How is this fundamentally different than the city's design review board?

http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/aboutus/whowe…

I'm all for doing things to increase architectural variety in this city, but this is pretty obviously a tool to empower West Seattle residents to keep their single-family home neighborhood encased in amber for eternity. Which I'd be willing to accept as long as those same West Seattle residents (of which I am one) are willing to forgo the billions of dollars of taxpayer money it will take Sound Transit to extend light rail to their neighborhood. Either grow up and accept the density that comes with living in a metropolis or suck it up and enjoy your hour-long commute.

I'm sick of the Strangers support for the crappy construction that is destroying the essence of Seattle. I've lived in the NYC area and if I wanted a urine soaked city of giant buildings I would have stayed there - and all you supporters of this crap can move there and be happy.
The words 'higher density' are used like a religious mantra by the Stranger to justify the construction of tiny, overpriced pieces of shit. The 1% of the 1% who are constructing this mess and making money are laughing at you as they rake in the cash.

"Meanwhile, he lives in a million-dollar home in West Seattle . . . ." A million bucks is a reasonable price in many nice West Seattle neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the trash neighborhoods are expanding . . . Rat City, High Point, and Delridge Way, for example.

How about a housing project in Magnolia Village? Never Happen! It is apparently commendable for nice "middle class" neighborhoods to be trashed. Annoy the truly rich? Never happen!

Very little coming out of city council helps affordable housing, especially for poor working and middle class families. Not apodments, not SLU or the new Yesler Terrace. Not upzoning U District. Livability and accessibility aren't going to be better with Murray's $ 900 million Move levy. Throw in a new bridge for Ballard and Fremont would be sensible. Fixing old bridges and crumbling road infrastructure would be sensible. You know the things which carry buses and yes even bikes.

For more under the table, less than transparent process:

http://citylivingseattle.com/Content/New…

Assassinate the Greedsters!!!

Have seen what used to be a $100,000 house in Wallingford owned by a young couple turn into a $750,000 house owned by NIMBY owners. Still very little growth in that and other neighborhoods now owned by the One Percent.

Time to zone all arterial blocks 6-8 story and accept that Seattle will DOUBLE in population by 2025 as the Climate refugees flee here.

Maybe HALA isn't useless after all, if they can help prevent Rasmussen pull off one last heist for "let's keep housing as scarce as possible" crowd.

Meanwhile, he lives in a million-dollar home

Uh. So does so-called "density proponent" Stranger editor Dan Savage.

I think neighborhoods should have some say/control over what goes up in their neighborhoods. That said, it appears this plan is just overkill. You cannot have complete non-professionals making these kinds of decisions.

Isn't there a middle ground for how neighborhoods look and expand? (Preferably one that does not involve Roger Valdez).

Microhousing as one of the "burgeoning sources of affordable housing units in Seattle"? Clearly somebody broke into the Girl Scout Cookie before writing this article. Microhousing is causing rents to increase, and is a money grab by developers. These aren't affordable housing units, they're 21st Century ghettos.

#7, I agree with your climate refugee analysis. People will never stop coming into Seattle at the rate they are now for the foreseeable future. In fact it will likely increase. But I'd argue that is a reason to stop sprawl and urban ghettos, not rezoning to let sprawl spread further. With this rapid increase in population, we must do everything we can to save any space, because once that space is used people will start trying to take the green spaces. As long as there's arterial blocks to fight over, our natural spaces aren't being looked at as an unused commodity.

@11 Exactly. aPodments - oh, excuse me, we use the new more friendly double-speak euphemism - "micro housing" (isn't that cute? it's like a puppy!) are anything but affordable.

There is nothing affordable about $40-$60 per square foot. "Affordability" is around $650 a month. Not $1000 for 200sq feet. It's a god damned developer scam that The Stranger insists on parroting every chance it gets.

Lol....urban problems

@11: What the hell re you trying to say here? "But I'd argue that is a reason to stop sprawl and urban ghettos, not rezoning to let sprawl spread further. With this rapid increase in population, we must do everything we can to save any space, because once that space is used people will start trying to take the green spaces."

If you're saying what I think you are (that keeping the vast majority zoned single family only prevents sprawl), then you're nuts. But if you mean something different, please clarify. Cause right now those sentences are just word salad.

we must do everything we can to save any space

No. No we don't have to do "everything" we can. We have to the things that work. Not this "OH MY GOD RE_ZONE! REPEAL REGULATIONS IMMEDIATELY!"

That's exactly the sort of reactive panic bullshit developers want. Because once they get their way there is no turning it back. And then you have lots of shitty expensive ugly apartments and no livable communities.

This shit has been studies and studied and studied. And market based solutions to housing don't work. Because housing does not behave like other commodities. And you can't treat neighborhoods like commodities. Not if you want livable cities. Market solutions have never worked anywhere and they never will work. Ask any developer to find you an example of any growing healthy city where they built their way to cheaper rents. It's never happened. The very best you can hope for is building more inventory to slightly slow inflationary pressures - and ONLY with government interference in the market.

The only thing that will lower rents is economic and growth contraction - or - extreme intervention in the market. That's it. Anybody tell you different they're selling something.

Look. Amazon could be gone next week. The cycle of boom bust in this town is about six years and Amazon in particular doesn't do anything that a hundred other companies couldn't start doing. This city won't be growing forever. So we need to stop this panic bullshit and make smart decisions for the long haul. Building $60 per squares foot aPodments is NOT a smart decision.

BTW: I can give you half a dozen examples of haphazardly building your way into unlivable broken cities.