The fate of a large “single family”-style house behind what is now Broadway Park has worried neighbors for a decade (Image: CHS)
As city officials prepare for upcoming changes in Seattle zoning hoped to create more housing in the high-demand city, the City Council is working on changing the language used to describe one of Seattle’s most hotly debated uses of land: so-called “single family” housing.
“Seattle’s neighborhoods have always been more diverse than the single family only designation would have us believe—from some of the longest-standing and beloved neighborhood businesses, to brownstone apartment buildings built before tightening zoning restrictions, connected housing with shared courtyards, that all allow for residents to live near schools, parks, and services our communities rely on,” citywide representative on the council Teresa Mosqueda said about her newly proposed legislation. “Changing the zoning title can help reflect the diverse housing we need across our city to support community well-being, walkability and affordability in Seattle, and create a more equitable and inclusive Seattle to accurately reflect our diverse neighborhoods.”
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Under the proposal from Mosqueda and co-sponsored by U District rep Dan Strauss, the city would begin using a new term to describe the “single family” zoning designation — Neighborhood Residential. The change would “touch many elements of the Comprehensive Plan,” a press release on the legislation says, including the Future Land Use Map, the Land Use, Housing, and Parks and Open Space elements, seventeen neighborhood plans, and the Housing appendix.
Mosqueda’s announcement says the city Planning Commission first requested the change in 2018 and the new description would be recognition “that the term ‘single family’ as used in Seattle’s zoning code is a misnomer, inaccurately describes current uses, and has roots in exclusionary practices.”
“I look forward to taking up this important proposal in my Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee to align our planning documents to reflect the diverse mix of households that make up our residential neighborhoods,” Straus said. “Our city is a series of neighborhoods that are more vibrant than the name ‘single-family’ suggests—from backyard cottages and legacy duplexes to multi-generational households—this proposal reflects the Seattle of today.”
The change comes as Seattle faces continued pressure to create more housing to address issues ranging from homelessness to affordability. In its most recent overhaul of zoning, the so-called Mandatory Housing Affordability plan altered the city’s zoning to surgically allow taller and more multifamily-packed development in the city’s densest neighborhoods including Capitol Hill and the Central District. The MHA plan tied upzones in 27 of the city’s densest neighborhoods to the creation of affordable units and was planned to transition a reported 6% of Seattle’s single family/Neighborhood Residential-zoned property. Growth advocates say much more is needed.
“One hundred years ago, housing of all shapes and sizes was legal to build anywhere in Seattle,” said Rep. Nicole Macri of Capitol HIll’s 43rd District.
“Since its introduction in the 1920s, ‘single family’ zoning has been expanded over time to encompass areas with apartment buildings, duplexes, triplexes, and more,” Macri said. “‘Single family’ zoning was designed to exclude and continues to hurt families and communities struggling with a status quo that doesn’t meet their housing needs—but the multifamily holdovers from the past remind us the status quo can be changed. Let’s use language that better reflects our values and vision for a zoning system that works for all.”
The language change must still be approved by Strauss’s committee and then the full council before implementation.
The new legislation comes in a quiet week for the council with no committee meetings scheduled headed into the 4th of July holiday.
Monday, the full council took care of one Capitol Hill-related piece of business, approving the landmark protections agreement on the Bordeaux House, an 118-year-old Millionaire’s Row mansion.
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If only the left hand knew what the right hand was doing. If you want current single family home owners to be part of the solution here by building ADUs/multiunit buildings in order to increase housing stock you can’t also pass sweeping legislation that limits their rights on who they can rent to, how much they can charge and when who they can evict for non-payment of rent.
I wish anyone on the city council was interested understanding incentive structures and how to motivate people to make the choices you want instead of just jamming through piece after piece of short sighted poorly thought out legislation to appease the activist communities and generate headlines.
There was a time when my wife and I were exploring an ADUs/mother in-law on our northgate area house, but we’ve thrown the plans away at this point, no way would I take the risk of being a landlord in this environment. We have a small house on a big lot close to where light rail is going in. Based on the laws passed by this council, the tenor of their rhetoric, and the proposals I see coming out of the mayoral candidates and the activists that have the ear of city hall, the best past forward for my family is to wait for completion of light rail and subsequent zoning changes and then either partner with or sell to a developer and put 3 tall skinny houses/townhouses on my land and sell those for like 700K each. So let me ask, is that going to help with affordability? Is that the desired outcome?
Also, I would be super excited if anyone anywhere in city government, the activists community, or on this blog could point me to a single example of a city anywhere in the world that built its way to affordability through density. Density seems to be much more highly correlated to higher cost of living than lower (just look at 1 bedroom apartments on Capitol Hill or Ballard vs northgate, lake city or Columbia city). Additionally, which of the most densely populated cities in America do you associate with affordability, NYC? SF? Boston? Maaaaaybe Chicago? Why we in seattle choose to accept feel good solutions that don’t actually work but are peddled over and over and over again by the same old snake oil salespeople is beyond my ability to understand at this point
Bingo. I had considered building an ADU on my Central District property but decided it’s more hassle than it’s worth. Don’t ask me to build more housing and then treat me like the oppressor.
You make a lot of points I agree with. “Build all the things” has yet to provide affordability anywhere. But it is a mantra of the Urbanist / Socialist crowd that has taken over D3 and City Hall.
The real way to affordability is people move someplace they can afford. Stop shoving their requirements onto existing neighborhoods. Sorry. You aren’t owed a participation trophy or a house anywhere you demand it. Go find someplace cheap and build it up DIY. That’s what we did 30 years ago here.
But no. You want to take here from us. Urbanist new arrivals, using the homeless as your human shields / justification for destroying middle class quality of life.
Uh no one is shoving requirements onto anyone. It just says your neighbor can build something other than a single house on the lot.
Sorry you don’t get to tell everyone in your neighborhood how to live.
Clearly you have not attempted to build an ADU on your own property. The permitting process alone is out of control difficult, requiring _years_ of time and $$. Not to mention the continual additional regulation on landlords that adds only downside to renting to someone.
People with the cash to add an ADU are saying “forget it” and investing their money elsewhere.
I don’t really understand your comment. We were talking about zoning.
Tokyo is a good example of a city that has built enough housing supply to meet demand + built a transit system to support all of it.
https://medium.com/land-buildings-identity-and-values/what-is-the-secret-to-tokyos-affordable-housing-266283531012
https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-housing-crisis-in-japan-home-prices-stay-flat-11554210002
I really don’t know why everyone wants to use Tokyo as an example….Tokyo is extremely expensive especially in the closest to city center areas and has very restrictive building codes, especially when it pertains to height…. New buildings have to allow a certain amount is sunlight and air to their neighbors… much of what happens here, with 4 story condos or semi detached buildings going in next to 1& 2 story exists could never happen there and their residential zones are stringently low rise…. They’ve coped by building extensive mass transit and spreading and sprawling over a massive area – up to more than 5,000 sq miles if you are counting the entire metropolitan area (Seattle is about 84 sq miles….) something we will never, due to geography, be able to do….. it’s an all around bad comparison.
I mean, I guess so? It’s hard to use a city with 35M people as a comp for one with about 800K, but let’s go with it.
With a cost of living index of 85.5 Tokyo is the 40th high COL city in the world, 5 spots behind Seattle (86.69) and ahead of such bastions of affordability like Amsterdam (84.43) and Stockholm (84.17). If Tokyo is now considered an affordable city my friends in Amsterdam are going to be shocked to learn that they living a down right cheap city!
Even if we accept the premise that Tokyo is affordable, transit is a major issue. Something like the 10 most costly rail projects in the world, measured as cost per mile, are in the US. So even if we were to try to follow a Tokyo model, building a transportation infrastructure to match theirs would be orders of magnitude more expensive, and the costs would be spread across 800K people instead of 35M.
I do appreciate your honest engagement on the topic though instead of just calling me a right wing trumper like most other people on this board usually do. I guess my main point is that, after living in seattle for almost 25 years you can start to see patterns. Seattle has never been affordable, when I moved here in 1998 and worked at a grocery store making 8.50 per hour my $800 per month apartment didn’t feel affordable, even with a roommate sharing a 1 bedroom. Now we have people making 15-18 bucks per hour, but the same 1 bedroom apartment I rented is 1400-1600 per month. The same people (whether it’s the Transit Riders Union, the Urbanst, or now the Socialist alternative) have been selling the same solutions to affordability year after year after year, more taxes, more government, and more density. And after 2 decades of listening to them and following their policy recommendations seattle is more crowded and less affordable than ever.
I won’t jump to name-calling if you won’t :)
Tokyo, for what it is, a world-class city and national capital of Japan, is relatively affordable. There was a request for an example and I provided one.
So, after reading your take, the question seems to be: now what? What solution do you propose to tackle the affordability issue in Seattle? Do nothing? Do you have an alternative to building more and denser housing, coupled with an increased supply of transit options? And what is the issue with crowding? We live in the biggest city in the state. If you want space you can find it elsewhere.
Tokyo-Yokohama has about 30x (if not more) our population, so they are a lot more people paying in to be able to afford infrastructure.
Guessing they had a much stronger social contract in place as well, e.g. they wouldn’t just accept thousands of people choosing to live feral homeless addict lives in places they cannot afford, nor would their cops have just abandoned their posts and turned part of their city into a literal lawless zone .. with no fallback plan, for weeks.
Nor would their city have decided that hundreds of tents on sidewalks and drug addicted tourists in parks were acceptable, including all the crime that results … in the name of some sort of “social justice.”
In short, unless you are willing to accept Japan, or any other First World Nation’s willingness to invest in keeping public spaces clear of homeless filth, you probably ought not be citing them as examples. Americans in big cities, currently victim to our present-day mollycoddling of homeless addicts, might get the wrong idea and decide we want European-style enforcement of civility law, or Japanese style enforcement of civility law.
I’m sure you kind folks buying the homeless addicted community tents for them to keep setting on fire won’t like that approach – it puts you out of a job.
You asked for an example of a city that is affordable (my some measure). I gave one. Now you move the goalposts and say it isn’t a fair comparison. How do you want to do this? And you seem to really despise folks experiencing homelessness… might want to work through that situation before discussing anything seriously.
Japan has very little tolerance for addiction to substances other than to alcohol…. Drug users are jailed and the penalties are harsh. You can get 5 years just for cannabis.
You are right. On a visit to Japan a few years ago, I took along some prescription opiate medicine in case I had a flare-up of back pain while I was there. As part of the customs procedure at the airport, this medicine was confiscated. I didn’t mind, though, because I respect that the Japanese have a very low tolerance for using such medicines, as opposed to the USA where anything goes, including rampant illegal drug use in our public spaces.
I, too, at one time planned to add a DADU to one of my two single-family rentals in North Seattle. It’s a 7200-square-foot lot with an 850-square-foot, 2-bedroom house on it. Now, I’m keeping that property vacant after my last tenant left (voluntarily) mid-covid. My other property has a long-term tenant with a teenager in high school. When she leaves, I will be putting that property on the market (I receive 3-4 letters a week from builders wanting to buy it). I’ve owned both properties for more than 20 years, and they’ve always been rented at below market rate, usually to young families saving to buy a home of their own. In other words, affordable housing. When I sell, they will both inevitably be torn down and replaced with something much more expensive. The house next door to my second property (the mirror image of mine) sold last year for $645,000; the new single-family house built in its place just sold for $1.75 million.
Super excited to see more superfluous nonsense from the council. As if changing the label and wasting time redoing regulations and reprinting stuff is going to make a lick of difference. About as impactful as the waste of tax dollars renaming King County. And people wonder why citizens have zero faith in government?
Ah, the same few landlords in the minority have something to say on a blog post, go figure.
I’m not a landlord but I do plan for when my property taxes become unaffordable, to rent out my home – currently housing 4 generations of my working class family. Eventually unable to afford the taxes we will move out and use the house for rental income to pay the mortgage, the taxes and hopefully help pay for my rent somewhere far out of town. This means instead of 4 generations being housed here in our historical neighborhood, where we don’t even need a car, we will go live in the sticks somewhere and pollute the planet by commuting to work, and rent the house out for $4K or more per month. Only the wealthy win in this scenario but Seattle and King county voters never saw a tax or a levy they didn’t think was great. Enjoy your skyrocketing rent as small landlords are forced out, or forced to rent at incredibly high rates to tech couples just so we can keep on top of the taxes and our mortgage.
Are you a senior? If so, check out the “Senior Property tax Exemption”……if you qualify, there is a substantial saving.
Is this just a language change, or does it mean that new multifamily development will now be allowed in these “Neighborhood Residential” zones (and existing multi-unit structures will no longer be classified as nonconforming)? That seems to me the key question, and this article doesn’t really address it.