Category: Development

City Council, Development

Audit Reveals Widespread Ethical Concerns About the City Department that Oversees Construction, Permitting, and Landlord-Tenant Law
A crane against Seattle’s downtown skyline. A new audit spotlights concerns from city employees about potential conflicts of interest and preferential treatment at the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.
Photo by Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Erica C. Barnett

Earlier this year, the Seattle city auditor released a report that raised serious concerns about ethics and culture at the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, which issues building and construction permits, conducts most of the inspections associated with building and construction, and enforces the city’s landlord-tenant laws, including the rental housing inspection ordinance, among many other responsibilities.

The audit, conducted at the behest of City Council land use committee chair Dan Strauss, was supposed to focus on the byzantine permitting process itself—a frequent source of complaints from developers and homeowners trying to keep projects on schedule.

But as the auditors talked to SDCI employees, they kept hearing similar concerns about potential ethical issues within the department: Managers with second jobs advising developers on the permitting process in nearby cities. Supervisors who pushed employees to approve or expedite projects for big developers, particularly those represented by the Master Builders Association, while allowing smaller projects to languish. Employees with spouses, children, and other close relatives working in the department—including at least one whose family owns multiple rental properties across the city.

In all, about 30 percent of the people the auditor’s office interviewed raised concerns related to ethics or equity in permitting, prompting the auditors to expand the scope of their report.

“There are reasons why you prioritize one project over another, but there should be a good reason, it should be transparent, and everyone should be able to see it—and it’s more opaque [in SDCI] than then we have liked,” City Auditor David Jones told PubliCola. “All we can say to SDCI management is, ‘Some of your employees, a decent number of them, have these concerns—so we should do something about it.'”

The auditors didn’t find any wrongdoing or legal violations by SDCI staff, who are required by the city’s ethics code to avoid conflicts of interest and report potential conflicts to their supervisors. (Wayne Barnett, the head of the city’s Ethics and Elections Commission, said he was unaware of any cases in which an SDCI employee was accused of breaking the ethics law).

However, the audit did find a “lack of consistency” and transparency in how permits get processed and prioritized as well as a lack of internal ethics policies for issues specific to SDCI, which could lead to ethical issues going unaddressed.

“The major players have been in power for decades, and they can call the SDCI Director, Mayor, and Council members to get their projects expedited,” an interviewer summarized one staffer’s remarks. “Those favored by the existing power structure (older white men) can take advantage of workarounds for the permitting process, to the detriment of those with less experience (who may also be bipoc communities).”

“As part of our audit, we did not investigate these concerns to the extent necessary to substantiate them,” the report notes. “SDCI should consider… an internal ethics policy to address situations that are unique to SDCI’s work environment” along with ongoing ethics training.

Many SDCI employees told auditors they believed the Master Builders Association—a trade association for local developers—gets special treatment and access to the department, while less-established developers and builderd, including many small and BIPOC businesses, have little direct access to SDCI staff.

PubliCola obtained hundreds of pages of the auditors’ interview notes through a public disclosure request.

“The major players have been in power for decades, and they can call the SDCI Director, Mayor, and Council members to get their projects expedited,” an interviewer summarized one staffer’s remarks. “Those favored by the existing power structure (older white men) can take advantage of workarounds for the permitting process, to the detriment of those with less experience (who may also be bipoc communities).”

During a land use committee meeting last week, SDCI director Nathan Torgelson said the department meets with many groups, including the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber, the Downtown Seattle Association, and affordable housing developers. “We, for a long time, met with BIPOC developers who are going through the design review process on how we can better serve that constituency,” Torgelson said.

One developers’ attorney confirmed that big developers, who pay significantly more in permitting fees for their large, complicated projects, can “get things done faster if you actually talk to the right people” in the department. In an environment where permitting, design review, and other delays can slow housing projects by months or years, this kind of access prevents projects from being “glacial,” the attorney said.

However, this also means that a homeowner trying to add two units to their property may have little recourse when a code reviewer sends over correction after correction, adding time and expense to a routine project. “What they need to do is get rid of the codes that are unreadable and get rid of the procedures that are not written down anywhere,” the attorney continued. “As we get into the middle-housing stuff, there’s going to be a lot of  small builders out there that are not going to have any idea” how to navigate the process.

SDCI employees brought up this disparity in their interviews with the audit team, noting that when established developers get to jump to the front of the line, that can have race and social justice implications. “Those favored by the existing power structure (older white men) can take advantage of workarounds for the permitting process, to the detriment of those with less experience (who may also be bipoc communities),” one employee told the auditors.

“If you are a large developer, you know the game, the rules, what managers and directors will bend to you to get your project through,” another said, according to the audit notes. “If a developer that knows the system well needs a 15-minute phone call, but a bipoc first time applicant needs a 4-hour meeting, why should the person needing extra help be charged more [for the extra time]?”

“The big developers know and feel comfortable contacting SDCI leadership and asking for their projects to be completed more quickly,” another staffer said. “SDCI leadership will often ask staff to prioritize certain projects over others based on these interactions. …SDCI staff know that those monthly meetings [with the Master Builders Association, or MBA] ‘do not end well for staff,’ because they are often asked to change something based on MBA requests.”

SDCI employees told PubliCola that managers frequently told them to expedite permits based on no specific criteria, bumping larger builders above dozens of other projects. When this happened recently, one employee they told their manager that “’in the interest of equity, we’re supposed to go through our queue [in order], and this person is 98 down in. Why are they getting fast tracked?’ These conversations get killed,” the employee said

Many SDCI employees have second jobs in development, housing, or consulting—a practice that’s allowed under the city’s ethics code, as long as a city worker’s outside employment doesn’t directly conflict with their government job. This includes running a firm that helps private developers sail through the permitting process in other cities—as long as the SDCI employee doesn’t do business in Seattle, the city has allowed this kind of outside employment.

The auditors didn’t attempt to substantiate the issues SDCI’s employees raised related to compliance with the city’s ethics standards, many of which would be hard to prove. “We really wanted to avoid being in a position where we were evaluating whether something was ethical or not, because we’re not experts in the code, and we don’t have authority to do so,” assistant city auditor Melissa Alderson, who co-authored the report,” told PubliCola.

But interviews with current and former department staff, along with the notes from auditors’ interviews with staff, show a widespread concern among staff that many of the department’s longstanding practices are out of touch with modern ethical standards.

For example, many SDCI employees have second jobs in development, housing, or consulting—a practice that’s allowed under the city’s ethics code, as long as a city worker’s outside employment doesn’t directly conflict with their government job. This includes running a firm that helps private developers sail through the permitting process in other cities—as long as the SDCI employee doesn’t do business in Seattle, the city has allowed this kind of outside employment.

“The city’s ethics code says secondary employment is allowed at the city, but [it also says] that when your ability to remain impartial comes into question, like when a reasonable person would question your ability to remain impartial, then that’s when you need to have a conversation with the ethics office, with your supervisor, and figure out what needs to occur, whether that’s disclosure or removing yourself from that situation,” Alderson said.

SDCI employees brought up several examples of managers, including division-level supervisors, who hold this kind of second job. Andy Lunde, the emergency response manager in SDCI’s engineering services division, owns a company called Lunde Code Consulting that teaches classes on the state building code in the Washington Association of Building Officials’ code accreditation program.

“To address potential conflicts of interest, I maintain strict separation between my professional activities and consulting services, and the roles held by my father and brother at SDCI,” Lunde said, a reference to the fact that his father, Al Lunde, and his brother, Larry Lunde, both work in SDCI’s building inspections division.

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Al Lunde did not respond to questions, and SDCI’s communications manager, Bryan Stevens, sent a warning to staffers not to talk to reporters shortly after PubliCola started reporting this piece.

Lunde’s boss, engineering services director Andy Higgins, has his own firm—CA Higgins Companies, Inc.—that, according to Higgins’ LinkedIn, helps “local governments effectively enforce, and private entities creatively comply with, the construction codes adopted in Washington State and the surrounding Cascadia Region through Plan Review, Code Consulting, Management Consulting and other Professional Services.” Higgins is also the president of WABO.

Contacted by email, Higgins said his firm “has actually been dormant for many years,” adding that he used to conduct plan review for “a few” cities outside Seattle.  “I have also provided technical support for design professionals unsure of how to address a specific building code issue. I have not obtained permits on behalf of anyone in those jurisdictions,” Higgins said.

Several SDCI employees mentioned other close familial relationships among SDCI employees, including at least two married couples who work in the department, which some employees argued could give them an advantage when seeking promotions or reassignments.

Al Lunde has another business that directly intersects with SDCI’s mission: He’s a landlord who owns several buildings across Seattle, including single-family houses, a six-unit apartment building, and an apartment complex in West Seattle that has been the subject of several complaints from tenants. (Members of the Lunde family own other rental properties in and around Seattle, including vacant and formerly vacant buildings that have also elicited complaints from neighbors over junk storage and alleged break-ins).

Dan Strauss, the council member who originally ordered the audit, said the ethical concerns that emerged in the report “were a surprise to me.” Given the lack of ethical requirements specific to SDCI, he said, “there may be employees engaged in behavior… that, to an everyday person, seems unethical, but is not [technically] unethical because there is not a policy in place.”

Over the years for instance, tenants at Lunde’s building in West Seattle have complained about black mold, broken sinks, holes in the ceiling, missing smoke detectors, and other issues, prompting the city to issue multiple citations. Although publicly available inspection records don’t provide details about how most issues at the West Seattle complex or a smaller building in Ballard were resolved, it’s worth noting that SDCI oversees landlord-tenant law, including citations and inspections in response to tenant complaints.

SDCI does not have its own code of ethics, and employees aren’t required to disclose “the appearance of conflict or impaired judgment for non-financial matters,” according to the audit report. Nor does the department have an anonymous channel for employees to register ethical concerns. Instead, the department follows the city’s general ethics code, which requires certain managers and supervisors to file annual financial disclosure statements. According to the auditor’s report, “over half of the managers and one director had not completed the form.”

Documents obtained through a records request show that 44 SDCI employees had filled out the form, a simple, four-item checklist that asks about financial interests inside the city, including real-estate ownership. A review of responses showed that all but 16 of those 44 answered “no” to all four questions indicating that most had done no business with the city in the last year and did not own any real estate inside the city, including a primary residence.

Strauss, the council member who originally ordered the audit, said the ethical concerns that emerged in the report “were a surprise to me.” Given the lack of ethical requirements specific to SDCI, he said, “there may be employees engaged in behavior that I, Dan Strauss, would not engage in because I try to stay 10 feet about the ethical line … behavior that, to an everyday person, seems unethical, but is not [technically] unethical because there is not a policy in place.”

The audit report includes 11 recommendations, including several that touch on the ethical concerns raised by employees and people outside the department. (While most of the recommendations are about making SDCI’s processes clearer, faster, and more transparent, several of the process-related recommendations overlapped with the issues employees brought up as potential ethical concerns.)

Those recommendations included adopting an SDCI-specific code of ethics; addressing racial disparities in permitting and barriers to access for small developers, including those who don’t speak English or require in-person services; providing more transparency into how the department prioritizes projects; and giving applicants more opportunities to talk directly with reviewers instead of interacting exclusively through the department’s official online system.

SDCI director Nathan Torgelson told PubliCola, “SDCI has already reviewed and revised several policies related to the Financial Interest Statement process and are working with the Office of Ethics & Elections on additional staff trainings,” which—according to the audit—have not taken place for several years.

“Also, in the next couple of months we will be moving forward on planned customer service enhancements and feedback tools.” At a recent meeting of the city council’s land use committee, Torgelson said. SDCI has also published its prioritization criteria on its website—something several employees recommended in their conversations with the audit team.

Strauss, who chairs the land use committee, said he was encouraged by the department’s response to the audit, but wanted to see progress on some of its promises. “If a nail salon can’t get a tenant improvement permit, that means we are creating a vacant storefront, that means we are putting someone’s personal capital on the line, that means that commerce is not occurring,” Strauss said. “So it is important for groups across the city to have that access and that there is not preferential treatment.”

City Council, Density, Development, housing

Pedersen Plan Would Require State Approval to Remove Any Tree Larger than 12 Inches

 

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.”

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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.

City Council, Density, Development, housing

Council Holds Lone Public Hearing on Legislation to Allow “Impact Fees” on New Housing

By Erica C. Barnett

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.”

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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.

Density, Development

City Delays Release of Draft Comprehensive Plan Update Until “Likely” Next Year

By Erica C. Barnett

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.

Density, Development, homelessness, housing, King County, land use

Use $1 Million in Shelter Funding We Offered or Lose It, County Tells Burien

 

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.”

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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.”

Affordability, Density, Development, housing, Opinion

Are Fourplexes Real?
A historic 1911 fourplex in Portland, OR

By Erica C. Barnett

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.”

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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.

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.