: In our adopted MHA framework, affordability requirements for new development are set through several mechanisms. The first is by dividing the city into low, medium, and high cost areas. In general, higher cost areas have higher affordability requirements. A second factor in setting the affordability requirement is the capacity given in the zoning changes. The higher the value of the capacity given, the higher the affordability requirement – and in most areas this is indicated by using the M, M1 and M2 suffix, with M being the lowest value of capacity increase and M2 being the highest value of capacity increase. This leads to a range of affordability requirements from 5% to 11%.
The Office of Planning and Community Development recommended an affordability requirement of 9% in the core of the U District. This was a reflection of the fact that while the area was an urban center receiving a relatively higher amount of additional capacity, the economic analysis did not clearly support the highest affordability requirements. There was a proposal to increase the affordability requirement to 10%, which I did not support. My concern was that higher affordability requirements could delay new projects which would delay new affordable and market rate units for an unknown amount of time, missing the opportunity to start generating new affordable units and funds sooner rather than later. I successfully passed an amendment that, when market conditions change, could reclassify the U District from a “medium” cost area to “high”, increasing the affordable housing requirement to 10%.
I believe there are areas of the city which are currently proposed for the “M2” designation and would require the highest affordability requirements, which I support. However, I believe the decision should be rooted in our best economic and zoning analysis, to ensure that we do not inadvertently limit the creation of the new housing that our city needs.
Q7- ADU / DADU Triplexes: We have been sympathetic to some changes that promote affordable ADUs and DADUs, for instance we favor eliminating the requirement to build off street parking for them. We would also like the city to go neighborhood to neighborhood with offers to help residents create affordable ADUs using vetted contractors, like how city light rolled out rooftop solar. On the flip side, we are concerned about changes that promote speculative redevelopment and teardowns, such as reducing owner-occupancy requirements.
We have heard you made comments lately that you believe backyard cottage legislation should also allow a house + a DADU + an ADU, effectively a triplex. Is this a proposed change city-wide and not just in urban villages? What do you think of proposed changes to the owner occupancy requirement, and what do you say to people that are concerned about this legislation leading to more teardowns? Are there other backyard cottage changes you want to see happen?
A7: I hear quite a bit of support from constituents about changes to make it easier for people to build accessory dwelling units, and I agree. It is a great way to provide small, neighborhood-based housing for a wide-range of households and provides homeowners with a way to generate additional income, provide homes for aging parents or young children, or even allows homeowners to downsize and live in the smaller unit while renting out the original home. I support many of the changes proposed in the Office of Planning and Community Development recommendations.
My understanding is that the original proposal would make changes in all of the areas where ADUs are already allowed, not limited to urban villages. I do support the change to the owner-occupancy requirement. Currently, we allow any single family homeowners, as well as any owner of a duplex or apartment building to rent out units without living on site and I don’t believe we need a different standard for an accessory dwelling unit. Regrading tear-downs, my understanding is that during the appeal hearing, the City expert’s analysis indicated that the proposed changes would not lead to additional tear-downs, but that is one issue that will be further studied as part of the Environmental Impact Statement that will be prepared later this year and I look forward to seeing the assessment of possible impacts before commenting further on the recommended changes.
I think that some lots can accommodate both an ADU and a DADU. The original proposal did not increase the amount of development that could go on one lot, but just changed the configuration. I would prefer to see additional small homes added to a lot rather than homes being torn down to build one, much larger home.
Q8- Meeting Rob in Wallingford: Thanks for taking the time to chat with Wallyhood again. You could hunker down with the “New Urbanist” blog and talk about how great Seattle will be once developers replace everything that’s here now, so we appreciate you taking the time to talk to us obstacles to progressive utopianism. As you know, there has been some frustration that you were not at the Wallingford HALA informational meetings or the find it / fix it walk with the mayor, as all three meetings were each attended by hundreds of residents protesting HALA. You also promised during the campaign to attend 4 community council meetings per year, but have attended only one since being elected. We understand you have small kids and you have attended private events in the neighborhood, but it’s arguably part of the job to be publicly accessible in your district neighborhoods.
For residents that want to speak with you in person, what is the next time you will be available in Wallingford for a public meeting? Can you announce some regular public availability in Wallingford?
A8: The reason I worked swiftly when I took office to open a district office was because of my goal of being accessible to my constituents. We expanded that accessibility to include public drop in hours at our booth at the Farmer’s market year-round. While both are located in the University District, we view this as a central location in the district and are opportunities for all constituents to take advantage of.
One of my staff members is at the district office every Friday morning, between 9-12. I am usually at the district office every other Friday afternoon, and constituents can always call the office to make an appointment. As for the Saturday Farmers Market hours, my staff members and I all take turns with those shifts. Each of us is at the Farmers Market once every 4-5 weeks.
We don’t have any specific Wallingford dates to share at this point, that does not mean we will not be present in Wallingford and to our Wallingford constituents. We are routinely available at our district office and at the farmers market to all of our constituents, in a public or drop in style. Regardless of neighborhood, constituents can always contact the office to schedule a time to chat, and either myself or my staff will continue to attend WCC meetings on at least a quarterly basis.
Thanks Eric and Rob. I want to restate that Seattle allows ADUs & DADUs to be built now.
(apologies for re-posting the following from an earlier discussion – but it when it comes to backyard cottages, the posts I see imply that they are not allowed to be built):
Seattle allows ADUs & DADUs to be built now. The city’s own study showed that the biggest reason people are not building is the cost. One of the big costs comes from the city – in the form of the sewer hook up fees for a DADU (backyard cottage). I am sorry, I don’t have time to find the reference for this info, but I believe it is on the city’s site & in the WCC call-to-action from last year on this subject. My friends told me that they were quoted around $50,000 for the sewer hook up. This makes it at least twice as expensive for the do-it-yourself-build-from-a-kit people. I heard this number from two different friends in two different parts of Seattle. If you already have a mortgage, plus school loan, plus childcare, taking another loan for $100,000 – you may be denied or it may just be too much financial burden to take on at this time (or any time) even though in the long-term it could bring you additional income. I just point this out as there are significant costs from the city to the homeowner, in addition to the cost of materials & labor, but the only solution I saw in the city’s proposal to help with cost was to remove the owner-occupancy requirement – with the idea being that speculators would provide the money to address all of these costs. There are downstream pros & cons to this that you may be fine with or not; there are 5 sides to every coin.
Personally, I was hoping for something more creative from the city to help with costs to help the current homeowner build a backyard cottage and thus to make it more desirable to add one. If I have to sell my house so that a speculator can put one in, then uhh, wait, what?
“My friends told me that they were quoted around $50,000 for the sewer hook up.”
Wow, the highest number I’ve seen is $10k. $50k seems ludicrous. Can you cite any example of it? Even the $10k I’ve seen in one online article is quoted as a charge that for whatever reason was super high (its written as though that cost was an outlier).
That said (and I’m moving on to another topic here) the main reason there aren’t cottages being built in large numbers is because most people who own homes don’t want to be landlords. Cost is not a factor if you don’t want to share your property with another family.
I was surprised, as well. One of the homes – like many in Seattle – sits up from the street (as in up on a hill), so I assume it had something to do with that. Curious what others have received as quotes for this.
and – very good point!
Water in and out is very pricy, and cost largely depends on how much excavation is required. I’ve heard stories of old pipes failing under streets and homeowners being on the hook for 30K just to repair the old pipe.
For us the cost for adding a unit with a bathroom, kitchen, and 1 bedroom seemed to be about 150K if we were super cheap about it, and even then it wouldn’t be legal to rent out because it wouldn’t have had off street parking. We did a backyard office instead, which was only 10K and allows us to rent out the basement eventually, but delays our ability to help with affordable housing in Seattle. Our dream was something like an air stream trailer with hookup, but the city blocks that and instead we’re getting upzoned so a developer can tear down our house to build something new. Yay for top-down Seattle government.
Yeah, the on site parking requirement is controversial – there’s a reason for it, but it does frequently stand in the way of accessory units. Whichever side I came down on, I could imagine that others could reasonably disagree. The owner occupancy requirement is not in that category so much.
Off street parking requirements are just bad IMHO- we had our basement finished and were required by code to keep our one car garage along with a fire door and all the rest. A one car garage requires a driveway that removes at least one parking place on the street, so the requirement actually removes parking for others. And of course we’ve never once used it as a garage.
The right way to handle parking I think is with sensible RPZ permit requirements. If people don’t build parking that’s fine, but then their RPZ allowances should be limited to the number of spaces in front of the building, with a minimum of 2 per lot (e.g. in case the street for your building doesn’t have parking). That seems most fair to me.
Didn’t you just justify tearing down as a better option by all the difficulties you described? Having patches here and there to add housing is difficult and not cost effective.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean. I said if Seattle fixed the off street parking requirements I would have added a DADU. Where did you get the idea that my house needed to be torn down?
The key thing is whether the affordable housing effort is going into enabling existing residents to add affordable housing, or whether the effort is going into helping developers buy houses, tear them down, and replace them. There’s a ton that can be done by working with existing home owners, but developers have all the paid lobbyists working downtown, and that’s who Ed Murray chose for his HALA supercommittee that wrote the “Grand Bargain”.
I mean if we are serious about adding units, we shouldn’t rely on people adding DADU. We should encourage existing houses being teared down so we can directly build add a lot of units. When you do that, the concerns for utility connections and parking can be addressed in bulk together. The Grand Bargain is already giving existing house owners too much say, therefore leading to inefficient policies.
The key to affordable housing is NEVER about enabling existing residents to add affordable housing. Enabling existing residents to add affordable housing is more about appeasing existing residents, and not that much about affordable housing.
TJ- Say you are correct and it’s most economic to tear everything down and rebuild. The answer then is to look for a target location that needs to be redeveloped. That’s why I asked Rob about tearing down luxury country club golf courses and rebuilding urban villages in their place. Nobody is displaced and there’s room and funds for schools, parks, and transit. Targeting Wallingford is just lousy urban planning- we have zero amenities and we’ll have very high displacement of people from what has been affordable housing up until recently.
I think targeting East Wallingford, where my house is, is actually a great idea. The light rail station is already coming, and the developments should be defined based on 10-min walk zones, 20-min walk zones, and 30 min-walk zones. Effectively, you can consider 20-min walk zones as guaranteed 30-min commute to downtown zones, regardless of traffic.
There is no high displacement of people no matter where you build up in Wallingford. The density is low.
As for room, isn’t the easiest way to have room for parks through removing single-family houses? The same area for 20 single-family houses can easily be a condo plus a park. If all current existing Wallingford residents move to condos, we’d have room for a giant park. Maybe something like New York Central Park?
The draft upzone that I’m looking at has no changes proposed for East
Wally except along 45th and down at the water. Has this changed?
“The Grand Bargain is already giving existing house owners too much say,…”
TJ, considering the fact that the city deliberately neglected to invite homeowners to the Grand Bargain table and only sought input from developers and housing activists, I find that comment baffling.
And btw, when you say “We should encourage existing houses being teared down,” what exactly do you mean by that? What is the mechanism or carrot and stick approach you would use to encourage more teardowns?
Actually there are already tons of carrot for redevelopment. There are no need for new ones. The issue is with the restrictions and the very high burden to start projects, not with the incentives.
Just out of curiosity, did you apply for a parking waiver? If not, why? If you were denied, how long ago was it?
Our parking waiver for an ADU was approved the day we filed for our ADU permit, no questions asked. The DPD desk people I talked to (a normal person and a supervisor) said they rarely deny waivers, since the city really wants people to build ADUs/DADUs. If it was a few years ago, I’d highly recommend giving the DPD a call about it.
This was like 3 years ago. I didn’t apply for waivers, maybe I should have. It’s too late now for me now- we have the backyard office done. The next step for our house will be converting the basement, which is actually something we’re starting on now. Not for rental as we have family moving in, but maybe after they move out.
Ah, ok. Makes sense. We’re doing our basement as an ADU and also did a seismic retrofit at the same time. Its been quite the trek!
So is this the contractor’s cost to add a sewer line or the city’s fee? Because the contractors costs in digging up the particular parcel has nothing to do with the city overcharging for access. If your land isn’t set up in a way where the new pipes are near the existing one, that’s not the city’s problem, is it?
When I bought a condo built in the late 90’s we inherited the sewer capacity charge from the previous owner. You can pay in installments. Anyway, all together it was well over 25k. This is now a required disclosure when selling real estate.
Developers pass on that cost to the consumer rather than paying it themselves.
I guess my point is that yes it is large, and it has been there for many years.
Wallingford has an 84 walk score (14th best in Seattle), and better than any US city other than SF or NY. The average resident can walk within 5 minutes to 6 restuarants, bars and coffee shops. Which means (beyond convenience for all of us) that people who work at those establishments can walk to work if they live here. It’s an easy walk or bus ride to Google offices in Fremont (where the folks who take care of the microkitchens will earn a minimum of $15 an hour shortly) – and if you just stay on th 62 an easy ride to Amazon (ditto). We have effing coyotes because we have so much open space on our northern border. We are one of the top access to opportunity neighborhoods in the city (and, by extension, anywhere in the country).
If you really feel Wallingford is bereft of any amenities or resources that you appreciate, please consider vacating space for the many, many people in Seattle and beyond who would find living here a great gift and be thankful for it every day.
We are very thankful for it, Bryan, and indeed it already is a wonderful neighborhood. That’s why we don’t want you urbanists telling us how to “improve” it.
You seem to be someone who doesn’t appreciate the neighborhood as is, so maybe you should consider vacating your premises for the greater good? Just think how many needy families you could cram inside that tall single-family home of yours.
Thanks Bryan. I mean public amenities that require planning and public expense- parks, schools, transit. We are bereft of those as an urban village area. Commerce isn’t really an amenity- it pops up wherever people are and zoning allows for it. Buses aren’t really much of an amenity either- they go anywhere there’s a road.
Regarding walkability, that strikes to the core of the problem with HALA as I see it. Walkable neighborhoods are the ones to be torn down by HALA while unwalkable neighborhoods stay frozen in amber. Should Seattle seek to have more neighborhoods like Wallingford by upzoning country clubs into new urban villages, or should we be tearing down places like Wallingford so they can become belltown?
HALA expands (some) urban villages so I’d expect they’d continue to do that as growth progresses.
It doesn’t really help to expand them. The places that are marginal for walkability etc. stay marginal, and the places that are strong get stomped on. We’re in the second category; take maybe Sand Point or Wedgewood for the first. (Along with Broadmoor, if you like.)
Walk-ability is related to residential density and offices. Low walk-ability neighborhoods are mostly rich neighborhoods with very low density. Those neighborhoods have been intentionally avoiding public amenity improvements. Laurelhurst and Broadmoor type of places basically want to be gated communities, and it’d be the best if they don’t have any businesses or public amenities that “outsiders” would travel to their communities to utilize.
So if we do want to start from scratch, with regulations not an issue, eminent domain on those neighborhoods and rebuild all new public amenities from scratch for the whole neighborhood could be better than touching Wallingford indeed. That’s not happening because the burden is way higher. Wallingford after all already is higher density than those with good access to highways and good access to light rail coming up. Google and Tableau are already right by the neighborhood.
At this moment, what’s an easy way to build up Broadmoor, even if we assume there are no residents? How do you build up access?
Thanks for asking TJ! Here’s what I’d like to see happen for country clubs like Broadmoor. First, it would be rezoned as an urban village and taxed that way but with extreme MHA and developer impact fees in place. That would mean the taxes would be very high, but the cost for purchasing the land would be as low as possible. That would either generate a ton of revenue for low income housing subsidies or force a sale.
The sale could either go to developers, or it could be done as a swap for a public course like Jackson Park that is directly on top of light rail. If a swap was done then Broadmoor would become a public course and Jackson Park would become a new urban village with light rail access. The great thing about this is that the public space as required by law would be maintained, plus we wouldn’t be paying almost a billion dollars a mile to tunnel underneath 2 public golf courses (that’s the current plan).
Once the location had been determined, you’d implement developer impact fees to pay for schools, transit, and parks, then carve space for those things out of the old golf course land base.
As far as I know, that approach would result in lots more new housing than HALA provides, no displacement, and funded amenities without property tax increases.
Plenty of green space in the Jungle, too. It’s close to downtown, with great views of the Olympics. And developing it would finally rid that area of the junkies and criminals.
“Walkable neighborhoods are the ones to be torn down by HALA”
Our neighborhood isn’t going to be torn down, just something other than single family homes are going to be (re) allowed.
We’re bereft of parks? Seriously?
There are a ton of blocks in the city beyond walking distance of a park. Such do exist in Wallingford. East Wally & S-SE Wally are weak. Between Aurora & Stone in the 30s & low 40s is also too far.
I think a walk to the local park should be 5 blocks, at most and encounter no dangerous or imposing foot crossings. Well-treed streets can mitigate the situation.
Brian, you are correct that we have a nice assortment of cafes, bars, grocery stores, and hardware stores in walking distance. But if you have an elementary school-aged child they can walk either to BF Day on the other side of Aurora or to Green Lake Elementary on the other side of 65th. And Green Lake, technically Wallingford’s neighborhood school at the moment, opened a new cafetorium two years ago so the kids wouldn’t have to eat lunches at their desks any longer. Guess what they’re using the cafetorium for today? Classrooms. It is was beyond over enrolled and there are no plans to fix that.
You mention buses but I wonder if you’ve actually used them. My family does regularly. My wife takes the 44 eastbound to the UW almost every morning. It skips her stop in front of Wallingford Center about 20% of the time because there is no room.
My daughter takes the 62 northbound to Roosevelt High School. It is often standing room only. I’ve taken that line southbound to meetings downtown. The last time I went at 10:30 in the morning and was stunned that I couldn’t get seat. Apparently Amazonians have swamped that line.
I coach my son’s soccer team. We practice at Lower Woodland in the fall. There is such a shortage of field space in the north end that I get to train 16 12year old boys how to play soccer on 1/6th of the field. If you go down there in the evenings or weekends (or to any of our neighborhood parks) you will see that they are beyond impacted.
I support the goals of HALA. Our city is too expensive and getting worse quickly and I worry not only for the teachers and fire fighters and where they will live, but where my kids will live. But the actual policies of HALA and the city’s implementation of those will not solve our problems. It’s time we work together to find real solutions rather than just ripping each other up on community message boards so that our side appears to “win”. Whatever that may mean.
Great points, Dead Ed. And let’s not forget that unlikely neighborhoods, Wallingford doesn’t even have it’s own community center. Even worse, now the city refuses to pay for the upkeep of the crumbling Evans Pool and Greenlake CC, and is considering selling it off or privatizing it.
I would agree HALA’s main problem isn’t that it’s doing too much. The problem is too little, and the regulation is too much for the city to do more.
How do we have more space for parks and schools? You increase density to free up land. However, there is no path available to do that. All of the density talks are restricted to be very small scale of individual buildings, so in the end it’s only about putting more people in specific lots, as opposed to a proper overhaul. Let’s say we increase the density of Wallingford by 20%. What’s the mechanism to increase park area by 20%? It would only be possible if we have bigger scale development. ADU type of solutions wouldn’t help at all.
I would say that you don’t increase density until you’ve addressed the already over-capacity infrastructure and made room (or at least plans) for additional density. Otherwise you take a beautiful, walkable, desirable neighborhood and turn it into … something much much less.
So whose houses are we tearing down first to make parks? The resist is from the same source: people who want to keep things as is.
I completely agree Dead Ed. The trouble is that the city has shown zero interest in discussing solutions that are “win-win” for communities and also for affordable housing. For instance- limiting demolitions via auction and using the funds for low income housing, which is my best add-on to HALA for making it win-win. That change would violate the deal that was cut by 28 developers downtown in the “Grand Bargain”. My experience is that the public meetings over HALA are strictly PR sessions- I’m not aware of a single point of the grand bargain that is up for discussion. HALA is very much take it or leave it at this point, so that means you’re either for it or against.
I’ve been taking the 62 to work since November. It’s awesome.
Bryan- I agree the key question is whether HALA is better than nothing at this point. As it exists, my view is that it will result in our urban village flipping like Ballard did, with over 90% of the new residents that move in being tech workers living in fancy new units. There are great win-win solutions out there for providing affordability and also preserving of livability, but they run counter to the profits of developers so they aren’t being considered as part of HALA. HALA as it exists was written by developers, for developers- It’s based on a nightmare model of razing neighborhoods and then rebuilding them at a profit, and any affordability component is just lipstick on the pig.
Thanks Eric. I appreciate and agree with the notion there may certainly be better solutions. And changes that make an areas less affordable would be bad indeed But factually comparing Ballard vs Wallingford, the areas of Wallingford with the least multi-family housing are much more affluent. (The city breaks our neighborhoods and census tracts at the link, an you can click through to 2015 American Community Survey data (attached as a picture) (http://seattlecitygis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=bf93420ee86147e9ba6de9cadecfc57e ).
29% HH’s with $150k or more income here vs 11% there, 35% under $50k income there vs 22% here
When you look at the part of Wallingford that runs up to and includes Aurora the figures become more comparable…but that’s back to the central point, more multi-family housing means greater affordability. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/89946cae8da664ae90e0d4bd66b2bb8f21a0116e7248935fa1c492201425906d.jpg
And realistically, due to the location of Wallingford, without some major tech crash there is no path for it to become as affordable as it was. The choice now is between if we keep things as is and make Wallingford a community of million dollar houses for the rich, or do we build up to create more $600k houses for the middle/upper middle class. If we do the former, the middle/upper middle class would be pushed north, and the poor to…..far far away? If we do the latter, than there might still be some chances for the poor in Seattle, just not Wallingford.
TJ: “without some major tech crash there is no path for it to become as affordable as it was.”
You have no idea how many of us who bought our homes in Wallingford when it was a lower/middle-middle class neighborhood wish the rich would leave for sunny California.
Surely I know well enough. If you really think about it, it’s the same kind of sentiment around the world that are helping nativist parties gain political grounds. How can’t the world just froze in a past state that they preferred?
In reality, I think it should be obvious to many middle class people who bought into the neighborhood cheap that families like theirs are impossible to buy into the neighborhood now. They can ignore that and tell themselves that somehow they are just harder workers therefore deserved the house with market price way above their affordability( a lie, but many people are good at convincing themselves to believe that).
I love this neighborhood, but every time a house is sold around me, I got reminded that this is not a place I am not supposed to afford, and there are people who are exactly like me just a bit younger that missed out on the neighborhood simply because they are younger. They could have worked harder than me and deserving more than me and still got shut out. I personally don’t consider that fair.
Well, life is never fair, but at least we try not to be too entitled.
That’s right, life is not fair. We can’t make Wallingford available to everyone, without turning it into something else more like Ballard is becoming. Someone who would support that and call himself an “urbanist” has I think far too narrow a view of urban quality. The ideas Eric has advanced to urbanize places like Broadmoor mark him as a better urbanist than the people who usually so call themselves, in my opinion.
TJ, you have a perverse way of twisting what people say to suit your biased views. ” I think it should be obvious to many middle class people who bought
into the neighborhood cheap that families like theirs are impossible to
buy into the neighborhood now.” Yes, it is obvious to the majority of us who don’t like it. We prefer neighbors that aren’t speculators, that is average income people who value their neighborhoods, not primarily the monetary value of their houses. If the latter were the case, we’d all to selling and moving to cheaper areas. Why are there not more homes on the market? Because we prefer to live in the houses we’ve maintained alongside the friends we’ve made over the years in the neighborhood. If that is selfish and entitled, then so be it.
Only these days, with these urbanists, is it the case. Preposterous.
Of course the words I said are preposterous for many. It’s just different philosophy of life. For those who thought buying a house meaning buying the right to freeze the neighborhood for like, they should think about people doing the same thing in communities that decayed: many of them are thinking the same, but nobody helps them when the communities change for the worse. What’s their right? What are they entitled to? We are lucky to be in a place that’s booming, but we are entitled to neither the boom nor any specific characteristics of the neighborhood. We would try as its resident to help influence it, but it’s not a privilege.
Sense of ownership is actually a cultural construct. Not all societies treat property ownership the same way, and the way we “own” our houses is just a concept that’s coded and enforced by the current government. We own it in the sense that the society generally agreed the form that properties should be managed with the government force help facilitating the system. Bees and raccoons surely don’t abide by the same rules, because there is nothing natural about our ownership. If those animals are intelligent, surely they’d think our sense of ownership preposterous also.
Well, so you are selfish and entitled. The reason Wallingford is becoming so expensive is not because of speculators. It’s because Seattle is growing fast and Wallingford is at a great location that many people want to live in. The demand increased a lot, but the supply is not meeting it. You said you are a UW professor, and you must know of many coworkers who work as hard as you do, and would like to live as close to the school as you do. And you probably know that they couldn’t afford to buy anything similar to your house. I guess you are willing to rub that in the face of your coworkers and their problems aren’t yours. They can live in Lake City.
I’m not too keen on the tone of the questions in the Q&A. It seems unhelpful.