by Josh Feit
There’s actually some good news for density advocates in Harrell’s slow-growth comp plan proposal: It’s being widely panned.
I take this backlash as a sign of progress. Consider: Nine years ago, when then-mayor Ed Murray floated the unthinkable in his own housing initiative—universal neighborhood upzones to promote growth, density, and housing—the NIMBY backlash against him, led by the Seattle Times, was swift and furious. Murray was immediately forced to backpedal, and eventually the city only allowed more housing along the margins of the 75 percent of Seattle that’s otherwise off-limits to apartments.
While it’s certainly disappointing that Mayor Harrell is still committed to an old-fashioned planning model that relegates density to busy arterial streets, it’s noteworthy that this time around, the backlash is an outcry for more density, not less. Critics are calling Harrell out for failing to go beyond the minimum statewide requirements established in last year’s House Bill 1110, which requires cities to allow at least four units on every residential lot, and for promoting a status quo that led to the current affordability crisis.
It’s not 2015 anymore. With a keener sense of the racism encoded in Seattle zoning rules, a pressing housing affordability and homelessness crisis, and an urgency about environmental catastrophe all informing the debate, a whole new generation of pro-housing advocates has dislodged the anti-growth, Seattle-politics-as-usual attitudes that Harrell’s comp plan proposal regurgitates.
It’s not just the usual suspects—armchair planners and YIMBYs on social media—either. Mainstream Seattle state legislators have formally joined the fray. Not only did they champion and help pass HB 1110, but they’re pushing back on Harrell for doing the bare minimum to comply with its density mandate. In a letter to Harrell’s office on March 5, the day the mayor released the plan, Seattle state Rep. Julia Reed (D-36) expressed “serious concerns about the Mayor’s comprehensive plan,” calling it “disappointingly modest, particularly as it relates to the [density] floor, middle housing zoning, and breadth of exemptions.” (PubliCola obtained Reed’s letter through a records request).
The two most recent takedowns of Harrell’s non-comprehensive comp plan—a 19-page letter from the Seattle Planning Commission and an in-depth analysis from the progressive Sightline think tank—both lay out the basic problem with Harrell’s proposal: It doesn’t call for density in enough of the city, providing for just 100,000 new units over the next 20 years. That’s 20,000 less than the bare minimum the city will need, as the Planning Commission put it, to “help us climb out of the existing housing deficit.”
Additionally, in the areas where Harrell’s plan actually does call for more housing, it doesn’t allow enough housing types, excluding apartments in favor of tall, skinny townhomes. Critiquing Seattle’s longstanding “strategy of confinement” for density, Sightline goes all in on advocating for apartments, writing: “Seattle’s plan could rise to the moment by allowing highrise towers in all regional centers and near all light rail stations, eight-story buildings in all urban centers, and six-story buildings near frequent transit stops and other community amenities like parks. It could also designate more and larger neighborhood centers with apartment zoning.”
And as everyone—even the Seattle Times—has pointed out, while Harrell says his plan follows the new state mandate to allow fourplexes wherever detached single-family homes are allowed, his reluctant proposal renders such development merely theoretical with restrictive caps on floor area ratio (a key measure of density) that prevent construction from actually penciling out.
Of course, Harrell may simply dismiss the negative reviews as grousing from a gaggle of liberal elites. And certainly, on cue, Erica and I both registered our disappointment in his proposal here on PubliCola wondering if it was written by AI, with a prompt from the minutes of a mid-90s neighborhood council meeting.
However, Harrell (who deleted density and equity goals proposed by his own Office of Planning and Development (OPCD) shouldn’t take comfort in his single-family comfort zone. Seattle is now skewed heavily toward renters—a change that’s reflected by this city’s new slate of leaders. Indeed, the people who were most outraged by Harrell’s timid plan were not think tanks and bloggers, but the squad of progressive populists who now officially represent Seattle in Olympia, including Reed—pro-density voices that helped pass the statewide fourplex rule last year. Demonstrating this changing of the guard, they passed that rule in part by first ousting longtime slow-growth Seattle Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-46) from his powerful position as chair of local government committee.
“Frankly, we were expecting to see the City take meaningful advantage of the additional flexibilities provided in HB 1110 and other tools that the state has made available,” Rep. Reed wrote in her letter criticizing Harrell’s plan, adding that she was “not the only member from the Seattle delegation with these major concerns.”
This spring, OPCD met with members of the Seattle delegation, including Sen. Noel Frame, (D-36) to respond to “the questions [and] concerns we’re hearing from our constituents,” Reed told PubliCola. Reed said OPCD staffers were informative and answered their questions, and that she and her fellow Seattle reps “want to work with the city so that the final plan reflects a shared vision of abundance, affordability, and unified belonging for the entire city.”
According to a spokesperson for Frame, the senator is also “a critic” of Harrell’s proposal “and says it ‘falls far short of what we should be doing’ as the biggest city in the state, who should be leading on the housing crisis.” Frame and other legislators plan to send a letter to Harrell’s office in the next few days, the spokesperson said.
PubliCola has been covering the density debate for 15 years. It’s only been in the past few years that pro-housing voices, now represented by a contingent of Seattle lawmakers with a new state law in hand, are part of the fight. And—as opposed to the days when anti-density homeowners ruled the public process—legislators like Reed are working in concert with an organized YIMBY movement that’s amplified by a sympathetic urbanist media infrastructure which regularly fact checks and pushes back against the Seattle Times’ NIMBY narrative.
Thank you, Mayor Harrell, for formally and finally revealing where you stand in the housing debate; Erica’s earlier reporting on Harrell’s drastic re-write of OPCD’s initial pro-housing draft proposal wasn’t surprising, but it was clarifying. The current backlash against Harrell’s plan is clarifying as well.
Josh@PubliCola.com
Wishful thinking is not reporting.
Halfwit babbling is not commenting.
Gosh Josh, when are you and Erica going to be real YIMBYs? I mean make a commitment to home ownership? Own some land? Build something? A house? A community that isn’t online? Come on! Let’s see some real, honest-to-gawd progress on something… affordable housing, mental health, the opioid epidemic. Move the needle on Seattle’s problems…. or just move on.
I’ve been hearing the same silly promises on affordable housing in Seattle for the last 30 years. It’s always there’s going to be some big political move and zoning change…. and Presto! Seattle’s housing problems are fixed. Lefties said “Urban Villages are the answer!!” in 2000. How’s that working out Josh? I’ve worked in construction in the greater Puget Sound for a big chunk of my life and I know members of King County Master Builders Association…. those guys have zero interest in building affordable housing. Why would they? Because nobody is building apartments for poor little Josh to afford. They build them to make money. If people can’t afford them and live in a tent…. why would they care? As long as rich out-of-Staters keep moving in…. the rents will never really go down.
There’s no way the King County construction industry could keep up with the number of Californians moving to Seattle over the last two decades. That’s why housing is so expensive in Seattle, not zoning. Go ahead, change the zoning! Doesn’t chance the dynamics of the real problem. At what point do young people realize the game is 100% rigged and walk away? Please Josh, quit spreading false hope. Save yourself! .. just move on.
Yeah, why can’t the young just walk away? ‘Tis a mystery, isn’t it? On the other hand, as that old timer Upton Sinclair wrote:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Didn’t you say you worked in building construction for all those years? Funny how old Sinclair can still be right after all these years.
It’s also funny how you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. 22-25 year old me would have gotten the fuck out of the current gentrified Seattle we now have to deal with – and unless folks have strong family ties here I would advise young people to move on, too.
For just one example related to the supposed superiority of city “culture”, if you’re a business-minded music fan you’d be a lot better off opening your own version of Wally’s House of Booze in Wenatchee or a club in Moses Lake than trying to deal with the high rents and oppressive regulatory environment in King County in general and Seattle in particular. I can also think of lots of similar examples in different industries, to.
When I retire I’m out of here, and I won’t be at all sad about it (where I might have been 20 years ago or so). I can drive into town if I want/need to.
Tacomee is abrasive but they are dead on correct with regard to the FACT that there are better opportunities for young folks elsewhere rather than being an underpaid cog in the overpriced wheel that is now Seattle.
Eh, certain places like Montgomery County, MD has been mandating low and middle income housing be built in every new housing project for decades. Along with rejecting forward thrust (and giving people easy subways everywhere paid mostly by the federal government), this is why Seattle is so damn expensive. Signed, a property owner.
Rep. Julia Reed and Senator Noel Frame are definitely NOT “mainstream”, but are part of the Progressive Left in the Legislature. Of the other sources you cite as examples of “critics” of Harrell’s Comp Plan, all of those are also on the far Left.
There’s a reason that moderates won the majority of the Seattle City Council seats last November; regular people are not embracing the Leftist, Urbanist ideals that you espouse.
What a load of nonsense. Polls tell us the facts, and they say the opposite: the vase majority of Seattleites support more density and lower housing costs. It’s the corrupt business interests who gambled they could purchase themselves a city council, and last year it paid off for them.
Besides, it shows you completely lack the ability to make reasoned judgements to call the squishy middle of the road ‘Urbanists’ leftists. It’s really quite ridiculous.
Please do cite that poll – because I think that when the rubber hits the road vague aspirational crapola like people supporting “more density and lower housing costs” in theory goes right out the fucking window when a developer proposes an upzone on their particular block.
“Please do cite that poll – because I think that when the rubber hits the road vague aspirational crapola like people supporting “more density and lower housing costs” in theory goes right out the fucking window when a developer proposes an upzone on their particular block.”
Maybe an idiot like yourself with think like that, it is obvious you’re a little slow. Just a popped bubble.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/06/13/seattleites-want-mid-rise-social-housing/
Asserting that people support “lower housing costs” versus a poll that says they support a vague goal of “more social housing” is dishonest, but I’ve come to expect that from you.
Eh, didn’t this blog report last week that the city council shot down Tammy Morales’ affordable housing pilot?
They did. But they didn’t go into the details of why, like the fact that the giveaways Morales was proposing were just short-term. Any rent relief (the “affordable” part) would be gone in under 5 years.
While there was, IMO, a lot of decent ideas in Morales’ proposal, there was an unwillingness to compromise to make her legislation better fit long term goals and not merely be handovers to special interest, ethnicity-based nonprofits.
“there was an unwillingness to compromise” Sure there was. More nonsense from one of those clueless limousine types.
So Feisty – do you drive a limo (and/or any vehicle worth more than $50K)? I’m guessing not, but since Samm likes to throw trite bullshit phrases like that around it might be nice to know.
Personally, I have an old Civic that has been stolen twice (and which will be eligible for collector plates next year) and a minivan that dates from the early aughts, the combined value of which would barely pay to rent a limo for three days.
But yeah, any halfway moderate normal Democrat who disagrees with Samm is some Richie Rich motherfucker – amirite?
“We’re all YIMBYs now …” Or at least the usual handful plus a coupla state legislators. Not quite seeing that 8-storey tidal wave.