From POV of past -- crazy, crazy rents and my sympathy for anyone entering housing market.
And my advice?
Avoid entering Seattle housing market if you can.
Plenty of fine places to live in USA besides Seattle, and much less expensive.
Find a job somewhere else.

It seems like greedy land owners sure are winning. They're using the new regulations as an excuse to raise their prices, after all. As the story itself says:

"For opponents of microhousing, the rules failed to [rein] in development: about the same number of projects entered the pipeline in 2015 as the year before the rule change. But just as affordability advocates warned, the new projects no longer include the lowest priced units."

More money for the same amount of work? Sounds like winning to me. Of course, Slog would have to spin it the other way, even allowing developers to personally frame the entire story with:

“Our energy has been directed into producing housing that is significantly larger, more expensive and less plentiful than before—the exact opposite direction from where we need to be going."

If any developer actually felt that smaller and cheaper units is what we need, there is nothing stopping them from building it. This developer is blowing smoke up our backsides, saying one thing and doing another, and The Stranger is aiding and abetting their fraudulence.

Bad form. For shame.

" It has nothing to do with greed, it's called business."

I rest my case. Game. Set. Match.

"If any developer actually felt that smaller and cheaper units is what we need, there is nothing stopping them from building it."
@2 , Did you read the article?

God damn it. I lived in one of the 160-sqft units on 13th and John for 11 months and it was PERFECT. Affordable, quiet, good people as my neighbors. Plenty of space for my modest needs, and I'd move back in today if given the opportunity. Why does everyone think these small apartments are squalid?

#5, I did quote it, twice. That is hard to do without reading it. If you had read the article, you would know that.

#6, I live in squalid conditions. I'm bouncing back from hard times. I'm paying 400 dollars a month (including utilities) for a single room with no windows, a slanted floor, and sewage issues next to a creek that feeds a salmon spawning stream.

My room is more than 160 square feet (over 16*10, closer to 25*10). Nobody thinks you live in squalid conditions. People in the know think you're getting ripped off on your rent. Most people want you to have your desired apartment. They just want you paying less than 3.75 per square foot to rent that property (which still puts a nice chunk of change in the landowner's pocket).

A quick question, especially to all the people who are trying to tell me things like property taxes are to blame. Were you here back in the mid 90's when the last housing bubble expanded and burst? I was. I was here for the real estate bubble before that. This is nothing more than the cyclical reinflation of that housing bubble, and now it is so far to one side of the scale that decent people are getting screwed.

Getting the congregant housing out of low rise residential zones is reasonable. Those areas aren't served as well by transit so tenants would (and did) wind up bringing a lot of cars with them.
The costs and rents aren't very well spelled out here and seem to be an apples to oranges comparison. The rents haven't gone up $300 across the board (despite that rents everywhere in Seattle are increasing rapidly), it's that what was the cheapest version of the aPodment is no longer going to be built. It's also not going to be built on the cheapest land now that they have to build outside of the SFH zones and can't just knock down a little cottage to build there. Property taxes would account for only a few dollars of the total rent so that's not even an issue here.
The realities of zoning and regulation often mean that you can't just build whatever you want wherever you want, and micro housing was just dodging the intent of those regulations before the new rules. With the new rules they now have to play with, yes, the costs will be a bit higher, but the profits for these companies are still much higher than building just about anything else. It's like buying everything at the convenience store instead of the supermarket...8oz for $.99 instead of 64oz for $1.99 If all you can afford is $.99 then you'll be paying way more over the long run. It's expensive to be poor.

@7
Then how come you seemed to ignore that rules changed & required larger units?

An architect's take: http://blog.buildllc.com/2015/06/micro-h…
"Many of the micro-housing ads and websites we studied relied on the same design & marketing strategy of “trading in quantity for quality.” It’s a design philosophy that we’re completely aligned with, provided that the trade actually occurs. And this is where most of these projects fail. While micro-housing successfully minimizes living space, they fail to supplement it with quality. "
"...most of these buildings are highly profitable boxes for living, nothing else."

@10, because they're inconsequential? As I and #11 point out, the problem is insanely high rental prices for subpar units. Those prices were insanely high before these changes. These changes don't impact that fact.

If we were able to literally turn property into money, what is happening in Seattle right now would be the very definition of usury.

@2 If any developer actually felt that smaller and cheaper units is what we need, there is nothing stopping them from building it.

Dude, you don't get it. Read the fucking article. THE CITY IS STOPPING THEM. It is now illegal. Fucking hell, man, get a clue.

It is the same all over the city. Let's say a landlord owns a house in an area zoned for single family. What is stopping him from converting the house into an apartment, and renting out all the units. THE CITY! That is against the fucking rules. In other cities it is legal, but not in our precious town, where such things would otherwise upset our sensitive sensibilities.

ADU limits, ownership requirements, setbacks, FAR, parking requirements and this (minimum unit size and kitchen requirement). They are all variations on the same thing. They make renters pay more.

@2 "If any developer actually felt that smaller and cheaper units is what we need, there is nothing stopping them from building it."

Yeah, nothing except, um, the new laws that are stopping them from building it... as cited in the very article you claim to have read. ... Dude, c'mon! Focus!

@12 -- Dude, you obviously don't understand. Let's see if I can explain this to you.

OK, let's say the government set very high standards for cell phones. No cheap flip phones, no smart phones with weak graphics or poor cameras. None of that. Every phone had to be top quality. Because, after all, some architect somewhere said that "only felons or college students" would want something less. And besides, the city is tired of these new ugly phones everywhere.

What would that do to the cost of a new phone? What would that do to the cost of a used phone? Yep, you guessed it, it would go way up. Way, way up! Is it because the phone makers are a bunch of rich, greedy bastards? Maybe -- I don't give a shit. Phone prices would go way up.

Only in this case we aren't talking about something as trivial as phones, we are talking about one of the necessities of life: Housing

@9 -- Your comments are such a mish-mash of statements I don't know where to begin. I guess at the beginning.

Getting the congregant housing out of low rise residential zones is reasonable. Those areas aren't served as well by transit so tenants would (and did) wind up bringing a lot of cars with them.

Low rise zones in general are served adequately by transit, but that misses the point. Why the hell should we require renters to pay for parking? If a neighborhood is so ill served by transit as to need lots of on the street parking, then everyone (including home owners) should pay for it. By requiring the builders to add parking, it pushes up the cost of development, which pushes up the cost of rent everywhere. Basic economics (think about the margins if you have trouble playing this out).


The costs and rents aren't very well spelled out here and seem to be an apples to oranges comparison. The rents haven't gone up $300 across the board (despite that rents everywhere in Seattle are increasing rapidly), it's that what was the cheapest version of the aPodment is no longer going to be built.

Yes, that is the whole point. You literally cannot build the cheapest version of a new apartment. A little economic theory shows how this ripples through the entire system (see my phone example).

It's also not going to be built on the cheapest land now that they have to build outside of the SFH zones and can't just knock down a little cottage to build there.

You never could build these on SFH zones.

Property taxes would account for only a few dollars of the total rent so that's not even an issue here.

No one said it was.

The realities of zoning and regulation often mean that you can't just build whatever you want wherever you want, and micro housing was just dodging the intent of those regulations before the new rules.

Agreed, but again, that is not the point.

With the new rules they now have to play with, yes, the costs will be a bit higher

YES, YES, YES. That is the point. The costs are higher! The costs are higher! When the costs are higher for the cheapest apartment construction type available (outside conversions and ADU/DADU, which remain tightly regulated and thus very expensive in this city) the end result is that people pay more in rent. Everyone does. Even people who have no fucking interest in living in an Apodment (because the guy who does is going to live somewhere else).

, but the profits for these companies are still much higher than building just about anything else.

Who cares. The point is fewer units will be built. In some cases, no apartment will be built. An owner, sitting on a place that might makes sense to develop when it can be an Apodment, will sit on the old building (say, a parking lot) just because it doesn't quite make sense to build a brand new apartment building. Unless, of course, rents rise. Again, basic game theory, man. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who owns a parking lot, makes some money, and is considering building an apartment. Now think of a landlord who rents an old building down the street (who has no interest in developing, but just wants to raise rents, but still attract tenants). Play it out. Restrictions like this push up the cost of rent, plain and simple.

It's like buying everything at the convenience store instead of the supermarket...8oz for $.99 instead of 64oz for $1.99 If all you can afford is $.99 then you'll be paying way more over the long run. It's expensive to be poor.

I have no idea what the fuck you are trying to say there.

@15, who is this "dude" you are speaking to?

And to address your mishmash of statements, that thing you don't care about, whether or not developers are greedy bastards or not? That is not only the point, but no progress can be made until that point is addressed.

@16, Yeah, that was a lot of mishmash.
Bullet points:
-Micro apartments in low rise zones were impacting neighbors parking. Yeah, NIMBY concerns, but that's the reality. Not nearly enough transit to make it practical to live there without a car. Limiting them to denser zones fixes that concern.
-The rent hasn't gone up by $300 as the article implies. Those existing units are probably still the same price, you just can't build them anymore. Not arguing that.
-A lot of these things were built where SFH units were. They may have been zoned low rise, but the lots were previously single houses.
-Fuck this. I don't really give a shit about aPodments until they try to build one next door. If you want to pay a premium to live in a shoebox that's fine. You'll be paying twice the $ per square foot of an apartment. The developers of these things are raking in way more money per square foot than building luxury units or mega houses. It's just funny that it's being hyped as some kind of social justice issue when it's just the most blatant cash grab by a bunch of fuckers who are now whining that they have to start playing by the rules instead of dodging them.

The private housing market never has, and never will supply adequate amounts of affordable housing. The City of Portland, for example, states it has a shortage of 44,000 low income housing units. The City of Seattle hasn't even publicly admitted how many deeply affordable units are needed in our city, but it is likely to be a higher number than Portland's. Seattle hasn't even counted the number of existing low income housing units, or if it has, it certainly doesn't hasn't made that number easy for regular people to discover. The city also appears not to track the loss of deeply affordable units over time, as units in older buildings are remodeled into more luxurious ones so that rents can be increased, or consistently monitor the demolition of buildings knocked down and replaced by new market rate units, the average price of which (for a 1 BR) is, according to Rent Jungle, approximately $1750/month. To the extent the city doesn't track these numbers or openly share them with the public, it is askting kind of like a carnival barker when it asks for the public to double the housing levy.

The 2016 7-year housing levy will cost twice as much as the levy it replaces, but Seattle hasn't clearly explained why it won't produce approximately twice as much low income housing as the last levy (of course taking into account inflation). Is that because a lot of money will be diverted into services, shelters and interim housing for homeless people, as opposed to actual, permanent housing for very poor people in general (including homeless people)? Unhoused people have pressing needs, and I certainly don't begrudge doing what it takes to meet those needs.

Nevertheless, the levies' past track record of creating and preserving over 12,500 affordable and helping 800 families purchase their first home isn't actually all that impressive, because (1) these accomplishments averaged only 433 homes per year, a number that is at least two orders of magnitude short of current actual need, and there is easy way to find out out how many of those homes represent a net increase to Seattle's deeply affordable housing stock compared to the preservation of existing units. In terms of preservation, it this actual preservation in perpetuity, or for just a finite number of years, after which these units can revert to market rate units, or land be sold underneath these units can be sold off--as was done at Yesler Terrace--to build thousands of new luxury housing units, with mere repalcement of the 561 units in Yesler Terrace. Sorry, but in a fast growing city, these numbers just don't cut it. It's as if the city isn't recognizing the rapidly growing need for affordable housing and thinks a tiny trickle is enough.

Similarly, HALA's very modest goal of producing a mere 600 year of low income housing over 10 years is just a baby step toward solving the problem. In addition, a successful outcome for HALA is predicated in endless construction of market rate housing with inclusionary zoning in situ or payment into an affordable housing fund. When the next economic crash comes, the cranes will very likely go away again, just like they did in 2008, but the number of homeless people and people with meager incomes will likely increase. Issuance of housing bonds would provide a much more robust and stable source of low income housing even during a severe recession. Muni bond financing costs would be much lower and there would be no developers expecting their automatic 15+% profit.

All cities with severe affordable housing shortages should regard such housing as critical human infrastructure that is just as important as roads, drainage facilities, police and fire stations, parks, community centers, libraries, schools, public transit and other essential public infrastructure.

We can't have a healthy, vibrant community that works for everyone if large numbers of people are unhoused, or paying up to 70% of their meager paychecks on rent. In past decades the federal government did more in the public housing arena. Some of what the feds did, e.g., building enormous, dangerous, soul-crushing housing projects in inner cities, was harmful, but surely we as a nation can do better now using lessons learned from the past.

To be quite honest, I expect nothing but crumbs from state government, which succeeds spectacularly in giving corporate tax breaks while starving low income urban and rural school districts that lack the tax base need to provide high quality schools in every district, and every neighborhood in our state (as shown in Michael Moore's latest movie "Where to Invade Next.") The city of Seattle should raise taxes on people making over $250,000 per year to pay for bonds to build the amount of very low income housing our city needs. It should also refrain from spending money on frills, like a new NBA/NHL sports stadium, the half $billion makeover of the Central Waterfront, and other vanity projects, until our much more urgent low income housing needs are met. Again, there is little chance of this happening, but it's what could and would happen in a decent, caring society that is willing to face and solve the growing problem of structural economic inequality.

Well said SPG.

All the arguments for strangling microhousing with regulation were incredibly stupid or grossly illiberal. As far as I can tell, they boiled down to:

1. I wouldn't want to live like that, therefore no one else should be allowed to.
2. I don't want those kind of people living near me.
3. Newcomers should have to pay a bunch of money for car storage, to make sure I can keep getting my own car storage needs met for free on public-owned streets.
4. If we allow microhousing to be built, someone might make a profit by building it, which is evil and wrong.

Fair enough.

5. Attempt to claim they're illegal by parsing existing, highly restrictive land use rules in the most restrictive way possible. Don't bother to try and justify the ban, you win on technical-legal grounds. Call this the lawyer's option.