Three-term city council member Tom Rasmussen doesn’t consider himself a NIMBY. NIMBYs are wealthy, crotchety homeowners opposed to change in their neighborhoods, whose rallying cry is “Not in my backyard!”
But among elected city leaders, Rasmussen has long been most closely associated with them, and not without reason. In 2013, amidst a growing NIMBY outcry over microhousing (“I don’t think most people want to live next to a boarding house with itinerant people living in it,” one man complained to The Stranger), Rasmussen floated an idea to place a blanket moratorium on the development of these small apartments—even though they’re one of the few burgeoning sources of affordable housing units in Seattle. Meanwhile, he lives in a million-dollar home in West Seattle, according to King County property records.
Fast-forward to today: Rasmussen is serving out the remaining five months of his term, having pledged not to run for reelection this November. “I decided if Bertha’s not running, I’m not running,” he joked on April 1, making reference to the stalled downtown tunnel project—one that he strongly supported as longtime chair of the council’s transportation committee.
But as Seattle grapples with explosive growth and a housing-affordability crisis, Rasmussen has come up with an answer—his last stand on housing, as several people described it—and it’s one that, wouldn’t you know it, enshrines NIMBYism and doesn’t tackle the affordability issues head-on.
Enter Neighborhood Conservation Districts (NCDs):
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