This past spring, Vulcan Real Estate went apeshit. They said the city was being "blatantly unfair." Why? The Seattle City Council passed rules that allow property owners in South Lake Union—including Vulcan, a Paul Allen company—to build taller towers. But in exchange, those South Lake Union landowners had to pay more money into an affordable housing fund than developers in other parts of the city.

Vulcan spokeswoman Lori Mason Curran said at the time that leaning harder on their neighborhood than adjacent downtown was "disappointing" and "shortsighted."

Well, now Vulcan can stop whining: In the next couple of weeks, the council is set to vote on applying the same housing rules downtown, establishing parity for both neighborhoods.

A bill introduced by Council Member Mike O'Brien would extend South Lake Union's rules, which say residential developers can access extra height for their towers—in some places they could be up to 10 stories higher—if they include some modestly affordable units. (Modestly affordable means affordable to those making around $48,000 per year.) But there's a catch: If developers don't want to build that housing themselves, or if they are building commercial office towers, they can simply pay into a low-income housing fund. Currently, downtown developers must pay $15.15 per square foot of new floor space to access that bonus height, and developers have been routinely paying it instead of building cheaper units themselves. O'Brien's bill would raise the fee to $21.68 per square foot, the same as South Lake Union.

But the council is not stopping there. With a push from progressives, including O'Brien, the council plans to take a fresh, comprehensive look at programs like this all over the city, with consultants analyzing how much affordable housing—and affordable for what income levels—the city needs so that the people who work in our rapidly growing city can actually afford to live here. And that's where it gets really interesting.

In South Lake Union, "there was a lot of debate as to what the adjustment [to those fees] would look like," says O'Brien. "And we got to a place where we had five votes." In other words, the progressive wing pushed for as much affordable housing as they could, but they still needed centrists to get a majority. But a shake-up this election has seen Socialist Alternative candidate Kshama Sawant oust developer-friendly Richard Conlin, changing the makeup of the council. That could give folks like Sawant and O'Brien leverage to require even more affordable housing from developers than is currently required downtown or in South Lake Union.

What the new rules will look like, we don't yet know. But one thing is for sure: We can expect a lot of squawking from developers—like Vulcan—that the new rules are "blatantly unfair."