The saga of the old house at 41st and Meridian has a new chapter: this morning, bulldozers showed up and knocked her down.
The house itself has been unoccupied for as long as I can remember, at least a decade if not two. For a long time, the lawn was carefully mowed and hedges trimmed (although they were allowed to slowly consume an old 1950’s era car, creating an unintentional bit of yard art), but the interior was hidden behind curtains. Unfortunately, a few years back, squatters moved in and started selling off the furniture that was left inside for some quick cash. They were eventually discovered and cleared out, but legitimate residents never moved in.
A couple years back (or was it this past year?), neighbors got permission to set up a haunted house in the abandoned building, and it was reputed to be quite a creeper. My son backed out in fear after barely making it across the threshold, and perhaps with good reason: when I spoke to the builder responsible for the tear down this morning, he was shocked at the notion that people were walking on the decaying floors.
So, the floors are decaying no more. In August of this past year, the house sold for $720,000, and this morning, we saw workers on the roof carefully taking down the chimney, dropping each brick down chute to avoid them tumbling off course and into the neighbors house during the demolition. When we walked by at 5 pm this evening, the show was over and the walls were down.
A steady stream of neighbors came by as we stood there, and we swapped stories about the house, our memories collectively stretching back 5, 10, and 20 years: for a while, I’m told, it seemed like whoever lived there last had stepped out for a quart of milk, leaving plates on the tables and cigarettes in the ashtray, never to return. I remember the slowly decaying curtains that hung on the windows, and the short, sharp cut of the lawn, always kept in top shape.
I’ll be curious to see what goes up in its place. It’s a choice corner lot, with the potential for a commanding view of the Cascades and an ambassadorial position at the intersection. It’s zoned single-family, so no worry that someone will try to cram multiple units onto the property. There have been some questionably boxy builds in the neighborhood recently, but also some really splendid shows of style (notably, in my opinion, the new house at 4119 Meridian falls into the latter category.)
The builder has promised to share the designs with me shortly, and I’ll share them here when he does.
The architect is listed on the DPD’s website, you could probly reach out and get the front view they drew up for the plans:
http://web6.seattle.gov/DPD/permitstatus/project.aspx?id=6513771
$720,000 teardown. 3,800 SF lot. No upzone, destined for new SFH. I think it’s reasonably clear we’ve crossed the Rubican on single-family affordability ay this point.
“It’s zoned single-family, so no worry that someone will try to cram multiple units onto the property”
Don’t worry, our zoning guarantees no one but a really rich family will be able to find a home here. That sure gives me the warm and fuzzies.
Bryan, are you losing your touch? You forgot to add that anyone who opposes the HALA upzones in neighborhoods like Wallingford wants to keep out black people.
why is “exclusionary zoning” in quotes? single family zoning is exclusionary zoning by definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_zoning
Zach, ALL zoning is exclusionary by definition. Zoning excludes building forms as well as activities. For example, zoning that prevents a gas station being built next door to you is exclusionary. And yet many YIMBY’s openly advocate eliminating zoning altogether.
I put it in quotes because Bryan and many other YIMBY’s (including, btw, Mayor Murray and many city council members) cynically use the term “exclusionary zoning” (aka redlining) to play the race card. They use it as a wedge and a cudgel to shame and silence opponents of HALA and other upzone schemes so they can get their way. Nevermind the fact that redlining ended generations ago, and that people in Wallingford aren’t a bunch of racists, and that anyone can buy in places like Wallingford. They just have to be able to afford it. And when it comes to the affordability issue, Bryan and others refuse to acknowledge that with HALA, builders will opt to pay the fee to the city, and not build affordable units here anyway. But that inconvenient fact gets in the way of their narrative.
For what feels like millionth time: all zoning is exclusionary as to use (i.e., industrial versus residential).
Zoning which makes the same use – i.e., housing – more expensive by mandating large lot size, minimum bedroom requirements, or prohibiting duplexes is definitionall exclusionary zoning.
The report referenced in the snippet (“Building the American City,” Report of the National Commission on Urban Problems, also known as the “Douglas Commission”) is available freely online.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bc444b57d3bc4da74b1263a6677d20c790d0c9685dfa8b851c99924d6eeadcdb.jpg
Or, for a contemporary update, the Department of Housing and Urban Development stated in 2013 that ““a major barrier to unrestricted residential choice.” (Available at https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=HUD-2013-0066-0002 unless Trump and co take it down).
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bc444b57d3bc4da74b1263a6677d20c790d0c9685dfa8b851c99924d6eeadcdb.jpg
Or, for a contemporary update, the Department of Housing and Urban Development stated in 2013 that ““a major barrier to unrestricted residential choice.” (Available at https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=HUD-2013-0066-0002 unless Trump and co take it down).
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d9cd7aeb12f673c5f0fb7c483463d077017ff3a553de5d257e0530adbd7d78da.jpg
I’m not sure what your disagreement with me is on that, Bryan. If you scroll up to my response to Zach, you’ll see that I agree with you that of course all zoning is exclusionary by definition.
However, your reason for using the term “exclusionary zoning” ad nauseum is not to point that all zoning is exclusionary. Your goal is to push the narrative that single-family zoning is racist in your view, and that anyone who supports it is therefore guilty of racism by association.
No, all zoning is exclusionary as to use – that is, “industrial” versus “residential,”
“Exclusionary zoning” as a specific thing that is well- defined by the US government, the courts, the industry, the NAACP and basically everybody are conditions attached to a use – that is, “residential” – that make that specific use needlessly more expensive.
It is not “racism by association,” it is support for a policy with an empirically obvious and undeniable disparate impact by race. Folks can justify it or make their piece with as they see fit, but there’s no way around the math.
“…it is support for a policy with an empirically obvious and undeniable disparate impact by race.”
Oh please. Are you even aware that within a one block radius of your house, you have multiple households of people from a variety of races? They weren’t excluded. We don’t care who lives here, as long as their a good neighbor.
And quite frankly, you YIMBY’s have a lot to answer to on the matter of race and gentrification. Like what your push for density at all costs has already done to the CD. And how your push to upzone the International District will flat out destroy that community as well.
There’s a particularly brutal takedown of the YIMBY movement from truth-out.org, a well known progressive site.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40509-yimbys-the-alt-right-darlings-of-the-real-estate-industry
It goes into detail about how YIMBY organizations in San Francisco are front groups for developers and rich techies: The founder of a local YIMBY group there was given seed money for her organization by one of the founders of Yelp, and she also got support from PayPal cofounder and Trump advisor Peter Thiel. (Closer to home here in Seattle, we have our own pro-HALA upzone front groups and think tanks like “Seattle for Everyone” and Sightline being funded by Paul Allen’s Vulcan and billionaire Facebook founders Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna.)
And who are these fearless self-righteous social justice leaders lecturing the rest of us about “equitability” in the YIMBY movement? Why, they’re evil rich white men! While they claim to advocate for affordable housing for minorities, they’re pushing development policies that actually displace them:
“The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, a project tracking displacement and evictions in the Bay Area, recently joined with the Eviction Defense Collaborative and San Mateo Legal Aid to conduct research on who is being evicted and why. The results were revealing.
“We found evictions are severely impacting poor and working-class Black and Latinx residents, seniors, female-headed households, non-English-speaking residents and households with children,” Erin McElroy, founder and researcher for the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, told Truthout. “Disproportionately, those in [YIMBY movement] leadership roles are in tech and are young, white men.”
“…In the 1960s writer James Baldwin remarked that San Francisco’s “urban renewal” of its then-Black-majority Fillmore district was “negro removal.” Under the YIMBY flag, the same is happening today with low-income Black, Latinx and transgender people of color being the core targets of displacement. The YIMBY movement’s developer allies and tech-employed urbanites stand to profit off this disruption of communities.”
That’s the YIMBY/urbanist movement in a nutshell. Sorry Bryan, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.
African-American households in the Seattle area are more than twice as likely to live in small multi-family housing than White non-Hispanic households (31% versus 15%) while White non-Hispanic households are more than twice as likely to live in single family detached houses (65% versus 40%).
One can’t want to give people with less rather than more money, including African-Americans, an equal shot at becoming a neighbor and support single family zoning at the same time.
Come on. Developers want to make money. They don’t give a crap about African Americans or Hispanics and it’s insulting to use them as reasons to help them make more money. African Americans are getting pushed out of the Central District and Columbia City by the very people claiming to care about their interests.
If we don’t make doing so illegal, developers can and will willingly make money building a duplex or a triplex folks to address the massive market of people who can’t afford a single family detached house – as they have many, many places.
An honest statement that shows you actually have no interest in addressing inequality.
Enabling teachers to live in the most popular neighborhoods doesn’t help address inequality?
You specifically brought up African Americans and Hispanics. I don’t know why I’m responding. It’s clear to everyone the shift in argument.
No shift. Lower price point than $1M is better for teachers, African-Americans, and Hispanics alike.
If you map what each group can afford, on average, at the median, and at the maximum, single family detached housing in north Seattle doesn’t work, so something different must be the answer.
Intention doesn’t matter because innocent intentions can’t make up for the disparate impact
Fair point. I would actually welcome multiple units if they were done well. What I was picturing when I spoke was the crap that is going up at NE 40th St and 1st Ave NE, or what went up on Meridian across from the Chase Bank’s parking lot. A tall wall with a driveway going in to a couple of ugly buildings that are completely cut off from the neighborhood. No front yard, no front porch.
How do you make room for those important details that can integrate a home into a community, and still put two units on a single lot? I don’t know, maybe you can’t, and that’s what I was thinking when I wrote “no worry that someone will try to cram multiple units onto the property”.
But, for the record, I do personally support changing the zoning to allow more multi-family units in our neighborhood.
Thank you. wrt to cramming while there are folks who have a more extreme view, but I would say a lot of the folks who support allowing more uses than single family only are a-OK with keeping the same lot coverage (basically 35%) and height (basically 3 stories) limits on size (myself included)
It would make a difference for a lot of people, if we could expect something other than crap.
Jordan, an intriguingly told story, as usual. It reminds me of this, one of my favorite true mysteries: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/199/house-on-loon-lake
My writing compared to TAL? Lifetime achievement unlocked!
🙂 Well-deserved, my friend; well-deserved.
“so no worry that someone will try to cram multiple units onto the property”
It goes without saying that the new structure will be built out to the max allowed. But SFZ did make sure only one (very rich) household can live there. Good job Wallingford!
Not necessarily. Individuals have bought houses in Wallingford for years, intending to rent them to students or other young people who pay by the room. My house has such rentals on three sides. I don’t know what the percentage of rentals in SF homes is in Wallingford, but I would be willing to guess it’s quite high. Speculators who prey on students in my experience are not terribly interested in maintaining the houses either.
The median cost of a newly built single family home in Seattle is 1.5 million. While single family homes are rented to students, those are almost entirely older homes. New single family homes aren’t a good investment for rentals for cohousing. They’re a good buy for rich families. Coincidentally, new town homes are do make for good cohousing rentals, due to their lower price. The median cost of a new town house in Seattle is 500,000.
Thanks Rick. I had no idea that building new SF homes was so expensive, but is that largely the cost of the land or the house?
The high cost of land means that the developers has to build a lot of house (500k to 1 mil in construction costs) to make the entire endeavor pencil out, regardless of how many people will live there. This is why McMansions are replacing bungalows in single family zone.
Some researchers are UBC made a great explanation on the economics of single family teardowns in Vancouver.
https://mountainmath.ca/teardowns
Thanks, Rick. Nice interactive house/land value calculator. It sure makes my house a tear down.
If HALA actually pushed for more alternatives, some of which like community land trusts they mention in their proposals, they might provide more SF homes in Wallingford for lower-income residents. With Community Land Trusts the purchaser buys the house, and leases the lot from the Trust. When they sell, they get back their equity in the house’s value but not the land’s. Thus such homes would not attract speculators.
Most CLTs are financed by public and donated funds and cost about half as much as market rate. They are built to the standards of city codes and the neighborhood and are specifically for families. They exist in neighborhoods throughout the city and would not be identifiable as any sort of public housing. But I have yet to see any promotion of them by the city. More evidence that HALA is either lazy or prone to please developers before citizens, probably both.
I’ll take it at your word that CLT homes sell for half the market rate. Then a typical million dollar wallingford house set up as CLT and subsidized by public money or donations would sell for 500k. That would required about 90k of annual household income to buy. You want to use public money to subsidize households earning more than the area median income to buy homes. How is that fair?
There is no economic model (public/private/whatever), where single family homes in Wallingford are accessible to low and medium income households.
I think 90K is the median income in Seattle now. Perhaps, two small families could go together and share a CLT. I think if the city housing dept was really dedicated to the concept, they might come up with something. It would be a drop in the bucket, but a few people might benefit.
Median in the city is 80k.
“Perhaps, two small families could go together and share a CLT”
Perhaps they could if only city would legalize duplexes in single family zones!
I was talking about buying it together. Of course, they would likely have to be trusted friends or family or have a good attorney. You don’t have to be zoned multiple for that, just like all the SF rentals housing 5-8 unrelated people, which is legal.
What is the point of having single family zoning in Wallingford when you yourself admit that it does not serve the needs of Wallingford families?
You’re advocating that 2 low income families get some lawyers and jump through a bunch of hoops so they can live in a house designed for one family? This is ridiculous; the knots you tie yourself into to justify an unsustainable policy.
Rick: “What is the point of having single family zoning in Wallingford when you yourself admit that it does not serve the needs of Wallingford families?” I never said this. All I’m saying is that rentals in SF houses have been common and served renters well, compared to the exploitive rents of the new buildings.
“You’re advocating that 2 low income families get some lawyers and jump through a bunch of hoops so they can live in a house designed for one family?”
You obviously don’t know anyone who has done this. You must be too young to know that baby boomers found ways to share expenses and incomes without even the need of a lawyer. There are not a lot of hoops if you’re willing to trust people and share housing costs. It happens all the time. Coops are one way of doing this. Of course, since Seattle has become a destination city, for whatever reason I have no idea, and so much of the city is already built up, individuals who insist on having a house to themselves are not going to do well without a lot of money. Those who are willing to reduce costs can do it without public help, if they cooperate with and trust each other in sharing expenses. Believe it or not, young Seattle couples used to do this frequently in the 1960s and 70s before the age of Reagan economics & selfish neo-liberalism became the norm.
I’ve done this myself. Which is why I advocate that zoning be changed to make it easier. We could convert existing houses to have additional kitchens, bathrooms, and entrances to make it easier, if the zoning would allow it. Unfortunately the single-family “selfishness” you decry is enshrined in the zoning code.
A duplex does exactly this, I don’t see why you’re so opposed to duplexes if you want families to share houses.
Rick: “We could convert existing houses to have additional kitchens, bathrooms,
and entrances to make it easier, if the zoning would allow it.”
The law does allow it. It’s what is commonly called mother-in-law apartments.
“There are not a lot of hoops if you’re willing to trust people and share housing costs.”
Establishing enough trust for people to share one home with your young children is a highly non-trivial barrier to put in front of people (as my relatives who are keen to find a duplex or triplex home for affordability are keenly aware).
So it’s not single-family houses. It’s two-family houses. Why not just go further and make them multiple-family? And using median income is the wrong metric, since Seattle median income is going up because the poor are being forced out. If you use that way to measure, then the easiest solution isn’t to build more houses, but to make Seattle a rich-people only city so median income would be so high that housing would not be a problem for a “median” family in Seattle.
If I remember correctly, the sale of this house included city approved plans for a new structure which was not too out of step with the neighborhood. Not sure if the buyers are going in that direction or if they started over.
Indeed if you look at the house on Redfin, there is a floor plan and digital rendering of the plans included in the sale.
“no one but a really rich family will be able to find a home here”
Those evil rich people should not be allowed to move here, maybe we should write a new law that states that!
Density is good, but make Developers pay for it. We need much better requirements to developers for providing low income housing. Right now it’s a joke. Without low income housing, how are the baristas supposed to afford to live in Seattle and have the privilege of pouring Brian’s coffee?
I think YIMBY is not a good term. It’s calling someone a name that’s actually a compliment. Perhaps REDS would be better. Real estate and developer shills.
People who are neither poor nor rich need places to live too. A couple of mid-career Seattle teachers have a shot at (say) one of three $500k-$700k row houses or stacked flats on that piece of land. A $1.5M single family house? Not even two teachers totally maxing out the salary scale.
Bryan you know as well as I do that that’s not what’s going to happen if you build a bunch of town houses in Wallingford. You keep trying to paint this picture of teachers or baristas or disadvantaged minorities coming to Wallingford to buy the housing that you claim would be think would be affordable if we go ahead with your upzoning scheme.
All one needs to do is take a drive through Ballard or the Central District to understand just how full of it you are. The people who are renting or buying all those boxy townhomes and condos are tech bros and millennials. Not that there’s anything wrong with that per se, but these are people who generally have no plans to stick around in the neighborhood long-term. They are going to rent or buy a place for a year or two and then move on. They’re not going there make any lasting connection with our neighborhood. And eventually our neighborhood will be like Ballard, a shell of what it once was. It’s a fun place to go out and party, but not to settle down and raise a family like it once was. And I make no apologies for not wanting to see that happen in Wallingford too.
That’s interesting, because the two couples I know living in Ballard both have one half of the partnership working in IT, have kids, and plan to be there for a long time.
I actually find myself going to Ballard more than before, because there’s more to do, and it’s more pleasant to walk/bike/bus there than 11 years ago when I moved here.
“The people who are renting or buying all those boxy townhomes and condos are tech bros and millennials”
You do know the actual answers to this is publicly available information from the American Community Survey and American Housing Survey, right?
No, they aren’t.
I don’t know why people think they can change the “natural laws” of capitalism and the constitutional and statutory laws protecting property that have existed since the beginning of this country, not to mention around the developed world. Why aren’t we talking about the elephant in the room which is the highly paid technical workers that come here largely from California for “bargain” housing prices. As long as they are willing to pay these exploitative prices and rents, the developers will build for them first and they will set the prices throughout the neighborhood and city. Clearly, SF homeowners faced with this kind of inflation will not sell when faced with these high costs, especially if they experienced the collapse of the market after 2006.
The only way to achieve equity is a graduated income tax, along with housing subsidies for low income people. During the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, federal income tax brackets for individuals maxed out at 80% – 90%. Our self-serving politicians at all levels have been unable to risk their careers to raise taxes since the Reagan years. There is plenty of blame to go around. But an income tax would at least require the wealthy to pay their fair share.
I posted this earlier, Berta, but in case you missed it, it’s an interesting read about the YIMBY’s.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40509-yimbys-the-alt-right-darlings-of-the-real-estate-industry
Didn’t know you had socialist sympathies hayduck. Your usual angle is “if you can’t afford Wallingford you don’t deserve to live here.
Ok, I’ll bite. How does that make me a socialist?
Truth-out is a socialist news organization, well to the left of dailykos and huffpo, and with shoddier journalistic standards. They have a history of refusing to retract stories proven false:
http://archives.cjr.org/politics/jason_leopold_caught_sourceles.php
You basically linked from the left-wing breitbart.
I disagree that truth-out is a socialist organization, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it is. posting an article by a socialist org doesn’t make one a socialist. it simply means I’m using their own media against them. After all, if the article I posted was from some right wing nut job site like Breitbart or World Nut Daily, do you think they’d care?
I facetiously asked if you had “socialist sympathies”. My point was that posting articles from a discredited fringe site (left or right) doesn’t make for a strong argument.
Thanks Hayduke, good article. I have another one from truth-out.org that discusses the overly simplistic supply and demand argument that is supposed to account for higher rents and prices. It explains the situation in San Francisco but the same processes are occurring here.
Developers Aren’t Going to Solve the Housing Crisis in San
Francisco
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26656-developers-aren-t-going-to-solve-the-housing-crisis-in-san-francisco-the-definitive-response-to-supply-side-solutionists?tsk=adminpreview
I hope the link works.
How is that tax resolving the problem of Wallingford property price though? You are just talking about a totally separate problem.
A graduated income tax, as everyone knows would, at least in part, reduce property and retail sales taxes which citizens pay at the same rate regardless of their income. Depending on how the bill is written, it could dedicate funds to housing, just as property tax is now distributed to various purposes like schools and transportation. It is not just about the current price of real estate but the increased taxes dues to higher valuations that require so many low income home owners to leave now high-priced houses that only five years ago cost half as much. I don’t expect prices to go down until the next recession or some Trumpian nightmare.
So you mean the issues are indeed unrelated. It’s not like the poor will stay in Wallingford even if there are no property taxes. No property taxes just makes the property even more tempting for investors, who don’t necessarily pay income taxes. There really isn’t a way to keep the poor in the neighborhood without increasing density. Different tax schemes or what not could make the poor have better life, just not living in Wallingford. Same as how the higher minimum wage would never be a mean to help the poor staying in Seattle. They are going to live far away no matter what, but minimum wage does help them live slightly better living far away.
Foreign (read, Chinese) cash purchases are having an effect on Seattle housing too. Here’s an excellent recent article by our own Paul Roberts, warning of Vancouver syndrome. Beyond the article, Seattle industry insiders are treating it as more than potential; it’s already a “thing.” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/hedge-city-vancouver-chinese-foreign-capital
Seattle is not seeing the same kind of influx as Vancouver. In Vancouver suburbs you’d see lots of Chinese kids driving Maseratis or what not, and none of those are here. Chinese that rich would go to Los Angeles or New York if they do come to the US. A lot of them in London also.
The influx here is much more of a upper middle class one. There are now thousands of Chinese foreign students in UW, and many more similar kids around the region. Their parents would buy a townhouse or a condo somewhere for them, and they might be driving a Lexus or just a Honda. Because of this influx, there are way more Chinese restaurants in the greater Seattle area than before. You see the same thing in most American cities with good universities.