By Erica C. Barnett
On Friday, hundreds of Seattle residents took time out of their days to comment on proposed updates to the city’s Comprehensive Plan—a document that sets the parameters for growth and development across the city.
Although the plan is supposed to go through a major update every 10 years, Mayor Bruce Harrell released his initial proposal a year behind schedule, and the City Council is currently plodding through the plan in several “phases,” starting with changes to the city’s historically single-family zones, now known as “neighborhood residential” areas.
Some of these changes are designed to implement House Bill 1110, a bill that requires cities to allow up to four housing units on every residential lot, or six if two of the units are affordable. The council, facing a deadline to comply with 111o or accept housing regulations written by the state, passed a short-term bill complying with the law earlier this year, but still has to pass permanent legislation to update zoning rules associated with the new law.
They’re also taking up Harrell’s plan to add 30 new “neighborhood centers”—areas within a 3-minute walk (about 800 feet) of commercial and frequent bus stops where 3-to-6-story apartments would be newly allowed.
Following a pattern that has defined Seattle’s housing debate for decades, last week’s hearing pitted opponents of new housing—who argued that apartments (and the renters who live in them) would destroy the “quaint” character of their neighborhoods and contribute to “clear-cutting” trees on private lawns—against density proponents, who argued that relegating rental housing to polluted, busy arterial roads is inequitable, and that prohibiting apartments in most of the city leads directly to deforestation for suburban sprawl.
Because each person had only one minute to comment, many used some of their time to rattle off a list of amendment numbers—gibberish to anyone who isn’t intimately familiar with the plan. So instead of focusing on the high-level arguments (seriously, though, you NIMBYs need to stop saying housing proponents want to murder “orca babies”), I thought it would be helpful to dive into some of the amendments that came up most frequently.
This isn’t a comprehensive look at the competing changes council members are proposing (I did that here); instead, it’s an attempt to explain the amendments people were praising or complaining about last week, and how they’re hitting with both sides of Seattle’s eternal pro- and anti-housing debate.
Eliminate parking mandates
HB 1110 forced Seattle to get rid of mandatory minimum parking requirements for new housing within a half-mile of major transit stops, making it possible to build apartments with few or no parking spaces; Harrell’s proposal would retain other parking mandates across the city, regardless of demand.
Rinck’s amendment (amendment 7) is the strongest among several that would reduce parking mandates or eliminate them across the city; it would effectively allow developers to add parking based on market conditions and demand, and could result in lower housing construction costs.
Support social housing
Proponents of social housing, which voters overwhelmingly opted to fund using a targeted business tax earlier this year, applauded two amendments incorporating social housing into the comprehensive plan. The first, from Rinck (amendment 17), expresses support for social housing as one of the comprehensive plan’s affordability goals and incorporates it into several sections on affordable housing.
The second (amendment 61), from Kettle, would change existing city law to make it easier to build dense affordable housing in all neighborhood residential (former single-family) areas, and expand the definition of affordable housing to include social housing—a substantive change in law that would take place outside the comprehensive plan itself. A similar amendment, 60, from Sara Nelson would make similar changes to affordable-housing rules but would not apply them to social housing.
Restoring neighborhood centers
Rinck’s proposal would bring back eight neighborhood centers—those locations within a 3-minute walk of commercial nodes and frequent transit stops where 3- to 6-story apartments would be allowed—that were included in an earlier “Alternative 5” version of the plan and studied as part of a final environmental impact statement for the proposal. As we reported at the time, Harrell’s initial “One Seattle” proposal eliminated half of the 48 proposed neighborhood centers included in alternative, (After widespread blowback, Harrell restored six of the centers his initial plan eliminated).
Rinck’s amendment would restore eight more of the nixed neighborhood centers, bringing the comprehensive plan closer to the alternative that nearly new council member elected in 2023 said they supported.
Single-family activists were overwhelmingly opposed to these changes, saying that they come as a complete surprise, have never been vetted, and would result in—of course—”clearcutting” of trees on existing residential lawns.
“Say no to the city overreach of our community’s character that would destroy the very charm that attracted us to our respective neighborhoods,” one speaker told the council. “Say no to those who have ramrodded this blind-sighted, misguided notion that will result in our neighborhoods being significantly impacted by upzoned, high-density monstrosities.”
On the flip side, both homeowners and renters turned out to speak in favor of the changes, arguing that the city’s renter majority should be allowed to live in more parts of the city. “We spend too much time in the city driving our children around,” one speaker said. “We need more time to walk to neighborhood amenities and also welcome more neighborhood residents into the Seward Park neighborhood with mixed housing types.. … So go as far as you can. We really need it, and if we don’t do that, plenty of trees are going to get chopped down [for] urban sprawl.”
Downsizing neighborhood centers
As I noted in my earlier coverage of the council’s amendments, several proposals would downsize proposed neighborhood centers, while others would increase them. If every single change to neighborhood boundaries passed, they would collectively increase the total size of neighborhood centers across the city, but there’s no guarantee of how each individual vote will go—and the new neighborhood centers would be located, lopsidedly, in the council districts of councilmembers who support expansion.
The downsizing proposals would shrink neighborhood centers in Fauntleroy and Morgan Junction (amendments 35 and 37, Rob Saka), Madrona (amendment 38, Joy Hollingsworth), and Bryant, Ravenna, and Wedgwood (amendments 39, 40, and 41, Rivera).
Dan Strauss’ amendments expanding and redrawing neighborhood centers all over his northwest Seattle district (42 through 49) are the main proposals that would offset these potential losses. If all the amendments were to pass, it would mean that most of the expanded neighborhood centers would be in District 6, which includes parts of Magnolia, Fremont, Wallingford, and Ballard, while most of the reduced neighborhood centers would be in Northeast Seattle, represented by Rivera. (Bob Kettle has also proposed restoring a neighborhood center on Nickerson).
In other words, the neighborhood center-specific amendments are a product of the city’s district council system, in which individual council members have been empowered reshape the density maps in the parts of the city they represent based on their individual opinions about whether more housing is good or bad.
Corner stores, not just for literal corners anymore
A large number of public commenters expressed their support for Rinck’s Amendment 66, which would allow “corner stores” throughout residential areas, rather than just on literal corners, as Harrell’s plan proposes. Rinck’s amendment would also remove a proposed size limit of 2,500 square feet for these businesses, allow bars (not just restaurants), and remove a requirement that new businesses close at 10pm.
“It’s time to let Seattle cook, brew, and create,” one supporter said. Nelson and Strauss have amendments that would remove the “literal corner” requirement but keep all the other restrictions in place.
More transit-oriented development
Rinck’s Amendment 76 would allow denser low-income housing and stacked flats in more parts of the city, by making a technical change to the definition of “major transit” so that it includes areas within a quarter mile of bus stops that have 15-minute service on weekdays. The upshot would be that these types of housing could get a density bonus if they’re near frequent transit; in addition, they wouldn’t be subject to mandatory parking requirements.
One commenter who spoke against this change suggested it would result in “denuding all of Seattle’s neighborhoods” of trees and “subject[ing] nearly the entire city to five- and six-story developments.” Others noted that it went beyond the requirements in HB 1110—which is true; that bill was meant to represent a floor for all cities across the state, not a maximum density level for the state’s largest city.
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Top-down dictates for new housing
Rivera has a couple of amendments that would create steep hurdles for new housing. The first, Amendment 81, would direct the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections to write rules dictating the kind of “exterior cladding” allowed on buildings in any local or national historic district, based on “objective design standards,” whatever that means.
Activists have sought and won historic district designations for neighborhoods like Wallingford with the goal of preventing demolition and redevelopment of lots developed in the 1920s and 1930s, but they might balk at HOA-style rules telling them what color they can paint their houses, or what specific type of siding they have to purchase during home renovations.
The second Rivera amendment, 102, is more insidious: It would authorize SDCI’s director, a political appointee, to require developers to come up with alternative site plans, at any point during the development process, “if the Director determines that an alternative site plan could feasibly increase the retention of existing healthy trees.”
In plain language, the amendment would give absolute power to the head of the city’s building department to kill individual housing projects on the grounds that there is some possibility a purely theoretical “alternative site plan” could protect any tree of any size or age—an absurd expansion of the city’s bureaucratic power.
As we’ve reported, neighborhood activists frequently present their own “alternative site plans” that they claim would allow developers to retain trees, usually by reducing the size and value of any future housing on the site.
Developers, who get loans to build housing projects based on future value, generally dismiss these alternative plans as unworkable (if you got a loan to build five 1,500-square-foot units with yards, you can’t pay that loan back by selling five 1,000-square-foot units with no outdoor space); under Rivera’s amendment, the city itself could use similar site plans to effectively stop housing projects from moving forward.
Lawns > housing
Other tree amendments (including 91, from Nelson; 92, from Strauss; 93, from Rivera, which would also establish new tree protection areas) would provide density incentives for developers that preserve existing trees on existing private lawns. One Strauss amendment, 100, would require developers to plant a new tree for every 2,500 square feet of lot area, in addition to other tree requirements, and another, 103, would prohibit removing large trees near the corners of any lot.
Unsurprisingly, many commenters claimed that allowing more density in Seattle’s historic single-family neighborhoods would result in “clear-cutting” the city, by eliminating the trees that homeowners and earlier developers planted in the yards of single-family houses. As one speaker argued, “We risk losing old-growth trees and wetland and bald eagle habitat ecosystems that make this area unique.” In fact, there are virtually no old-growth trees remaining on private property in Seattle, because early developers clear-cut the forest that once occupied the land now known as Seattle in order to build single-family houses.
Two proposals that didn’t come up much, if at all, during the public hearing are also worth flagging. The first, Kettle’s amendment 32, would add an entirely new “public safety element” to the comprehensive plan—effectively adding goals like crime reduction and improved 911 response times to the city’s foundational zoning document.
The second, which spans two amendments (21, from Nelson, and 22, from Saka and Mark Solomon), would “discourage the concentration of human services facilities” for “low-income populations” in downtown Seattle. As the brief staff summaries of these amendments notes, the city frequently has no say in where services for low-income people are located; one reason a lot of services are downtown is because downtown is the city’s most central and transit-accessible neighborhood.
The comprehensive plan committee will take up all the amendments (plus, god help us, any new ones) on September 17 and 18, with a final council vote on the Phase 1 changes likely later this month.
Along with the comp plan we also needs a fair and equitable plan to expand water mains throughout the city. To have some developers paying a few thousand dollars for water connection fees and other small developers asked to pay $250k or even a million dollars for small lot developments is manifestly unfair. Exorbent water connection fees have the effect of squashing development. SPU appears to have taken a growth pays for growth argument and twisted that to small developers pay for necessary maintenance, system upgrades, and new seismic valves that are their responsibility.
City council has more work to do reining in spu and perhaps other departments that place a de facto hold on Urban growth.
Data on heat islands. Trees are critical for supporting our residents as we build out more structures in a warming world. https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/executive/governance-leadership/climate-office/focus-areas/climate-preparedness/extreme-heat-mitigation
Because these height differentials exist does not mean they are compatible! Well designed neighborhoods, which are coincidentally the most desirable, and the most expensive, have struck the right balance— and when there is a mix of high and low-rise, apartments are placed on corners rather than in the middle of blocks. Focusing apartment structures on corners is something I have been advocating for a very long time. It has been a long-time feature of historic neighborhoods like Capitol Hill. This design allows garden ecosystems to remain intact, maintains tree canopy, and allows people of diverse incomes to live in a neighborhood, while usually restricting the negative effect on lower rise neighborhoods to only one adjacent property.
When a three or four story townhouse complex is set in the middle of a residential block filled with low rise homes, within a year or two most of those remaining homeowners have sold, not wanting the loss of light and privacy that made them buy the homes in the first place. Along with those sales go the gardens and the tree canopy and the neighborhood begins its path towards becoming a heat island. Seattle, formerly the Emerald City, now ranks fifth for heat islands in United States.
Disgraceful NIMBY councilmembers are spreading lies about the consequences of banning the century-long single-family zoning restrictions. These restrictions lock up about 75% of Seattle’s buildable land. Other neighborhoods used racially-restrictive covenants protecting Jews and people of color and other “undesirables’ from buying homes in areas north of the Ship Canal, such as North Beach, Olympic Manor, Innis Arden and Wedgwood. Other parts of Seattle that used the covenants to protect exclusive white neighborhoods include: Madison Park, Broadmoor, Magnolia, Capitol Hill and Queen Anne. After the covenants were declared unconstitutiona in 1948, bigots used single-family zoning to keep out the undesirable renters.
Now the City of Seattle is poised to change the zoning in those locked-up areas to “neighborhood residential,” which would permit multiple-family rental housing. The majority of the Council owns homes in single-family exclusionary zones and is fighting hard to prevent this change that would permit people they see as dangerous outsiders moving into their privileged enclaves. To Maritza Rivera, Sara Nelson, Bob Kettle and Rob Saka renters represent not the richness of diversit, but a source of crime and disorder and a threat to their neighorhoods’ “way of life.” That phrase is almost always a racist dog whistle. Instead, this group and their constituents use buzz words like “neighborhood character,” “local control” and “limiting building heights and setbacks to as to preserve the “walkable and attractive” areas. Don’t be fooled – it’s all about racism, classism and exclusion.
Opponents of expanded density make the absurd claim that removing exclusionary single family-home zoning will result in trees in those areas being clear-cut. Their propaganda is aimed at creating hysteria among low-information voters and inviting them to exclude “the other.” Magnolia, one of the most bigoted neighborhoods in Seattle, has been doing this for decades, Former Councilmember Cathy Moore used this technique in Lake City when she tried to kill a long-approved arrangement for a tent city to move temporarily to Lake City. She riled up Lake City residents to hysterically focusing on crime. In fact, residents of Tent Cities help stop crime rather than commit crimes. The debate about zoning is really about race and class. Should well-off, mostly white people be able to lock up 75% of Seattle’s buildable land for the exclusive use of rich elistist single-family homeowners? This zoing dates back to 1923, the height of lynching and other acts of terrorism against African-Americans, as well as the erection of Confederate statues in the South. Those who oppose this zoning change seem to believe they have a God-given right to avoid having to deal with renters, corner stores, neighborhood community centers and poor people of color.
Seattle has allowed three housing units on every every formerly single-family lot since 2019. Zoning changes since then at city and state levels have allowed 4 units per lot throughout residential neighborhoods, with exceptions for the few neighborhoods that have superseding HOA regulations which are not subject to state or city zoning changes. So we have been living with zoning that has banned single-family housing for six years.
The idea that all of the low-density areas of Seattle are that way based on racist covenants is absurd. Redlining was banned by the City Council in 1977. Since then anyone of any race has been able to live in any part of the city they can afford. Single-family zoning in Seattle and many other cities is primarily zoning for compatible height and infrastructure. It is incompatible to have 4 to 8 story buildings next to one and two story buildings. Responsible urban planning takes this into account and ensures that there are buffer zones and graduated heights between high and low-rise structures. When an existing low-rise home is suddenly surrounded by apartments or the new three and four story townhouses, which are far higher than a standard home in Seattle, they lose light and privacy. Their yards are suddenly completely shaded, those who have installed solar panels find that they will not work, and they have neighbors looking directly into bathroom‘s kitchen and bedrooms. The quality of life expected under the zoning present when they purchased the house is erased.
Forty percent of Seattle is non-white. I urge you to walk around some of these neighborhoods that you consider so exclusive. My north Seattle block has three Asian and one Black household. We have social workers, special ed teachers, retired school counselors, contractors, nurses and artists. More importantly, we have had up to 12 rental homes within a one block radius of my house. These homes, with the exception of one luxury spec-house, have offered affordable housing. A mix of students, low-wage workers, and families live there. Under current upzoning, most of these rental homes are being torn down and replaced with three or four new structures of 1,000-2,400 square feet with a price ranging from 800,000-2.3 million dollars. For-profit builders do not build apartment houses for renters on small lots. There is no money in those. They build what is most profitable, and that is more single-family housing, all of which is double or triple the cost per square foot of the housing, which was torn down. The new structures are often connected by absurd breezeways to categorize them as an ADU or DADU— but they are sold to and occupied by one family or individual.
Profitable new rental housing is normally very large, 4 to 8 stories and a block long. The infrastructure required for these buildings is enormous. Many of the Seattle residential neighborhoods proposed for this level of development with expansion of neighborhood centers and a lifting of height regulations do not have this infrastructure. Water and drainage are recurrent issues even now with current development. Many homes flood during the rains. Madison Valley experienced a tragic death due to this. The much-maligned “lawns” otherwise known as gardens and green space, are our natural way of providing filtration and drainage. Because Seattle has so many hills, even with green space and trees water has its own natural path— downhill.
If we want affordable homes, whether as rentals, condominiums, or stacked flats, it makes sense to build them where the infrastructure is least expensive, and that would be in flat parts of the city where there is already adequate water, sewer, and electrical service. Infrastructure limits are not fiction, or “exclusionary racism” in disguise. One builder in the newly upzoned Roosevelt has found that he cannot develop a multistory project because there simply is no way for the fire department to get water to the upper stories. If Seattle wants to increase its supply of expensive apartment homes, it should go ahead and up-zone the hilliest areas of the city, with existing water issues and narrow streets, like Magnolia, Madrona, and Queen Anne.
The racialized and polarizing language used in this piece and in comments is out of date, inaccurate, and manipulative. It needs to be retired and replaced with serious conversation about how we increase housing opportunity while preserving quality of life.
Sent from my iPhone
“Single-family zoning in Seattle and many other cities is primarily zoning for compatible height and infrastructure. It is incompatible to have 4 to 8 story buildings next to one and two story buildings. Responsible urban planning takes this into account and ensures that there are buffer zones and graduated heights between high and low-rise structures”
This is in no way true. For example: there is a 2 story, 10 unit apartment building in our neighborhood next to 2 and 3 story houses. There is also a 3 story five unit apartment building next to 2 and 3 story houses.
Apartments can and should always and everywhere have been legal even if we accept the premise that public policy should be used to keep like-heighted-buildings near each other.