On Monday the Seattle City Council heard its first public briefing of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s newly released, once-in-a-decade Comprehensive Plan, which sets allowances for housing growth over the next 20 years. With the housing crisis raging on, the state-mandated update gives the City the opportunity to aggressively commit to increasing the housing supply—or not!
Harrell’s plan does not go nearly far enough in the eyes of urbanists, and its inadequacies set up perhaps the first public battle between the Mayor and his supposed allied council. Keeping their cards close to their chest in the initial meeting, most of the council gave broad “value statements,” as Council Member Cathy Moore called them. Only Council Member Tammy Morales, who will lead Comprehensive Plan negotiations as chair of the Land Use Committee, sided clearly with housing advocates over the Mayor.
“This plan feels like it’s planning for our current conditions and not planning for a vision of what we know is coming in terms of growth and what we could become, which is a city of really healthy, vibrant, well-connected neighborhoods,” Morales said in the meeting.
With a powerful ally in the land use chair, housing advocates could actually score some major wins as the council edits the Mayor’s lackluster draft. It’s not over, baby.
The council made the most noise about increasing homeownership opportunities. Moore said that transitioning renters into homeowners could break people out of poverty and rebuild the middle class in Seattle. Others backed her up, noting the importance of homeownership for people of color and other economically marginalized people to build generational wealth.
But apparently not all owned homes are equal in the eyes of this council. During the meeting, they wasted plenty of breath whining about the eyesore of townhomes, and Council Member Bob Kettle complained about how little the growth plan talked about “public safety.” I wish someone thought of me as much as Kettle thinks about cops, holy shit.
In my first gloss of Harrell’s draft, I flagged three issues: the low number of potential units, reliance on “urban village model,” and compliance with the House Bill 1110, the missing middle housing bill. Some of the council members shared those concerns in the meeting. They must be fans.
Harrell’s plan would allow “at least” 100,000 new units of housing over the next two decades. That’s just 20,000 more new units than if the City changed absolutely nothing about the current zoning scheme. For comparison, housing advocates demanded a Comprehensive Plan that would allow for at least 200,000 units, considering the city’s current housing deficit of 120,000 units and the fact that more than 200,000 people will move to Seattle in the next 20 years.
Even Council Member Rob Saka, who has never really shown any urbanist inclination, showed some hesitation over the number of units promised by the draft.
“Has Seattle and other neighboring jurisdictions, when they set the sorta ‘floor,’ have they had the political courage and will to build and expand upon that to meet the true needs of the city?” Saka asked. “I don’t know! It’s a rhetorical question. It’s food for thought.”
Harrell’s plan also continued the notorious and racist “urban village” model, which concentrates density, allowing inefficient single-family homes to dominate the vast majority of Seattle’s landmass. Harrell’s plan includes 24 urban villages, now called urban centers, and seven “regional centers,” which allow even denser zoning than the urban centers.
Morales flagged that the draft does not upzone any South End neighborhoods to meet the regional center classification. She said the zoning amounted to exclusion because it put more economic development opportunities north of I-90.
This Comp Plan draft continues the status quo — and the status quo excluded and left the South End behind for decades.
We must intentionally plan for economic development opportunities, or we are repeating the mistakes of the past and creating deeper economic inequities. pic.twitter.com/980FVk0sxo
— Councilmember Tammy J. Morales (@CMTammyMorales) March 13, 2024
Harrell’s plan also skirts the requirements from the newly passed missing middle housing bill, which legalizes fourplexes in most of the state. The draft includes a “two-tier” compliance model (if you can call it “compliance”) that would zone some areas at high risk of displacement to allow only up to triplexes. The law includes an actual anti-displacement mechanism to delay implementation in high-risk areas, but the Mayor decided to do his own thing! Everybody’s so creative.
Moore said she does not “really see [the two-tiered model] as a viable displacement tool.” The City basically already allows three units on any plot anyway with ADUs and DADUs, she noted. Moore, as well as many [the two-tier compliance model]er colleagues, called for strong anti-displacement measures, but she did not specify the kinds she might support.
Council President Sara Nelson will be one to watch, given her clear influence this year. In the Monday meeting, she didn’t reveal much. She shouted out Harrell for allowing more corner stores in his plan, but she seemed to brush off the public’s concerns about the actual number of units his plan would bring in, reiterating that zoning is just one component of housing production. It’s of course true that zoning is only one component of housing production, but it is also true that zoning is one of the biggest components of housing production in the council’s control, and so, if this council is serious about increasing affordability and reducing homelessness over time, then they ought to use their powers to the fullest extent.
The temperaments of each council member will become clearer as negotiations heat up. For now, the City kicked off a 60-day public comment period, and Morales, the only clear ally to the urbanist-left, encouraged everybody to get involved. Otherwise, we may get stuck with this plan–or worse, the NIMBYs could water it down.
The new city council is completely useless.
“Seattle’s housing production set a new record in 2023, producing 12,853 new homes, according to data from the City of Seattle. This is the most homes built since at least 2005, the furthest back we have recent records, and a 21% increase over 2022.“
Given those numbers, why should Seattle try to plan for 200,000 new units over twenty years? That production rate would require a sustained level of output which Seattle has not demonstrated any ability to meet.
Indeed, we should not expect Seattle to sustain last year’s record production: “Plummeting permits could point to a housing slowdown…”
(https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/01/16/seattles-housing-construction-booms-while-permitting-flashes-warning-signs/#:~:text=Seattle's%20housing%20production%20set%20a,a%2021%25%20increase%20over%202022.)
If even as gung-ho a group as writers at The Urbanist do not expect housing production anywhere near a sustained rate of 10,000 units per year, why should Seattle plan for it?
@2 Because the “plan” is not merely a forecast, it embodies a set of policies that can cause more housing production to occur or prevent more housing production from happening.
I don’t understand why urbanist don’t simply run an initiative doing away with SFZ (be that at the state, county, or city level) – if it has the support urbanist suggest, it will be a slam dunk (and we could stop the hand wringing once and for all).
“Harrell’s Plan” makes it sound like Bruce wrote the Draft Plan himself. He didn’t.
City Planning Staff wrote it, and it took hundreds of hours. But you know, “Urbanists” know better than Urban Planners…
@3: You didn’t answer my question. Why should Seattle plan for an outcome which it has demonstrated absolutely no ability to realize, instead of for one it might actually realize?
If I were to save progressive politics in Seattle, I would start by focusing on what really matters locally. What do you see when you walk out your front door? My Seattle neighborhood is Jerusalem, and just across the canal is Palestine, so obviously the most important local issue going on in this city is Gaza. When I talk to the Gaza at my local coffee shop, and when we get into the real, meaningful issues affecting Seattleites, the answer is consistently the same: “I can’t catch a bus downtown without running into Rafa.”
So my five part plan would be this: First, I would Israel some Palestine, but with a strong focus on Gaza to help with Seattle’s housing crisis. Second, I would Gaza Palestine some Israel, especially in the Ceasefire district where it’s needed most. Third, let’s focus on Gaza Gaza Palestine Israel Netanyehu Israel Jerusalem, Joe Biden is bad. Fourth, I would Ctrl + F search for “Ceasefire” and any time Joe Biden called for a ceasefire, poof! Magical thinking, I ignore that, because Palestine Gaza Hamas Hamas and also Jerusalem. Fifth, the secret to progressive victories in Seattle’s local elections is to Hamas Gaza Israel Rafa Palestine Israel Israel Bibi Joe Biden bad Palestine Israel Rafa neoliberalism Israel Jerusalem.
But NOT in an antisemitic way. Phew, glad I remembered to add that!
With this kind of “think local” plan in place, Progressives will sail into historic nationwide victories.
@6 Seattle has never tried to achieve ambitious housing goals so we have no idea what the realistic potential is.
@4 City law does not allow zoning to be changed by initiative unfortunately. That’s why this comprehensive planning stuff is so important.
I’m really convinced the urbanists care more about punishing SFH owners than they do about actually building housing. The drone on and on about being able to build 6 plexes in Madison Park when in reality even if they did get the zoning for that approved its never going to happen at the velocity and scale to make a dent unless the city forces the issue which I’m sure would be the next move. Instead of beating a dead horse why not build housing in areas that actually make sense (like along transit) to scale and then focus on the SFH. @8 is correct as well. There is a limit to the density. We already saw power outages last Dec and concerns about water with the low snow pack. There are no plans to build new substations or aquifers to support a massive increase in density. The only thing you’ll get is declining quality of life and increasing issues with more people.
@9: I quoted from the actual housing production statistics for the last two decades. Seattle has never even come close to sustaining a rate of building 10,000 new housing units per year. Not even when a forest of construction cranes stretched towards the horizon (as seen from my then-apartment house‘s roof deck, 2014-2015) did Seattle come anywhere near to sustaining that annual rate of production. Why should Seattle plan for it now?
@11 “Seattle has never even come close to sustaining a rate of building 10,000 new housing units per year. “
…while a majority of the city’s residential land has zoned single family 5,000, 7,200, or 9,600, lot splitting is mostly illegal, and accessory dwelling unit have been capped at one (and now, lately, a whopping 2).
If 2023 produced 12,000+ homes under those anti-housing conditions, how many more might we produce if they were changed for the better? Let’s see!
@10 then change zoning at the state level (the initiative process still seems to be the best way to capture the groundswell of progressive support to end SFZ).
“One” council member ain’t a majority. She might need to learn to work with her colleagues to get shit done. Or she can sit around and complain like the rest of the left.
@13 zoning has been changed at the state level – HB 1110 requires every residential lot in Seattle to allow 4 or 6 units depending on various things; however there is justified worry that the size limits for homes in this draft plan are so low that 4 or 6 plexes will in practice never get built (unless the limits are changed – either in the final plan or afterward by a legislative override).
@12: Seattle produced more than 10,000 units of housing last year. That’s not the issue. The issue is sustaining that rate, year in and year out, for decades, which has never, ever, come anywhere close to happening. (You can re-zone the Moon as many times as you like, but for some strange reason which you cannot ever seem to explain, no housing ever gets built there.) Yet that never-ever-seen outcome is the foundation of the Urbanists’ demand, and the entire reason the Stranger brands the city’s current plan as “inadequate.” Well, guess what, every plan will be exactly that inadequate if you can’t explain why Seattle has never met it.
@16: “Well, guess what, every plan will be exactly that inadequate if you can’t explain why Seattle has never met it.”
I did explain why Seattle has never met it: “a majority of the city’s residential land has zoned single family 5,000, 7,200, or 9,600, lot splitting is mostly illegal, and accessory dwelling unit have been capped at one (and now, lately, a whopping 2).”
@16 the reason it hasn’t been met is because “shocker” people enjoy living in SFH neighborhoods and having space to mentally unwind. Not only that they are willing to pay a premium for the privilege of not having a bunch of other people crammed in their space and builders respond to that by creating SFH. As you noted the urbanists can zone these neighborhoods whatever they want and it will still take generations to realize their dream or they can focus on building housing now.
If Morales is as effective at this as she is at caring for her constituents and her district, single family home owners have nothing to fear
@18 Except that we know what you’re saying isn’t accurate, because once the city took the legal stranglehold off accessory dwelling units just a little bit here’s what happened…
Seattle is now building more ADUs than single houses
Seattle Times March 8, 2023
@17: ‘I did explain why Seattle has never met it: “a majority of the city’s residential land has zoned single family 5,000, 7,200, or 9,600, lot splitting is mostly illegal, and accessory dwelling unit have been capped at one (and now, lately, a whopping 2).’
(To paraphrase Douglas Adams, this must be a use of the word, “explain,” with which I’m previously unfamiliar.)
With the exception of the ADU bit at the end, those conditions have been true for a long time. If you go to the Urbanist story I cited @2, you’ll see a graph for new housing production which swings wildly from year to year, all the way back to 2005. So, while the zoning remained the same, the housing production varied tremendously. And yet, @3, you claim zoning is one of the city policies which “can cause more housing production to occur.” You literally have little to no correlation between the zoning and the number of new housing units built, and somehow you continue to believe the former caused the latter.
(Again, and with apologies to Douglas Adams, it appears you did the same thing with the word, “cause.”)
While the city ought to ensure they aren’t in the way of development and construction, it never ceases to amaze me the obsession that “urbanists” have with trying to ensure multi-family homes go up in neighborhoods far away from adequate transit and that they never would visit, much less live in. The city is a big enough place to have both single family neighborhoods for those that might prefer that, and denser neighborhoods for those that might prefer that. Why the obsession with ensuring that no one enjoy something different than the “urbanists” demand?
@21 There’s tons of peer reviewed research on the relationship of zoning to housing supply – e.g.,
A wide array of local government regulations influences the amount, location, and shape of residential development. In this chapter, we review the literature on the causes and effects of this type of regulation. We begin with a discussion of how researchers measure regulation empirically, which highlights the variety of methods that are used to constrain development. Many theories have been developed to explain why regulation arises, including the role of homeowners in the local political process, the influence of historical density, and the fiscal and exclusionary motives for zoning. As for the effects of regulation, most studies have found substantial effects on the housing market. In particular, regulation appears to raise house prices, reduce construction, reduce the elasticity of housing supply, and alter urban form. Other research has found that regulation influences local labor markets and household sorting across communities. Finally, we discuss the welfare implications of regulation. Although some specific rules clearly mitigate negative externalities, the benefits of more general forms of regulation are very difficult to quantify. On balance, a few recent studies suggest that the overall efficiency losses from binding constraints on residential development could be quite large.
@22: As I’ve been noting here for years, Seattle could build thousands of new housing units in Belltown high-rises every year, and with a fraction of the transportation footprint that distributing that same number of units in low-rises across the city would have. Yet Seattle’s self-appointed “urbanists” simply don’t care about the larger environmental footprint that rezoning SFH neighborhoods would have. As noted above, it’s ideology, not good ideas, which drive Seattle’s urbanists.
@23: Again, Seattle has proven unable to build housing consistently in the quantities needed to meet the urbanists’ plans. Just because you claim changing zoning would allow it to happen doesn’t mean it will happen. I’ve given you multiple comments in which to adress Seattle’s housing-production shortfall, and you just keep droning on about zoning. Good luck getting those houses built.
@19 — Councilmember Morales has vowed to bring the same levels of focus and energy to housing that she unleashed on the criminal open-air drug markets in Little Saigon!
Ooops.
@25 “Seattle could build thousands of new housing units in Belltown high-rises every year”
Yet somehow the fact that Belltown was upzoned in 2017 is supposed to have nothing at all to do with this…
@27: Yes, and that rezone nicely complements Belltown’s location, within walking distance of downtown, Seattle Center, and other places. Increasing Belltown’s already-high walk score was a great reason to re-zone it.
The Urbanist group is funded by Labor Unions and Socialists, just like Tammy Morales and the rest of the door mats running King County and Olympia, ect.
We cleaned up Seattle City Council last year, time to flush more of the door mats this year. Voting against MLK Labor Council would solve that.
@28: “Increasing Belltown’s already-high walk score was a great reason to re-zone it.”
Wallingford’s Walk Score is 85 so let’s gooooooooo……!!!!