Tag: density

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.)

 

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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

Maybe Metropolis

Separated at Birth: “In this House” Seattle Liberals and Project 2025
Photo by Lauri Shaull, via Wikimedia Commons

By Josh Feit

Seattle’s pro-housing activists used to rightly call out the hypocrisy of “In This House” Wallingford liberals whose exclusionary zoning politics seemed too ideologically close for comfort with Donald Trump’s Build the Wall politics.

This was circa 2017, when local progressives were pointing to Seattle’s history of housing-covenant racism as a way to expose the ugliness of Seattle’s single-family zoning paradigm. Still campaigning for universal housing access (sigh), local YIMBYs now have the receipts on the philosophical similarity between Trumpism and Seattle’s angry zoning rules, which make it impossible to build apartments in most neighborhoods. May I point you to page 511 of Project 2025 which says the future Trump “Administration should oppose any efforts to weaken single-family zoning.” There you have it, Alki, Magnolia, Queen Anne, Laurelhurst, and Seward Park: Seattle is a Trumpist safe space. (The housing section of Project 2025 was written by Ben Carson, Trump’s former Department of Housing and Urban Development director.)

As Erica and I have documented here, here, here, and here, the Harrell administration had to be dragged kicking and screaming to minimally comply with new state zoning requirements, proposed by State Rep. Jessica Bateman (D-22, Olympia), that allow more housing in traditional single-family zones. While the Harrell administration’s new 10-year Comprehensive Plan proposal makes a nod to the state mandate for fourplexes—it includes new density bonuses for stacked flats, including larger, family-size units, and no longer completely exempts 15 percent of the city from the new mandates—the mayor’s governing conceit remains bullish on the same old failed 1994 model of “neighborhood planning” that sequesters density onto busy arterial roads.

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Sadly, cordoning off density not only artificially inflates housing prices by putting a cap on development, but it undermines effective transit and saddles lower-income people with the environmental and safety hazards of car-choked streets. In Seattle, it also segregates low-income kids from the best schools and makes it impossible to run out and buy a frozen pizza or laundry detergent after 10:00 pm.

A closer look at Project 2025’s reasoning for opposing more flexible housing rules tracks to Seattle homeowners’ own familiar arguments against adding density. You just have to translate the national context to the local context to hear the “neighborhood character,” local-control pathology in Trump’s go-to document.

Again, quoting Project 2025: “American homeowners and citizens know best what is in the interest of their neighborhoods and communities. Localities rather than the federal government must have the final say in zoning laws and regulations.” Sub in “individual neighborhoods” for “localities” and city government for “the federal government,” and I could be quoting any anti-renter homeowner testifying at city hall or writing on the butcher paper at an Office of Planning and Community Development outreach meeting.

Project 2025 goes on to mirror Seattle’s “lefty” housing opponents, with another classic reactionary canard: That the real answer to the housing crisis is preserving existing houses.

“Along the same lines,” the document continues, “Congress can propose tax credits for the renovation or repair of housing stock in rural areas so that more Americans are able to access the American Dream of homeownership.” Not only does that Project 2025 logic echo the Seattle NIMBY argument that there’s no need for new housing, but it’s hard to miss the similarities between Trump’s idealization of “rural areas” and Seattle’s preservationist mentality, which says we don’t need more development in our neighborhoods, we simply need to make do with what we’ve got. Of course, what Seattle NIMBYs are trying to preserve is a idealized mid-20th-century version of the city that excludes renters, low-income people, and new buildings that don’t conform to the current “neighborhood character.”

While blue cities like Chicago and Denver have announced they will not cooperate with the Trump administration’s nativist agenda, Seattle’s leaders have remained largely mum on MAGA’s looming assault. In the immediate wake of Trump’s 2016 win, then-mayor Ed Murray announced that Seattle “would not be bullied by this administration into abandoning our core values” and went on to sue the Trump administration in defense of sanctuary cities. Fast forward: Current Seattle Mayor Harrell is taking the olive branch approach, saying, “I’m not going to D.C. with my fist balled. That’s just not how I lead. I look for opportunities … no matter who’s in the White House.”

Given Harrell’s grumpy response to a state mandate to allow more density in single family zones, the opportunity to partner with the Trump administration on the NIMBY aspirations spelled out in Project 2025 should be popular in Seattle.

Josh@PubliCola.com

Density, Development, Equity, housing, Mayor Harrell

Planning Commission: Harrell’s Growth Plan Will Worsen Inequities and Keep Housing Unaffordable
Diagram by Matt Hutchins, from Planning Commission letter

By Erica C. Barnett

The city’s Planning Commission, which advises the mayor and City Council on policies related to Seattle’s growth, sent a point-by-point critique of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed 20-year Comprehensive Plan Update to Harrell and Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) director Rico Quirondongo last week, echoing many of the issues PubliCola has identified with the status-quo proposal.

As we’ve reported, OPCD originally proposed a plan that would have included significantly more density throughout the city than the anemic version Harrell ultimately introduced, along with an “anti-displacement framework” that deleted dozens of proposals aimed at addressing ongoing harms caused by city policies, like zoning and development rules that prohibit most housing in single-family neighborhoods.

“The [Anti-Displacement] Framework, as drafted, is a list of what the City is already doing to address displacement, yet displacement has already impacted many people and continues to happen,” the commission wrote.

By failing to provide enough housing of all types, especially apartments, in more parts of the city, Harrell’s proposal perpetuates the existing “urban village” strategy, which preserves most of the city for single-family homeowners while concentrating apartments on major arterials and highways. “Upholding this pattern of economic and racial exclusion will do little to reduce disparities in housing affordability, access, and choice,” the commission wrote.

Instead of remedying the existing housing shortage and planning for continued growth in the future, the proposal assumes housing growth will slow down dramatically over the next 20 years, from about 8,000 units a year to just 5,000.

“In order to ensure everyone has a home they can afford in the neighborhood of their choice, we need to plan to increase, not reduce, our current rate of housing production” to allow  “five to eight story multifamily housing in many more areas of the city.” Specifically, the commission recommends expanding “neighborhood centers”—small, isolated where Harrell’s plan would allow three-t0-five-story apartment buildings—to include high-end neighborhoods like Laurelhurst and Seward Park, and allowing higher-density housing further away from “high-volume, high-speed” arterials, so that renters could more easily access amenities like “large parks and quiet streets for recreation” that single-family homeowners enjoy.

“The current housing market locks the most affordable homes, multifamily apartment buildings, into small areas of the city that are often along noisy and polluting major highway corridors or in areas that historically faced disinvestment,” the commissioners wrote. “If the City continues to concentrate affordable housing types like multifamily apartments in the same areas of the city, these long-term patterns of inequity will not change.”

While Harrell’s proposal technically complies with state law by allowing four housing units on all residential lots, the city envisions these units as tall, narrow townhouses, not apartments or “stacked flats,” which are generally more affordable (and accessible to people who can’t climb multiple flights of stairs.) Increasing density in formerly exclusive single-family neighborhoods to allow  small apartment buildings would make it more likely that people with modest incomes could live in these units, the commissioners wrote.

In addition to growth, the comprehensive plan includes strategies related to transportation and parking; these, too, fail to acknowledge 21st-century reality, the Planning Commission argues. Like Harrell’s back-to-office mandate for city of Seattle workers, the plan “overemphasizes centralized employment in Downtown and other Regional Centers,” despite the fact that “daily life and commuting patterns have shifted significantly with many more daily needs being met closer to home.” Acknowledging this reality would mean allowing more neighborhood businesses (not just corner stores on literal corners) and “incorporat[ing] flexibility into land use policies associated with residential and commercial uses,” the commission wrote.

As PubliCola reported, Harrell’s office deleted an OPCD recommendation to get rid of minimum parking requirements throughout the city, a decision the commission recommended reversing “to reduce housing costs and encourage alternative transportation modes.” In addition, the commissioners noted, Harrell’s plan focuses on private vehicle electrification to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—a future in which Teslas, rather than gas-fueled vehicles, clog city streets every morning and afternoon. With Seattle already “leading its peer cities in the number of cars owned per capita,” the commission argued, the city should focus on reducing vehicle trips by investing in alternatives to driving. 

It isn’t too late to weigh in on Harrell’s vision for growth, housing, and transportation in Seattle, but the deadline is approaching. The city will hold its final in-person open house on the comprehensive plan from 6 to 7:30 pm on Tuesday, April 30, at McClure Middle School on Queen Anne, followed by a virtual open house starting at 6:00 on Thursday, May 2. The public has until 5 pm on Monday, May 6, to submit comments on the proposal.

Affordability, Development, housing, Maybe Metropolis

Seattle’s MHA Program Should Come with a Tax Break, Not a Fee
We’ll never have Portland-style density if we don’t have Portland-style incentives. Photo by M.O. Stevens, CC-by-SA 3.0 license

by Josh Feit

I have repeatedly argued in this column—and long before— that liberalizing our land use code is the best way to address Seattle’s housing affordability crisis. Summary: We need to allow apartments in the vast majority of the city where they’re currently banned. Thankfully, there’s a recent glimmer of hope. The state passed a new law last year, HB 1110, that will upzone Seattle’s neighborhoods. Thank you state Rep. Jessica Bateman (D-22, Olympia); her legislation requires cities with populations of 75,000 or more to allow four-unit buildings wherever single-family homes are allowed, and up to six units if two of the units are affordable.

This encouraging uzpone goes into effect statewide after the cities update their local comprehensive plans, as Washington cities are required to do every 10 years; Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan update is on the docket for 2024.

I have to admit, though: The fact that the bill is tied to Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan update makes me nervous. Readers may recall that we started the year with some 2024 PubliCola predictions, including my pessimistic prognostication about how Seattle will sabotage Rep. Bateman’s upzone requirement through our comp plan update.

Here’s what I wrote on January 1 (italics added this time around): Undermining the new state mandate for increasing density in traditionally single family zones, Seattle “will come up with lot coverage minimums, setback requirements, and height limits along with hefty affordable housing fees that will keep housing developers from building any apartments in Seattle’s touchy neighborhood residential zones.”

As our comp plan update gets underway behind the scenes, I’m hearing affordable housing fees are already in play at City Hall. It’s hardly surprising. One thing that unites all political stripes in Seattle—lefties and NIMBYs alike—is a call to tax developers, everyone’s favorite scapegoat. Why has pickleball colonized traditional tennis courts? Evil developers!!

Call it Funded Inclusionary Zoning, or FIZ. How would we pay for it? Portland has a smart model. Under their IZ program  they give developers a property tax break.

Seattle’s gut instinct to tax housing production to pay for housing production is a political pathology. And it stalls development, leading, ironically, to less affordable housing. It’d be like targeting Swedish, Virginia Mason, UW Medical Center, and Seattle Children’s with a special tax to pay for local health clinics even though these institutions help reduce greater health care costs down the line.

Let me be clear, I’m all for government intervention to create affordable housing. It’s precisely what governments are supposed to do: Regulate essential marketplaces. Like all good governance, ensuring universal access to life’s fundamentals—such as housing and health care—not only promotes equity, it also benefits society as whole by preventing things such as spiking health care costs en masse through widespread upstream care. Or, per UW real estate prof Greg Colburn’s 2022 book Homelessness is a Housing Problem, here’s a more germane example: Building more affordable housing helps address homelessness.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the swath of land that HB 1110 opens up to new housing development, Seattle is likely to tax it. Watch for the comp plan update to expand Seattle’s Mandatory Housing Affordability program, a quasi-inclusionary zoning program the city created in 2019. Inclusionary zoning, or IZ, is housing policy that requires developers to include affordable units in their projects. MHA isn’t classic IZ because there’s also an option to pay into an affordable housing fund rather than building on-site. But either way, MHA puts the cost of building affordable housing on developers.

Certainly, requiring developers to contribute to affordable housing stock in the city is an important step, but mandates aren’t going to create affordable housing on their own. Progressive governments also need to help pay for that housing. Otherwise, as projects become financially untenable, developers are going to build less. The best affordable housing policy would require developers to include affordable housing in projects (or an in lieu program) while also providing government subsidies to help the program pencil. Additionally, as I already mentioned, we need to upzone to allow dense housing citywide,  ending our restrictive zoning policies that perpetuate classist and racist policies of the past.

MHA, which also came with an upzone, including peripherally around the edges of single-family zones, was an earnest attempt to address the ugly legacy of Seattle’s restrictive zoning, and it got off to a good start, raising tens of millions for affordable housing (about $68 million in 2020). However, we may have already hit peak MHA; while MHA payments raised more than $70 million annually in both 2021 and 2022, the 2022 number represented a slight drop—a 1.5 percent decline in cash along with a drop in the number of affordable units developers committed to include in new buildings, from 107 to 66.

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Showing the same downward trend, and perhaps even more worrisome, as Erica reported, production of in-fill housing like townhomes has dropped in the MHA era with permits shrinking from more than 1,800 permits filed in 2018 to just 165 in the first nine months of 2023. And the Seattle Times reported that overall apartment and townhouse construction permits dropped 42 percent  and 27 percent, respectively, between 2021 and 2022.

We need more evidence to see if MHA requirements are squelching development, but these are not good signs. The drag on development (and the related drop in affordable housing dollars) makes sense in an Econ 101 way—and highlights the irony I called out above: We’re taxing, thus discouraging, something we want.

Rather than discouraging affordable housing production, let’s make it easier for developers to meet the inclusionary zoning mandate by funding it. Call it Funded IZ, or FIZ. How would we pay for it? Portland has a smart model. Under their IZ program, which requires developers to include affordable housing in projects that include 20 or more units (or pay a steeper version of an MHA-style fee), they give developers a property tax break on all the units in a building. The program was initially limited to Portland’s downtown core, but the data showed it was working so well at creating affordable housing that their city council voted unanimously to expand it citywide last month.

Coupling IZ with property tax breaks is a logical next step here. Seattle  already has an optional incentive zoning program, known as the Multi-Family Tax Exemption credit, that rewards property owners with a 12-year tax break if they choose to make units affordable. There are currently 6,300 affordable MFTE subsidized units citywide, according to the most recent data.

Now that we’ve decided, as demonstrated by our MHA inclusionary zoning program, that affordable housing production is no longer optional, let’s also make sure that funding isn’t optional.

However, now that the city has decided, with MHA, that creating affordable housing should no longer be optional, let’s also make sure funding is no longer optional. A property tax exemption—for all buildings whose developers participate in the expanded program, including those where developers opt to pay a fee—would do just that by making affordable housing pencil out for developers.

There’s one asterisk. Government intervention requires more than just funding. Witness our famed Housing Levy, a property tax that’s been dedicated to affordable housing production for more than 40 years; the latest seven-year iteration will raise $970 million. Clearly, given that the root of our current housing crisis is a scarcity of affordable units, the levy is not delivering enough.

While we’re paying to build where we can, there’s not enough opportunity to build in general. Bateman’s zoning reform legislation could change that, adding substantially to the housing pipeline by allowing apartments in historically off-limits single-family zones. IZ would also help. If it’s funded!

Zoning changes in isolation won’t solve the housing problem; mandating affordable housing production in isolation won’t solve the housing problem; and funding affordable housing in isolation won’t solve the housing problem. Rather than defaulting to MHA’s unfunded mandate in our comp plan update, let’s seize the opportunity to combine all three approaches—housing production mandates, funding, and allowing citywide development—to properly address our affordable housing crisis.

josh@publicola.com

Development, Economy, Maybe Metropolis, neighborhoods

The CBGB Theory: Weirdos Not Bros Will Revive Downtown

By Josh Feit

After insisting for months that getting big employers to summon their workforces back to the office was the key to a revitalized downtown, Mayor Bruce Harrell rolled out his updated “Downtown Activation Plan” this week without mentioning that increasingly remote strategy. When Amazon announced earlier this year that, starting in May, employees must come in three days a week, the company’s own employees immediately rebelled.

Today, employees are spending about a quarter of their time working from home, according to a recent Stanford University/Census Bureau study. And just last week, noting that “offices are still at half their pre-pandemic capacity,” the New York Times ran with this enervating headline (for those holding out hope for a corporate office rebound): “Return to Office Enters the Desperation Phase.”

In Seattle, telecommuting was already rising sharply prior to COVID, tripling to more than 16,000 downtown workers between 2010 and 2019, according to Commute Seattle. And let’s be honest, a 3-days-in-2-days-out model already represents the startling acknowledgment that the future of downtowns looks different than the traditional model. More important, a mandate that grates against a major social shift hardly seems like the makings of a long-term or sustainable solution.

And so, credit where credit is due to Harrell’s office for finally chilling out on the Amazon panacea and rolling out some longstanding urbanist wish-list items, including a few legislative proposals. Erica posted an in-depth report on Wednesday, and along with Harrell’s (and soon-to-be deputy mayor Tim Burgess’) predictable, go-to policing solutions, the plan does mine some of the real Janette Sadik-Khan stuff that Seattle urbanists have been talking about for more than a decade.

The grab bag  includes supporting a broader range of building and street uses—waiving fees to bring more food trucks downtown, for example, and allowing both ground-floor housing and retail on the upper floors of buildings downtown. Likewise, it includes recommendation for a pedestrian-only pilot by prohibiting cars on Pike between 1st and 2nd—a tiny bit of car-free real estate, but I’ll take it. And Harrell’s plan even gives a nod to lidding I-5, a near-decade-old, $2.3-to-$2.5 billion planning nerd agenda item. Most prominently, there’s also legislation in the mix that supports increasing downtown housing stock through targeted up-zones on Union and Pike Streets (with incentives for affordable housing) and also code changes that help turn office space into residential space.

As a neighborhood’s stock drops, it becomes more open to free-rein experimentation, not to mention more open to a diverse economic base of commercial renters.

It’s a nice roundup of ideas, but it misses the mark by emphasizing new, downtown residential housing stock; downtown is already dense and tall. We need to get serious about putting density elsewhere in Seattle, rather focusing on downtown . The first step to reviving downtown isn’t new housing, it starts with embracing the grim commercial real estate market, where vacancies recently increased from 22 percent to 24 percent.

How does embracing vacancies help revitalize downtown? Like this: As commercial vacancies rise—new demand for Seattle office space fell 30% from January 2022 —rents drop. And as rents drop, the weirdos, rather than the big employers, move in. And by weirdos, I mean: creative-class, art-centric, small-scale retail. In short: The rebirth of downtown will be sparked not by Amazon, but by high vacancy rates, leading to low rents, leading to an influx of vibrant, small businesses, leading to new housing demand.

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Call it the CBGB theory of city planning. During the sluggish mid-to-late 1970s, New York City’s famously abandoned and spent Lower East Side neighborhood, where CBGB set up shop on Bowery, attracted waves of bohemians who turned the neighborhood into the epicenter of an urban shock wave that would change cities into magnetic destinations for brains, youth, talent, and commerce.

Making analogies to New York City—in the 1970s, for that matter!—certainly seems like a stretch for Seattle. Seattle’s hot tech economy and hot real estate market don’t conjure the “Ford to City: Drop Dead” days of NYC bankruptcy. Nor does Seattle, population 779,000, parallel the creative serendipity that flows through a city of more than 8 million people like New York. But this basic truism makes sense at any level: As a neighborhood’s stock drops, it becomes more open to free-rein experimentation (and yes, graffiti!), not to mention more open to a diverse economic base of commercial renters.

I’m going to put my hope in the new, small businesses that have recently and eagerly started popping up downtown. 

The limited data available from real estate analysts such as CoStar suggests that demand for leases on smaller spaces (0-5,000 square feet) has decreased more than 50 percent year over year—suggesting lower rents could come, drawing small businesses  downtown.

Consider the arc of this anecdotal observation about the downtown retail renters’ market from the folks at Seattle Restored, a City of Seattle program that pairs downtown landlords with small pop-up style businesses for three-to-six month rental stints, providing grants to help with rent.

A lot of property management companies began reaching back out, perhaps realizing renters weren’t willing to pay the high prices, they were now looking for smaller renters.

When I first contacted them in April for any insights about downtown’s small space retail market, they believed landlords were willing to hold out for high rental prices. They didn’t have any hard data, but said they noticed larger real estate/property management companies were rescinding  initial offers to work with the program, likely holding out hope to rent at full market value.

However, recently they noticed a change. This week they gave me an update, saying it looked more like a renters’ market these days: About a month after we first spoke, they told me, a lot of property management companies began reaching back out. Perhaps realizing commercial tenants weren’t willing to pay the high prices, they were now looking for smaller renters. The program’s success so far backs up this theory: With 30 spaces now filled, the program is well on its way to hit its goal of 45 small businesses set up by the end of the year.

With that in mind, I’m going to put my hope in the new, small businesses that have recently and eagerly started popping up in PubliCola’s neighborhood (Pioneer Square), such as The Monkey Bridge II,  OHSUN Banchan Deli & Café, and Café Lune—none of these are  a subsidized Seattle Restored business, by the way. In short, I’d rather bank on them than on Harrell’s plan for new high-rises on 3rd (conveniently ousting McDonald’s, I imagine)—or phantom Amazon employees, for that matter.

The city should focus less on policies of willful denial—landowners imagining high rents and Amazon execs mandating against reality—and focus more on attracting eager small businesses. The city can do this by passing zoning regulations that favor or even mandate smaller square footage spaces. Let the weirdos, not the bros, take the lead in reviving downtown.

Josh@Publicola.com

criminal justice, Density, Elections, housing, King County, Morning Fizz

Poll Tests Messaging on Pro-Density Bill, Dunn Blasts Program He Voted For, Seattle Nice Debates Eviction Ban

1. Supporters of a bill that would legalize small multifamily buildings in residential areas across the state were testing messages for and against the legislation in a telephone poll last weekend.

The bill would eliminate the kind of exclusionary zoning that has preserved three-quarters of Seattle’s residential land exclusively for detached single-family houses, allowing very modest density (between two and six units, depending on proximity to housing and employment centers) in residential areas.

Although the bill is complex, selling it politically will boil down to messaging, which is where polls come in. This one tests how a number of positive messages impact a respondent’s support for the bill, including:

– Bans on homes like duplexes and triplexes make it more difficult for people of color to live in high-opportunity neighborhoods;

– Making more home types available and affordable helps protect our climate and prevent sprawl;

– The housing crisis spans municipal borders, which is why we need statewide solutions.

The poll also tests a number of messages opponents may use against the bill to see which ones are most convincing, such as:

– Traffic here is already terrible. It is impossible to live without a car here. This plan for massive new development will put more cars on the road and some units will not have to have off street parking. Our region is already growing too fast. Let’s not make it worse.

-We need to preserve the character of local neighborhoods. This is blanket fix that eliminates local control of development. It’s a one-size-fits-all mandate, even where new housing does not fit local character and the infrastructure isn’t there. Middle-income housing should not be burdened with fixing the housing crisis.

– This bill will accelerate and increase gentrification. too many working people, especially people of color, have already been forced to move and the solution should be rent control. This is another attempt by politicians in Olympia to line the pockets of wealthy property owners.

Although voters won’t get a direct say on HB 1782 or other legislation aimed at increasing access to affordable housing, a successful messaging campaign could put pressure on wavering density supporters to solidify or back off on their support for pro-housing bills. As happened last year, density opponents are already rolling out competing bills that are riddled with loopholes and designed to preserve the single-family status quo.

Although Dunn voted to fund Restorative Community Pathways’ $5 million budget at the end of 2020, he told PubliCola it turned out to be a bait-and-switch

2. King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn introduced a motion on Tuesday to pause a new juvenile diversion program, arguing that the program softens the consequences for crimes he considers too serious for diversion.

In a press release, Dunn cited similar complaints from the mayors of Kent, Auburn, Federal Way and Renton, who said the program could exacerbate the recent uptick in gun violence.

Dunn is challenging Democrat Kim Schrier to represent Washington’s 8th congressional district—a historically Republican seat. His criticism of Restorative Community Pathways is the latest in a series of high-profile provocations that position Dunn as a law-and-order stalwart on the council; he also led the charge to condemn City Hall Park, adjacent to the King County Courthouse in downtown Seattle, as a public safety hazard.

Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell, the only other person quoted in Dunn’s press release, is campaigning to replace outgoing King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, also on a law-and-order platform.

Restorative Community Pathways, launched at the end of 2021, relies on nine nonprofits—including well-known organizations like East African Community Services—to provide counseling and supportive services to young people charged with low-level crimes, ranging from car thefts to some assaults. Most of the roughly 70 people referred to the program so far were arrested for misdemeanors, but the program is also open to young people charged with felonies. Continue reading “Poll Tests Messaging on Pro-Density Bill, Dunn Blasts Program He Voted For, Seattle Nice Debates Eviction Ban” →