Category: Maybe Metropolis

Maybe Metropolis, Mayor Wilson, Taxes

The Gaffe Faff: Wilson isn’t Misspeaking. She’s Delivering.

By Josh Feit

Desperate to make anything stick to our unflappable and breezy left-wing mayor, Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat tried to create the narrative that Mayor Katie Wilson is prone to gaffes. He didn’t mean it in the same way the damaging label once dogged klutzy president Gerald Ford in the 1970s. (Ask Claude about Ford and the Air Force One stairs.) Or the way we mean it when we talk about Trump getting his facts wrong 24-7. What Westneat means is: Wilson has said a few things about tax policy that he disagrees with. He’s evidently the keeper of common sense.

On several occasions now, Wilson has acknowledged, with gusto and millennial nonchalance, that she’s not cowed by the business class.  Specifically, when questioned about the state’s new “millionaires’ tax” during a recent appearance at Seattle University, Wilson mockingly said “bye” to rich people who choose to flee. And while promoting progressive tax policy at an earlier event, Wilson described Seattle as “filthy rich.”

She was hardly wrong. Between 2013 and 2023, the number of millionaires in Seattle grew by 72 percent, putting us in the company of other tech boom towns like Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area.

To characterize Wilson’s statements as “gaffes,” Westneat assumes Wilson has unwittingly said what she really thinks—and, more importantly, that she’s been nefariously hiding something.

But she hasn’t been hiding anything. That’s what drives Westneat bonkers. The editorial team at the Seattle Times still can’t wrap its head around the fact that Wilson openly ran as a socialist and won. They’re now rationalizing her victory by pretending she has a secret agenda.

Westneat calls Wilson’s pronouncements “revealing.”  Only to someone who’d be surprised to find books in a library.

Wilson, the first mayor in memory who seems to actually like the job, is brazen about being a Capitol Hill lefty. In March, I saw Wilson wear her politics on her thrift-store sleeve during an address to Seattle’s capitalist class in a convention center ballroom at the Downtown Seattle Association’s annual State of Downtown event. Just like the supposed gotcha fodder she hand-delivered at Seattle U, when she insouciantly defended progressive taxes, she gleefully reiterated the same pro-tax message to the business crowd at the DSA. She openly described herself to the ruling class in attendance as “a progressive and a socialist”—and then paused to say it again, in case anybody missed it.

There’s just no gotcha to get. These aren’t “gaffes.” Wilson said what she she openly believes, including her assessment that the narrative about millionaires fleeing the state is, as she told the SU crowd, “overblown.” And she’s right. As the New York Times reported this week in a story about Wilson’s co-conspirator, NYC mayor Zohran Mandami: “Research shows that past tax increases by states have not led to an exodus of wealthy residents.”

It’s also important to note that Wilson’s derisive comment was specifically about the tiny number of high-income people who may leave the state—as opposed to those who may grumble, but decide living in a thriving city like Seattle is worth paying higher taxes. She isn’t demonizing the wealthy. She’s ridiculing wealthy people who don’t prioritize their larger community.

There’s also another group of people in Wilson’s calculation. Lower-income people who don’t have the luxury of deciding whether or not to stay, but instead, are forced out by Seattle’s insuperable cost of living. Raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for affordable housing and transit is one way to help make sure working-class residents aren’t displaced. Which is a much more pressing and concrete concern for a mayor than the notion of millionaires on the lam.

“We continue to have one of the most regressive tax systems in the country in this state,” Wilson said with typical candor at a pro-social housing event in February, evidently sounding like Che Guevara or, I don’t know, centrist state Democratic Sen. Jamie Pedersen (D-43, Seattle). (Pedersen led the charge for the state’s new tax on people who make more than a million dollars a year.) “It is very gratifying to know that we’re going to be able to use a little bit of that wealth and put it to work building housing and operating housing,” Wilson concluded. 

In another recent attempt by the conservative media to catch Wilson in a supposed gaffe, talk radio seized on a press conference last month where she announced a new bus lane. They accused her of  being privileged because she said she takes her daughter to Seattle Center on Metro’s Route 8. (Yep. Taking the L8 up Denny is apparently elitist.)

Unsurprisingly, the ploy didn’t work. Wilson, who co-founded the Transit Riders Union and ran on improving bus lanes, simply doubled down on her new bus-only lane plan and playfully trolled the apoplectic media on Instagram.

In case the Seattle Times doesn’t follow Wilson’s Reels, they might want to watch this one, because she offers up another consistent core belief that they could spin as a “gaffe.” Wilson said: “As our city keeps growing, there just isn’t room to keep adding more cars to our roads. When we make it possible for more people to choose public transit for more trips, more people can get where they want to go and everyone wins, including those who drive.”

Trying to portray Wilson as gaffe-prone when all she’s doing is demonstrating her commitment to the progressive agenda that she openly ran on last year is just sour grapes from the Seattle Times. It also shows how flummoxed they are with her casual charisma. As they reported themselves last year, the anti-Wilson campaign couldn’t get traditional anti-left memes to stick to her. This latest iteration doesn’t track either.

Economy, Maybe Metropolis

Maybe Metropolis: French Revolution Vibes

By Josh Feit

Seattle’s capitalist class gathered last week in the fifth-floor ballroom of the $2 billion Pine St. convention center for the Downtown Seattle Association’s annual state-of-downtown shindig.. Mayor Katie Wilson, who playfully identified herself as a socialist, received a tepid—though hardly hostile— response as she defended higher taxes while bonding with the establishment camp on the need to improve public safety.

As they do every year, the DSA paired the event with a user-friendly report on the economic state of downtown, which they define as 13 distinct neighborhoods that stretch from SoDo to Lower Queen Anne and from the Chinatown/International District to the western blocks of  Capitol Hill. The boosterish report had lots to brag about this year: An uptick in downtown visitors and daily foot traffic. An increase in occupied apartments, new units,, and new businesses. And a decrease in violent crime. One troubling footnote: A drop in new housing permits, the precursor to a construction and housing downturn.

Here’s something I found even more concerning. I got French Revolution vibes reading the DSA’s descriptions of who’s keeping downtown flush.

According to the group’s Downtown Seattle retail assessment, a 2025 snapshot of downtown consumers courtesy of DSA consultant Downtown Works and analytics from mapping software company Esri, there are five key demographics driving the downtown economy. They are: 1) Metro Renters (34.7 percent of downtown shoppers): “Young, educated, professionally ambitious, tech natives;” 2) Laptops & Lattes (21.1 percent): “Digitally connected, trend-conscious, experience-driven”; Urban Chic (19.8 percent): “Health-conscious, financially savvy, globally connected”; 4) Top-Tier (8.7 percent): “Affluent, cultured, service-oriented urban dwellers”; and 5) Trendsetters (6.1 percent): “Tech-savvy, health-minded, socially engaged.”

And while it’s a bit hard to tell the difference between thee five discrete groups, the Top-Tier crowd is specifically differentiated as hyper-wealthy. As in: “The pinnacle of affluence, earning more than three times the U.S. average household income and enjoying an average net worth exceeding $3 million.” This is as opposed to the Metro Renters, who are explicitly described as younger and who “Prefer generic and budget-friendly brands when shopping.”

Otherwise, the five categories, which read like they were written by AI, an intern, or both, seem indistinguishable. They are all educated, tech savvy, health conscious, environmentally conscious, and active. And the Urban Chic certainly don’t seem that different than the Top-Tier. “They indulge in the finer things—imported wines, organic foods, luxury cars and world travel. Equally at home in yoga studios, ski resorts and art galleries, these discerning consumers prize both wellness and worldly experiences.”

As I said, French Revolution vibes. For those who haven’t seen Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s early-20th century sci-fi masterpiece about a mob-rule proletarian revolution, these descriptions are reminiscent of the super rich in the “Garden of Delights,” who live sequestered above the toiling city before the violent revolution. A more modern reference? Think of President Snow and Effie Trinket lounging in the Capitol in The Hunger Games. 

I’m not one of those Gen Xers who’s nostalgic for the ’90s. In fact, I think Capitol Hill is more diverse and more exciting these days. However, as I float around the coffeehouses and bars on the Capitol Hill circuit, I’ve duly noted how dramatically the typical topics of conversation have changed over the years—from bohemian concerns such as politics, underground theater, and feminism to 9-to-5, normie talking points, like Monday’s stand-up meeting, investment strategies, and weddings.

In that context, the Urban Chic who “indulge in the finer things,” the Trendsetters “who crave the latest in branded fashion and tech” alongside the Top-Tier who “channel their disposable income into organic foods, fitness clubs, stylish wardrobes, travel, arts,” represent a red flag for a renter-majority city where half are cost-burdened, spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing. A city that relies on rarefied lifestyles at this extreme is not sustainable.

In other words, it’s no wonder that, against the preference of Seattle’s business establishment, the majority of Seattle elected a socialist mayor this past November. The DSA members might not like Mayor Wilson’s pitch for progressive taxation, but if we don’t go that route, the inequality DSA inadvertently portrayed with its Marie Antoinette character sketches also paints a volatile picture. Howard Schultz may have been wise to flee Seattle last week.

Footnote: The DSA profiles don’t add up to 100 percent of downtown’s customer base. Evidently, shoppers who account for 10 percent of downtown customers are going unnamed.

Density, housing, legislature, Maybe Metropolis

An Alternative Approach to Creating Affordable Housing: Inside-Out Urbanism
Image of a four-unit apartment building
Sneaky urbanism adds housing inside the existing buildable footprint—and can be a way to expand the footprint in advance of major zoning changes.

By Josh Feit

The city of Seattle was supposed to be done with its 10-year comprehensive plan update more than a year ago, in December 2024. The comp plan is the document that governs local land use and zoning, which means it’s also about where the city will (and won’t) allow more density. As you know, it’s now 2026.

This should give you an idea of how many deadlines we’ve missed. Here we are, 14 months on, and pro-housing advocates are still waiting as the city braces for yet more debates over the specifics of the Neighborhood Center and Urban Center strategy that, sigh, continues to cordon density into tightly constricted areas.

We don’t have the luxury of waiting for the city to take action. It’s time to take matters into our own hands—at least as we wait for the new pro-density council members like Eddie Lin and Dionne Foster to join forces with Alexis Mercedes Rinck and new self-avowed urbanist Mayor Katie Wilson to get the zoning right. In the meantime, I’m hopeful about an emerging method to usher in the dense housing we need citywide to address the affordability and climate crises: Instead of fixating on wholesale land use changes, focus on discrete housing regulations with piecemeal reforms. Devious density.

I’m not advocating for timid tinkering around the edges. I’m thinking of ingenious hacks that are possible within the restrictive height limits, contorted floor area ratio guidelines, and setback requirements that currently define and limit the number of units you can fit into an apartment building. Like rearranging how you pack your suitcase rather than buying a bigger suitcase, affordable housing advocates should change the construction equation inside apartment buildings themselves.

Pro-density progressives in Washington state have already had success with this sneaky inside-out approach. In 2025, they won parking reform, which maximizes the square footage available for housing by lowering building costs and forgoing the need for carports and underground garages. Similarly, in 2023, advocates succeeded in passing the nation’s first-ever single-staircase bill, a reform that frees up space for more units in the same building footprint by getting rid of unnecessary two-staircase mandates.

Another recent bit of tactical urbanism, passed last year, made an exception to mandatory setbacks (the distance a building must be from the street and other lot boundaries) for smart construction methods like mass timber, passive house, and modular construction, as well as for affordable housing units.

In the current legislative session, pro-housing advocates are now on their way to passing elevator reform, which will lower costs for developers, hopefully hastening construction of more units.

As I reported last week: While the elevator industry stripped out a push for universal reform, urbanists are still set to pass a deceptively specific change at the ground level. The legislation will change elevator size guidelines for apartment buildings up to six stories tall, lowering costs and allowing more units. This detail-oriented code change will open the doors to multifamily housing in neighborhoods where the the overall zoning remains antagonistic to this type of renter-friendly development.

Consider this “within-the-envelope”-approach a pro-housing hack against the classic anti-density refrain about “neighborhood character.” (The housing “envelope” is the planning term for the ultimate size allowed for a development after all the setback, density, height, and other parameter guidelines are taken into account.) By adding the potential for more units within buildings that are visually in sync with the surrounding area, pro-housing advocates may reveal what intransigent NIMBYs actually mean when they say “character.”

Affordability, housing, legislature, Maybe Metropolis

Elevating the Affordable Housing Issue

By Josh Feit

How can we increase affordable housing production? According to Senate Bill 5156, one button we can press is elevator reform. Sponsored by State Sen. Jesse Salomon (D-32, Shoreline), the legislation would allow the state to change current elevator rules that—practically speaking—force builders to buy from an elevator manufacturing oligopoly. His idea: Allow smaller elevators as a way to bring down the cost of housing.

In 2024, a 100-page white paper from the Center for Building in North America outlined how a clutch of firms, including Otis and Kone, have signed onto a binding labor agreement  mandating a set of inflexible elevator specifications that define and limit elevator production in the US and Canada. These specifications, including exclusive propriety installation and repair standards, cut out a bevy of reputable and safe elevator makers that serve the rest of the world.

Prompted by the 2024 report, pro-housing advocates nationwide have been making elevators a YIMBY agenda item. As part of this lift, Sen. Salomon’s aspirational bill would allow changes to Washington state’s building code that could, according the urbanist nonprofit Sightline, increase the production of affordable, smaller-scale multifamily housing: “Apartment buildings with at most six stories and at most 24 units,” specifically, per Salomon’s bill.

The logic goes like this: State-by-state elevator regulations mandate unnecessarily oversized elevators.  As a result, according to the CBNA report,  elevators in North America are more expensive than elevators in the rest of the world. The report found that elevators cost around $50,000 to install in Europe while in the US and Canada, “these installations start at around $150,000.”

As the summary report on Salomon’s bill notes, this means that “currently, buildings either must have large elevators or [developers] are likely not to build them at all.” This second point gets at a cruel irony about opposition to the legislation.

One rationale for the current size standards is to ensure that elevators accommodate disabled tenants who rely on wheelchairs and make it possible for medics to fit stretchers onto elevators in emergencies. And it’s true that the elevator downsize recommended for smaller buildings in Salomon’s bill—they could take up about 17 percent less floor space—could mean elevators wouldn’t be able to accommodate a fully extended gurney. Citing emergency response concerns, the Washington Fire Chiefs and the Washington State Council of Firefighters testified against the bill last year, when it ultimately failed.

However, under Salomon’s recommended changes, elevators would still be ADA-compliant (current state law requires elevators to be much larger than ADA requirements). And, as Sightline notes: The new guidelines would still have enough room to spin a wheelchair around, plus another person, as well as a slightly tilted gurney. More importantly, they say, having a slightly smaller elevator is better than having no elevator at all.

“Perversely,” as the proponents of elevator reform at California YIMBY put it, North American rules actually make buildings less safe for people who need to be transported by gurney and less accessible for those who rely on wheelchairs.

“While larger elevator cabins make it easier to transport patients,” a California YIMBY blog post on the former issue argues, “the high costs the requirement imposes also increases the likelihood that buildings will not have any elevators at all, and that emergency responders will have to carry the patient down multiple flights of stairs.”

The CBNA report made a similar point about wheelchairs. “The United States and Canada now require the largest elevator cars in the world … a perverse disincentive that some developers respond to by simply building walk-ups.” In these buildings, people who are unable to navigate the stairs are restricted to living on the first floor.

Stephen Smith, the author of the elevator-reform report, acknowledges that he doesn’t know how many elevators aren’t getting built that otherwise would if the bespoke regulations didn’t govern the US market. But he stands by his report’s conclusion that “walk-up complexes are … being built, at a scale and to heights that are unique in the developed world.”

He explains: “I spent a lot of time poring over new apartment listings in Germany, Italy, France, and Spain and noticed that virtually all new four-story apartment buildings had elevators, and most new three-story buildings did too. In the US, virtually no new three-story apartment buildings have elevators.”

Smith says that when it comes to four-story apartments, his best guess is that it’s about “50/50” split on new apartments having elevators or not. As for the extremes,” Smith adds: “I have found examples in LA of five-story buildings without elevators, and six-story walk-ups in NYC and Seattle.”

Smith’s report does have telling data comparing elevators per capita in European and Asian countries versus in the U.S. and Canada. The difference is dramatic. Canada and the US come in last with four and three elevator cars per capita, respectively. In comparison, Switzerland, Spain, and South Korea come in at 27, 23, and 15. (Greece tops the list at 41.)

Elevator-free apartments also make housing inhospitable to the broader universe of people who can’t navigate stairs easily or at all and who are looking for affordable housing. Conversely, as I noted, if developers do include the pricey, larger elevators in their projects, it raises building costs. And this too undermines the broader universe of people seeking affordable housing by making the housing too expensive.

Certainly, developers aren’t loopy enough to skimp on elevators in tall buildings. That’s why Salomon’s bill puts the focus on allowing smaller elevators in smaller buildings; changing state guidelines per Salomon’s bill wouldn’t violate any federal rules. (Salomon’s bill doesn’t recommend any changes to bigger buildings; it simply directs the state to “support” efforts to harmonize national and international standards in the hope of beginning a multi-state effort to make North American elevator guidelines line up with the rest of the world’s.)

Fortunately, small-scale multi-family housing such as stacked flats, condos, and small apartments are exactly the kind of housing that urbanists believe will have the biggest impact on supply: Four-and six-story developments are examples of “missing-middle housing” that would fit seamlessly into traditional low-density single-family zones; these are neighborhoods that largely exclude lower-income families, renters in particular.

As Uytae Lee, a pro-city videographer who worked with Sightline to promote elevator reforms, says in his elevator-reform agitprop video: By making more neighborhoods accessible, elevators are “an essential part of our transportation network … a core part of a city’s infrastructure.”

housing, land use, legislature, Maybe Metropolis, Urbanism

Turning Park-and-Rides Into Housing
Aerial view of Shoreline Park-and-Ride via Google Maps.

By Josh Feit

We (Ed: Actually, Erica) gladly paid $7 an hour on a recent Friday afternoon for a  street parking spot behind Capitol Hill’s Stoup Brewing. The reasonable fee is part of SDOT’s data-driven demand management program, which puts an appropriate price on parking, recognizing—sort of like NYC’s congestion pricing program—that popular destinations should be subsidized by the car-centric culture their urban density offsets. After all, density makes Capitol Hill’s go-to clubs, bars, restaurants, and shops possible in the first place.

Applauding the high cost of parking was on point because the event we were attending was a happy hour thrown by Sightline Institute, where more than 50 people crowded in to celebrate, I kid you not, a parking reform bill.  Sightline, which has become an incubator of green metropolis legislation in Olympia, helped draft the bill, which had just passed the state legislature the day before.

Demand management is well and good. But the Sightline bill takes the next step: It prevents cities from requiring too much parking in the first place. The bill, which was sponsored by urbanist rock star Sen. Jessica Bateman (D-22, Olympia), caps parking mandates statewide. For example, the bill says cities can’t require more than one parking space for every two units in new multifamily housing. Developers could still build more parking, but they’ll no longer have to.

There were free stickers on the tables proclaiming, in the style of parking signs: “End Parking Mandates.” And when Sightline’s parking reform guru Catie Gould jumped up on a table with a handful of drink tickets to thank everyone for coming—identifying herself as “the one who wrote” SB 5184—the crowd feted her like she was Bernie or AOC behind the mic on the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.

Certainly, three cheers for the parking caps; I grabbed one of the free stickers. But it’s another bill that sets my war-on-cars heart aflutter. Where the Bateman/Sightline bill limits new parking, the one I’m giddy about actually nukes existing parking infrastructure—parking infrastructure that (unsurprisingly to those who have been predicting a transit future for years) is sitting largely empty.

According to King County Metro spokesman Jeff Switzer, only about 30 percent of the parking spaces in park-and-rides across the system are full on a typical day—and the most heavily used lots, at Northgate and on the Eastside, are only 60 to 70 percent full.

King County lobbied for a change in state law to allow for a different use at these properties: Affordable housing. Appropriately enough, the reform—which authorizes  Metro to overhaul three pilot sites for now—came as an amendment to state Sen. Julia Reed’s (D-36, Seattle) transit-oriented development bill, broader legislation that’s about incentivizing affordable housing near transit hubs. (I wrote about Reed’s bill and its innovative funded inclusionary zoning progam earlier this session.)

 

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

The un-pave paradise amendment, a friendly add from state Sen. Yasmin Trudeau (D-27, Tacoma), says WSDOT can select up to three park-and-ride facilities in King County so Metro can conduct a pilot affordable housing program that “releases [Metro from] any covenant imposed for highway purposes and replace it with a covenant requiring affordable housing.” “Gaining this flexibility,” Metro spokesman Switzer said, “would be really important to help both the state and King County Metro achieve their shared goals around transit oriented development and building housing conveniently near frequent and reliable transit service.”

You don’t have to convince me, Jeff. Turning parking into housing is an urbanist’s version of turning swords into ploughshares.

Switzer declined to specify which park-and-rides are being liberated, but the legislation specifies three large surface parking lots—each with between 300 and 1,000 parking spaces—in Kirkland, Shoreline, and South King County.

Go figure. Parking lots with 300 to 1,000 stalls are going underutilized. Props to King County Metro for turning those empty stalls into an opportunity for fulfilling the potential of transit infrastructure as a prompt to build affordable housing. Transit policy is land use policy. And King County needs more land use policy like this that authorizes affordable housing.

Josh@PubliCola.com

Density, housing, legislature, Maybe Metropolis

Seattle Should Follow State’s Lead on Inclusionary Zoning—By Funding It
Rep. Julia Reed (D-36, Seattle)

By Josh Feit

With little fanfare, state house legislators passed a game-changing housing affordability bill out of committee last week. The bill, HB 1491, would require more housing density around rail and bus rapid transit stops and mandate on-site affordable housing as part of new developments in those areas. The bill tanked during the last two legislative sessions. But this session, it includes a change that represents a tectonic shift in how affordable housing advocates are thinking about the issue of inclusionary zoning, a policy that requires developers to include affordable housing in new projects.

I’ll get to that big shift momentarily, but first, a little history. Known as transit-oriented development, or TOD, housing around transit stops is a longtime priority for pro-density urbanists. In Washington State, I trace its origin back to the 2009 (!) legislative session, when the housing advocates at Futurewise first took up the cause.

At that time, their nascent pro-housing movement unwittingly stirred up a hornets’ nest of anti-development opposition from both the homeowner right (who are touchy about “neighborhood character”) and the social justice left (who often equate new housing with developer “giveaways” and displacement).

Thankfully, a lot has changed since then. First of all, gentrification has escalated exponentially under Seattle’s low-density status quo, a trend that calls b.s. on the NIMBY thesis that denser zoning is the cause of gentrification. If anything, the last 10 years under single-family protectionist policies show that it’s the opposite: Sequestering multifamily housing into a minuscule slice of the city’s residential areas causes gentrification.

And, more importantly: The pro-density “Yes In My Backyard” (YIMBY) movement of the past decade has re-framed the density debate in a way that has attracted social-justice lefties. YIMBYs now talk about municipal land use regulations in the context of  historic redlining and current exclusionary zoning laws that wall off huge portions of cities like Seattle from lower-income families and renters. As a result, lefties no longer stand in lockstep with wealthier “neighborhood character” obstructionists like they used to.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Certainly, knee-jerk opposition to developers (along with real issues like displacement) persist, but 1491’s sponsor, Rep. Julia Reed (D-36, Seattle) let go of the orthodox left’s antipathy toward for-profit developers by accepting a Republican amendment from Rep. April Connors (R-8, Kennewick) that includes a new tax exemption to make the housing mandate pencil out. Thanks to Connors’ amendment, Reed’s inclusionary zoning bill, which passed the housing committee 9-5 with two GOP votes, is now a funded inclusionary zoning bill, or FIZ.

“The goal of this bill,” Reed said before last week’s vote, “is to try to address the urgent housing needs in our state, to ensure some public value capture for opening up new areas to development, but also to ensure that builders are incentivized to build, and that cities have the flexibility they need to manage this development effectively.”

Funded inclusionary zoning is exactly what it sounds like. Rather than simply making developers include affordable housing in a portion of their new developments, FIZ also helps pay for the affordable housing. In this instance, the amendment authorizes a 20-year property tax exemption on the development, and provides two options for affordability; a developer who builds in a FIZ zone can either make 10 percent of the project affordable to people making 60 percent or less of area media income (AMI), or 20 percent for people making 80 percent of AMI.

This is a classic compromise: Developers don’t like inclusionary zoning, but were willing to go along with it if it was subsidized; and lefties don’t like giving tax breaks to developers, but they like affordable housing. “This is a supply bill that ensures affordability while offsetting the costs for new development,” said Futurewise executive director Alex Brennan, who is encouraged by the sudden momentum for his group’s longstanding TOD bill.

The funded inclusionary zoning compromise, something I advocated for in this column a year ago, combines two well-intentioned, but limited, affordable housing policy tools: First, traditional inclusionary zoning, which requires developers to add affordable housing if they want to build a project, and second, the state’s existing Multifamily Tax Exemption (MFTE) program, which gives developers a tax break if they choose to include affordable housing in a project. By combining the two tools, 1491 makes the prospect of actually adding affordable housing to the state’s housing stock more likely.

Seattle has had its own (unfunded) inclusionary zoning program, Mandatory Housing Affordability, since 2019. MHA requires developers to either include some affordable housing in new developments or pay into an affordable housing fund. Reed’s bill exempts cities that have their own inclusionary zoning programs from following the new TOD affordable housing mandate. However, let’s hope Reed’s smart bill, which is likely to encourage more housing starts thanks to the tax exemption, prompts Seattle to consider a FIZ program of its own.

Similarly, the increased zoning 1491 contemplates wouldn’t have a big effect around Seattle’s light rail stations, because Seattle has already upzoned those station areas to the same or greater density as what the bill would allow. But the legislation could increase density around many Seattle bus lines where its upzones are greater than Seattle’s current requirements. Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development hasn’t done a full analysis, but a spokesperson said, “There is a larger difference between existing zoning around BRT stations in the city and the potential new requirements than there is for zoning in the light rail station areas.”

And the legislation could add more density to Seattle in another way. The bill defines transit areas as locations within a half-mile of rail stops or quarter mile of bus rapid transit. This geographical definition of TOD would overrule the current minimalist “Neighborhood Centers” proposal in Seattle’s pending comprehensive plan, which would limit new density to developments that are just 800 feet from major bus stops. Seattle’s slow-growth council is actually trying to scale back that already-timid TOD plan. Thankfully, if HB 1491 becomes law, Seattle will get more housing and more affordable housing despite intransigence from City Hall.

The funded inclusionary zoning TOD bill is currently in the house appropriations committee.

Josh@publicola.com