As I reported in November, the City has released the “Preferred Alternative” maps for proposed zoning changes under HALA (if you don’t know what HALA is, you can find out more here). What I did not have in my hands when writing about the Preferred Alternative maps the first time, was the figures for just how much new development Wallingford could expect under these proposed zoning changes.
As you can see in the document linked below, Wallingford is targeted for a whopping 95% increase in housing growth under the latest proposed changes! This is a big jump from the 39% growth we would have seen under the first version of the zoning maps released in 2016, which the City now calls “Alternative 2” (“Alternative 1” is no change in zoning which is my particular favorite). That first 2016 map had its own problems with large zoning jumps west of Stone Way, but once we got used to the first version it was easy to not realize what a big jump in growth there with the new Preferred Alternative map and its predecessor.
Of 27 urban villages slated for upzoning, Wallingford is planned for the third highest amount of housing growth behind Morgan Junction and Crown Hill under the City’s Preferred Alternative. The growth targeted for Wallingford is more than double the average compared to the other urban villages.
And Wallingford’s zoning changes would not be happening in isolation. If you consider Wallingford’s upzone in conjunction with the massive upzone that was approved last year for the U District with plans to turn the neighborhood just east of us into a South Lake Union style tech hub, our neck of the woods has the potential to get a lot more crowded.
You may or may not agree with the zoning changes that were born from former Mayor Ed Murray’s housing agenda, but either way you have to wonder why there is such a disparity in the growth planned for the different urban villages?
If you’d like a chance to ask such questions or give comments to city officials about the proposed zoning changes, the City of Seattle is holding an Open House this Tuesday, January 30th at 6-8 pm at Hamilton Middle School.
There is also a Public Hearing for our District 4 area scheduled on Monday, February 12th at 6-8 pm at Eckstein Middle School. Please come and sign up to give public comment.
We all know growth is coming to Seattle, but our current zoning capacity is more than sufficient to handle what is expected. Will citywide upzones really make Seattle more affordable? And why is Wallingford targeted for such high growth under HALA? City officials need to stop playing politics and reevaluate their plan.
Additional information:
- To submit comments to the City via email, you may write the entire City Council at [email protected], our District 4 Councilmember Rob Johnson may be reached at [email protected] and Mayor Jenny Durkan at [email protected].
- For information on all of the upcoming HALA Open Houses and Public Hearings click here.
- To read more about the Preferred Alternative zoning changes proposed for Wallingford, click here.
- More than two dozen community groups have joined together to take legal action against the City stating it has not adequately studied the negative impacts of the proposed upzones. To learn more about the appeal, click here.
Excellent! Wallingford is the nexus of two frequent bus routes (44 and 62), has the Burke-Gillman trail running along the south, and the eastern part of the neighborhood will be within walking distance of the new Brooklyn light rail station. Wallingford can and should accommodate much denser housing and employment than it does now. I look forward to having many more people and businesses as neighbors.
Absolutely! The sooner we bulldoze this shithole neighborhood the better. Good thing hala doesn’t touch broadmore or sand point or laurelhurst or windermere or blueridge or any of our other gated communities with private country clubs. After all, buses can’t drive on roads there, only luxury SUVs. Best to destroy our walkable, human scale urban villages instead. Soon the whole neighborhood will be new high end housing for tech bros! Yay for rob johnson!
And don’t forget Mike O’Brien!
I see Mike as being much better than Rob, at least in my limited experience. Mike listens so much he is frequently overwhelmed and tends to go with group think in the end, but I don’t see him as being fundamentally foolish, cynical, or corrupt. When you talk to him, he listens and says what he thinks instead of lying or falling back to talking points. Another good thing about him is that his campaigns haven’t been bought and paid for by developers like Rob’s have. All the backyard cottage stuff in HALA is also much more sensible than the urban village upzones, and that’s the part Mike has been focused on. Maybe his aw-shucks persona has me fooled, but I think he honestly wants everyone happy so long as it leads to a greener, more caring future.
Better than Rob, that’s easy, but I don’t know about much better. Once an idea gets put into his head, it has a hard time getting out. Yeah, more honest, but in the end I don’t care if he honestly believes in fairies or if he’s bought and paid for, it’s about how the policy comes out. I will give him credit, he took that business about 320 foot tower upzones in the University District and their “M1” medium scale MHA classification, went after Johnson over it right there in council chambers and made a pretty good show of it (they should have been M2, which would have cost developers more.) Ineffectual in terms of outcome, but at least someone said it.
How green is that camp at 50th and the freeway? How caring to let people camp all over the place? We’ll have to agree to disagree, but ain’t that America…
You can agree or disagree with Johnson on the issues, that’s fair. However, it’s wrong to suggest he is corrupt. Publicly accepting a donation from someone who supports what you are doing is not corruption.
Rob J. is too rigid to be corrupt….or a good civil servant…or come up with truly creative solutions.
I guess there’s a chicken or the egg argument- you could say that all his personal opinions just happen to perfectly line up with developer interests so developers are paying to keep him propped up in office, and that isn’t corruption. I think that’s naive- he’s molded his opinions and priorities to perfectly match developer interests, and that’s a quid pro quo situation. His motivations are clear- he’s a young guy that’s very ambitious so he’s getting buy in from moneyed interests to fund future campaigns, or a private sector job in case that doesn’t work out.
You could probably draw that line all the way back through his career. People who aren’t all about big development and big ticket civic projects, don’t get very far in that line of work. He’s successful – he gets results for the people who really keep score.
You solve the chicken-egg problem by assuming good faith. People can do the wrong things for the right reasons. Who agrees with someone doesn’t determine if they are doing the right or wrong thing.
We need ambitious young people to run for public office, they will get things done. We just must make sure they do the right things. If you criticize Johnson, do it because you think he does the wrong things, not because he is ambitions.
I agree with Eric. Rob Johnson has not earned our good faith, he is a politician who had a lot of special interest / independent expenditure money thrown at his last campaign. And his voting record has been to the advantage of the big money interests who put him in office.
“It turns out that PACs, overwhelmingly representing business interests, made it rain on three particular candidates: Rob Johnson, Tim Burgess, and Shannon Braddock….
The Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s PAC, was the biggest pusher of independent expenditures last year, and was largely funded by the engines of Seattle’s explosive growth. It collected a total of nearly half a million dollars, with major contributions from Vulcan, Amazon, the development company R.C. Hedreen, and the Rental Housing Association.”
Source: http://archive.seattleweekly.com/news/963302-129/how-amazon-and-vulcan-bought-their
Good faith is not earned. Everyone deserves the assumption until they demonstrate otherwise.
Pro development candidates keep winning elections in Seattle, sometimes by big margins. It appears that if they are being influenced by anyone it is the voters.
And in what way is your motivation better?
Because I’m not motivated by big money.
But still motivated by self interest. When big money interest is more in line with the overall public good, it’s better than personal interest.
Eric — check this out, from the Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2018/01/29/housing-emergency-really/
Advocates converting golf courses to housing.
I’d also say: we should levy higher property tax on the private golf courses. They pay something like 2 cents per square foot in property tax, while single family zoned parcels pay closer to $80-100 per square foot. In my view, either private golf courses should contribute to the public coffers via tax, or they should contribute to the public good by being open to public use for free (for non-golfing activities).
Converting gold courses to housing a bad idea. Once open space is lost you can never get it back. We all benefit from having someone keep a large area of land in the city green even if we don’t get to be on the land.
Golf courses serve such a small selection of our population and serves zero percent of the population who needs affordable options. One must have $$ and time to golf.
In addition, they are very hazardous to the environment.
If the ball walking dudes use their money to buy large areas of land within the city which will remain open space then they should be encouraged, not penalized. It is a huge benefit to everyone even if we never step foot on the grounds.
If the ball walking dudes use their money to buy large areas of land within the city which will remain open space then they should be encouraged, not penalized. We don’t need money or time or even to step foot on the grounds to benefit from the open green space for now and future generations.
Yes, thank you.
Once open space is lost it is lost– however converting a gold course to a large park wiht multi-generational housing on outskirts is not a bad idea.
Naughty kitten
How exactly do you think we all benefit from private golf courses? Closely-mown grass is not carbon-dioxide breathing green space like, say, the arboretum is. Private (and public) golf courses should be restored to native forests and open to all.
These lands are kept as open spaces. In decades or generations to come when open space is our greatest need then they can become public. Right now, if they were to become public property they would be built upon. In old dense cities like London the remaining open spaces are where the lands the wealthiest people kept for there recreation.
If that’s the case, why hasn’t the arboretum been developed? Woodland Park? Discovery Park? Gasworks? Do you really believe the ‘public’ doesn’t know how to preserve open space? Ever heard of the National Park system? Are you aware of what’s happening at Bears Ears National Monument?
We don’t have to do things the same way the London aristocracy did things centuries ago.
When a public park is established people won’t give it up. When people are considering what to do with land which was private then they consider multiple uses. The cost of acquiring the land and other pressing needs for land are reasons for this. The Seattle Commons is an example where people put other needs before a public park.
Bears Ears is a good example. A public wilderness was created. Then powerful forces argued for alternative uses. It remains to be seen which argument will prevail. This is what will happen if we attempt to convert private parks to public parks during the current political climate in Seattle.
Agreed, we don’t have to do things the same way the London aristocracy did
things centuries ago. But, it would be a good idea if we did. It turned out great for London.
I do appreciate the higher taxes on the gold courses.
Higher density neighborhoods are more walkable. Ballard core for example is way more walkable than Wallingford right now, with more people and more stores within a small area.
There are a surprising number of stores in Wallingford that are either closed on Saturday or closed all weekend. It’s a shame.
Which?
Eric – the city could zone the gates communities however it wanted and it wouldn’t make a difference. That’s the whole point of gated communities – they have private restrictions on the titles. You could do the same with your neighbors if you all got together and hired lawyers to put liens on each other. Apart from that, the infrastructure requirements to put in more housing into totally car dependent areas with no public amenities wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense.
As far as ad-hominem attacks on elected officials, it’d be nice to assume good faith. It could just as easily be said that CM Johnson is working hard to make sure the good jobs being added to the city (and for which seemingly every other city in North America is fighting for right now) are of public benefit rather than a perverse burden imposed by single family mcmansion advocates (see what I did there?).
It’s important to remember we’re taking about what is allowed to be built, not dictating what will be built. Any changes to those allowances goes to the owners of the property, not developers who must complete to buy it.
Right now, SF5000 areas can only build large, single family homes. That’s essentially the kind of country club classism you’re complaining about. I’m a bit tired of seeing $700k teardowns/to-the-studs remodels selling as $1.75m single family buildings a year later, which is what’s happening in my corner of the neighborhood.
(nothing against mcmansions – I just don’t think we should be subsidizing them. They should just cost $3m because they are competing with 4 700k townhomes as another development option for the same lot).
I’d also point out that the “bulldoze the neighborhood” advocates are not the folks suggesting an upzone. Rather, the, “all growth can be accommodated in existing capacity,” folks are the ones advocating building the whole neighborhood. That’s the definition of existing capacity (what would be built if every lot was bulldozed and redeveloped). Upzoners are saying build a smaller number of lots up, not bulldoze out.
We barely tax country clubs. Broadmoor and Sand Point collectively pay less takes than 10 bungalows in the Wallingford Urban village and occupy a land area 1.5 times as large while providing no housing and no public amenities. You can’t even join those country clubs without an invitation from an existing member. Rezoning fixes that- they need to actually start paying taxes, and in doing so that can help force redevelopment.
Second, I personally support the parts of HALA that make it easier to build more density in single family neighborhoods. A duplex is better than a mcmansion, and a backyard cottage is better than a teardown. It’s the upzoning of urban villages that’s a terrible thing in my view. Instead of seeking to destroy our walkable, human scale urban villages and turn them all into belltown, we should be looking to create new urban villages in car-centric neighborhoods. Let’s make every neighborhood walkable and fix neighborhoods that are broken- don’t break neighborhoods that are already working. One mechanism would be forcing extremely high taxes on country clubs and forcing them to either become urban villages themselves or to do land swaps with public courses directly on light rail and then turn those public courses into new urban villages. There’s lots of ways to deal with the issue, but it requires political courage to do.
Cool – do you have a way to look up property taxes for arbitrary properties? I’d be interested in taking a look – it’d be interesting if nothing else. Are you speculating that rezoning Broadmoor would increase its property value and thus the property taxes? (I can only imagine the lawsuits we’d see around any changes there, but then, yay State Environmental Policy Act?) I can imagine the clubhouse voluntarily entering into a private lien with the other property owners to avoid any valuation changes.
As far as turning every neighborhood into Belltown, as far as I can tell, nothing in the MHA preferred alternative is proposing that for Wallingford – if the next building going in on Stone Way is 15′ taller than the last one, I don’t think anyone is going to be legitimately disturbed and I suspect most people won’t even notice given the upper floor setbacks that are now required to go that high. Most of 45th is zoned so narrowly that I don’t think we’ll even see heights reach the existing limits (there are parts of 45th where the zoning is only 45′ deep from curb to the Single Family lot just outside the UV). Even if we did rezone all of Seattle to allow for the 200+ ft you see in Belltown post MHA, I would be very surprised if the economics ended up penciling out that we’d see many of those towers.
The most contentious points of MHA in Wallingford right now seem to be any rezoning of a lot that is currently SF5000 to anything other than that apart from some people being ok with RSL (I imagine the fact that most existing lots in SF5000 in the Wallingford UV are not 5000 sq feet makes RSL seem like a not much of a change).
To see what’s being paid now use the king county parcel viewer here- if you zoom in enough you see the assessed value of parcels and what taxes they pay:
http://gismaps.kingcounty.gov/parcelviewer2/
Fair enough that Belltown is an exaggeration for here, that’s more in line with the U-District upzone. We’re more zoned to be Ballard V2. Ballard is becoming nice after the last 15 years of razing buildings and rebuilding, but you could have achieved the same thing by dropping a bomb on Ballard in 2000 and starting over from scratch. Everyone that was in Ballard 15 years ago is gone today, all the buildings are gone, all the people are gone, and anyone that tried to live there in that time went through hell. I don’t want to see Wallingford suffer the same fate.
I asked Rob Johnson why he didn’t cap demolitions as part of upzoning urban villages so the rate of change would be manageable by residents. He said it was because he wanted existing housing torn down as quickly as possible to allow for new housing. He has utter contempt for the people he is supposed to represent.
So, the point of upzoning the urban villages is to increase the production of housing. Adding a strong, legally questionable, unstudied restriction to the production of housing is not something I’d expect someone advocating the upzone to support. And honestly, given your statements here, I’m amazed CM Johnson continues to be willing to talk to you at all. You’re clearly not even trying to be fair to him.
Demolition permits also sound like a bad idea if your goal is to have new development concentrated in particular areas where you can then justify new services to those areas. Most of the desirable effects of density are reduced by spreading that density out – in fact, that’s literally the opposite of density. Similarly, saying that Ballard had a bomb droppe don it is a very narrow view of what constitutes Ballard – sure a few blocks around the commercial corridors now contain a lot more townhomes, and a lot of families moved there to start their lives together. Outside of those blocks, many, many single family homes still exist. That doesn’t seem like a horrific outcome. And Ballard is still one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city.
And the way to avoid the process Ballard went though is actually razing Wallingford at a large scale all at once, so we can get to something better than Ballard within 5 years instead of suffering a long term chronicle pain. Too bad that can’t happen.
The solution to the issue is to encourage demolition, as opposed to cap it.
Yes, too bad we can’t just confiscate people’s property that they worked for, eh comrade? Seriously man, you suggest that I should move to Idaho? How about you move to North Korea or China? Your mentality would fit right in there.
Speaking for myself, I used to feel that just because Wallingford is getting shafted with HALA, I don’t want to see other wealthier and exclusive neighborhoods like Broadmoor and Laurelhurst suffer the same fate.
I’ve changed my mind. I know Murray took this off the table, but I want to see ALL of them get threatened with HALA. Why should 6% of SF households who happen to exist in the Urban Villages get the short end of the stick? Everyone should suffer equally, in the name of neighborhood destruction “equitability.” Because as it is right now, you have urbanists from every corner of the city pushing their HALA upzone Koolaid, because they are ideologues and have nothing to lose. Meanwhile, the neighborhoods that aren’t threatened by HALA don’t see much of a need to bother getting involved, so why bother? Threaten them with HALA, and they’ll join the fight. Until that happens they’ll happily contribute to and vote for people like Rob Johnson, because he’s not a threat to them. So Johnson makes the calculation that he can screw over a relatively small portion of his district, while he can count on the backing of his wealthier constituents.
And on that note, why should Johnson be safe and secure from HALA? He lives just outside a UV. He has all the power to arbitrarily change that boundary to include his block, but he hasn’t. Kinda NIMBYish of him, I’d say. So upzone it all, spread the damage to lessen the pressure and impact on Wallingford, and bring in the whole city into the debate, rather than just the unlucky 6% of us.
What do you think?
I personally, as Eric does, also think that we should allow for more housing options in SF zones. So does 50%+ of the electorate according to polling during the last election (with about 25% against and 25% unsure if I remember right). I think Murray got freaked out by the reaction to the initial proposal, and maybe that wasn’t justified. Hopefully it’s on the table next.
I of course completely disagree with your characterization of letting someone build a duplex next to me if they want constituting the destruction of the neighborhood, but then, maybe that’s not the part of your comment you meant to be taken seriously?
Haha! No, I meant all of it in seriousness. Although to clarify, I was thinking more of the aPodments with no setbacks that would be allowed under the current option they’re pushing with HALA.
I personally don’t have much of a problem with allowing some duplexes or backyard cottages, aka ADU’s and DADU’s, if that’s all that would be built and not oversized Borg cubicles with 40 microhousing units. Perhaps with some caveats in place, but I’ve always been open to that. I see that as a workable middle-ground solution that I might even take advantage of myself, provided they don’t jack my property taxes up way more and put all kinds of rent restrictions on me. But with the way the city council has been tilting lately, a little hope of that solution being found.
Careful there, Phil… I might have to swing by with a HALAyes sign for your yard! 🙂
I’d agree that all SF parcels should be in play. All SF parcels should be able to take increased density.
Cool, I need sone more kindling for my fire pit ;-P
The premise that HALA is a disaster to be avoided is wrong. Changing zoning so that more people can live on and around the business core of Wallingford will make the neighborhood better while leaving the single-family blocks largely unchanged.
People fear change. There are people stoking these fears. The supporters of HALA need talk to existing residents about how existing residents will directly benefit from these changes. Stop with talk of affordability. Telling people how others will benefit results in a feeling that residents are being made sacrifice for the grater good.
Talk of affordability would be more compelling if there were anything to it. MHA salesman Rob Johnson will blubber about his daughters and the likelihood they’ll have to live elsewhere, but when pressed, boosters will abandon that market rate affordability angle and pretend it’s all about the subsidized affordability from the MHA in lieu fees, which is irrelevant for anyone but the lucky affordable housing lottery winner who happens to snag one of those units. Not many will look you in the eye and say that market rate housing is going to be affordable in Seattle, thanks to MHA or any such gimmick.
People don’t need to fear change, but MHA’s basic premise is implicitly that it’s change for the worse. It’s a bargain, remember? A “grand” bargain with developers (most of whom weren’t at the table and have been talking about legal action, but I digress.) The city gave away land use changes – changes to zoning and standards – and if those changes didn’t represent some kind of sacrifice, then how could they have convinced the developers to pay for them? If the city really thought MHA were going to be such a great thing, they’d have just done it, for free, right?
But it isn’t a great thing, it’s land use planning cave-in. Upzones aren’t inherently bad, when done in the context of real planning – as for example happened in the core Ballard area recently, with widespread approval from most everyone concerned as far as I know. But this kind of one-size-fits-all broad brush upzoning is a sick joke on us that will have permanent consequences.
Don — you might be taken more seriously if you didn’t vomit on our elected officials.
Hello Skylar! As a Wallingfordian who takes the bus.. I am happy to report that the buses take me EVERYWHERE I could want to go! I can easily ride my bike to the city in less than a half hour, and can walk to a 24 hr grocery store. We should absolutely welcome more density as we have opportunities you don’t find in other Seattle neighborhoods
Thanks, Jaws! When I moved here, there was no frequent transit service to Wallingford — the 62 didn’t exist, the 16 topped out at 20 minute headways, and the 44 topped out at 15 minute headways with 30 minutes off-peak (same as the 26 now!). It’s pretty amazing to be able to experience what we have in that context.
The change in both the 62 and the 44 in the last year(? or so) is indeed amazing!
Big sounding numbers can be misleading. “95% increase in housing growth” doesn’t mean about double the people will live in Wallingford. It means that the neighborhood will grow about twice as fast as it has been growing.
I have been pondering this number and it smeaning. I look around wher eonce there wer homes and now a lot wiht 4-6 cndos and no ground, lawn or trees all around where my apartment is located. How much lan ddo we have for mor econdos and no mor etrees? OOPS I forgot! Gasworks is full of undeveloped land,
“Welcoming Wallingford” and others, this blog has been asking for contributions. I’d love to read a well-researched post here on the local benefits of this proposal for our neighborhood.
If the editors are up for more posts from us, we’re happy to oblige – we were told in the past that they didn’t want more HALA related content (although that seems not to apply to one half of the argument).
If you’d like to hear more from us, please follow out Facebook page and check our events – this Wednesday we’ve got the newest Seattle city council member, Teresa Mosqueda visiting us at Blue Star Cafe starting at 5:30pm.
Hey Ben,
Get in touch! Send us your story ideas to [email protected]. Wallyhood would love to post more diverse opinions on this topic.
Katy
I’m going to make a personal bet that HALA will have a net negative effect on homelessness and a meaningless impact on housing affordability. We should disassociate the two issues and stop letting developers use a nonsense moral crowbar to abuse our interconnected urban issues.
You do not need a bet for the future to know that lack of housing start and strict zoning regulations contributed to high housing price and homelessness though. It’s proven.
Wrong. It is not an affordability issue. It is a meth and opiates issue. Most of the homeless are addicted to one or the other, or to alchohol. You could cut the price of housing in half tomorrow and you’d still have tent encampments and RV’s everywhere in this city.
Phil — I’m sure you’ve got the research you can point us to that backs up your assertion?
The research I’ve seen is increases in rents results in increases in homelessness. See:
http://www.kiro7.com/news/rent-increases-linked-homelessness/28697248
http://www.commerce.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/hau-why-homelessness-increase-2017.pdf
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/even-small-rent-increases-in-these-cities-make-people-homeless-2017-08-03
“The estimate is that half of the people who are addicted to opiates are homeless. And about 80 percent of the folks in our unauthorized encampments are addicted to opiates. That crisis continues to grow.”
-Ed Murray, November 2, 2016
So Paul, when HALA upzones are enacted citywide, or for that matter, if we eliminate zoning outright, do you think our “unhoused neighbors” at the 50th st. ramp are going to pack up their tents and go back to work to pay the rent?
The city research on this doesn’t register opioid addiction, half of people who are homeless report no drug use, and about a quarter report using alcohol… I’m sure there’s at least that many people with homes who use alcohol 🙂
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3480319-City-of-Seattle-Homeless-Needs-Assessment-March.html
Regardless, the research has demonstrated that as rents increased, it has caused an increase in homelessness as people with jobs become unable to afford rent.
And regardless, ensuring that the rent continues to skyrocket — by restricting development, by not building more affordable housing — we’re ensuring that the homelessness crisis will continue.
Because nothing fixes homelessness like putting people in homes.
“…about a quarter report using alcohol… I’m sure there’s at least that many people with homes who use alcohol :)”
So now you’re equating people who come home from work and have a drink or two to wind down with chronic street inebriates who cost the city tens of thousands of dollars every year in emergency services not to mention all the other burdens they impose.
And you clearly have no idea about the nature of addiction if you think that just sticking them all in free housing is a solution, not to mention that doing so would bankrupt the city.
Case in point: the wet house at 1811 Eastlake. This low barrier facility houses 75 individuals with severe alcohol addiction. The construction costs alone were over 11 million dollars. And that’s back in 2005, when construction costs were way lower than they are now. And it doesn’t include the annual maintenance and staffing costs. I recently spoke with a woman who works there. And I asked her how many residents there have ever made it out of the facility and back into leading sober and productive lives where they’re not a burden on society.
Her answer? ONE.
Meth and opiates issues are far worse in many small rural towns that have no homeless problems.
Sure, but most of the ones who are homeless in big cities do have addiction problems.
Phil — That’s not what the city research shows, does it? It found about 50% of the homeless don’t use alcohol or drugs at all. Or do you have alternate research you can point us to?
Also, the study talks about “using alcohol” not “addicted to alcohol”, so I can’t make any assumption about how alcohol use by nice respectable people in homes compares with the homeless.
But at the end, Phil, I’m not clear what you’re advocating. You seem to not want homeless people sleeping on sidewalks and in parks and under freeways. And you seem to not want to see them in housing. So what’s the other options we’ve got?
Don’t be so naive, Paul. When the city asks a bunch of homeless people what caused them to be homeless, do you think they’re going to say it was the drugs and alcohol that caused them to lose their job or get kicked out of the house? If you believe that then you probably believe that anyone on some off-ramp spanging with a sign saying they’re an army vet actually served their country.
So every homeless person is a drug addict (despite all available research telling us otherwise)?
So what’s your solution, Phil? You don’t want homeless people in parks and you don’t want them in homes… What’s the other option?
“So every homeless person is a drug addict”
Nope, that’s not what I said. And I’ve told you my ideas for solutions multiple times. I’m not going to go back into it again here.
That’s because they are at the bottom of the power structure, not because they are the cause of homeless problem. Black people are often the one suffering the most from unemployment for the same reason. When you are at the bottom of the society structure, bad things happen to you first.
Your statement doesn’t make sense to me, which one of my comments are you responding to?
We have built record amounts of [luxury] housing for the last several years and yet homelessness continues to increase. We have plenty of zoning capacity.
We have built record number of housing for our own standard, but not by more meaningful standards. The whole west coast is not building enough houses. Again we can look at Tokyo with huge number of housing starts, more than the whole of California state, therefore they have affordable housing. If Wallingford is full of 5-story apartments, we know for sure we would not have the housing issue.
The available research shows that at rents increase $100, homelessness increases by ~15%.
Building more keeps rents in check. Keeping rents in check means that people who have jobs — just not high paying ones — are more able to keep their apartment. Being able to afford rent is a strong predictor of not being homeless.
Then places like Ballard, the Central District and Downtown which have seen a lot of increased density should have also seen rents go down, right? New apartments cost more than the old ones being demolished. The influx of luxury apartments is making rents go up, not down.
Seattle-area rents drop significantly for first time this decade as new apartments sit empty
The biggest rent decreases were mostly in the popular Seattle neighborhoods that are getting the most new apartments. Rents dipped more than 6 percent compared with the prior quarter in First Hill, downtown Seattle, Belltown, South Lake Union and Ballard, along with Redmond and the Sammamish/Issaquah area.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-area-rents-drop-significantly-for-first-time-this-decade-as-new-apartments-sit-empty/
Seattle rents have dropped some, because the supply has increased. See
* https://seattle.curbed.com/2018/1/12/16886558/seattle-median-average-rent-cost
* http://www.heraldnet.com/business/seattle-rents-drop-significantly-as-new-apartments-sit-empty/
* https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/01/15/25713850/seattle-area-rents-drop-to-a-level-thats-still-far-from-affordable-for-most
* https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-area-rents-drop-significantly-for-first-time-this-decade-as-new-apartments-sit-empty/
* http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/say-what-report-finds-rent-in-seattle-is-dropping/
From the Stranger article: “Seattle-Area Rents Drop to a Level That’s Still Far from Affordable for Most”
“If we are to follow the market urbanist’s logic through to the end (and this is indeed the logic that dominates the region’s housing policies and politics), then developers must not just build furiously when rents are rising but, more importantly, as they are falling. If that sounds like nonsense to you, then you can finally see one of the many flaws (or contradictions) of a market-driven housing program. The value of the empty apartments in the Seattle area will be preserved or protected by a slowdown in construction. Why? Because that’s precisely what falling or stabilizing prices communicate to developers and bankers: slow-the-fuck-down.”
From the Curbed article:
“Across the Seattle metro, typical rent was $1,723 in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to a quarterly report by data and analytics firm Realpage. That’s slightly down from the previous quarter—3.2 percent—but before renters jump for joy, it’s up a similar amount year over year.”
Yup. I agree with Mudede that we need to keep building furiously. And, if rent is going to decrease or even just stabilize, then it’s gotta start somewhere. It’ll be interesting to see what rents look like in the next quarter, and the next year.
Also important: getting the laws changed so that we can build more condos, and not just apartments.
Any realistic change to zoning in Wallingford won’t help the homeless. It will add additional homes for people who are moving to the area in a neighborhood which can absorb them and will benefit from the them.
“Realistic change” is sadly confined by the self interest of upper middle class people. So yeah, realistic change would only mean allowing some other upper middle class people into the luxury condos. At least with that we are still relieving the pressure on the whole region.
Thank you for all the hard work that you do Susanna!
I absolutely second that motion. You are a beacon of light in the HALA darkness.
Where will the denser housing go? OK- the old ZAW building will be something, as will the old Auto Zone. What about the land which was devoted for a homeless camp? Can’t touch gGasworks– I hope, or Meridian Park. There is a triangle on 45th & Woodland Park- a thin triangle could go up there. That old motel on 99 & 46th– make into condos?
Much of 45th is 1-2 story buildings, often covering just a fraction of the lot. It’s ripe for redevelopment as mixed use residential and commercial.
So, the buildings should be torn down and higher buildings built/ Like Kitaro’s? Or the bog box drug store down where the Moon Temple was? Or destroy the FEDEX, Al’s, shoe repair to make higher buildings? BTW the theaters are for sale– so they will go. bTW on Whitman 4 boarded up houses are fially torn down and development is happening quickly– not sure what tho.
Business displacement is an issue. I’d love for the city to work with landowners, developers, and businesses to find temporary space nearby, and then perhaps implement the development so the business can move back.
Whomever redeveloped the lot at 34th and Troll did right by Milstead and Cafe Turko.
I think that if the neighborhood groups, like WCC, advocated for policies like that, they would find a much broader base of support within the neighborhood and at city hall.
(re)legalize corner commerical everywhere – Al’s doesn’t need to be be bang on an arterial; corner commerical space a block or two in that no national chain wants would do just fine, and with housing above we’d be net positive both commercial space for local business and homes for people with less rather than more money
Heck, that’s just describing the part of 45th that *has* buildings. A good portion of it is parking lots – even Wallingford Center is half parking lot by surface area. Going forward, we as a city should concentrate on housing people, rather than cars.
It depresses me when people complain about parking in Wallingford and then I look at all the unused blacktop along 45th. If parking spaces were good for the businesses then 45th street would be thriving, not dying. 45th needs people, not parking spaces.
The best thing to happen to Stone Way and Frewally was when the enormous unused parking lots at 40th and the underused Safeway were replaced by a whole and then lots of apartments and bagels and exercise machines.
Yes, thank you Susanna for continuing to report on this conversation. I’m concerned that more housing will not mean more affordable housing, but also with the LA part of HALA. At what point will there be discussions about where they will put more schools, play fields community centers, libraries, and parks when they bring in the additional people to our neighborhoods? Wallingford and Fremont have the two smallest libraries in the city, no community center or pool, and are about to add sports from a 1600 person population in the form of a new high school (Lincoln) to the already overused lower Woodland fields. I think it was former council member Sally Clark that did away with setbacks which effectively got rid of front yard green space. And while there is an ongoing discussion of transportation, when is there going to be a realistic plan for moving people east/west in the city?
“when is there going to be a realistic plan for moving people east/west in the city?”
What is happening with the Ballard – U District Streetcar? It’s so exciting!
Good lord, they’re not actually going to build a streetcar line from Ballard to the U-District, are they?
There has been no discussion of a Ballard-U District Streetcar. There is supposed to be a bus rapid ride at some point in the future. A street car is a more expensive, less flexible version of a bus. No point in them at all. All it takes to completely stop the SLUT is someone’s SUV a few inches over the white line – they have to wait for a tow car.
Of course if all the students could live in the U District, we wouldn’t need a bus rapid ride.
Exactly. The existing streetcar lines have proven to be a complete waste of money with ridership far below what they projected to get it funded. Plus, the city is now liable for expensive lawsuits from bicyclists getting killed and injured when their wheels get hung up in the tracks.
The 1st Ave streetcar is a great idea.
The Ballard-U District streetcar on 45th St will be great too.
I don’t get it, but … what if we rigged up a couple of rubber tired buses to look exactly like streetcars, and drove them along “rails” painted on 45th? Guaranteed to be cheaper, more flexible and less hazardous to bicycles; any down side? (Other than the inherent mockery, of course, depending on how you feel about that.)
The streetcar is cute, but does not seem to be the most financially responsible transit option. (In general I really wish our City Council was more fiscally responsible.) From the Seattle Times:
“Your fares cover about 40 percent of operating costs for Sound Transit’s Link light rail. Fares cover about 31 percent of the cost of King County Metro buses. Seattle’s two streetcar lines cover 23 percent of their costs with fares.
But once a streetcar is built along First Avenue in downtown Seattle, the city Department of Transportation (SDOT) expects fares to cover a whopping 56 percent of operating costs for the three lines.
That would be among the highest rates of any transit agency in the country.
And it’s one of a number of optimistic financial projections contained in Seattle’s plans to expand a streetcar system that is performing far below expectations.
“The financial assumptions are simply unrealistic based on our history with the streetcar,” Seattle City Councilmember Lisa Herbold said. “I don’t want a situation where we don’t meet those projections and the result is we end up seeing bus-service hours cut to pay for any shortfall.””
To read the full article:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/seattle-to-spend-177m-on-new-streetcar-line-amid-questions-about-unrealistic-revenue-rider-projections/
We spend billions building and maintaining transport infrastructure in the city. We can spend a tiny fraction of that on a few marque projects to encourage people to try transit.
No, we have plenty of buses and cars already on that route.
I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. My understanding is that it removes parking along 1st, and is thus 2 lanes max. And the cost is $135M, a large chunk of which is utilities improvements that are tangentially related to the streetcar line.
That said, I would have been fine to see us start with dedicated lane Bus Rapid Transit from Capitol Hill, through downtown, to SLU.
The third lane is for the stations inbetween the rails:
http://1p40p3gwj70rhpc423s8rzjaz-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/CCCOH6BoardsALLFINAL-pisqconcept.jpg
There’s still a car lane in each direction, right? Seems fair.
Yeah, nevermind whether or not the system actually WORKS to move people around the city. Nevermind the nearly $200 million we’re flushing down the toilet, just raise taxes some more. Nevermind that the trolleys are slow, locked into their route, and ridership numbers are far below projections. Or that no one wants another shiny toy for Paul Allen and Vulcan. Or that bicyclists continue to get killed /injured and sue the city. Or that 1st ave will be torn up and disrupted for years during construction, during a time when downtown traffic is expected to become hell on earth with all the big budget projects they’re about to start. Or that businesses all along 1st ave won’t be able to get deliveries. Or that taxis and rideshares won’t be able to pick up and drop off riders anymore.
Nevermind all that, because it’s “seems fair” to punish those evil car drivers.
Phil — When did you become pro-bicycle? Given your war on bike lanes, I hadn’t realized that the lives and well-being of bikers was a top priority for you.
The 1st Ave Streetcar doesn’t punish drivers. It’s about improving mobility. Dedicated transit lanes improve mobility. Every research study on the subject has demonstrated this. A top method to increase transit ridership is to remove them from car traffic.
And you know what else will improve traffic downtown? If you took the bus, Phil.
Nevermind is a great album.
I have mixed feelings about the 1st Ave streetcar, but a good portion of the cost will be covered by federal grants and it stands a chance of making two useless streetcar lines actually useful. As long as SDOT manages to put transit ahead of private vehicles, I think it will at least be an improvement over what we have now.
Are streetcars more dangerous to people who travel by bike than having the same passengers travel in many cars?
Streetcars that have their own right-of-way are great. Streetcars that share lanes with cars don’t do so much.
Busses that share lanes with cars don’t do much. Real Bus Rapid Transit (which requires separate lanes for the busses) are also great! BRT can be cheaper than light rail, but it’s not always the case.
I’d be up for converting NW Market and 45th street to BRT-exclusive use. That would connect the Ballard and UW Link stations. And it would pump a lot of vitality into our local businesses.
For a real BRT, see this photo: http://thecityfix.com/files/2017/07/ICLEI-BRT.jpg
Nice photo of what I imagine is a very sensible use of BRT, in an arterial situation that’s pretty near the scale of a freeway. To drive that thing through the heart of Wallingford’s commercial district, would be devastating.
Not to mention people wouldn’t use it, which would harm, rather then help local businesses.
Putting BRT on 45th would look like 45th today, except without the massive traffic that clogs the city. We’d get fast transit from Ballard to UW. We could put bike lanes along the route. We’d likely see an increase in retail sales on 45th (assuming every study done on transit/bike/pedestrian improvements is correct).
I’d be just as happy to build a light rail subway, but there was concerns over cost….
I would love to see a study of the benefits of converting Market / 45th to bus only. It could provide a fast-reliable transit option to the Brooklyn rail station and UW. It could also reduce the traffic on 40th & 50th. Best of all for Wallingford, it would create a safe pedestrian street in the heart of the neighborhood, boosting local businesses and allowing people to mingle face to face.
However, even if all that is shown to be possible, I think it’s a leap too far for people to believe it. Instead we can be excited about the Ballard-UW streetcar.
A. Do you have any idea why people and vehicles are on 45th, or where they are actually going? Probably not, no one’s done the kind of study that is needed. There is a lot of commercial traffic on 45th. B. A bus corridor does not make a safe or pleasant pedestrian corridor – see 3rd Ave downtown at rush hour. and C. there isn’t going to be any streetcar.
a. We don’t know the impact of converting 45th to bus only. That’s why I suggested a study.
b. 16th Street in Denver is an excellent example of a very nice safe pedestrian street with buses.
c. Don’t give up on the dream of a streetcar.
Portland has a nice bus plaza, Bellevue has a nice bus plaza.
So what. If no one is doing a study, it might just mean that it is a BAD idea.
If you want street car, a waterfront project makes much more sense, roughly along the Burke-Gilman route from the Ballard Locks to UW Stadium. It can be combined with converting some of the industrial zones along the way into commercial zones.
Including a streetcar line in the Burke-Gilman Trail right of way is an excellent idea.
A better idea is a network of water-taxi or water-buses connecting Fremont, Wallingford, University Medical Center / Husky Stadium Station, and South Lake Union.
One piece of the transportation equation that is missing is the fact that soon – when Lincoln opens – 3,000 young people will be going to school in the middle of the urban village. The influx of cars and school busses into the urban village is a reality that no one seems to be grappling with as far as I can tell. I think it will be the only urban village to have a high school and a middle school in its center. Metro bus transportation to school will not be a solution for a good portion of these students. Some, because they are too young to wait at stops or transfer in the dark; some, because they will be coming from as far as Magnolia. Many will drive cars or be picked up because there are no after school facilities or amenities for them actually in Wallingford – no community center, a tiny library with no teen programming. They will need to be bussed or driven to play fields throughout the city for practices and games. Part of solving the car problem is providing walkable services for those that live and go to school here. Instead of conducting feasibility studies, understanding the transit implications, and doing concurrency planning our elected officials argue out of both (multiple) sides of their mouths: saying Wallingford doesn’t really need a plan for any of those things while also saying the students (and residents) will need to go to other parts of town to get those services while also trying to reduce car traffic. Something’s gotta give.
Middle school children are not too young to wait for a bus or transfer in the dark.
If that’s your main objection to my post, I’m glad you took mu overall point that there is no other urban village with two schools in the middle so a a transportation feasibility study that includes the impact of school-based traffic would be an important addition to transit conversations for Wallingford. Also, how many middle schoolers do you have who currently take transit and what are your rules for them?
I live in Wallingford so my middle school child walks to Hamilton. I personaly took a bus to middle school in a place which was much less safe, much colder and darker than Seattle (and nobody had cell phones).
Hi KatCat7- I haven’t heard of the street car, but I can mention that the 44 is becoming an All Hours bus, as is the 5 and the E. That means 3 bus routes to Wallingford that will run all hours of the day! I find that to be rather exciting! https://kingcounty.gov/depts/transportation/metro/programs-projects/routes-and-service/late-night-service.aspx
All the more reason to implement development with fewer parking spaces!
If the built up in Ballard were put in Wallingford to begin with, the issue of moving people east-west would have been smaller, because the high density area would be on both sides of I5 and the lightrail line. I think your point is effectively a convincing one why Wallingford should have more build up in the future than other places. It’s a place people can bike to SLU for work.
Now with the Ballard build up already happened, causing forever traffic jam on 45th, 50th, 80th, and 85th, I think by the time Northgate extension is open, there have to be some dedicated bus lane from Ballard through us to the light rail stations.
One issue I have with a lot of the transportation conversation is the assumption that a) people only need to travel to work; b) everyone who needs to move somewhere is able bodied. The transit system/urban village needs to take into account people with young children, children going to schools, seniors, people with disabilities. On that front, Wallingford is a difficult place for density because there are very few services and amenities that are easily accessed. Folks have to travel in and out of the urban village to access services and while the bus is feasible, the lack of light rail, combined with the lack of actual services in the urban village complicates transportation. It’s not as easy as hopping on a bike.
And Ballard used to have same level of services and amenities as Wallingford until the density goes up. Now it got way more stores and businesses opening for longer hours than Wallingford. Rural areas have way less services because the density is too low. If your concern is true, then you should advocate for building up. Only with enough people within the short distance can you justify having more services within the neighborhood. If the build up is high enough, there will not be needs to travel in and out of the neighborhood to get anything, since all things will be available locally.
There is no lack of light rail for Wallingford. We’ll be next to two stations for the Northgate extension. It’s places like Ballard and Sand Point that lacks light rail.
Unfortunately that premise is false because Wallingford already has the population to warrant a community center and a bigger library. We are the ONLY neighborhood in the city that does not meet the city’s “levels of service” for these amenities (this information is available in the city’s strategic planning documents). Also, good portions of Wallingford do not meet the city’s goal of being within walking distance of a park. So, good concurrency planning would mean at least moving out of a deficit amenity position and addressing the existing needs of current (as well as new) residents. It’s a political issue not a density one.
In fact, the community centers were not placed where they are based on numbers of people in a community, they were originally paired with middle schools so they could serve the students in the neighborhood.
And also – what light rail stations are you referring to? The Brooklyn station? There is no plan for light rail in Wallingford. and there will be one in Ballard.
I think we all agree that we need more parks, a community center and a decent size library, and possible a bigger pipe for something. But to get to get these we need to agree that something needs to be bulldozed, otherwise where to we build these things?
The sewers and storm drains don’t handle the present load. How will the city accommodate an increased density?
A few ways.
1. Building codes for new/larger buildings have been changed to require more / most stormwater to be managed on site.
2. The city provides various incentives for homeowners to build rain gardens and other mitigations.
3. The city is building a massive (15 million gallon) storage pipe that will hold excess stormwater during big storms. Details can be found here: http://www.seattle.gov/util/EnvironmentConservation/Projects/WallingfordShipCanal/index.htm
You do not understand the storm water code. I’d bet you haven’t even read it. Managing storm water on site, particularly for larger buildings, is simply a question of metering flow. Later rather than sooner, the water still ends up in the combined sewer or in the storm sewer if there is one available. The only strategy for larger buildings that keeps water out of the sewers is rainwater harvesting for toilet flushing, very expensive and seldom used. The infiltration strategies require permeable surface, and the kind of buildings you are fond of leave little or know permeable surface to absorb the rainwater. Houses with backyards do have a lot of permeable surface. Ironic, isn’t it. Rain gardens need a fair amount of just the right type of open space, also the sort of thing you find around homes with big enough lots.
LOL. Yes, Margie, the shit’s gonna hit the sewer at some point. The problem is not that rainwater or our sweet-smelling shit goes into the sewer. The problem is that at certain times there is too much coming at once, and that peak flow must be managed.
So,
1. Building codes that require larger buildings to manage on site means that during these peak events, less water goes into the sewer. Talking with the city last night, they said that when new large development goes in, it actually *reduces* the excess storm water problem. The large storage pipe will address the remainder of the peak flow problem.
2. Rain gardens aren’t just for single family homes, are they? Lots of buildings are installing green roofs — likely because #1.
3. The more dangerous sewer problem is from heavy metal and petroleum products from cars, which can be reduced by increased density leading to more pedestrian and transit trips rather than by personal car.
Our utilities actually are handling the present load just fine. The problems we’ve had are the result of mismanagement at the county level (see the West Point fiasco last year), and a combined sanitary/rain sewer system that requires treatment capacity for peak rainfall rather than a baseload of people. The difference between a dry day and a rainy day is far more than the difference between current population and any amount of population growth that’s under discussion.
“Our utilities actually are handling the present load just fine.”
That is absolutely false. One outflow in Wallingford dumps around 12 million gallons of untreated waste into Lake Union while one outflow in Ballard dumps over 40 million gallons right near where we all like to watch the salmon climb the fish ladder. And there are outflows all over Seattle (Wallingford alone has five).
The massive storage pipe that I believe Paul_Sea was referring to won’t be completed until 2025…
Ideally our storm water should be filtered through the ground before it reaches the water table. But more impervious surfaces from increased lot coverage means more untreated storm runoff (with oil and dirt and pollutants) is combining with our untreated raw sewage (eww) and overflowing into our open waterways (so disgusting).
And all of the development is cutting down our large trees. Trees, especially our large evergreens that keep their leaves during the rainy season, hold water during a storm (that’s why you can stand under one and stay dry). This decreases how much storm runoff we have. These trees are being cut down with a dizzying pace and replaced by saplings that usually are usually not evergreens.
All of this increases local water pollution from sewage overflows.
Susanna, I completely agree with you that having a combined sewer system is a problem. To draw the conclusion that we shouldn’t build anything at all until we separate rain and sanitary sewage is pretty unreasonable, though, and not supported at all by the facts.
King County’s West Point treatment plant treats on average 110 million gallons per day (mgd) of wastewater on an average dry day, 133 mgd on an average wet day, and has a maximum capacity of 215 mgd.[1] King County and Seattle estimate per-capita water usage at 56 gallons per day.[2] This shows me that the difference between an wet day and a dry day (23 mgd) is the equivalent of over 400,000 people — half the population of Seattle! The problem we’re dealing with isn’t a function of the number of people, but a fundamental design flaw in our treatment system. By all means, let’s fix it, but let’s not pretend that the problem is something that it clearly is not.
[1] https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/dnrp/wtd/system/facts.aspx
[2] https://your.kingcounty.gov/dnrp/library/wastewater/wtd/construction/Planning/RWSP/CompReview/13/1407_UpdatedPlanningAssumptions2014.pdf
I have no idea what your employment or training is, but you pretty clearly are not a civil or plumbing engineer. Converting our current combined system to separated systems requires digging up streets all over the city and installing a second pipe system. It is not going to happen in your life time, let alone mine. In any case the existing smaller 8″ lines running down residential streets do have a finite capacity for sewage, let alone storm water. What’s unreasonable is thinking that a finite system has infinite capacity just because that suits your politics.
I might not be a utility engineer, but I doubt anyone else talking about this topic is either…
That said, Susanna’s point is about overflows (presumably caused by more than an 8″ pipe), not backups into homes. As Paul_Sea mentioned below, there’s now a huge 60 million gallon storage tunnel under Lake Union that will greatly reduce overflows. If we ever do run out of branch line capacity, though, are we really going to claim that adding another 8″ pipe less than 20′ below the surface is beyond our capabilities?
I’m not a utility engineer, but somehow I doubt anyone else talking about this is either…
In any event, Susanna’s point was about overflows, not backups. As Paul_Sea mentioned below, there is now a 15 million gallon storage tunnel near Lake Union that will make overflows less likely. If we ever do run out of branch line capacity, though, 8″ pipes less than 20′ below street level should be trivial to add, and really shouldn’t justify holding up development.
You are wrong. I am a piping engineer. That’s why I am very sure that you aren’t, Paul isn’t, and tearing up streets to install deep buried sloped pipe for long runs is very, very, very expensive. Just generally, get someone who knows the field on your team, or moderate your claims.
Margie — The city is dealing with the sewer problem, and unlike you they aren’t recommending that we install a new sewer system under the streets.
Are you making the claim that their solution is inadequate? And if so, inadequate for what problem? The sewer overflow problem? Or just basic capacity problems from toilets to the treatment plant? Something else?
I’m not “recommending” retrofitting the city for a two pipe system. Nope. A project of that scope is somewhere on the spectrum between impossible and ridiculous. Your misread.
Margie, I’m confused then. As Susanna pointed out, there is a problem sewage overflow into Lake Union. How is a lack of capacity up-stream from Lake Union (i.e. Wallingford and beyond) able to cause sewage overflow at the lake? If there really is a lack of capacity in Wallingford, wouldn’t we see sewage overflows up-stream from the lake? In the 12 years I’ve lived here, I’ve only seen one back-up, and that was clearly caused from debris (SPU vacuum truck fixed the problem in a couple hours). Do you have evidence that SPU capacity is lacking up-stream of the overflows?
If the capacity problem is between Wallingford and West Point, how will the storage tunnel *not* improve matters?
As for combined vs separated sewage, I was actually surprised to find that Fremont and Wallingford actually already have partially separated sewage systems:
https://www.seattle.gov/Util/cs/groups/public/@spu/@drainsew/documents/webcontent/1_065575.pdf
(See Section 5.5)
Further on in that document, SPU/KC estimate that overflow events will drop from 53/year (37.5 million gallons) for basin 152 (Wallingford’s, close to Gas Works), to 0.7/year.
The document also estimates that while development will increase the impervious area in Wallingford, it will actually reduce infiltration/inflow because new development will be required to divert rain and sanitary sewage into separate systems.
Nowhere in that document was there mention of capacity problems up-stream from the overflow sites.
Sigh. Most parts of Wallingford don’t have combined systems, my street certainly doesn’t. How could rainwater from new construction be required to flow to a system that doesn’t exist? That is not what on-site management means.
Yes, I know that there are some areas with separated systems. It’s part of my job.
For most of the rest of what you’ve written – I never said lack of capacity up stream is causing the sewage overflows, in fact if you look back, you will find that the first time I used the term “sewage overflows” is in this sentence.
I said pipe capacity is FINITE. Apparently this is an unacceptable concept.
I guess I keep going back to overflows because I was replying to Susanna – while I disagree with the conclusions that she’s drawn, she has offered concrete evidence of a capacity problem somewhere in our sewer system. I certainly can’t argue that pipe is finite, but I am curious to know what evidence you have that we are at all approaching a limit and, even if that were the case, that it is an intractable problem. I had no idea that even part of Seattle’s sewer system was separated, so is there any evidence that we can’t continue incremental separation as part of new development? The SPU report certainly suggests that we can – can you provide evidence to the contrary?
“Combined sewer overflow status”
https://www.kingcounty.gov/services/environment/wastewater/cso-status.aspx
“Stay out of the water for 48 hours after a combined sewer overflow; contact with polluted water can make you sick.”
23 areas met this category when I just clicked on the live map (it’s not currently raining).
The sewer capacity is a huge issue. Rarely considered.
On the contrary, sewer capacity has been exhaustively considered. See the list of active projects here:
http://www.seattle.gov/util/EnvironmentConservation/Projects/index.htm
Why do techies, even the ones with liberal arts training, think that they are experts on every subject? Why do we need doctors, scientists, or engineers, when we have techies who can produce “expert opinions” merely by looking up something on the internet? Many or most of those projects have absolutely nothing to do with sewers.
Margie — did you have a point other than to make an unproductive personal attack?
Did you have a point other than smearing the reputation and expertise of an entire city department, one that is right now as we discuss hard at work fixing the sewer overflow problems?
If you’ve got evidence that shows that the city is *not* considering sewer capacity, please provide it.
Otherwise, how about please save the snark?
She said nothing about that department – reputation, expertise, whatever. The objection is directed at you, with your lists of references that turn out to have little or nothing to do with the point. Which is, lest we forget, the connection between sewer capacity and the population potentially added by MHA upzones. The city department that ought to consider such things is currently called OPCD.
LOL, Don! Did you even look at the list? It’s the Seattle Public Utilities project list. Nearly every of the 37 items deal with stormwater, drainage, and sewer issues.
It doesn’t take an “expert” to understand that.
And persistently griping about “sewage capacity problems” — when Seattle Public Utilities is right now at this moment dealing with sewer, drainage, and stormwater issues with more than 30 projects — is smearing the reputation and rejecting the expertise of an entire department.
If you have data and evidence that shows that SPU (or OPCD) is failing to take sewer capacity seriously, how about you provide it, rather than engaging in another of your inscrutable personal attacks?
Do you know this sewer issue was mentioned in the neighborhood plan that was written over 20 years ago? So yes, we want the City to finally fix it now (the pipe you mentioned won’t be finished until 2025), before adding more density to the already insufficient sewer lines. And it’s not just toilets. It’s also increased impervious surfaces and loss of big trees that exacerbates the overflow issues.
“We the citizens of Seattle who’ve been here for 20 (or more) years who failed to pay enough to fix this for the last 20 years, and, in the process, went along with sewage overflows, now want to stop new people from being able to live here because of our under investment for decades” doesn’t strike me as the most compelling argument.
Maybe you shouldn’t make it.
Susanna — is your position that we should stop all development and population increases until 2025 when this issue is fully addressed?
As noted above, the city is already mitigating impervious surfaces.
Paul, you are the last person who should be lecturing others about personal attcks.
You’re awesome, Phil! Keep up the good work!
That was specifically directed at you and your buddies. I would never refer to the engineering staff at SPU as techies, they are engineers. My misstatement on the project list; only a few of them are relevant to your brush off of concerns about sewer capacity because it’s supposedly been taken care of. I have some minor quibbles with the storm water code; I’m not convinced that bioretention planters are quite as effective as intended and the systems make my part of things more complicated. On the plus side, it actually has infiltration, i.e. permeable surfaces, as the first solution for all projects.
Margie — I guess I’ve misunderstood your comments, then. It sounds like you’re saying that what the city is doing in that long list of sewer and stormwater projects is not adequate, and that I’m wrong or naive or just a techie for believing that the city engineers understand the problems and are delivering on solutions.
Is that an incorrect understanding?
Or is there some other concern that you’re raising that I’ve missed?
Interesting how you keep trying to interpret what I’ve written as some sort of critique on SPU. Not my intent at all. Apparently that’s the twist you want to put on it. Would you still have so many nice things to say about them (the professionals who work with the system) if they were telling you things you disagree with, say for instance, adding multiunit housing should be at a slower pace until the CSO is completed?
Margie, that confuses me even more. This started out with a claim that sewers aren’t being considered. And I simply posted a link that shows, yes in fact they are and the city has been and is doing many things to address capacity.
You attack me personally, and term the list of city projects as a “brush off of concerns”, which can reasonably be understood to imply that the city is not doing an adequate job.
But it seems you’re now saying that the city is doing a fine job with sewers?
Can you help me understand what your concerns are with regards to sewer capacity, and as someone who it sounds like has some expertise in sewers, what your recommendations might be?
If every single family homeowner spent, say, the home equity they’ve gained in the last 60 days on Green Stormwater Infrastrcuture best practices, whatever problems exist would probably be solved handily:
http://www.700milliongallons.org/types-of-gsi/
Or homeowners can just complain and blame others and pocket the gains.
How are the homeowners at fault? They’ve paid taxes to the city and the city is supposed to take care of this. Maybe the city should plan better. Maybe the city shouldn’t be encouraging more growth in an area that isn’t yet prepared for it. Why blame people who have nothing to do with the city’s poor planning? What next? We get blamed for not having enough hipster pubs in the area for the newcomers?
In a democratic society, the government can only extend in limited ways beyond the will of the people who elected them. It’s not like more authoritarian societies where a leader with good vision can simply implement that and plan for long term and make changes fast. As you can observe here already, existing residents often resist changes that can help accommodate future growth. People who are against HALA are effectively to be blamed for the city’s poor planning for being able to accept more newcomers in the future.
Because of that kind of dynamic, the city government always have to be working in somewhat of a patch up as we go mode. You think ten years ago the city could have justified to existing homeowners to fund the infrastructure we obviously need today? Surely not. And even today you have people claiming Seattle will shrink soon, therefore we shouldn’t build up for more people.
Go read up on the infrastructure differences between China and India. It’s a very well-discussed topic.
T J :
“As you can observe here already, existing residents often resist changes that can help accommodate future growth.”
What else would you expect TJ? How many people anywhere want to pay high taxes for programs they will never benefit from because they won’t be alive when they’re finished? I don’t consider Seattle’s RECENT propensity to pass huge self taxation programs to help subsidize others as some sort of disinterested philanthropy It’s sheer ignorance. I’m willing to bet that most young renters didn’t even know that passing these outrageously expensive Sound transit programs would affect their rent.
It’s rare throughout history that people will voluntarily pay to support people who aren’t even born yet, which is why so many reactionaries can’t accept Climate Change restrictions. Also I’m not so sure you should assume we live in a democratic society anymore under the current administration.
And finally, although our bus system has improved immeasurably over the last 20 years, all the discussion on this blog that I’ve read seems to show little concern for people in their 70s-90s and there are a lot of them now. Do you really expect them all to bike and walk? Until we have a decent transportation system in the city that can accommodate the old and disabled, we don’t have a democratic system there either.
4
We’re “the city.” We have agency.
Didn’t take the WCC long to make scary signs plastered everywhere against upzoning and to sign on to a lawsuit against the city against ADUs and DADUs.
Been in Wallingford 15 years and the swere thing has been an issue for 20+ and I don’t recall seeing any scary signs about poop in the lakes or organizing for a lawsuit anywhere in that entire time.
Bryan, if you’ve been here that long, then you should know how Metro got started. Hint: it wasn’t about buses.
Well, we’re not all sewer experts. I leave that to civil/plumbing engineers like Margie.
Should we leave urban planning to the urban planning experts?
Transportation planning to the transportation experts?
…
WCC did not “sign on to a lawsuit against the city against ADUs and DADUs.”
To start with, the action I suppose you refer to was not a lawsuit, it was a SEPA appeal, of a fraudulent “Declaration of Non-Significance” on an action that was not insignificant at all.
It was not against ADUs and DADUs, inasmuch as they’re already legal without the measure in question.
In any case, WCC didn’t sign on to that appeal, or play any role in it whatever. So with remarkable economy of expression, you have managed to fit 3 falsehoods into one clause of 12 words.
Technicalities
As previously mentioned, the sewer upgrades are underway and expected to be completed by 2025. I don’t think hardly anyone here was even aware of, let alone fought against, those upgrades. In fact, I’d say most people don’t even know about the sewage overflows.
Supposedly there are fecal counts posted online for the lakes/beaches.
Everyone, please write to city council!! I just did. Also to Rob Johnson (who seems pretty lame in my book). Besides the obvious issues with upzoning, interesting open house tonight is scheduled at same time as State of the Union address! No, I don’t support our White House (does anyone in Wallingford?), but I still want to hear what the idiot says.
What I find frustrating is how Anti-Family this plan is. It doesn’t require density limits (that’s city zoning speak for how you get developers to add 2, 3, 4 bedrooms units) so that we get true family-housing ADDED to Wallingford. There is nothing in this plan for increasing school capacity and the play fields that go along with that, nor for adding a community center, increasing our library size, or for retaining/ growing open and green space. It reduces setbacks so that it makes it harder for kids to play right outside their “housing unit.” And it does NOTHING to retain nor grow Middle Class Housing.
See you tonight at Hamilton.
Spot-on, Miranda, and it’s a point that often gets left out in this debate. It shouldn’t be called multi-family housing. It should be called “multi-unit housing.”
We’re getting family housing in Wallingford. The Wallingford Urban Village upzones — most of which is LR1 and LR2 — will look a lot like these projects that are being built today in these zones:
https://www.seattleinprogress.com/project/3022700
https://www.seattleinprogress.com/project/3019486
If we have more land zoned LR1 and LR2, we’ll get even more of this multifamily housing. In general LR1 and LR2 won’t look like the hyperbolic examples that Greg Hill prefers to use.
Currently LR1 (Low Rise 1) usually results in town homes. But in addition to changing the zoning, the City is also changing the definition of the zones. So if all of this passes City Council, apodments will be allowed in LR1 and above (all throughout the Wallingford urban village).
The new LR1 regulations that are being proposed would require…
-for every three 220 sq foot “small studio” the developer would have to include one 800 sq foot two bedroom “family sized” unit
OR
-the building could be entirely 401 square foot studios.
With our current officials, multifamily zoning does not equal family sized housing. If you want family sized housing, then tell the City to keep the current LR1 regulations. And yes, maybe even require a yard for the children of these families to play.
“And yes, maybe even require a yard for the children of these families to play.”
Mandating by law that larger pieces of some of the most expensive residential land in the city be attached to new homes is not a great way to make housing more affordable.
Children would be better off playing with their friends in the park or street than by themselves or an older/younger sibling in their personal garden.
Single family zones are special places with a unique and precious sense of community where, nontheless, neighbors can’t possibly work together to help those with more onsite parking share it with those with less, and those with smaller yards couldn’t possibly play in the yards of those with more space.
(Note: this is sarcasm, but, as far as I can tell, accurately reflects some points of view.)
Susanna — I’m not seeing that… The MHA FEIS appendices seem to be saying something different…
http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/HALA/Policy/MHA_FEIS/Compiled_MHA_FEIS_Appendices_2017.pdf
There are LR regulations accommodate both apartments and townhomes/rowhouses. Is there any reason to think that we’ll always only get apartments in LR zones? We aren’t today.
Also, the proposed LR zones have a family requirement of one 850 sq foot 2-bed unit per every 8 units, or 1 3-bd 1050 sq ft unit for every 16. Based on the FAR requirement [1], the net usable square footage, and the multi-bedroom requirement, for a small LR1 apartment building, we’d see something like one 2-bed 850 sq ft apartment and eight 540 sq foot. Say the developer wanted to go big: they could put in 16 units, but that would require two 850 sq foot two-bedroom units.
So, not seeing the worries here….
[1] for people who don’t know the acronym, FAR = how many square foot the building can be in relation to the lot size. A FAR of 1.0 means that on a 5000 sq ft lot, the building floor sq ft is 5000.
I just edited this above after talking to OCPD last night.
I wonder if they can even keep it straight, though. Up until the EIS, the “family” sized unit was 850, but in the EIS (F.5), where “every 5th” also is introduced, it’s 800. The way they put it in F is, require one 800 sf for “every four small housing units.” “Small” is defined in this context as “400 sf or less” (F 53, labelled 41.) So there’s no guarantee of any even 800 sf units, unless more than 3 units are under 400 sf.
Don — You can read the FEIS I linked to above. Appendix F, IIRC. Clearly states there that for every 8 units in an L1, there must be one 2-bedroom unit that is 850 sq ft minimum.
Let me add (Don & Susanna) — if the city said last night that every 5th unit must be family sized @ 850 sq ft minimum, that sounds like more family units than before 1 out of 5 versus 1 out of 8.
So… not seeing the problem here?
In my paragraph above, annotations like “F.5” refer to page numbers in Appendix F. They clearly state one thing, and then clearly contradict themselves with another, hence the confusion. The upshot is that there’s no requirement for family units, if all but three units are over 400sf.
Don — Not sure how you make this leap of fancy. Nor is there a *contradiction*.
In all cases in Appendix F it clearly states that there is a “family-size” apartment requirement.
On F.5 it states “one family-sized unit of at least 2 bedrooms and 800 square feet for every four small housing units in a development.”
And on page 21 of appendix F it states:
“For every 8 units, at least one 2-bedroom unit (min. 850 sq. ft.). For every 16 units, at least one 3-bedroom unit (min. 1,050 sq. ft.) or two 2-bedroom units (min. 850 sq. ft.”
I can see how you might be confused by this, and the city could clarify what they mean, but both of these can be true.
If “small housing units” means less than 400 sq ft, then for every 4 units you must have an 800 sq ft unit. And regardless, for every 8 units in a building, one of those must be 850 sq ft.
http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/HALA/Policy/MHA_FEIS/AppF_MHA_FEIS_2017.pdf
For every 4 small units. That’s what it says. LR1 apartments are not required to include any small (≦ 400sf) units, and if they don’t, they don’t have to include any “family sized” (≧ 800sf) units either. That has been fairly consistent, though only once stated clearly (page 53, labeled 41.)
Don – how do you square that assertion with the clear requirement in L1/2/3 for one 850 sq ft 2-bd unit for every 8 in the building?
Don’t ask me, I didn’t write that document.
So the document clearly states “For every 8 units, at least one 2-bedroom unit (min. 850 sq. ft.). For every 16 units, at least one 3-bedroom unit (min. 1,050 sq. ft.) or two 2-bedroom units (min. 850 sq. ft.”
I think perhaps you’re misreading it through your anti-change eyeglasses.
You’re already admitted that it “clearly” says something else on page 5. Have you gotten to the version page 53 yet? (Marked as page 41.) That’s where it will “clearly” explain the concept, though the parameters are out of date, as they are in the passage you quote. I’m not going to pursue this any further with you, anyone reading this can presumably see what’s going on. It’s practically immaterial anyway, these documents don’t govern implementation.
Don — none of those statements are in actual opposition to each other, even if there is imprecision. And all three instances clearly indicate that the city intends to require “family” housing in the L1/2/3 zone.
And if these documents are immaterial, I don’t know why you got your undies in a twist over your misunderstanding of them.
“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” ― George Bernard Shaw
Circling back looking for discussion on the LA of HALA. My earlier comment segued into a transportation discussion which is a worthy topic, but only one part of the puzzle. What about play fields (Lincoln is slated to open in 2019. Their sports teams will need to use lower Woodland fields – these are already overcrowded), schools (likewise overcrowded), parks (these can be green space, dog parks, pea patches), community centers and pools to support the additional population? What are the city’s plans for these items?
“What are the city’s plans for these items?”
Shouldn’t we the residents be making recommendations for what to do given that “top down, the city doesn’t listen is a frequent complaint?*
*”Stop people from moving here” would require a Constituional amendment so that is probably not something the city could deliver on.
You know very well that no one proposes to “stop people from moving here” in the sense you’re using it – and you know what sensible steps could be taken if the city wanted to take any responsibility for a sustainable rate of growth. Don’t be like your colleague and leave us wondering whether your misunderstanding is a cognitive or ethical defect.
I wasn’t trying to be snarky – rather I was trying to elicit realistic and constructive recommendations skipping those which are non-starters:
stopping people by fiat won’t work
raising unempployment or depressing wages (which I think might be steps you’re thinking of based on previous comments, but I won’t speak for you) is also politically not going to happen (thank goodness)
So taking the world as it is, what do we recommend?
(I’m no way hostile to recomendations – I think it was on Wallyhood I learned the school kids would be using Green Lake’s facilities. The track is downright dangerous, that abolutely has to be upgraded before track teams are using it.)
Last summer, the city rezoned the University District for 160 foot office towers, generally understood goal being a 2nd South Lake Union, really biotech this time. As an example, we should put the zoning back where it was, and let that happen instead in some part of the world where employees can afford to live.
If University District really becomes the 2nd South Lake Union, then East Wallingford should be turned into Belltown or Capitol Hill so people working in University District can walk to work from here. Not even need for public transportation. And can we get that 47th street foot/bike bridge built then?
When a lot more people are working in the U District people can ride the streetcar from Ballard, Fremont and Wallingford to work.
But changing the zoning won’t stop the demand for space if it exists (or create it if it doesn’t).
For example, Fremont is still zoned for 4 ish story buildings. Google and Tableau keep taking over or building more of them. So they occupy more land in lower story buildings.*
Keeping the old zoning in the UDistrict (or SLU) would likely mean that businesses with more money outbid those with less, pushing them out, and consuming more land.
If upzoning created business demand, then Gary indiana could upzone itself and get desperately needed jobs.
*The fact that SLU is zoned higher looks to make it likely that Google will vacate a bunch of space in Fremont in order to consolidate into a high rise in SLU in the next few years, in fact.
The U district growth isn’t guaranteed because it was upzoned – we could luck out – but obviously, without the 160 foot towers there’s a limit to how much can happen, and that becomes one of the factors that bring stuff here instead of elsewhere. Just like the zoning and infrastructure upgrades in SLU had a lot to do with what happened there. Our elected officials throw every scrap of wood on the fire they can find, while leading the chorus of laments over how our asses are getting scorched – as well they might, since they benefit on both ends, from the influx of affluent employers and from the tight housing market. Kids, stay out of my city, if you don’t want to spend half your income on housing.
Ah! The ol’ “Kids stay out of my city” argument.
Just a positive note to say that I was thrilled with the news that we could be expecting more density in our Urban Village and am looking forward to the variety of people and interesting interactions that it will bring.
Sounds like Capitol Hill is more suited for you.
Seattle need more places to be turned into Capitol Hill or Ballard to allow more people in. The city is not what it was ten years ago, and I think moving out of Seattle is better suited for you. How about Boise?
Electric sounds like a nice, welcoming, and sensible chap. I hope he stays in Wallingford.
Although, Capitol Hill does have a street car already!
Yeah it’s kinda funny, just looked back at this post and thought it could just as well be titled:
“Wallingford benefiting from more zoning liberalization than most other urban villages under HALA”