By Josh Feit
Calling Mayor Bateman, calling Mayor Bateman! We need your help. Again!
Bateman, of course, is pro-housing Olympia-area state senator Jessica Bateman, whose 2023 HB 1110 forced the slow growth Harrell administration and even slower-growth city council to actually allow some multifamily housing in this year’s comprehensive plan.
First off, thank you for forcing us to allow four-unit multifamily housing in all residential zones; although Mayor Bruce Harrell scaled back his own planning department’s original proposal to fully embrace your model for growth, it’s a start.
We need another favor, though. There’s a transit-oriented housing bill at play in the state legislature right now that, if you passed it, would stop the Seattle City Council’s latest NIMBY crusade against another minor upzone that’s in the city’s comp plan proposal.
The comp plan would create new “Neighborhood Centers,” allowing 3- to 6-story apartment and condo buildings within a 3-minute walk (about 800 feet) of 30 commercial centers and bus stops with frequent service. The state TOD bill, HB 1491— sponsored by your colleague from Seattle, state Rep. Julia Reed—would actually do better than that by allowing multifamily housing within a half mile of light rail and within a quarter mile of bus rapid transit. That would mean upzones for apartments all along the new G Line through Madison Valley, for example!
In its quest to stop the “floodgates of unlimited development,” as North Seattle City Councilmember Cathy Moore put it at a recent briefing on the plan, the council is cuing up its push to remove several of these neighborhood centers from the plan, reducing them even further from a list the Harrell administration already pared down from almost 50 in the original plan.
What I love about the council’s high-pitched opposition to adding a small amount of tightly controlled density is that it exposes the mendacious reasoning behind a core NIMBY argument: “Concurrency.” Concurrency is the obstructionist idea that you can’t add density to neighborhood until you first add bus routes and other infrastructure. It’s actually the reverse—and I’ll get to that in a second—but for starters: It’s disingenuous to claim, as the anti-housing (homeowning) contingent did at a January 29 public hearing, that you oppose density in your neighborhood because your neighborhood lacks transit—and then come out against a plan to target density along transit lines.
If the argument against adding density is that we don’t have the transit to support it, then why are council members like Moore intent on taking Maple Leaf off the list of new neighborhood centers? The area of concern for Moore that’s slated for the upzone, between NE 85th and NE 91st, sits on a frequent bus line (the 67) between two light rail stops, Roosevelt and Northgate. (Moore called this workhorse route the “one little bus” that serves the neighborhood.)
To be clear, the “concurrency” argument is illogical in the first place. Consider: At another hearing on the comp plan earlier this month, Councilmember Moore reasoned: “People seem to believe that if you build all this multifamily housing, transit will come. Let me tell you, it will not come. That’s not how it works.” (As Erica pointed in her reporting on that hearing, that’s exactly how it works.)
Dressing up obstructionism as logic, Moore seems to be saying that an upzone will bring thousands of new people overnight. But in reality, population growth happens over time. Asking Metro to run empty buses through currently sparse street as a prerequisite for future density is a comically inefficient use of Metro dollars. The smarter way to do things is precisely the way Metro does it today: When a neighborhood reaches the point at which buses make sense, they meet the need concurrent with new growth—not before the growth arrives.
With a single-family zone protectionist mayor who shredded his own Office of Planning and Development’s original pro-growth proposal, and with a half-baked council now parroting anti-housing tropes, I’m sending a pro-housing SOS from Seattle: Don’t let Seattle strike down this opportunity to build more units. These minimal, cordoned-off neighborhood center transit-oriented development zones won’t exactly qualify us for a Jane Jacobs city-building award, but you’ve helped us get started before. Please help us again.
Josh@PubliCola.com
All those nimbies don’t want a Better built better choice home but they’re willing to put restrictions and sabotage the integrity of a robust build-out to ruin it for everybody to make sure that nobody has a better choice of home when they try to continue their double triple quadruple supply and demand squeezed inflated housing that oppresses home buyers proving how much of a sellout seattleites are when they try to ruin it for younger generations still need a better choice in home and real equity without low quality Warehouse echo slums built by nonprofits on qualified having to hire subcontract a for-profit that’s not properly vetted creating low-level low quality in bad location areas only for black people that’s the payoff a billion dollars they’re just going to line the pockets of black non-profits who hire black for-profits or only black people get to live in them and all the different neighborhoods it’s going to be like the new modern third world slum with a racist equality of have and have Not or racistly prioritized and racistly discriminated against but yet the whole of the working class are going to be cheated out of this whole thing being forced to move into low quality non-profit housing well I restricted amount of for-profit sheets deliverable amenity space denying rooftop views and fitness rooms with a view with fresh air away from the street noise that they want you to live close to ruining it for everybody like 20th century sellouts
Was there a barely mention about all the homeowners who are adamantly opposed to higher levels because they imagine more traffic sitting in traffic lights road rage pissing them off for Rush hour morning and evening due to the fact they have antiquated outdated red traffic lights the city council sabotaged and put restrictions and then pretty much forced for-profit developers to pay the mha fee fund then they changed the law only non-profits politically connected had access to over a billion dollars and then the housing Consortium a racist unqualified kiss the shake down the city council hiding the same George Floyd protesters and black lives matter activist and prowl beating devil’s advocates that originated the defund shift the paradigm and create bad spending priorities the presently are creating Warehouse echo slums in every neighborhood except Maple leaf get the Urban village doesn’t go high enough and it’s still car centric with dumpster pickups overwhelming and a lack of amenity livable space with all multi-use being flawed obsolete real estate floor plans
This is the one of the problems with the urban village approach (which has been renamed but remains a key aspect of the proposal). It is too easy for people to oppose it because they think their area shouldn’t be part of the change. If you take the far more effective approach (like Spokane did) of changing the zoning *everywhere* it is hard to make that argument. Sure, your neighborhood might change. Instead of a new house going up it will be a new apartment (that is the same height). But that could happen anywhere.
Unfortunately that is part of the problem. The leaders of this city are far more conservative than those in Spokane.
It has taken Metro several years to change Mapleleaf service. For decades, there was more service on 5th (routes 66-67) and 15th (routes 73, 77, 78, and later 373) NE than Roosevelt Way NE (Route 68) where the business district is. For the U Link process, implemented in March 2016, an initial concept focused service on Roosevelt Way NE, but the ordinance retained routes 73-373. Even in fall 2021, Metro retained Route 73. It was finally deleted in fall 2024. But Route 67 is not as frequent as it should be. The Seattle TBD (rebranded as STM) of fall 2020 is smaller than the one of fall 2014, due to the court case over Eyman and the VLF, so service was reduced in fall 2020. For about two years before that, routes 65-67 had 10-minute headway service; Seattle bought more trips on routes 65-67. I hope Route 67 or its successor route gets 10-minute headway service. (RossB of the Seattle Transit Blog had an interesting concept that would consolidate routes 67 and 348; both routes spiral into Northgate station; a consolidated route would connect the north Shoreline and Roosevelt stations; it made sense for all routes to meet Route 41 at Northgate, but now there are several Link stations and minutes spent reaching Northgate could buy more trips).
The lack of sidewalks is a significant transportation issue in Mapleleaf. They are lacking south of NE 90th Street on the east-west local streets. 15th Avenue NE lacks them north of about NE 90th Street. The city might require developers provide sidewalks if multifamily housing is provided.
Typo: north of NE 90th street
As someone that lives in Maple Leaf, I can say that I’m for it, IF it creates affordable housing. So far, that’s not what happening.
Instead, we still have an unreliable transit route that is frequently late. Yet, the city is using the route to argue that residents have access to ‘reliable’ transit.
Meanwhile, developers demolish and redevelop existing homes after they are sold, maximizing housing square footage and minimizing green space (e.g., trees, grass, etc.). The result is these homes go for a minimum $1m+ often well past that number. Then there are the dwelling units. Anyone notice how the city’s getting hotter these days?
In one case, I saw them demolish a 1k square foot house on around 4k of property before installing three multi-story dwelling units. Each sold for $1m+ each! And there’s another set, just down the street for me, going for nearly $2m and $1m on a lot that is almost 5k square feet.
Now, if you take this sample set and apply this over time, sure, we might reach affordable housing, if affordable means you rent. But affordability should apply to both ownership and renting. That’s not what’s being proposed.
Finally, I’m not a tech worker, making 100s of thousands of dollars. I bought my house during the great recession, with my own savings, and through some luck, I’m now a homeowner. Yet, I get inundated with cold calls, junk mail, and business cards on my doorstep trying to get me to sell. It’s exhausting and shows a lack of compassion that not everyone has millions of dollars in savings.
Also, I like where I live. I love my neighbors, to the point of trusting them with housing sit my pets.
Also, I didn’t move here from some small city or town. In fact, I used to live in downtown Bellevue, in a condo. And ‘getting to know the neighbors’ wasn’t on my mind when I bought this house. But, now, I’m loathed to predict how density will help me, beyond a steady deluge of phone calls and junk mail from predatory realtors and property developers.
So when you ask me if I’m for affordable housing. I’ll say sure. But right now, if what’s occurring around me is an indicator, it’s nothing more than a vaporous promise from someone who is trying to keep their job. Till then, I’m going to argue against a Neighborhood Center, until they address transit and how they will enforce and sustain affordable housing.
We need a pro-housing mayor. I think there’s one person with the credentials and policy chops to do it: Representative Julia Reed. She has been a strong leader in the statehouse on housing and has extensive executive experience. Her experience in DC will be helpful in navigating the Trump years, too. Run Julia, run!
Josh, that is just excellent.
“People seem to believe that if you build all this multifamily housing, transit will come. Let me tell you, it will not come. That’s not how it works.” — says someone who doesn’t work for Metro anyway. The city of Seattle doesn’t run any buses, through Maple Leaf or anywhere else. But why let facts get in the your desire to live in Atherton, CA?
Don’t kid yourself: every side uses disingenuous arguments – even radical urbanists. It’s all about what city you want to live in. Some folks experience waves of intense pleasure picturing lines of 6-storey apartments the length of Madison. Others don’t. The “logical” arguments come later.