Category: housing

Affordability, City Council, housing

Debate Over Affordable Housing Tax Break Heats Up
City Councilmember Sara Nelson said expanding eligibility for tax-exempt housing will benefit moderate-income renters.

By Erica C. Barnett

As the Seattle City Council prepares to update a program that gives tax breaks to developers who set aside apartments for low- and moderate-income renters, opponents of the changes called them a giveaway to developers for housing that will still leave its residents burdened by excessive rents. Proponents, including Habitat for Humanity and for-profit developers, said the changes would make it feasible for them to build affordable housing at a time when development of all kinds is slowing across the city.

The 12-year tax exemption program, called the Multifamily Tax Exemption or MFTE, currently has to be renewed every four to five years. The most recent renewal, in 2019, imposed new affordability requirements and restrictions on rent increases—making higher-income renters ineligible to rent MFTE units and imposing a 4.5 percent annual cap on rent increases, among other changes.

The latest iteration, known as “Program 7,” would bump up the cap on annual increases to as much as 10 percent a year and make higher-income renters eligible for some units, a change opponents say will make MFTE apartments unavailable to lower-income tenants.

Earlier this week, two dozen affordable housing providers and advocacy groups sent an open letter to the mayor and council objecting to the proposed changes, arguing that if the council approves them, “the purpose of the MFTE program would no longer be to ‘increase affordable multifamily housing opportunities … for households who cannot afford market-rate housing in Seattle,’ and would instead focus on increasing multifamily development in exchange for a modest share of MFTE units and no guarantee of rents meaningfully lower than market rate.”

At a meeting of the council’s housing committee on Wednesday—where the committee also took up 14 amendments aimed at various aspects of the program—renters’ rights advocates urged the city to reject the proposal and keep the existing program in place another year while the city comes up with a more equitable plan. (The MFTE update has already been delayed twice, and expired yesterday.)

Miram Roskin, the former deputy director of the city’s Office of Housing, said the program removes about $20 million in “invisible” dollars from the city’s budget every year in the form of foregone property taxes, in exchange for very limited benefits for lower-income renters.

“At the margin, there are certainly financially feasible, on the bubble projects that benefit and come to fruition thanks to the tax exemption. However, this is speculative. It is unquantified, it’s anecdotal. This is why the affordability component of the program matters so much,” Roskin said. “In many cases, rents would be indistinguishable from the market. And in fact, in some cases, the affordable rent would even be higher than the market [rent].”

For example, under the new proposal, renters making up to 50 percent of Seattle’s median income would be eligible to rent small studios (less than 320 square feet); the proposal bumps up the maximum rent for these units to $1,375 a month, just $91 less than the median similar apartments rent for on the private market. The maximum rent for a standard one-bedroom would increase to $2,209, or about $395 less than market rent.

Median incomes, and—indirectly—maximum rents are set by a federal formula that includes both homeowners and renters. The Seattle Renters Commission called out this issue in its own letter opposing the new program, noting that the median Seattle renter makes around $79,000, compared to about $181,000 for homeowner households.

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Developers, in contrast, said they the current standards have made them opt out of the tax exemption program, and argued that the changes would spur them to build more affordable apartments at a time when building permits have slowed down dramatically, a trend that will likely make Seattle’s housing crunch significantly worse over the next several years.

“We are evidence that the program currently is not working,” Kamiak Real Estate founder Scott Lien told the committee. “We rescinded our MFTE applications on four of our last five projects prior to occupancy, and now we have six buildings with 1,100 units in our pipeline, and have no plans to participate in MFTE for most of those” under the current program.

Developers also argued that the MFTE program was never designed to provide housing to low-income residents, but is supposed to create “workforce” housing for moderate-income renters.

A 2024 University of Washington study found that the MFTE program does cost the city money every year, but noted that developers won’t use the program if they can’t make a profit. The study also found that the city has historically seen a benefit of about 50 cents on the dollar, in the form of lower rents, over the life of the program, except under the most recent iteration, where rents decreased and the benefit to the city increased more dramatically.

Over the life of the program, which began in 1998, developers have built more than 7,000 affordable housing units, mostly studios and one-bedrooms, but those lower rents “may only represent a modest discount” compared to the rest of the market, the UW study found. Apartments in areas where rents are already higher, like South Lake Union, are more affordable relative to other available units than they are in areas where rents are lower, like South Park or Rainier Beach, where “there may be negligible differences between the rents of restricted and unrestricted units.”

“Some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city,” the study notes, have been categorically exempt from MFTE because they’re zoned for single-family houses. Given that most MFTE units are in three-to-five-story apartment buildings, this isn’t likely to change much, even with zoning changes that allow between four and six units per lot in these areas.

Several of the 14 amendments councilmembers introduced Wednesday would lower the income eligibility thresholds for various types and sizes of apartments, prompting Council President Sara Nelson to object that new affordability restrictions could force renters out of their homes. “We don’t want to be displacing people,” Nelson said. Making people who make more money eligible for MFTE units, she added, “means more access, not higher prices.”

Although a central staffer assured Nelson that the program has a “grace” component that lets existing tenants stay in their homes as their income rises (under the program, existing renters retain their rent discounts until their income rises to 150 percent of the eligibility level, and pay market rent after that), Nelson raised the exact same objection a moment later.

“There are people already living in these units, so what’s going to happen to them if you lower the income per unit? Then the person’s going to have to move out. … I feel like this is going to displace people and in fact that’s what happened to my friend.”

Councilmembers also proposed amendments to allow developers with projects already in the pipeline to opt in to the new, more developer-friendly program, a change the housing advocacy groups called “a bad deal for Seattle” in their open letter. Other amendments would require regular reporting on which developers are participating in the program and what kind of housing they’re building, and reinstate a sunset clause that would require the city to update the program again in 2029, which the original legislation eliminated. Rob Saka, the cosponsor of the sunset amendment along with Alexis Mercedes Rinck, said revisiting the program regularly was a matter of good governance.

“Deleting a sunset date whatsoever, in perpetuity, for something of this significance, and greater scale, and subject to fluctuating market conditions—I don’t know if it’s the best, most appropriate, prudent course of action,” Saka said.

Another amendment sought by developers, from Mark Solomon, would eliminate the requirement that developers who are replacing older, “naturally affordable” housing with (typically denser) new MFTE units add one new unit that’s permanently affordable to renters making 50 percent of median income to their new buildings for every tenant in the demolished building who qualifies for relocation assistance under the city’s Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance. Developers argue that this permanent affordability requirement has stopped the development of dense new housing under the MFTE program.

Councilmember Debora Juarez complained that the 14 amendments (including one that was so new it didn’t show up on the council’s online agenda) had been “dropped on us” at the last minute, with little time to analyze or understand them. The committee didn’t vote on the proposed changes; they’ll do that on September 22, with a full council vote likely on September 30.

City Council, housing, Taxes

City Plans Major Overhaul of Affordable Housing Tax-Break Program
An MFTE building, Mad Flats, on Capitol Hill

By Erica C. Barnett

The city is getting ready to overhaul a program that provides tax breaks to developers who agree to keep 25 percent of their apartments affordable for 12 years (or 20 percent if 8 percent of the units are two-bedroom), known as the Multifamily Tax Exemption program (MFTE). It’s the city’s main program for providing housing affordable to moderate-income people; as of November 2024, according to a University of Washington evaluation of the program, there were nearly 7,000 income-restricted units in Seattle as a direct result of MFTE tax breaks

The MFTE program has been overhauled several times in its 27-year existence; the current program, known as “Program 6,” has been in place since 2019. In that update, the City Council imposed a cap on rent increases of 4.5 percent a year and reduced the maximum income for eligibility, opening up the program for lower-income renters.

While those changes made more people eligible for MFTE units, they also made developers less likely to participate in the voluntary program. As construction costs ballooned starting in 2019, market rents in Seattle softened, making MFTE units less competitive with the market–and the program less appealing to developers who might otherwise participate in it.

According to the UW study, “The City of Seattle has a difficult responsibility to calibrate the relationship between the costs of the program (benefit to developers) and the public benefits it delivers (more affordable housing). As the City pushes for greater public benefits, the program becomes less attractive to developers. This is the central tension.”

The proposed update, known as “Revised Program 7” to distinguish it from an earlier proposal that came out of the city’s Office of Housing, would set new (generally higher) rent and income limits for most of the affordable units created under the MFTE program, adjusting eligibility standards so that the program would be geared toward people earning between 40 percent of Seattle’s median income for the smallest units to 90 percent—about $113,000 for a two-person household—for two-bedrooms.

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Updating the tax-break program has been fairly uncontroversial so far—somewhat surprisingly so, given some council members’ recent opposition to other proposals that would encourage new housing, such as density increases in the comprehensive plan, on the grounds that they aren’t tailored to very low-income people.

It may help that the council’s most vocal opponent of such measures, Cathy Moore, is off the council and no longer chairs the Housing and Human Services Committee, which discussed the legislation last week. During public comment at last week’s housing and human services committee, just one speaker vociferously opposed the proposed changes to the program: Longtime Phinney Ridge neighborhood activist Irene Wall, who argued that MFTE was “a failed program” that served too few people for the amount it costs homeowners like herself in additional taxes.

“The Office of Housing spent months trying to figure out what to do with this program,” Wall said. “They asked tenants if they like their rent reductions in their new buildings, but there was no outreach to any of the taxpayers who are funding this graft. Why are the taxpayers not considered equal stakeholders in this scheme?”

Overall, a median homeowner in Seattle spends $145 a year in property taxes to offset the taxes developers who participate in the program don’t pay in exchange for providing affordable housing.

Council President Sara Nelson, who has frequently beat the drum for more “workforce” housing, called MFTE “a program that’s extremely important because it it makes it easier to build housing across the board.”

The proposal would also replace a 4.5 percent annual cap on rent increases with the statewide rent cap (which doesn’t currently apply to MFTE buildings) of 7 percent plus inflation or 10 percent, whichever is smaller. Separate from the legislation, Office of Housing director Maiko Winkler-Chin told the council that OH is simplifying the income verification process for renters, which can require prospective tenants to fill out a lengthy, complex application for each MFTE unit they apply to rent.

“The city doesn’t have any program that supports workforce housing besides MFTE, really, for rental units,” Nelson said. “And that, I would say, is the greatest need because of the sheer numbers of people that fall within the category.”

The council, which is currently on its annual two-week summer recess, has until September 3 to propose amendments—for example, adjusting the maximum income levels so that higher-income renters are ineligible for the program—in advance of the next meeting to discuss the program on September 10.

City Council, Elections, housing, podcasts, Taxes

This Week on PubliCola: August 10, 2025
The crowd begins to gather at Mayor Bruce Harrell’s party early on Election Night

A huge election upset led this packed week, which included two podcasts (plus two-thirds of Seattle Nice on KUOW!)

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, August 4

New Forecast Reduces City’s Projected Revenue Shortfall to $150 Million

Seattle’s latest revenue forecast, which will form the basis of the 2026-2027 biennial budget, reduced the. city’s projected two-year budget shortfall from around $240 million to about $150 million. The city’s revenue forecasters used a more optimistic model than the April forecast.

Seattle Nice: Seattle Sues Trump, Camping Ban Proposed, Business Tax Hike Heads to Ballot

On the first of two Seattle Nice episodes this week, we discussed the broader implications of a proposed ballot initiative that would make it illegal to fall asleep outdoors in unincorporated King County, a Seattle ballot measure to raise business and occupation taxes to pay for housing stability and human services, and a lawsuit filed by City Attorney Ann Davison, a Republican who’s struggling to retain support, over a seven-month-old Trump executive.

Tuesday, August 5

Business Tax Will Be on November Ballot, Despite Council Objections Over Spending “Buckets”

The city council approved the business and occupation tax proposal for the November ballot, overcoming objections from some councilmembers that it shouldn’t be dedicated to any specific purpose, but instead should go toward any current or future general-fund purpose elected officials decide they want to fund. In general, voters approve taxes for specific purposes, and there is no recent precedent for sending a blank-check tax measure to the ballot.

In Anti-Incumbent Rout, Progressive Candidates Lead In All Local Races

This week’s local elections represented a massive rebuke of the people elected in the wake of COVID and the 2020 protests against police brutality. Across the board in Seattle, progressive candidates were leading big, from Katie Wilson (running against Mayor Bruce Harrell) to Erika Evans (headed for victory against Davison).

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Thursday, August 7

Council Amendments to Comprehensive Plan Reveal Competing Priorities

City councilmembers have proposed more than 100 amendments to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s much-delayed Comprehensive Plan update, which only deals with neighborhood residential (former single-family) zoning. Some amendments would further shrink the size of neighborhood centers—small nodes of potential future density—while others would expand them and create new incentives for housing.

Seattle Nice: Election Results Emergency Edition!

On this week’s second edition of the podcast, we debated what’s behind the shift toward progressive candidates this year. I argued that it’s a combination of people’s desire to have people in office who’ll fight Trump policies that impact Seattle and a rejection of politicians who’ve prioritized cracking down on minor crimes over solving the affordability crisis; Sandeep says voters are reflexively “lurching to the left” because of Trump, not any specific local issues.

Friday, August 8

Another Tree Petition, Another Council Staff Departure, and Another Round of Election Results

A petition to “save the trees” is more blatantly misleading than usual, as the trees in question aren’t threatened by the development people are protesting. Maritza Rivera can’t seem to keep staff for more than six months. And the latest election results put Katie Wilson at 50.2 percent to Harrell’s 41.7, while Ann Davison and City Council President Sara Nelson lost ground too: The two incumbents have 33.8 percent and 35.8 percent of the vote, respectively.

City Council, Elections, housing, podcasts

Another Tree Petition, Another Council Staff Departure, and Another Round of Election Results
Google image of the site before demolition; the “million dollar house” is the white house in foreground, with the closest tree to the property visible on the right.

1. More than 400 people have signed a Change.org petition imploring the city to “Save Three Sisters Park in Ballard,” which the petition page describes as “a trio of trees that must be over 100 years old” that, the petition claims, are now threatened by development.

“What was once a quiet refuge could soon be overshadowed by development. Someone’s living room window will be mere feet away from what was once a community space. All for what? So that some corporate entity can replace the existing million dollar home with SEVEN million dollar homes. Lining the pockets of capitalism.”

Just a few problems with that description. First, there’s no park called “Three Sisters Park”—as with other campaigns to whip up opposition to new housing, the petitioners have anthropomorphized the trees. (See also: “Luma,” “Kaia,” “Astra,” and of course, “Grandma’s Cedar.” Second, the “park” isn’t even a park—it’s a stand of three Western Red Cedars on what’s known as an “unopened street end,” like a planting strip that functions as a barrier to traffic, owned by the Seattle Department of Transportation. (The trees’ age is unknown).

Third, and most important: The trees aren’t threatened by the development next door. According to an SDOT spokesperson, “There are no current plans to prune or remove the Western Redcedars.If construction requires pruning in the future, the developer will need to file an amendment to the permit. This would be reviewed by SDOT Urban Forestry to assess the necessity and impact. If approved, the work would need to be completed by a Registered Tree Service Provider (RTSP).”

In addition, the developer, MRN Homes, plans to plant four new trees on a site that currently has nowsignificant trees, just bushes, adding tree canopy in the future. (It’s also ironic that the petition posits proximity to trees as a bad thing for people living in these future townhouses, when their more common tactic is to claim people living in new buildings will lose the benefits of shade if trees are removed).

Finally, it’s pretty disingenuous to claim that a “million-dollar home” is being replaced by “seven million-dollar homes.” MRN, a local Seattle builder, has built some large, almost-million-dollar townhouses in the city. However, their smaller townhouses sell for a more typical-for-Seattle price of around $700,000—not affordable housing, by any stretch, but considerably more in reach than the $2 million to $3 million single-family houses currently for sale in the neighborhood near this development site.

As for the “million-dollar home” that was on the site—an 875-square foot, 2-bedroom house from the 1960s? That “house” was valuable not because of the house itself but because of the land underneath it, which is zoned for multifamily use.

2. City Councilmember Maritza Rivera has lost another legislative assistant—the fourth person to leave the position in the 19 months Rivera has been in office. Unlike most other council members, Rivera has just two legislative assistants, or LAs—longtime aide Wendy Sykes, and another position that has gone under several different titles in Rivera’s brief time on the council, including “policy lead,” “policy director,” and “district director.”

The turnover rate is higher, by far, than in most council offices, which tend to have more staff and retain them longer. (Only Rob Saka has had similarly high staff turnover).

The latest staffer, who we were unable to reach, lasted less than six months. That’s actually a better record than some of Rivera’s previous staffers, who’ve lasted between four and six months. In 2023, according to the Stranger, 26 employees at the city’s Office of Arts and Culture signed off on a letter complaining about a toxic environment at the office, quoting workers who called her a micromanager who treated them with condescension.

3. Friday update: Yup, Thursday’s results were an anomaly. As of the latest vote count, Katie Wilson leads the mayor’s race with more than 50 percent of the vote, to Harrell’s 41.7 percent. That’s a terrible result for an incumbent.

Thursday’s election numbers, which reflected the second set of ballots counted since Tuesday (election night), saw a notable shift away from the progressive trend in Wednesday’s results, moving the needle back slightly toward centrist incumbents. In the latest batch of about 32,000 ballots, challenger Katie Wilson led Mayor Bruce Harrell 47 to 45; challenger Erika Evans led incumbent City Attorney Ann Davison 53.4 to 36.7; and challenger Dionne Foster led incumbent Sara Nelson 54.9 to 39.3.

Overall, Wilson is currently leading Harrell 47.8 to 43.8, Evans is leading Davison 53 to 36, and Foster is leading Nelson 55.4 to 38. Rinck has 76.7 percent of the vote.

It’s unclear why Thursday’s ballots swung slightly back toward centrist candidates. Thursday’s count may have included ballots mailed before election day, while Wednesday’s reflected ballots dropped off at drop boxes on Tuesday; later votes almost invariably trend more progressive.

In the race for City Council in District 2—the seat currently held by appointee Mark Solomon—city land-use attorney Eddie Lin was leading SDOT outreach staffer (and former Harrell transportation advisor) Adonis Ducksworth by 46 percent to 30 percent overall, reflecting a slight gain by Lin (considered the more progressive candidate in this race) in the latest round of ballots, in which Lin got 47.7 percent to Ducksworth’s 30.4.

As of Friday, there are about 15,000 Seattle ballots left uncounted.

4. If you couldn’t get enough of Sandeep and me beefing over the election results, and/or if you’d like to hear what an actual current council member thinks Tuesday’s election means, check out Week in Review on KUOW this week, with host Bill Radke, City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth, and us two chuckleheads. It’s a fun, lively listen.

City Hall, Development, housing, Renters, Uncategorized

Council Amendments to Comprehensive Plan Reveal Competing Priorities
Maritza Rivera’s amendments would shrink neighborhood centers—areas where 3-to-6-story apartments would be newly legal—across her northeast Seattle district.

The comprehensive plan sets rules for how Seattle develops in the future, including where the city will allow its renter majority to live.

By Erica C. Barnett

After nearly a year of delays, the city council is finally getting ready to put its stamp on Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed 10-year Comprehensive Plan—a document Harrell has branded with his campaign slogan as the “One Seattle Plan.” The council has been meeting for months to discuss elements of the plan, including the creation of a few dozen new “neighborhood centers” where apartments will be allowed for the first time in decades, but this week was the council’s first opportunity to propose tweaks to the plan—107 amendments in all.

The comprehensive plan sets policies for growth and development, designating where new housing, transportation, and other infrastructure should go and placing limits on housing density in the city’s neighborhoods. It’s updated every 10 years, with periodic amendments, and inevitably reflects the political priorities of whoever is in office at the time.

We’ve reported previously on the Harrell Administration’s reluctance to allow significantly more housing in Seattle’s traditional single-family neighborhoods as part of the plan.

After killing an early draft of the plan that would have allowed significantly more density, Harrell released a plan last year that fell far short of the changes necessary to create enough housing for new and current residents—including renters—to live in Seattle affordably. After intense criticism of that proposal—the city’s Planning Commission said it upheld exclusionary policies rooted in redlining and failed to provide the housing Seattle needs—the mayor came back with a new plan that allowed slightly more housing, though still less than the proposal most members of the current city council said they supported when they ran for election in 2023.

The council’s proposed amendments are a mixed bag. Several proposals would collectively shrink the size of the proposed “neighborhood centers”—areas within 800 feet of certain frequent transit stops where 3-to-6-story apartments would be allowed—by hundreds of acres, in a blatant retreat to old single-family zoning patterns that benefit people who already own property and don’t want renters living in “their” neighborhoods.

Others would impose new restrictions on any new development that requires removing trees, including one that would give the city free rein to force builders to redo projects if even one tree, of any size, was threatened.

Still others would provide new incentives for developers to build dense housing, serving as a counterpoint to other councilmembers’ proposals to shrink the areas of the city where people who can’t afford to buy a house in Seattle are allowed to live.

Breaking the substantive amendments down into broad categories, we have:

Expanded Neighborhood Centers

On balance, the proposed amendments that make it easier to build housing—including everything from density bonuses for affordability to expanded and brand-new neighborhood centers—outweigh NIMBY proposals to restrict housing, although some of the proposals are probably nonstarters—or negotiation starters—in their current forms.

Harrell’s final comprehensive plan proposal included 3o neighborhood centers—down from 48 in an early draft, but more than the 24 included in an early version of the plan. Since then, though, there’s been intense pressure on the council to further reduce the number of neighborhood centers in the plan, coming primarily from incumbent  homeowners in neighborhoods like Wedgwood, Madrona, and Maple Leaf.

Although several council members did end up proposing amendments that would scale down the size of neighborhood centers, in some cases dramatically, the amendments to add new areas of potential density outweigh those proposals, meaning that if every proposed change to the neighborhood centers was adopted, the amount of land in designated neighborhood centers would increase significantly.

Council members who proposed new or expanded neighborhood centers included Dan Strauss (who proposed a new East Ballard neighborhood center and called for expanding the boundaries of five others, including in Magnolia), Bob Kettle (who proposed a new North Queen Anne/Nickerson Neighborhood Center) and Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who’s proposing eight new neighborhood centers, one in each council district.

“Seattle needs more housing,” Rinck said. “Seattle also needs full and thriving communities, and we’ve heard an overwhelming call from constituents to achieve these goals with more housing, especially in high-opportunity neighborhoods which haven’t seen proportional growth.”

Build This, Not That

Other proposed amendments would add density bonuses and incentives for different types of housing, such as stacked flats and affordable apartments.

Kettle, for instance, proposed getting rid of an “amenity area” requirement for new housing in neighborhood residential zones, freeing up more land for housing.

Under the current proposal, 20 percent of the space around new apartment buildings in the city’s traditional single-family areas would be reserved for open space, typically a yard, for residents to “recreate on site”—as if what apartment dwellers in cities really want is a tiny lawn where they can all hang out together.

An amendment from Sara Nelson would retain a requirement that residential buildings, including new apartments in all parts of the city, be exempt from environmental review under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA); that exemption is otherwise set to expire next month, making housing harder to build.

Other amendments, from Hollingsworth, Nelson, Kettle, and Rinck, would provide bonus density for developers who agree to build specific types of housing, including social housing, accessory dwelling units, and low-income or affordable housing. Several proposals would create incentives for developers to build stacked flats—apartments spread out across a single story of a building—including density bonuses for retaining trees and amendments that would allow stacked flats to be denser than other types of apartments in neighborhood residential (former single-family) zones.

Rob Saka also has an amendment that would give a density bonus for one- or two-story “cottage” apartments surrounding a large common area, a style that resembles single-family housing more than the three-to-six-story apartments that will be allowed in the new neighborhood residential zones under the current plan.

Strauss proposed an amendment that would increase the maximum height in these areas from six to seven or eight stories immediately next to a major transit stop, and Rinck proposed changing the definition of “major transit stop” to include high-frequency buses.

15-Minute City

Several amendments would reduce or remove mandatory parking requirements. The most ambitious, from Rinck, would “remove parking requirements citywide for all land uses in all zones,” a phrase that brings joy to my car-hating little heart. (Yes, I own a car. No, I don’t think the city should socially engineer car culture, as it currently does.)

Builders wouldn’t be barred from including parking in their developments, but they wouldn’t be forced to do so, as they are in many places under the city’s current code.

Another amendment from Rinck, essentially a backup if her first parking proposal fails would reduce parking mandates to comply with a statewide parking reform bill that requires cities to eliminate some of their parking mandates by 2028. Another proposal, from Strauss, would establish parking maximums in the city’s regional centers—the densest areas, including downtown, Capitol Hill, and Strauss’ home turf of Ballard. In a concession to the tree-preservation lobby, Rinck’s amendments also include one that would eliminate parking mandates for developments that preserve trees.

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A proposal to allow corner stores in neighborhoods could also see some meaningful changes.

In the past, we’ve dunked on Harrell’s proposal to allow corner stores in neighborhoods, because it would only allow new stores and restaurants  on literal corner lots, with restrictions that don’t apply to other businesses in the city, such as a mandatory 10pm closing time. Several amendments attempt to remedy those issues. The amendments range from extremely modest (a Nelson amendment that would remove the literal-corner requirement but retain restrictions on business type, size, and closing hours) to ambitious, by Seattle standards (a Rinck proposal that would remove the corner requirement, allow businesses to be open past 10pm, and add bars to the list of businesses that are legal in neighborhoods.

Three amendments, from Rinck, Strauss, and Nelson, would make it easier to open stores and restaurants in residential neighborhoods where they’re currently banned. As we’ve reported, Harrell’s comp plan proposal would allow corner stores in neighborhoods, but only on literal corners, with additional restrictions such as mandatory 10pm closures and a stipulation that they can include restaurants, but not bars.

The amendments range from modest (amendments from Strauss and Nelson to allow stores throughout residential zones, not just on corners) to ambitious (a Rinck proposal that would allow restaurants and bars throughout these areas, eliminate a requirement that businesses be closed from 10pm to 6am, and ditch a 2,500-square-foot size restriction included in the mayor’s proposal). Allowing bars in neighborhoods, a policy that works fine in big cities across the country, may be a bridge too far for censorious Seattle, but a compromise between these proposals could be a first step toward creating more 15-minute neighborhoods in Seattle.

Homeowners vs. Renters

Of course, it wouldn’t be a zoning update without some NIMBY poison pills. Although no one, including newly appointed District 5 Councilmember Debora Juarez, has proposed reviving former D5 councilmember Cathy Moore’s quixotic effort to remove an entire neighborhood center from Maple Leaf, several councilmembers have proposed reducing the amount of land in their districts where people who rent apartments can live.

Maritza Rivera, who has frequently claimed that the city did insufficient outreach to single-family neighborhoods before allowing apartments near frequent transit stops, has three amendments to shrink neighborhood centers in Bryant, Ravenna, and Wedgwood. Her proposal to scale back the Wedgwood center is the most radical of the three, in that it would reduce the size of the center by about 40 percent, limiting apartments to 35th Ave. NE, already a busy arterial, and prohibiting them in the adjacent blocks. (In contrast, one of Rinck’s amendments would expand the Wedgwood neighborhood center to the south; expect strong objections from Rivera to that one).

“Based on months of feedback from community members who live in and near the proposed neighborhood centers, my amendments modify the boundaries of the neighborhood centers in the D4, including Wedgwood, Bryant and Ravenna, to reflect resident concerns….  around the ability of local neighborhood streets to handle increased growth and the infrastructure,” Rivera said.

A Rivera amendment for Ravenna traces a similar line to carve single-family houses in a designated historic district (itself a way for older neighborhoods to oppose density) out of the proposed neighborhood center around Third Place Books, leaving the commercial area but ensuring that there would be no apartments in the neighborhood surrounding the commercial center.

Separately, Rivera proposed an amendment that would give the city the HOA-like authority to dictate what kind of external siding would be allowed on buildings within designated national or local historic districts, based on factors like the “historic character” of an area; this extraordinary new power would also apply to historic districts that might be designated in the future, including those proposed by house owners who oppose new development in their neighborhoods.

Joy Hollingsworth wants to cut the Madrona Neighborhood Center by about seven blocks, concentrating new housing into a smaller area that already includes parks, schools, and other areas where housing can’t be built.

Joy Hollingsworth has proposed shrinking down another controversial neighborhood center in Madrona, whose homeowning residents showed up en masse to oppose the zoning change in their neighborhood. Hollingsworth’s amendment would shrink the Madrona center by nearly 40 percent, slicing off big chunks of current single-family areas on the east and west sides of the proposed center and concentrating any new housing around an existing commercial stretch that includes an elementary school, library, and playfield where housing can’t be built.

Finally, it wouldn’t be a conversation about housing in 2025 without hand-wringing over trees—not planting or maintaining trees in public spaces, which are actions the city could take at any time, or encouraging property owners to plant new trees themselves, but preserving trees that already exist, generally at the expense of new development.

In addition to the tree preservation incentives I mentioned earlier, there’s an amendment from Strauss to “recognize the importance of the natural environment and native species, including trees, bees, salmon, orca, and herons,” plus several from Rivera to make it harder to develop housing if trees are on site.

The most extreme proposal from Rivera—and the one that made Rinck confirm with council staff that the amendment really would do what it appeared to do—would allow the city to require developers to come up with a completely new alternative plan if it turned out their housing proposal would require the removal of any tree, no matter its size, age, or viability.

It’s easy to see how this could grind development in traditional single-family areas to a halt. If someone planted a sapling on a property slated for development, or if there was already unremarkable small tree on site, the city could stop the project and require the developer to start from scratch.

Housing is already tremendously expensive to build in Seattle, and construction permits are declining as developers pull out of the city. Empowering unelected city staffers to force full project redesigns around every existing tree would exacerbate the housing crisis, adding costs to projects that are already financed while reducing the amount of housing that could be built in every project with a tree on site. And forget about expanding the city’s tree canopy—who would plant a new tree on a property they may want to sell in the future, knowing it would instantly reduce their property value?

City Council, Health, homelessness, housing, King County, Mayor Harrell

This Week on PubliCola: June 21, 2025

It was a packed week of news and PubliCola exclusives, including the latest from City Hall, King County, and the regional homelessness authority.

By Erica C. Barnett 
Monday, June 16

After Tumultuous Relocation, Tent City 4 Contemplates Its Next Move

Tent City 4, the authorized encampment whose long-planned move within Lake City was hampered at the last minute by objections from City Councilmember Cathy Moore, can stay for six months. Although Moore and Mayor Bruce Harrell expressed surprise that Tent City 4 planned to stay in Lake City, emails show their offices were working to make the move happen as far back as February.

Seattle Nice: Assessing the Assessor, Moore Faces the Urbanists, and Seattle Hates Nightlife

PubliCola co-founder Josh Feit was our guest on this week’s podcast, where we discussed the King County assessor’s latest attacks on the woman he’s accused of stalking, Cathy Moore’s losing battles against a growing urbanist movement, and the historical context for Bruce Harrell’s latest efforts to crack down on nightlife in the guise of protecting public safety.

Tuesday, June 17

Investigation Suggests Seattle Firefighters Forged Vaccine Cards to Get Out of Citywide Vaccine Mandate

In this PubliCola exclusive, we reported on an outside investigation that found it likely that Seattle Fire Department employees, including senior officials, bought and sold blank CDC vaccine cards and fraudulently presented them as proof they had been vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to get around the city’s vaccine mandate. One high-ranking fire official involved in the alleged vaccine card trade referred to himself as “the Harriet Tubman of SFD,” a reference to the Underground Railroad.

Wednesday, June 18

Council Taps Brakes on RealPage Ban, Delaying One Week to Address Building Owner Concerns

The city council tapped the brakes on Cathy Moore’s fast-tracked legislation to ban property management companies from using algorithmic tools like RealPage to set rent prices, pushing a vote on the bill back one week. Moore, who is leaving the council on July 7, objected to the brief delay, saying there had already been plenty of process—an ironic position for someone who has consistently called for more public input into legislation that would allow more housing in Seattle.

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Saka: People Who Support Keeping “Curby” Are Anti-Immigrant, Radical “Defund the Police” Carpetbaggers

In a bizarre, emoji-filled email rant, City Councilmember Rob Saka accused people who opposed his efforts to remove a road divider that prevented illegal left turns into the preschool his kids attended of being racist, pro-“defund the police” car haters and “White Saviors” who don’t even live in his district and only pretend to support immigrants and refugees, just like Trump does … among many other spaghetti-at-the-wall complaints.

Afternoon Fizz: Reagan Dunn Joins Chorus Calling for Resignation of Assessor Accused of Stalking; Advocates Appeal Ruling Upholding Burien’s Sleeping Ban

King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn, who was absent from last week’s 8-0 vote demanding the resignation of Assessor Wilson, made a point this week of saying he thinks Wilson should resign. On Facebook, Wilson weaponized a photo of himself and the woman who has a restraining order against him, noting that she is smiling and does not look scared of him in the picture.

Also: The Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness has appealed a ruling upholding the city of Burien’s complete ban on sleeping outdoors.

Thursday, June 19

NPR Piece Criticizing South Park Development for Tree Removal Omitted Key Facts

A story from local station KNKX, distributed nationally by NPR, contrasted two housing projects in Seattle—one that saved existing trees, and one that removed them. What the reporter failed to mention was that their example of a bad, treeless project is an affordable-housing development by Habitat for Humanity—and that Habitat is planting 26 new trees to replace the 10 that are being removed to build 22 new affordable homes, more than doubling the number of trees on site.

Homelessness Agency Says They’ll Cut 22 Jobs if City and County Don’t Increase Administrative Funding

The King County Homelessness Authority presented potential budget cuts that could reduce homeless services this week, along with a warning that without another $4.7 million to pay for administrative expenses, the agency may have to cut 22 jobs—about a fifth of its staff.