Screengrab via Councilmember Alex Pedersen’s official Facebook page.
By Erica C. Barnett
City Councilmember Alex Pedersen, who’s leaving at the end of the year, may get one parting shot at developers after his proposal to advance “impact fees” on new housing (co-sponsored with another departing councilmember, Lisa Herbold) failed last week.
Just before budget deliberations began earlier this fall, Pedersen proposed legislation that would require a state archaeological agency to sign off on the removal of any tree larger than 12 inches in diameter—a class of trees that is already explicitly protected by the city’s new tree ordinance, which added new protections to about 48,000 trees, largely by making it more difficult to remove smaller trees. According to the legislation, the new regulations are necessary, in part, because the a new state law exempts “missing middle” housing, such as fourplexes, from state environmental review.
Pedersen’s proposal would require the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI), the agency responsible for review tree removal applications, to notify the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation (DAHP) about every request to remove a “Tier 2” or “Tier 3” tree (those 12 inches in diameter or greater) and to “receive confirmation” from the department about “whether the tree is part of an archaeological site”—that is, whether it is a culturally modified tree. Put another way, the city would assume that every tree larger than a foot in diameter is culturally modified until proven otherwise.
“I’m not an attorney, I’m an archaeologist. But I don’t see how a local government can pass a law that binds a state agency.”—Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation director Allyson Brooks
Asked about the potential impact of the proposed new regulations, a spokesman for SDCI said that although the agency “is committed to identifying workable protections to preserve Culturally Modified Trees, we believe this proposal would cause significant delays in permits for new housing… create resourcing issues, and cause delays on permit approvals including Master Use Permits, construction permits, and simple over-the-counter permits.”
Generally speaking, “culturally modified trees” are trees that were altered by indigenous residents in the past to serve a cltural purpose, such as peeling bark for baskets and construction materials, marking important locations, or wayfinding. Earlier this year, a developer agreed to preserve large Western red cedar tree in the Wedgwood neighborhood that the Snoqualmie Tribe said had been culturally modified to “mark a trail system that predated the city, and settlers in the area,” according to KUOW. The developers’ own analysis concluded that the tree was around 85 years old, but supporters claimed it was 200 or older, which would make it an ancient outlier among other Western red cedar trees in Seattle.
The decision to save the tree, which Wedgwood residents named “Luma,” on cultural modification grounds paved the way for Pedersen’s legislation, which would make it more difficult and expensive to remove any medium-to-large tree in Seattle.
It’s unclear, however, if the city has the authority to require a state agency to do anything—especially a small agency like the DAHP, which has just six staff to review around 16,000 federal and state projects every year.
“I don’t know how we would do this and on what timeline,” DAHP director Allyson Brooks said. “We don’t even have any staff in Seattle. It’s not realistic.”
“I’m not an attorney, I’m an archaeologist,” Brooks added. “But I don’t see how a local government can pass a law that binds a state agency.”
Neither Pedersen nor SDCI responded to questions last week, and a spokesman for the City Attorney’s Office said he couldn’t comment on whether the city attorney had offered advice to Pedersen’s office on the legality of his proposal. The Snoqualmie Tribe also did not respond to questions last week.
In its stage-setting “whereas” section, the legislation argues that a state law allowing more density in previously exclusive single-family neighborhoods could threaten the existence of many “previously unidentified culturally modified trees” in Seattle, including trees “of particular importance to the Indigenous peoples who have resided in the Puget Sound area… since time immemorial.”
Similarly, despite Pedersen’s lofty language about cultural preservation, his efforts to “save the trees” have long been inextricable from his opposition to new apartments, and he and other density opponents have relied on many different arguments to push for legislation that makes housing harder to build.
Wedgwood, where the median home price is now well over $1 million, was founded as a whites-only outpost in the 1930s, when a builder dredged and cleared the area for development. Today, according to the to the University of Washington, the neighborhood is still “overwhelmingly White,” and its residents have vociferously opposed changes that would alter its suburban character. In 2018, the neighborhood opposed (and ultimately killed) a bike lane that would remove parking spaces along one side of 35th Ave. NE. Initially, the residents focused on the loss of parking, but eventually pivoted to claim that bike lanes were only for “the privileged.”
Similarly, despite Pedersen’s lofty language about cultural preservation, his efforts to “save the trees” have long been inextricable from his opposition to new apartments, and he and other density opponents have relied on many different arguments to push for legislation that makes housing harder to build.
Brooks, from the DAHP, says the need to identify and protect culturally modified trees and other Indigenous archaeological resources is great, but that if Seattle wants to make it a priority, they should hire a city archaeologist, rather than asking the state to come out every time a property owner wants to cut down a mature tree. Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities, whose work often involves digging, have their own archaeological experts, but they deal with utility projects, not tree removal on private property.
A public hearing to consider an amendment to the city’s comprehensive plan that would allow transportation impact fees on new development was bumped by more than two hours to make room for public comment on a resolution from outgoing councilmember Kshama Sawant demanding “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, an end to U.S. funding for the Israeli military, the safe release of all hostages, the restoration of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.”
After hours of public comment from Sawant’s supporters that included chants of “from the river to the sea,” the resolution failed for lack of a second, prompting a chorus of denunciations from the crowd and a brief recess to clear council chambers.
By the time the council returned about 10 minutes later, it was past 4 pm and tensions were high. Lisa Herbold, who sponsored the comprehensive plan proposal along with Alex Pedersen, teed up a presentation on the amendment by accusing her council colleagues of misrepresenting her legislation and confusing the public by raising questions about the fees themselves.
“I’m really frustrated that … when I ask questions, I’m being treated as if it is unreasonable. These questions are coming from community.”—Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda
Transportation impact fees are based on the number of units in a building, based on the premise the denser the development, the more of a negative “impact” it has on the city’s infrastructure, like roads and bridges—a assumption that conflicts the urbanist view that density is greener and more efficient than sprawl. The legislation Herbold and Pedersen are sponsoring would allow the council to adopt impact fees in the future, “identify deficiencies in the transportation system associated with new development,” and adopt a list of projects that could be funded through such fees.
“I can’t tell you how many emails we’ve received commenting on whether or not people want a transportation impact fee or oppose a transportation impact fee,” Herbold said. “There is no transportation impact the proposal before the council today. People have pointed to the questions about the potential transportation impact fee program as a reason to not support this amendment. … These are not questions for today.”
Councilmembers Dan Strauss and Teresa Mosqueda disputed this characterization, noting that while amending the comprehensive plan to allow impact fees might technically be “procedural,” the only reason to pass such an amendment is to move impact fees forward—a longtime goal for both Herbold and Pedersen, who are leaving at the end of the year and won’t get another chance.
Ordinarily, amendments to the comprehensive plan—the document that guides all planning and land-use decisions in the city—go through the land use committee, which Strauss chairs, but the council voted last month to bypass the normal committee process and push the amendment through before the end of the year—all very much over Strauss’ objections. “This is a big piece of legislation,” he said last month, on par with the tree protection ordinance and changes to the city’s maritime industrial zoning. “I believe it is important that we have the time to understand the policy.
“It really upsets me to hear people say that this impacts the cost of affordable housing. We have not set a fee. … And I just really think that we’re doing a big disservice to the public by continuing to suggest that we’re making those decisions today.”—Councilmember Lisa Herbold
“I’m really frustrated that … when I ask questions, I’m being treated as if it is unreasonable,” said Mosqueda, who submitted 20 questions about the proposal back in September and said she is still waiting on responses to most of them. “These questions are coming from community. These questions are coming from people who are very interested in [ensuring] that there’s no impediment to building housing. These questions and concerns are essential for us to address and should have been addressed in a committee setting, not in the middle of budget” season, a time when the council ordinarily does not consider major legislation.
“It really upsets me to hear people say that this impacts the cost of affordable housing,” Herbold retorted. “We have not set a fee. … And I just really think that we’re doing a big disservice to the public by continuing to suggest that we’re making those decisions today.”
According to a presentation by council staff in September, the fees could add millions of dollars to the cost to build new housing and “generate between $200 million – $760 million over 10 years.” The housing developers and attorneys who stuck around to testify against the legislation (their comments limited to one minute each because it was so late in the day) said impact fees could make some of their recent projects prohibitively expensive.
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“I feel like I’m in an alternate reality when I hear a council member saying that this is not a policy change, when the comprehensive plan is actually the city’s main policy-setting document,” said McCullough Hill attorney Jessica Clawson. “Make no mistake—you’re setting policy, and again, I have never seen the council rush to make such an important policy decision—ever.”
The council will take up the proposal again next week, and is expected to vote on the amendment on November 21. It will then be up to the next city council—including a group of newcomers that does not include a single outspoken proponent for density or renters—to take action on impact fees, and to decide how much to penalize developers for building new apartments in a city with an acute housing shortage.
Editor’s note: This post was originally an item in Afternoon Fizz published on November 3.
The city of Seattle’s draft of the 10-year Comprehensive Plan update—a major revision to the plan that determines how much, and in what ways, the city will grow—has been delayed again. According to a spokesperson for the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development, the draft comp plan update, and the Draft Environmental Impact statement that lays out the impacts each option will have on the city over the coming decade, will come out sometime “in late 2023 or, more likely, early 2024.”
The delay means that the public will have less time to review, absorb, and weigh in on the five options outlined in the plan before the end of next year—the state deadline for every jurisdiction in King, Snohomish, Kitsap, and Pierce Counties to adopt an updated ten-year plan.
Originally, the city said it would release the drafts in April, but pushed that back to September over the summer.
The delay means that the public will have less time to review, absorb, and weigh in on the five options outlined in the plan before the end of next year—the state deadline for every jurisdiction in King, Snohomish, Kitsap, and Pierce Counties to adopt an updated ten-year plan.
Each option represents a different vision for the future of Seattle—from the suburban-style status quo (Alternative 2) to a city where as many as four housing units per lot are allowed everywhere (Alternative 5). “Alternative 6,” an option proposed by housing advocates that would allow more apartments all over the city, could influence the final document despite being off-the-books.
Pushing the release of draft documents into 2024 means that the new city council, which will have four, and likely five, new members, could find itself deliberating over complex planning documents while also figuring out how to close a budget shortfall of more than $200 million during the annual late-fall budget season.
Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon and City Attorney Garmon Newsom II
By Erica C. Barnett
Editor’s note: This post has been updated and re-published as an individual post due to length.
UPDATE: Although Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon told City Council members that it took him a week to notice an email from King County imposing a November 27 deadline for $1 million in homelessness funding, emails provided by King County reveal that this claim was not true.
As we reported Friday, Bailon claimed that he failed to notice an email from Deputy County Executive Shannon Braddock sent at 11:56 am on Friday, October 27, because of 150 subsequent emails about a church-based sanctioned encampment proposed the following Sunday. The nonprofit that proposed the encampment is associated with Councilmember Cydney Moore, who has opposed encampment sweeps and voted against the city’s recently-passed “camping ban.”
The email exchange shows that Bailon responded to Braddock shortly after receiving the email last month, confirming receipt of her letter about the new November 27 deadline and saying he would speak to Mayor Sofia Aragon and council members “about the timeline set for selecting a location, and deadlines established by the federal government regarding the commitment and use of ARPA funds,” and “hope[d] to have more news to share with you soon.”
Aragon (a city council member serving as mayor) was included on the email, so was presumably aware of Bailon’s response by last week. It’s unclear whether Bailon let other allies on the council know about the $1 million deadline before claiming the email was “unopened” and “lost” one week after he opened and responded to it.
This email chain directly contradicts Bailon’s claim, made in an email to the entire council and Burien’s city attorney on November 3, that “the email from Shannon Braddock went unopened and became lost until today due to the more than 150 email messages that I have received since Sunday regarding the proposed encampment at Oasis Church. I have since reviewed all unopened email message.”
Bailon, in short, opened Braddock’s message and responded to it but did not inform the full council until a full week later, then claimed he hadn’t seen the email because his inbox was jammed with messages about a proposal from a council member with whom he has frequently clashed.
We have contacted the city’s spokesperson for a response to the new information.
ORIGINAL POST:
King County has given the city of Burien a deadline of November 27 to use or lose the $1 million the county offered to build a shelter in the city back in early June.
The initial offer included 35 Pallet shelters, which can accommodate up to two people each, along with a land swap in which the county would provide garage space to a Toyota dealer who is currently renting a city-owned parking lot to store his excess inventory, and in exchange Burien would host the shelter at that site. The Burien City Council voted down that offer in July, and since then has proposed and rejected several other sites, including a spot at the end of a SeaTac airport runway that the Port of Seattle said was “not an option for any sort of residential or housing use.”
In an email to Burien councilmembers on Friday, Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon blamed his failure to open the Deputy County Executive’s message about the $1 million until today—a full week after he received it last Friday—on “the more than 150 emails I have received since Sunday regarding the proposed encampment at Oasis Church.” It’s unclear why constituent emails that started coming in on Sunday would make it impossible to open an email sent the previous Friday.
In a letter dated October 27, Deputy King County Executive Shannon Braddock told City Manager Adolfo Bailon and Mayor Sofia Aragon that while the county “appreciate[s] the City’s work to find a suitable location,” the source of the $1 million is time-limited federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds that need to be used before they expires. “[I]f the City of Burien has not identified a suitable location by November 27, 2023, we will choose to allocate this money to support homelessness response through a different process and withdraw the current offer. The new process will still allow Burien to potentially receive the funding, but is not a guarantee of funding.”
In an email to Burien councilmembers on Friday, Bailon characterized the letter as “a 30-day notice of intent to withdraw its offer.”
He also blamed his failure to open the Deputy County Executive’s message about the $1 million until today—a full week after he received it last Friday—on “the more than 150 emails I have received since Sunday regarding the proposed encampment at Oasis Church.” It’s unclear why constituent emails sent over the course of a week beginning last Sunday would make it impossible to open an email about a $1 million contribution from the county since the previous Friday.
As we reported yesterday, a nonprofit run by Burien City Councilmember Cydney Moore reached an agreement with the church to open a temporary clean and sober encampment at the church.
The city has shown that it will fast-track funding for projects that have the support of the council majority and the city manager. On Monday, as I reported this morning, Bailon signed a no-bid, contract with Discover Burien, a business group that is expected to subcontract with The More We Love—a controversial nonprofit run by a Kirkland real estate broker named Kristine Moreland—to respond to encampments in the city and “serve as [the Burien Police Department’s] primary de-escalation effort.”
On the local campaign trail this year, you can’t go to a debate without hearing multiple candidates profess their support for “Comp Plan Alternative 5″—the densest potential option currently on the table for the city’s comprehensive plan update, which will serve as a framework for Seattle’s future growth and development for the next 15 years.
It’s a kind of proxy for an urbanist (or urbanist-lite) position on development that fits neatly into a 30-second debate response: Supporting Alternative 5 signals that you support housing as dense as fourplexes (or even sixplexes!) in areas that were previously zoned exclusively for detached single-family houses—a marked departure from the bad old days when even backyard or basement apartments were a third rail for the homeowner activists who dominated the public debate over density.
We’ve expressed optimism in the past about the way the Overton Window has shifted on density and housing. This, at least, is undeniable: Polls show that Seattle residents are increasingly receptive to the idea of “more housing in my neighborhood,” and politicians have come along, including many on the left who have come to support density coupled with anti-gentrification measures, like targeted investments in affordable housing, homeownership, and preservation.
But lately, I’ve started to think that my optimism may have been misplaced. This is because while the concept of “more housing” is generally popular, the kind of housing people say they support is actually a very specific type: Modest density that looks like the rest of an existing neighborhood—the kind of inoffensive density you don’t even notice if you aren’t looking for it. Ask a moderate candidate what they mean when they talk about density in residential neighborhoods, and they’ll often describe a fourplex built about 80 years ago— the type that blends in to a single-family neighborhood because it looks an awful lot like the the single-family houses that surround it.
When pressed, candidates are often explicit about this preference. Take Maritza Rivera, running in District 4. When David Hyde, moderating a debate at Roosevelt High School, asked the candidates what they thought of a new state law that allows fourplexes in formerly exclusive single-family areas, Rivera said she supported increasing density “gradually” in a way that preserves “the character of the neighborhood… for instance, on north Capitol Hill, you can see there are some places that look like mansions, but they’re actually fourplexes.” Or Maren Costa, in District 1, who talked about creating a set of pre-approved architectural plans that homeowners could use to convert their property into a fourplex while adhering to the current neighborhood vibe.
Just look at Minneapolis, which, in 2019, made nationwide headlines as the first city to “eliminate single-family zoning” outright by allowing triplexes everywhere. Fast forward to 2023, and just 17 triplexes have been built in areas previously zoned for single-family use in Minneapolis, a blow to the idea that cities can encourage “gentle” density by gingerly increasing what’s allowed in formerly redlined neighborhoods.
It’s thoroughly unrealistic (and, I would argue, a form of creeping architectural fascism) for a big city to dictate what housing in a neighborhood must look like. But the problem goes deeper than aesthetics, and gets to the question that has been nagging me for months: Are fourplexes real? That is: If we zone the whole city to allow fourplexes everywhere, will they get built? To drill down even further: Will developers find it possible–in other words, profitable— to build four-unit rental housing developments on single-family lots?
My belief, increasingly, is that fourplexes are not a viable option for replacing single-family houses in Seattle—but apartments are. Which is why it’s time for urbanists to stop conceding this point. We have to stop settling for “plexes”—and start advocating for apartments everywhere.
This doesn’t mean allowing high-rises in Laurelhurst, or eliminating tree protections (which, by the way, are easier to follow when housing can go up instead of sprawling out). But it does mean allowing regular old apartment buildings (not “sixplexes”; not “stacked flats”) in a lot more places, and allowing taller, denser apartment buildings everywhere short, stumpy apartment buildings are currently allowed.
I’m not a developer, and I don’t pretend to have the precise zoning formula for what will pencil out for builders and actually create housing in the city, rather than just on paper. (I mean: No zoning at all works pretty well in Houston, but I’m not a lunatic. I know where I live.) What I do know is that when other cities have tried to go for modest, tentative density, it hasn’t worked out the way they hoped.
Just look at Minneapolis, which, in 2019, made nationwide headlines as the first city to “eliminate single-family zoning” outright by allowing triplexes everywhere. The city was seen as a model for the kind of modest, infill density known as “missing middle” housing, including by hopeful urbanists in Seattle. The housing advocates at the Sightline Institute, for instance, argued that by allowing triplexes, cities could start to undo the “ugly legacy of economic and racial exclusion” and break “the entrenched stranglehold of exclusionary zoning.”
Fast forward to 2023, and just 17 triplexes have been built in areas previously zoned for single-family use in Minneapolis, a blow to the idea that cities can encourage “gentle” density by gingerly increasing what’s allowed in formerly redlined neighborhoods.
One reason triplexes didn’t catch on in Minneapolis is that formerly single-family areas retained their old envelope (height and lot coverage) limitations, which means that the new three-unit buildings can’t take up much more physical space than the houses they replace. If you allow developers to build more units but don’t let them build up or out, it turns out they decide to build housing that’s more profitable—like $950,000 townhouses, or 100-unit apartment buildings in the narrow slivers of the city, generally along multi-lane arterials, where renters are mostly allowed to live. You can argue that this is developer greed or unwillingness to get creative or rapacious gentrification all you want; what matters is that this kind of housing, though now legal in Minneapolis, isn’t getting built.
Seattle is facing a similar path. Although the city hasn’t released all the details of the five comprehensive plan options yet—an environmental impact statement that will include this information has been delayed from April to November of this year—a high-level “scoping” document says that new, market-rate “plexes” will have to fit within current height and zoning limits for single-family areas, which means Seattle will likely run into the same problem as Minneapolis.
Paradoxically, if we do increase Seattle’s theoretical zoning capacity without actually increasing the amount of housing, urbanists could end up playing directly into NIMBY hands.
The city’s Mandatory Housing Affordability Program, which allows developers to build more density in small portions of formerly exclusively detached, single family homes, in exchange for building affordable housing (or paying for it elsewhere) provides a local example of what happens when the city plans for a type of development without considering whether it’s practical for developers to build.
Townhouses, which were the city’s dominant low-density development type before MHA passed in 2019, have all but dried up, shrinking from more than 1,800 permits filed in 2018 to just 165 in the first nine months of 2023. This isn’t because people weren’t buying townhouses; it’s because developers can’t make them pencil out now that they have to either build one or two affordable townhouses per four- or six-house development or pay tens of thousands of dollars in MHA fees.
On the other end of the income scale, MHA requirements effectively killed small efficiency dwelling units, or SEDUs—the housing type the city reluctantly allowed after banning microhousing, or “aPodments,” for being slightly too small for city officials’ aesthetic preferences and not having enough sinks.
Paradoxically, if we do increase Seattle’s theoretical zoning capacity without actually increasing the amount of housing, urbanists could end up playing directly into NIMBY hands. For decades, traditional neighborhood activists have argued against upzoning by pointing out that there is already “plenty of zoning capacity” in Seattle to accommodate future growth; in other words, if every parcel of land in Seattle was built out to its maximum allowable density, there would be enough housing for everyone.
Let’s stop equivocating, or using euphemisms, to describe the changes we must make in order to have any hope of being the kind of city where working people can afford to live. We need apartments where people can live—not imaginary plexes that “fit in” to our existing suburban-style neighborhoods.
The problem with this faux density argument is that capacity isn’t housing until someone builds it. Until then, it’s existing housing that people already live in—from the affordable dingbat apartment building that’s been hanging around since the 1960s to the Craftsman bungalow that could be, but hasn’t been, replaced by a triplex. This “capacity” argument has lost currency in the face of Seattle’s growing affordability crisis, as Seattle residents have generally come to accept that we probably could stand to add a bit more density. Adding more theoretical capacity—even, perhaps especially, in the absence of actual housing—will only give NIMBYs another reason to argue that Seattle has plenty of room to grow.
I’m not completely giving up hope on the possibility that Seattle may yet build more rental housing, and even affordable housing, in its traditionally single-family areas. But I am going to start looking beyond “fourplexes” and “sixplexes” as that housing solution, because I don’t believe it’s going to happen—at least, not in a way that meaningfully makes a dent in the 112,000-unit shortfall we’re expected to face over the next 21 years. Instead of “plexes,” we need apartments—and that means building densely, not tentatively, everywhere in the city.
We could start by re-legalizing small, aPodment-style apartments and bringing back single-room occupancy units—housing types that may shock the sensibilities of people who think everyone needs two sinks in their 180-square-foot microunit but that will be popular among people who don’t have a lot of stuff, or those who would otherwise be unsheltered.
So let’s stop equivocating, or using euphemisms, to describe the changes we must make in order to have any hope of being the kind of city where working people can afford to live. We need apartments where people can live—not imaginary plexes that “fit in” to our existing suburban-style neighborhoods.
1. City Council candidate Ron Davis, who frequently touts his urbanist cred (The Urbanist called him an “urbanist supervolunteer“) signed a pledge written by the U District Community Council attesting that he will never vote to upzone University Way NE, AKA The Ave, during his council tenure. Davis is running to represent District 4, which includes the University District, against Maritza Rivera, who declined to sign the pledge.
The pledge, which takes the form of a letter to Mayor Bruce Harrell and the city council, says in part:
Preserving the unique quality that small independent businesses bring to the city and maintaining a pedestrian- friendly experience on this narrow street are critical to the sustainable development of this urban center.
You will recall that both candidates for our position on the council in the previous election cycle endorsed a similar letter in support. We will follow their lead and agree to not upzone The Ave during our tenure on the council.
The Ave is a special and historic place. Preserving it provides a serious public good, directly experienced by hundreds of thousands of people every year.
Former District 4 city councilmember Rob Johnson agreed to a plan to remove the Ave from a 2017 upzone that was part of the city’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, or HALA; the upzones increased the amount of density allowed along arterial streets, where apartments were already legal, and modestly increased housing capacity in some former single-family-only areas. Neighborhood activists and small businesses rallied against upzoning the Ave, arguing that taller buildings (and more housing) in the U District’s commercial core would destroy the neighborhood’s character.
“As you know, I’m not a fan of using historic preservation style actions to create private benefits,” Davis told PubliCola. “But I’ve always thought that where preservation creates significant public benefit (in this case, preserving one of our few human scale, walkable, downtown style gathering places in Seattle) and it is open to the public, it makes sense to consider preservation if the benefits outweigh the costs.” Davis added that the rest of the city needs to be upzoned, not just commercial areas, and said downtown Ballard and Pike Place Market were similar areas that “don’t need high rises.”
Earlier this week, Davis sent out a fundraising email lambasting “the giant corporate developers (Master Builders Association) that have done so much to make Seattle expensive” for “dumping upwards of $100K on behalf of Rivera.” The Master Builders, Davis’ email continued, were the same “people who rewrote our tree legislation so it would be easier to cut down trees like Luma the Cedar in Wedgwood.”
Asked why she didn’t sign, Rivera told PubliCola, “I’m not comfortable signing a blanket pledge about this—or any other—complicated policy issue where the policy proposal’s details are unknown. As I told the UDCC, if I’m elected in November, I am committed to bringing a thoughtful approach to reviewing any proposal that is put before me.”
Earlier this week, Davis sent out a fundraising email lambasting “the giant corporate developers (Master Builders Association) that have done so much to make Seattle expensive” for “dumping upwards of $100K on behalf of Rivera.” The Master Builders, Davis’ email continued, were the same “people who rewrote our tree legislation so it would be easier to cut down trees like Luma the Cedar in Wedgwood.”
The claim puts Davis’ position squarely in line with Alex Pedersen, the District 4 incumbent who has been the most vocal opponent of new housing on the council. Pedersen was out on the fringes of the council on this issue; Davis’ mailer echoes the misleading claims Pedersen made back in May when trying to scuttle a tree protection proposal that a supermajority of the council supported.
“Luma,” the name advocates gave to a large cedar tree that a developer planned to (legally) remove to build townhouses, became a rallying point for neighborhood activists who have long opposed new housing in historically single-family areas like Wedgwood—which, as Josh pointed out last month, was originally a dense forest that was razed by white colonizers who wanted to build a new whites-only neighborhood in the area. Pedersen’s attempt to derail the long-negotiated legislation failed 6-1.
The Democrats called Councilmember Sara Nelson’s claim about people dying because Lewis did not initially vote for the bill “unintentionally misleading at best, deliberately lying at worst.”
2. The King County Democrats issued a statement on Thursday condemning District 7 council candidate Bob Kettle for an ad (which PubliCola covered last week) that includes images of encampments and features Position 8 City Councilmember Sara Nelson, who blames District 7 incumbent Andrew Lewis for causing deaths due to drug overdoses by failing to pass her original version of a bill empowering the city attorney to prosecute people for having or using drugs in public.
In the video, Nelson says, “Andrew Lewis’ decisiontoblockmydrugbillcost the lives oftoomanypeoplefromfentanyloverdose.Itrust Bob Kettletodotherightthing.”
The Democrats compared the ads to similar “Republican scare tactics” used by Sen. Patty Murray’s unsuccessful challenger Tiffany Smiley last year; Smiley’s ads included images of encampments and a boarded-up Starbucks on Capitol Hill.
“Most distressing of all is the use of individuals experiencing homelessness in Bob Kettle’s ad, likely without their consent. It is imperative that we treat all individuals with dignity, especially those experiencing homelessness who already face immense challenges. Using their struggles for political gain is not only ethically wrong but also demonstrates a shocking lack of empathy and understanding,” the Democrats said in their statement.
The Democrats called Nelson’s claim about people dying because Lewis did not initially vote for the bill “unintentionally misleading at best, deliberately lying at worst.”
3. The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office announced Thursday that it has hired an outside collision reconstruction firm, ACES, Inc., to analyze in-car and body-worn video and other materials submitted by the Seattle Police Department for the prosecutor’s felony traffic investigation into Kevin Dave, the SPD officer who struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula as he was speeding to respond to a call nearby.
According to KCPAO spokesman Casey McNerthney, the prosecutor’s office will decide whether to file charges against Dave at some point after they review the video—and, potentially, reconstruct the collision scene itself. McNerthney said the prosecutor’s office will have another update—which could, but won’t necessarily, include a charging decision—in November.
As we’ve reported, the police and fire departments initially claimed Dave was responding “as an EMT” to an overdose nearby when he struck and killed Kandula in a crosswalk, elaborating later that police need to be on scene when the fire department is reviving people who have overdosed because they can be violent. PubliCola’s reporting later revealed that the caller had not overdosed, but was lucid and waiting outside his South Lake Union apartment building when he made the 911 call. As PubliCola reported, Dave was driving 74 miles an hour and did not have his siren on when he struck Kandula on Dexter Ave., which has a 25 mph speed limit.
Urban environmentalists—that is, pro-housing groups and transit advocates—have been correctly pointing out a serious shortcoming of environmental impact statements: Environmental review has been commandeered by slow-growthers and anti-housing groups to thwart green transit projects and even modest density, such as backyard cottages.
Can we please look at the bigger picture? Adding density not only translates into a better return on infrastructure investments, such as new transit, by improving efficiency and adding riders, but it also reins in sprawl and its accompanying high-carbon commutes. Framing new housing along these lines makes one wonder why we don’t do environmental benefits statements for new development.
Unfortunately, as Erica reported on Monday, the city council is preparing to weaponize the notion of impacts yet again, amending the city’s comprehensive plan to queue up new impact fees on development. Proponents of impact fees say they would fund the new transportation infrastructure needed to accommodate new housing. The populist idea, which unites the council’s right flank (sponsor Alex Pedersen) and left flank (socialist Kshama Sawant) over their shared reactionary utopianism, is a see-through ploy to slow development—also known as housing. Developers—who you might think were manufacturing opioids, not new housing stock, given the blanket animosity they inspire—already pay sales taxes, real estate excise taxes, and Mandatory Affordable Housing fees. In fact, Pedersen’s proposal could cost developers up to four times as much as the annual property taxes on new development, according to a potential fee schedule introduced at a recent council hearing on the comprehensive plan amendment.
Instead of prescribing impact fees on new housing, the council should tax the impact of non-development by authorizing a fee on property owners who live in the vast tracts of our city, 75 percent of Seattle’s developable land, where prohibitive zoning forbids apartments. The city’s current development ban has put inflationary pressure on housing, fueling the affordable housing crisis and creating a disproportionate impact on renters and potential first-time buyers. Meanwhile, homeowner wealth grows. Between 2012 and 2022, the median cost of a house in Seattle rose from $420,000 to $1 million. During the same period, according to data from Zillow, median rents in Seattle rose from around $1,250 in 2012 to $2,350 in 2022.
Critics of new development like to point out that brand-new housing is never affordable to low- and middle-income people. But they seem to miss the fact that the developments they’re criticizing are being built now, under Seattle’s current zoning regulations—not in the up-zoned dystopia that exists in their minds. In other words: It’s the current rules against more density that are raising the price of housing, not some pro-development free-for-all.
Making new housing even more expensive by charging an impact fee for transportation (when we’re already investing in transit through several other streams) is a regressive canard, not a fair policy. Pedersen argued that impact fees could allow the city to lower the next transportation levy, reducing property taxes, but as Erica correctly pointed out, it would simultaneously harm renters by making the cost of new housing more expensive; a majority of the city, around 55 percent, rents.
The pro-housing advocacy group Sightline sent a letter to Mayor Bruce Harrell and the council last week that warned about the regressive effects of existing impact fees in Oregon, where they’re called System Development Charges. Noting that scarce housing markets are likely to make impact fees “fall on renters and new homebuyers,” Sightline cited research that concluded: “Homebuyers and renters in tight housing markets likely bear a greater share of SDC costs than landowners.”
An impact fee on non-development—as opposed to a tax on development—makes sense because you can see the harsh impact of Seattle’s restrictive, status quo zoning laws every day: Gentrification, rising rents, and development that’s clustered along busy, polluted arterial streets.
The Oregon data also concluded that fees kill development (rather than raising any money from it). Sightline’s cautionary letter to Mayor Harrell and the council goes on to argue that impact fees put a disproportionate burden on affordable housing. In Oregon, they wrote, “smaller entry-level homes, lower-cost middle housing and apartments, and communities with weaker markets are disproportionately affected by SDCs. High-end single-family detached housing is generally impacted least.”
Conversely, an impact fee on non-development—as opposed to a tax on development—makes sense because you can see the harsh impact of Seattle’s restrictive, status quo zoning every day: Rising rents; gentrification; development clustered along busy, polluted arterials (about the only place where developers can build dense housing). The regressive status quo forces renters to bear the carcinogenic brunt of the car culture that our suburban-style homeowner zoning promotes; and, because bus routes don’t pencil out in the vast majority of our low-slung city, we’re stuck with an inefficient transit system. Indeed, the best thing we could do for transit isn’t levying a tax on development, but adding more development that would support robust transit.
The council is holding its public hearing on their impact fee proposal on November 7. I agree they should pass an impact fee, but not one that exacerbates our affordable housing crisis. The council should take up the impacts of our current zoning system—the one that’s responsible for forcing people to flee the city’s overpriced housing market—and they should propose an impact fee on the deleterious impact of Seattle’s longstanding, NIMBY prohibition on building homes.
Seattle’s list of projects that impact fees could fund includes projects that have already been funded and are nearing completion.
By Erica C. Barnett
In an unusual move, City Councilmembers Lisa Herbold and Alex Pedersen persuaded a majority of their council colleagues last week to fast-track an amendment to the city’s Comprehensive Plan that would set the stage for “transportation impact fees” on new housing—fees that are based on the premise that dense, urban living causes negative impacts on the city’s transportation system.
The Comprehensive Plan is the overarching framework for planning and development decisions in Seattle. The changes the council is considering would allow transportation impact fees, “identify deficiencies in the transportation system associated with new development,” and adopt a list of projects that could be funded through such fees.
Pedersen has said fees on new housing could allow the city to reduce the size of the Seattle Transportation Levy, which is paid for by property taxes—lowering taxes for homeowners while raising the cost of new apartments for renters.
The council voted to bypass the normal process for approving changes to the comp plan, skipping Councilmember Dan Strauss’ land use committee to send the proposal directly to the full council, with a single public hearing scheduled for the council’s 2pm meeting on November 7 (coincidentally, Election Day). The council would vote on the amendment itself two weeks later, on November 21—the deadline to push the changes through this year.
Unlike MHA, in which developers fund new affordable housing in exchange for greater housing density, impact fees treat new housing as a bad thing that must be offset by fees to offset its negative impact. This anti-urbanist assumption elides the fact that the hundreds of thousands of people moving to Seattle over the coming decades are going to have to live somewhere—and that if there isn’t enough housing in the city, people, including many who can no longer afford to live in Seattle, will be pushed out into car-dependent suburbs.
Strauss, who has already scheduled a public hearing in the land use committee for November 29, protested this departure from the council’s normal procedures, noting that the city spent years deliberating over changes to industrial zoning and a tree protection ordinance, and both still need work after passing earlier this year. In addition, Strauss noted that the city’s hearing examiner has yet to issue a ruling on an appeal related to the fee proposal, which developers say would have a significant negative environmental impact—namely, it would reduce the amount of new housing in the city.
“I believe it is important that we receive the hearing examiner’s decision and have the time needed … to understand the policy” and hold a public hearing before voting the changes through, Strauss said.
Proponents of the legislation, including Herbold and Council President Debora Juarez, have minimized its impact, calling it a minor “procedural vote” with no actual policy impacts. In reality, changing the city’s Comprehensive Plan to allow impact fees is a consequential decision that could ultimately reduce the amount of housing that gets built inside city limits.
Juarez, Herbold, and Pedersen are not running for reelection and will leave the council at the end of this year.
According to a staff analysis, impact fees could bring in between $200 million and $760 million over 10 years—similar to the Mandatory Housing Affordability program the city adopted in 2019, which allowed denser development in some areas while helping to fund new affordable housing. MHA, like impact fees, was controversial, and the council held “at least 20 committee meetings” before passing it, Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda noted.
Unlike MHA, in which developers fund new affordable housing in exchange for greater housing density, impact fees treat new housing as a bad thing that must be offset by fees to offset its negative impact. This anti-urbanist assumption elides the fact that the hundreds of thousands of people moving to Seattle over the coming decades are going to have to live somewhere—and that if there isn’t enough housing in the city, people, including many who can no longer afford to live in Seattle, will be pushed out into car-dependent suburbs whose negative impacts are well-documented.
Advocates on both sides of the issue will now have just two opportunities to weigh in—once at the full councl meeting on November 7, and two weeks later, when the council is scheduled to take its final vote. Although Pedersen claimed last week that the commenters who showed up to oppose impact fees were just “paid lobbyists” who were “afraid of a public hearing,” Mosqueda argued that the accelerated schedule makes it less likely that ordinary members of the public will be able to weigh in on changes that could further depress housing development in the middle of a housing downturn.
Once the council adopts the changes to the Comprehensive Plan, they can begin the process of adopting the fees themselves. That process will almost certainly have to include additional comp plan changes, since the proposal the council is considering includes a list of projects that includes some that have already received funding—like the RapidRide G line on Madison Street, set to open next year.
Rendering for a planned building on South Jackson St. that its developer said would not have been feasible with millions of dollars in new transportation impact fees.
By Erica C. Barnett
Two city council members who have argued for years that developers who build new housing should pay large fees to compensate for their impact on the city’s transportation system may end their terms without seeing their vision realized.
Councilmembers Alex Pedersen and Lisa Herbold, who are both leaving the council at the end of this year, have proposed a change to the city’s Comprehensive Plan—the document that guides development in the city—that would dictate how transportation impact fees will be determined in the future and lay out a list of specific projects they will fund. Pedersen, who is leading the charge, wanted to hold the one required public hearing for the change last week, which would queue the changes up for later this month, but land use committee chair Dan Strauss canceled the hearing, saying last week that he wanted to wait for a ruling on a legal challenge related to the fees.
The changes to the comp plan are the second of three necessary steps required to impose the fees; the third and final step would be adopting legislation to implement the fees laid out in the plan.
Pedersen has said fees for new housing could offset the property taxes that pay for the Seattle Transportation Plan, reducing property taxes for homeowners while raising the cost of new apartments. Both property taxes and the cost to build new units ultimately get passed on to renters, but the fees would typically cost far more up front than the annual property taxes for a building, according to both developers’ testimony and PubliCola’s own comparison of actual property taxes for new developments to the fees they would pay under a fee schedule, introduced as part of the city’s defense to the developers’ challenge, which represents the maximum the city could charge for each land use type. The legislation does not include a specific fee schedule.
For example, the owners of a brand-new, 171-unit luxury apartment building called the Ballard Yards will pay about $580,000 in property taxes this year. The impact fee for that same development under the proposed fee scheme, including apartments and the first-floor retail space, would be about $2.2 million, almost four times as much. For a smaller building like the Crane, a five-year-old, 39-unit complex in Interbay, the impact fee would add $495,000 to the cost of development, compared to a little more than $100,000 in annual property taxes.
One reason Pedersen’s proposal would cost developers (and therefore renters) so much more money overall is that the fees are calculated by unit, not development—so that someone building a single-family would pay one fee, while a company building a 100-unit building would pay a separate fee for every unit.
“I’ve tracked this over the years, and every time I dig into it I leave with as many questions as I have answered,” Strauss told PubliCola. For example: “What is the potential impact on MHA? How do we marry it with our budget this year? Are these projects still the right projects?”
During last week’s land use committee meeting, public comment over the proposal was extremely divided, Strauss noted. “To see the divided room—it told me that waiting until the [Seattle] hearing examiner makes their final decision before having that official public hearing was the right choice.”
Earlier this year, the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development determined that the fees would have no significant impact on the environment under the State Environmental Policy Act, prompting a group of developers and housing advocates to file an appeal; the city’s hearing examiner held the final hearing on that appeal next week, and will announce his decision sometime in the coming weeks.
In their appeal, the developers and advocates, organized as the Seattle Mobility Coalition, said the new fees would “raise the cost of development in Seattle across the board, amounting to a tax on new housing, which will reduce housing production, increase housing costs and undermine the goals of the Mandatory Housing Affordability (“MHA”) program,” which allowed more density in certain areas in exchange for new affordable housing.
For example, Mill Creek managing director for development Meredith Holzemer said in a declaration, a 397-unit apartment complex the company is planning on South Jackson Street would cost them several million dollars in impact fees over and above the $10 million they will already pay into MHA; the extra fees, Holzemer said, “will render the project economically infeasible and it will not be constructed.”
Although the proposal would exempt housing built specifically for low-income people, that doesn’t address the situation that’s driving up the cost of housing for everyone else: Wealthy people, including newcomers who move here for high-paying tech jobs, are “bidding up” existing units that would otherwise be affordable to middle-income people, pushing up the cost of housing at every level of the market.
Basing future road usage on past behavior is always a stretch, even without a pandemic that completely upended commute patterns and reduced the amount people are driving at rush hour, possibly for the long term. To name just one very recent (and very consequential) example, the state estimated that around 130,000 people would use the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement by 2030, and used that estimate to justify building an $18 million bypass tunnel and the surface-level waterfront highway that is now under construction.
Pedersen and Herbold were quick to point out that changing the city’s Comprehensive Plan is just a precursor to adopting impact fees—one Herbold called a “small procedural step” that “is not complex” at all. In fact, amending the comp plan is a consequential process that the council sets aside time for once a year, usually rejecting a majority of the proposed amendments that come before them. Setting up a plan and project list in the city’s primary planning document isn’t some mere gesture, but a major first step toward adopting the fees themselves.
One reason Pedersen’s proposal would cost developers (and therefore renters) so much more money overall is that the fees are calculated by unit, not development—so that someone building a single-family would pay one fee, while a company building a 100-unit building would pay a separate fee for every unit. The fee for each new apartment would be a few thousand dollars less than for single-family houses or duplex units, but the overall cost would be much higher; developers would also be encouraged to stay away from single-family areas by discounts for building in already-dense urban villages. The proposed fee structure could have the effect of keeping the city’s suburban-style land use patterns the same while placing another wall around historic single-family zones—a longtime goal for Pedersen.
How could someone living in an apartment in a dense area with easy access to transit service “cost” nearly as much, in terms of negative impacts on the city’s transportation system, as someone building a new house in one of Seattle’s car-centric suburban-style neighborhoods? According to the Pedersen-Herbold amendment—which, if adopted, would become a permanent part of the city’s overarching growth strategy—the costs are based on a couple of factors.
The first is “Seattle’s expected growth in person trips over the next 12 years”—that is, how many “trips” Seattle residents will take using the overall transportation system. This measurement of “person trips” comes partly from vehicle trip estimates from the Institute of Transportation Engineers, which uses its own “trip generation manual” to estimate the number of people using the entire transportation system during the evening rush hour, and the Puget Sound Regional Council, which estimates population growth and surveys commuters on how they get around. Using these two tools, the city estimates there will be about 85,000 new rush hour trips every day by 2024, most of them by car.
Perhaps you are sensing one issue with these estimates: Basing future road usage on past behavior is always a stretch, even without a pandemic that completely upended commute patterns and reduced the amount people are driving at rush hour, possibly for the long term. To name just one very recent (and very consequential) example, the state estimated that around 130,000 people would use the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement by 2030, and used that estimate to justify building an $18 million bypass tunnel and the surface-level waterfront highway that is now under construction. When the drivers didn’t arrive—prior to the pandemic, about 53,000 people drove through the tunnel daily, a number that plummeted to 40,000 in 2020—the state’s plan to use tolls to help pay for the tunnel fell apart.
It’s worth noting that the ITE’s predictions have come under significant scrutiny because they overestimate the traffic generated by new development—and especially new apartment buildings—substantially. One comprehensive study found that the ITE overestimated the trips generated by new development, on average, by 55 percent; for new multifamily buildings, the ITE overestimated trips by 108 percent. The city, in other words, could be assuming twice as much “impact” from new apartments, simply in terms of how many new trips they generate, as they have in reality.
Of course, not all trips are created equal—a solo driver has more impact than a single person riding a bus or biking to work, for example. The city’s plan attempts to address this by measuring how much physical space people using different transportation modes take up on the road. A driver, by this measure, takes up 180 square feet of space, whereas a person biking to work takes up 22.5 square feet, so the driver has about 8 times as much impact on the overall transportation system as someone who walks to work.
It’s easy to see why this measure is somewhat silly. It’s obvious that someone driving a 6,000-pound, gas-guzzling Land Rover—or a 8,500-pound electric Rivian!—contributes far more to the state of Seattle’s roads (and traffic) than a cyclist, whose space needs and physical impact are negligible in the first case and basically nonexistent in the second. (Also, bike lanes typically use space that would otherwise be used by heavier, more impactful cars—so wouldn’t they have a positive impact?) If eight cyclists are the equivalent of one vehicle, then it makes sense to assume an apartment building where almost everyone walks or rides a bike has the same impact as dozens of new lawn-locked single-family houses with two or three vehicles in the driveway.
And, of course, these estimates all assume that every new person has only a negative impact on the transportation system and the environment—ignoring the many positive impacts of living in the city rather than commuting into Seattle by car from a highway-dependent suburb.
Pedersen and Herbold have tried to rush their impact fee proposal through while they’re still on the council—an acknowledgement, perhaps, that this isn’t a priority for other elected officials. None of the people running for open council seats have identified impact fees as a campaign issue, and it’s possible, perhaps likely, that if the proposal doesn’t go forward this year, it will die from lack of interest.
But there are some pretty significant reasons not to push forward with a fee proposal before the end of the year. First of all, it’s pretty clear that the proposal is a bit half-baked. The list of projects the fee would help fund was developed by then-councilmember Mike O’Brien back in 2018, and it’s showing its age. The list includes some projects that have already been fully funded—the bus-rapid transit project on Madison Street, for example—and others that may now be outdated or lower-priority. In theory, the city could enshrine the project list in its comprehensive plan and then amend it list later, but why adopt a major change to the city’s growth plan without a public discussion of the projects a new impact fee would fund?
It’s debatable, for example, whether renters who live in a new building on Capitol Hill ought to be paying directly for improvements for freight trucks driving on East Marginal Way, which is one of many road improvements on the list of projects ostensibly impacted by new housing. And, as Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda noted last week, it’s unclear whether the project list represents an equitable distribution of improvements around the city, relative to the equity impacts of adding to the cost of housing in areas that may desperately need it.
“I want to make sure that… we look closely at whether or not there is an a disproportionate impact on equity or [Race and Social Justice Initiative issues that our city closely monitors” before adopting impact fees, said Mosqueda, who submitted a list of about a dozen questions about the proposal to the council’s central staff. “I understand the comments that were made” by Pedersen and Herbold “about how [outreach for this proposal includes] every stakeholder that has informed the pedestrian, bike, and transit plans, but that does not equal to me an RSJI equity analysis for this specific proposal.”
Indeed, Pedersen has waved aside concerns about outreach and engagement on his fee proposal by repeatedly pulling up a pie chart, based on undisclosed data, showing that 75 percent of people his office surveyed supported the proposal. Here it is:
Convincing, right?
Beyond the dubious project list, Pedersen and Herbold are trying to move the new fees forward at a pace they would never have allowed a proposal like MHA, which allowed slightly more density in exchange for new fees to fund affordable housing. Herbold, in fact, pushed for more process and deliberation before passing MHA (which she ultimately supported), and Pedersen made opposition to the program a centerpiece of his campaign for office, later hiring a homeowner activist who repeatedly sued the city to stop MHA as his legislative assistant. MHA went through years of deliberation before it even came before the council, followed by months of meetings and extensive outreach to every neighborhood in the city.
In contrast, Pedersen has made it clear he hoped to pass the comprehensive plan amendment, setting up a process to quickly pass impact fees, in the course of a couple of weeks. Now that that won’t happen, it will be up to the council to decide whether to consider the plan before he and Herbold leave. If the hearing examiner comes back with a ruling quickly, and sides with the city, Pedersen will have to provide 30 days’ notice of a new public hearing, which would push the proposal well into the period when the council will be debating the 2024 budget.
If the council decides it’s too busy with the budget to add changing the comprehensive plan to their schedule, it would push the debate into next year, when there’s a distinct possibility that no one will be motivated to bring it up again. Currently, housing construction is on a downward trajectory, thanks in no small part to the city’s slow permitting process, with just 441 master use permits last year compared to 975 in 2015.
Recently, the Puget Sound Business Journal announced that developer Barrientos Ryan backed out of plans to build a 300-unit “workforce housing” development along 15th Ave. W in Interbay, citing new requirements from the city that added more than $1 million in unanticipated costs. Instead of housing, the property will now be home to 20 new pickleball courts.
Source: Museum of History & Industry, Seattle (MOHAI), via Historylink
by Josh Feit
In a headline-making standoff this summer, residents of the Wedgwood neighborhood were able to thwart a developer who planned to replace a single family home with two three-unit buildings. Under heat from the community, the developer relented and turned one of the planned three-townhouse buildings into a single unit instead, shrinking the number of housing units by a third.
The effort, waged by Wedgwood tree canopy advocates who objected to the developers’ plans to cut down a cedar tree, got an assist from the Snoqualmie Tribe, which weighed in with a letter to the city arguing that the tree was a historic culturally modified tree.
I’m glad the Snoqualmie Tribe got involved in great tree debate. Not because their plea to spare the tree—which Wedgwood activists named Luma—may have helped save the massive cedar, but because it opens the discussion to looking back at what Wedgwood was like a century or more ago. And this is where my disagreement with canopy ideologues starts.
According to HistoryLink, Wedgwood used to be a sylvan paradise of “dense forest” crisscrossed with trails. After the forest was clear-cut, white newcomers transformed the area into farmland and then, in 1941, into a new whites-only neighborhood called Wedgwood. Today, Wedgwood is made up mostly of single-family houses with lawns and zoned “neighborhood residential”—part of the 75 percent of Seattle’s developable land where apartments are banned.
Now that all those trees have been replaced with single-family housing, anti-development voices, such as city council member Alex Pedersen—who tried and failed to drastically expand a new tree protection ordinance by using tree protection as an unsubtle proxy for anti-development rules— present themselves as righteous tree advocates.
I know it’s a gotcha to point out that single-family development is the original anathema of tree cover, but it’s a meaningful gotcha. It reveals the hypocrisy at the core of the NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard) that still governs our city today: Now that I’ve got mine, I’m not going to let anyone else have theirs.
Seattle Daily Times, July 6, 1941
The added irony, and frustration, is that dense development—that is, more units on individual lots, as opposed to one single-family house per lot—ultimately supports more trees in more spaces. For example, if everyone living in Capitol Hill, one of the densest zones in the city (with more than twice as much density—20,000 people per square mile—than Wedgwood) stretched out into single-family living, there would be little room for green spaces like Volunteer Park and the Arboretum that serve the neighborhood. Indeed, Council District 3—with Capitol Hill at is core—has the second highest canopy cover in the city, at 32 percent; the city’s goal is 30 percent citywide.
I live on Capitol Hill. Specifically, I live in a Neighborhood Commercial-55 zone (one of the city’s denser designations, where five-story mixed-use buildings are allowed) and my immediate neighborhood is an emerald wonderland.
Sure, as the 2021 City of Seattle Tree Canopy Assessment Final Report found, “neighborhood residential” (formerly “single-family”) zones had more tree cover (34 percent on average) than multifamily areas (23 percent). But this highlights yet another hypocritical cornerstone of the NIMBY reality. Their roomy neighborhoods leave space for more greenery and tree growth because they rely on multifamily zones to provide an offset. Multifamily zones are packed tight as part of a cohesive zoning plan to work in tandem with the adjacent commercial hubs and transit-friendly arterials. Adding more of these dynamic, walkable housing and commercial hubs to our city’s zoning map would preserve more trees in the long run because it accommodates sustainable growth as opposed to sprawling growth.
In other words, the only reason less dense areas have more canopy is because they’ve confined the kind of development that makes the city workable to a paltry portion of the city as a whole. If our city wasn’t growing and housing wasn’t scarce, this status quo might be sustainable. But as Seattle rapidly approaches a population of 800,000, we need to make more room for more housing adjacent to stores, transit, restaurants, arts, and services. Given that building densely ends up preserving more space for trees, this city needs more multi-family zones, not fewer, if it wants to meet its 30 percent canopy goal.
Using tree canopy as a cover story to prohibit additional density actually threatens existing canopy because growing outward obliterates more trees than it saves. In this context, by saving one tree, but stalling more housing, the tree activists scored little more than a Pyrrhic victory in Wedgwood.
Certainly, two wrongs—knocking down more trees in Wedgwood on top of what we clear-cut a century ago—don’t make a right. But enacting a hardline tree protection ordinance, which now seems to be the conventional takeaway from the Wedgwood tree saga, is also a wrong, and a graver one. Instituting an inflexible prohibition against much-needed housing development is simply a way for people in single-family neighborhoods to reject new residents.
This example—downsizing from six planned units to four—might not seem like a major loss of housing, but if neighborhoods across the city are able to decrease housing developments by a third every time a developer tries to build in-fill multifamily housing, the losses will add up fast. Conversely, allowing greater housing flexibility in the areas where more new housing is needed—the core idea of YIMBYism (Yes In My Backyard)—would serve the greater good. It would also, ultimately, save more trees.
The pledge, which takes the form of a letter to Mayor Bruce Harrell and the city council, says in part:
