Tag: Greater Seattle

Elections, homelessness, Mayor Wilson

Greater Seattle: Wilson’s Sweeps and Nelson’s Disappearing $30,000

By Josh Feit

108 < 112 < 151

In her press conference last Wednesday, Mayor Wilson debuted a new homelessness approach that focuses on identifying homeless people by name and then prioritizes getting them into shelter and formulating individualized plans. Prompted by successful examples, like a joint Downtown Seattle Association/Purpose Dignity Action encampment resolution in Pioneer Square during the World Cup this summer, social service workers will hit the streets neighborhood by neighborhood and connect people to services and shelter that work for them. Erica has a full report.

In addition to this empathetic effort, Wilson also went on record at a press briefing last week to say the city has not—counter to Councilmember Dan Strauss’ claims—backed off on sweeps, telling two different reporters that she has no plans to change the city’s encampment removal policy. “Our Unified Care Tam has continued doing encampment removals at basically the same rate that they were doing removals before I entered office,” Wilson said. 

Wilson’s buy-in on sweeps was not news to us!

The subject of sweeps and how they beget more sweeps was actually the very first item in last Monday’s installment of this column, which also noted that lefty mayor Wilson had done more sweeps in her first year so far than her predecessor, Mayor Harrell had done by the same point in his first year.  Wilson’s 151 > Harrell’s 112. This, despite Harrell’s tough-love, football-coach reputation that endeared him to the pro-sweeps establishment.

It turns out Wilson’s 151 sweeps tally so far also bests Harrell’s tally for the same period (January through September) throughout his entire term, including in 2025, when the number of sweeps under Harrell was 108. In 2024, there were 112 sweeps under Harrell during the same period. In 2023, there were 95. And as I noted, during his first year in 2022, there were 112 sweeps.

These persistent numbers reiterate the main point I was making all along: Sweeps obviously aren’t a solution to homelessness.

Good on Mayor Wilson for at least adding a proven, humanist policy to the otherwise vicious circular logic of sweeps.

$30,000 > $15,000

We could soon find out who contributed to SeaFor, the shadowy entity former Seattle city council president Sara Nelson set up to raise money for local candidates while concealing donor’s names in order to “protect the privacy of businesses and individuals” (as its own website boasted.) That’s the possible silver lining, anyway, after the lefty Progressive People Power PAC  filed two complaints about a $30,000 donation Nelson’s fund made to a local PAC, North Seattle Neighbors. NSN is supporting the establishment-backed choice in this fall’s council race, Julie Kang, against progressive favorite Nilu Jenks.  The complaints convinced NSN to return the mystery money, which accounted for about two-thirds of the money NSN had raised to date.

How would returning the check reveal whose money SeaFor collected and passed through to NSN? Well, NSN effectively already spent the $30,000 by sending out an initial round of anti-Jenks mailers. As a result, in order to pay off the debt they incurred on those mailers, which they originally planned to cover in part with Seafor’s check, they’ll now have to go out and raise more money themselves. And it’s likely NSN will simply turn to the same conservative donor base that Nelson did. The public should keep an eye on NSN’s upcoming disclosure reports to see who their donors are in the next few weeks. NSN has until election day to cover the mailers; they’ve only reported $15,000 raised to date beyond the elusive $30,000.

I say “silver lining,” because on balance, this is an ethically-challenged turn of events for Seattle. Nelson got exactly what she wanted without having to spend any of her PAC’s money. Sure, NSN was going to buy the mailers before they had the money in hand, as political campaigns often do, operating on the assumption that they’d be able to raise the money in time to pay the eventual bill. But the bad actor in all of this, Nelson, hasn’t faced any consequences for her cynical chicanery. Her group’s ephemeral check, which as of last week accounted for two-thirds of NSN’s money “raised” to date, was on NSN’s books—and now it’s not.

By Monday, NSN had reported raising another $15,000 or so from individual donors, including former deputy mayor Tim Burgess, Vulcan chief real estate officer Ada Healey, Fremont industrial landowner Suzie Burke, and real estate investor Judith Runstad. By that time, though, NSN had already sent out another mailer accusing Jenks of being “clueless” on crime.

And as we were going to press, Jenks’ campaign announced they’d filed a complaint with the state Public Disclosure Commission and the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission calling on NSN to halt any more mailings until the names of their donors are released. They note in their complaint that the NSN’s mailers themselves list Nelson’s group as their top donor.

Josh@PubliCola.com

Business, City Council, homelessness, housing

Greater Seattle: We’re Number 1 (in Home Listings Jump); Small Biz is in a Bad Mood; and Sweeps are Not a Solution

by Josh Feit

More Sweeps ≠ Less Homelessness 

During last week’s city council budget hearings, Ballard council member Dan Strauss channelled a business owner in his district to give a speech criticizing Mayor Wilson. There’s an encampment in front of the business, Strauss said, leading to this dais grandstand: “We have seen in this last year, since last October, a complete change in the city and how effectively the city is addressing homelessness.”

He continued: “I have a business in downtown Ballard that had an encampment in front of their business last October and .. it wasn’t moved until, I believe, March. And that person reported to me that they have had an encampment on one of the four blocks around their business—and it’s a small block—270 days out of the last 365 days.” This demonstrated, Strauss said, that “just the ability to interact with and work with people has changed from a three-week cycle to a three-plus-month cycle”.

What Strauss’ (and his constituent’s) sidewalk tent example actually shows is not that we need more sweeps, but the opposite: Sweeps don’t work. They simply push homeless people around the city. Logically enough, in the context of an ongoing, active sweeps campaign, an encampment has now landed on this particular doorstep. Sweeping the people living in that encampment to another part of Ballard just means that a different business will eventually end up in Strauss’ ear.

Consider: Wilson is actually doing more sweeps than her tough-love predecessor, Bruce Harrell. According to the UCT’s own records, they’ve done more than 150 full encampment removals this year, compared to 112 by this point in Harrell’s term. According to the UCT’s “site journals,” the team rarely connects encampment residents to shelter.

Complaining about a homeless encampment in front of a business as an argument for more sweeps—when the people at that encampment were likely swept there in the first place—reminds me of the illogical days when neighbors argued against upzones on the grounds that they would make housing more expensive even as housing prices were skyrocketing under the strict Seattle zoning that prevented building more housing.

Seattle Home Listings Increase > Home Listings Increase in All Other Metro Areas

This brings me to the post-single-family-zoning-only Seattle housing market. According to Zillow data for September 2026, Seattle has the biggest percentage increase in home listings for US metro areas. Seattle’s current 14,877 listing represented a 20.3% increase from September 2025.

With housing prices dropping 1.1% month over month and 2.2% year over year, Seattle is a buyer’s market right now.

Rents, by the way, dropped .2% in September and ticked up only minimally, and far below inflation, at 1.8% year over year with typical rent at $2,250.

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Cutting $950,000 is Not a Good Look 

As I’ve noted before in this column, I’m frustrated with Mayor Wilson’s approach to reviving Seattle’s business climate. Following the recommendations of a report her Office of Economic Development commissioned, the mayor seems focused on prompting more tech-adjacent startups as opposed to girding existing small businesses. The thinking goes that tech businesses have a disproportionately positive impact on jobs and the local economy. But my thinking is that indie businesses, just like childcare and affordable housing, are prerequisites for economic growth. Indie small businesses, for example, bring the crowds and lines that make cities vibrant. Lines around the block at clubs are a public policy win for a city.

I’ve been asking managers at bars and shops lately what the city could do for them right now. One thing I’m consistently hearing has to do with the costs of repairs and infrastructure upgrades—how those costs, often related to city inspections, can be debilitating. One manager, who recently oversaw the closure of a longtime North Seattle business (and still manages a couple more across the city), gave a specific example about graffiti, reporting that the cost of  repeatedly cleaning up the graffiti —as the city requires—became onerous for the neighborhood bar that closed.

I’m not convinced graffiti cleanup could sink a healthy business, nor do I think the city’s fixation on graffiti —particularly under Mayor Harrell, who actually funded anti-graffiti education for kids—is discerning policy. But I took this bar manager’s request for city support in earnest—and, lo and behold, it turns out Wilson’s budget cuts $950,000 for a program that helps private business owners clean up graffiti on their buildings.

As a council Central Staff memo put it, “The proposed budget would not continue funding for these services and [Seattle Parks & Recreation’s] ability to offer private property owners graffiti abatement services would be significantly impacted.”

I tend to filter the business-lens on local politics with skepticism, but as a Wilson fan I must say, when the bad-mood example from a bar manager tracks so succinctly with Wilson’s new budget, the mayor’s got a problem. I’m not saying reinstating a graffiti cleanup contract is the answer. I’m saying Wilson’s angle on what’s ailing Seattle’s economy has the wrong emphasis.

Josh@PubliCola.com

City Council, Transit, Uncategorized

Greater Seattle: A Supermajority, a Mistake, and a Chance

 

By Josh Feit

66 percent = A Supermajority

I’ve gone from stunned, to angry, to eventually, “oh, Seattle” since I first learned more than a decade ago that the Seattle Department of Transportation doesn’t charge for street parking in West Seattle. So, while I wasn’t exactly breaking out the champagne, I was relieved when the city finally announced on September 30 that it has decided to expand its parking demand management program to the West Seattle Junction (and to Upper Queen Anne as well.)

The SDOT program, which exists in most business districts in the city, regularly reviews parking availability from Ballard to Roosevelt to Capitol Hill to South Lake Union to Columbia City, tweaking the dials on parking rates to ensure there’s always one to two spots open per block. The well-tested theory behind the (mostly) citywide policy, first enacted in 2010, goes like this: When people have to pay for parking, they’re likely to be more efficient with their time, which leaves more spaces open more often. Showing great forbearance, SDOT patiently explained this concept and the change—$1 an hour in the morning to  $4 an hour in the evening—to West Seattle residents in the recent report.

According to SDOT’s “intercept” surveys of West Seattle Junction visitors (conducted in-person rather than online), a 66 percent supermajority of people said they walked, biked, or took transit to the Junction as opposed to driving.

This provides a potential new rejoinder to complaints from businesses about paid street parking.

The longstanding and obvious retort is that rather than decreasing the number of people who can park and shop, paid parking adds more shoppers by making parking spots more readily available. Now SDOT can add this: The fact that a supermajority of people aren’t even driving to the commercial district in the first place means the shopping-while-driving customer isn’t the seismic constituency shopkeepers may assume they are.

The 66 percent number tracks. It’s similar to the 60+ percent number the SDOT’s survey found in Upper Queen Anne.

Admittedly, SDOT’s online surveys showed the opposite: More people in those surveys said they drive in to the Junction and (though much less so) to Upper Queen Anne. The online sample size was also bigger. But with hundreds of in-person respondents who were actually interviewed in the neighborhood, the West Seattle and Queen Anne surveys seem noteworthy enough for SDOT to call out, which they did in the Queen Anne report under the banner “Many People Visit Without Driving.” They also noted the supermajority in the West Seattle report. “While 71% of online respondents said they typically drive to the Junction, our intercept survey found 66% of respondents typically walk, bike, or take transit to the Junction.”

Slower Bus Service > Faster Bus Service

I’m all for dedicated lanes and multiple-door boarding and inline platforms. And I’m a yes to off-board payment and synchronized traffic lights and queue jumps. Give me all the smart-bus fixes that speed up service. What I’m not for is taking away stops on one of the busiest local bus lines in the city. That’s the current vision for the 7, which King County Metro plans to replace with the Rapid Ride R line—R for Rainer. The county council is scheduled to vote on the the changes—which could reduce the number of bus stops on the popular 7 by about 30 percent—before the end of the year.

Council members and Metro planners should remember that R also stands for Rely on, which is exactly what many of the 11,000 daily 7 riders do—to get to local grocery stores, services, and appointments along the Rainier corridor itself and not necessarily, as the RapidRide plan seems to imagine, travel exclusively to downtown.

To quote Anna Zivarts’ recent editorial for us: “The downtown-centric alignment of the Rapid Ride R was based on pre-pandemic destination data. Despite profound changes in commute patterns since then, there hasn’t been time or resources to examine whether Rainier Valley’s transit needs have evolved.”

Eliminating stops along one of the most heavily used local bus routes in the city seems likely to make it less popular and less reliable.

5 to 4 > 6 to 3

Seattle voters have a chance to second 2025’s election results in a few weeks. Which I hope they do to make it clear for the the Seattle-is-Dying media that bashing Mayor Wilson for the past year hasn’t prompted the backlash they’re hoping for.

Last year, in addition to electing dorky socialist Mayor Katie Wilson, Seattle also added two much-needed progressives to the council’s vote count, nudging city hall from an 8-1 conservative-bloc roll call to a less- dominant 6-3 dynamic by adding brainiac lefty Dionne Foster and urbanist attorney Eddie Lin.

Foster and Lin have been great additions so far. Former Washington Progress Alliance ED Foster, no surprise; YIMBY Lin for rookie legislator of the year (thank you for reining in hearing examiner appeals on land-use decisions)! They’ve both joined charismatic Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, the most reliable lefty of the three.

Three is still less than six, though. North Seattle voters now have a chance to add a fourth progressive to the mix, Nilu Jenks, whose strong showing in the primary bodes well for the ongoing trend away from the Harrell years. And with swing votes like Rob Saka and Dan Strauss occasionally breaking from the majority, even that 5 to 4 conservative hold could be tenuous.

All this is to say, our progressive mayor may soon have more votes to work with on the second floor.

A question would remain, though. Can she work with them?

Josh@PubliCola.com

Business, Transportation, Urbanism

Greater Seattle: Bike and Scooter Share Could Soon Lap 2025’s Record-Setting Numbers

by Josh Feit

10.5 million by October > 10.5 million by December

Seattle scooter- and bike-share is about to break last year’s record of 10.5 million total rides—maybe as soon as this week, nearly three months before the year is over. The program hit 10 million rides as of late September, and with usage trending up—it increased 68 percent between 2024 and 2025, for example—we’re on pace to hit 13 million by the end of this year.

It costs $1 to access a bike or scooter and 47 cents a minute after that, or about $8 for a 15-minute ride. It gets much cheaper if you get a monthly membership for $5.99 to lock in lower fixed rates: $1.50 for five minutes, $2.85 for 20 minutes. SDOT also requires the main contractor Lime to have a low-cost program for low-income riders.

The scooters are more popular than the bikes, by the way—and there are far more of them in circulation too (more than 10,000 versus 3,500) when you combine the standing and seated models.

There are plenty of reasonable guesses to explain why rented bikes and scooters are growing in popularity. A seemingly obvious answer, the spike in ridership during FIFA, doesn’t seem to account for most of this year’s boon, though. Ridership during June and July, while the World Cup was in play, was higher than the comparable months for last year, but overall ridership was consistently higher in every other month this year as well, highlighting a trend that’s larger than FIFA tourism.

So what’s going on, besides $5.67 per gallon gas prices? One possibility: Four new protected bike lanes came online this year, including a few that go to popular tourist spots, including to the downtown waterfront and one along the waterfront itself, which connects to the existing Elliott Bay Trail.

You can also make the case that the program has been around for nearly nine years now and more people are simply familiar and comfortable with tapping on and bombing down Yesler or climbing up Denny, particularly for that first-mile-last-mile trip to get to or from the bus; the average trip in 2026 is 1.3 miles. And the average ride clocks in at 11.3 minutes.

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Normalizing bike and scooter trips points to my favorite possible explanation, or at least my favorite micromobility trend. Even though, as I reported in an earlier Greater Seattle, non-rush hour bike and scooter share is growing at a faster clip than traditional peak commute time use, more employers may be taking advantage of Lime’s business program that allows companies to offer a commute benefit for short-term bike and scooter rentals.

Those two facts aren’t contradictory. In fact, they’re likely complementary. As bike and scooter rides become more popular, companies are realizing they need to accommodate their employees. Institutionalizing alternatives to cars is the best way to wage the war, and I’m all for it, especially when it signals that companies realize it’s in their best interest to do so.

21% > 38%

The Downtown Seattle Association released some new data last week showing that downtown foot traffic (as measured by workers who work downtown, but don’t live there) has remained stuck since stabilizing in 2024 at around 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels. “Incoming Commuter Foot Traffic” was about 62 million annually in 2019, while it’s around 38 million today, a 38 percent drop.

This puts us on par with other cities such as Denver and Portland, but it’s triggering for the DSA. Bellevue’s recovery is about 17 percentage points better than downtown Seattle’s; their commuter foot traffic is just 21 percent lower than their pre-pandemic levels.

Back Alleys = Main Streets

Speaking of foot traffic and (speaking earlier) of the World Cup, the state temporarily eased some booze regulations in advance of FIFA to help businesses capitalize on the soccer crowds. House Bill 1515, “Modernizing the regulation of alcohol service in public spaces,” allowed restaurants and bars to expand the boundaries of outdoor-table liquor service, including into public space. It also allowed neighboring businesses to combine those spaces.

And while the World Cup has been over for months, the legislation will remain in effect until the end of 2027 as a pilot project so the bill’s sponsors, including prime sponsor Seattle Rep. Julia Reed (D-36, Seattle), can get feedback from the more than 70 licensed liquor businesses who got the temp permits to expand their alcohol service. Of course, it also means we’ll hear from neighbors and others about how the pilot is going.

That extra input could help. “World Cup and Pioneer Square Art Walk are great examples of how vibrant public spaces can be,” says Henry Watson, Director of Development with Urban Villages and the RailSpur project, a Pioneer Square art space that’s been working with SDOT and the state to increase alley activation. “The question I keep getting asked is how we can make that level of activation a regular thing,” he says. “SDOT and the state have a great vision of how to do that with HB 1515.”

“Activate the Alleys” is a longstanding urbanist agenda item; it’s been bandied about Seattle for decades. Here’s hoping the World Cup gave us the kick we needed to actually make it happen.

Josh@PubliCola.com

Business, Development, Economy, housing, Mayor Wilson

Greater Seattle: Inclusionary Zoning, Part 2; Amazon as a Percentage of the Budget; Permitted, but Struggling

By Josh Feit

Last week, I featured Seattle City Councilmember Dionne Foster in an item headlined “Inclusionary Zoning > No Inclusionary Zoning” to reflect her progressive affordable housing stance. However, according to a comprehensive new academic study, she has it backward.

No Inclusionary Zoning > Inclusionary Zoning

So says the study released this summer by an economist at UC Irvine about inclusionary zoning (IZ), a policy that requires builders to couple any market-rate housing they build with affordable housing. Seattle’s version of this—as in Foster’s resolution calling for inclusionary zoning requirements in residential areas where the policy doesn’t currently apply—uses a “fee in lieu” model where developers can pay into an affordable housing fund instead of including the affordable housing in their own projects.

Unlike other (inconclusive) research on IZ, the UC Irvine study had a clean before-and-after look at the policy, thanks to California’s unique history of going through a period when inclusionary zoning (including the fee-in-lieu model) was legal, illegal, and then legal again.

The study indicates inclusionary zoning does the opposite of what it’s intended to do, finding that IZ makes it more expensive to rent. California renters paid approximately $6.97 billion in additional rent in areas with IZ mandates. So, even as IZ funds some affordable units, it comes at a steep cost to renters, including low-income renters, who aren’t “lucky enough to get an IZ unit,” according to the study.

But the real zinger: The study then compared that rent increase to the number of affordable units created and found that it wasn’t worth the tradeoff. As the author bluntly states in the opening summary: “I estimate the cost of generating an affordable unit with inclusionary zoning to be approximately $800,000 [per the 8,990 units created] in ‘excess rents’ paid by market rate renters as a result of the policy’s constraint on supply. This exceeds the cost of directly incentivizing the creation of low-income housing [~$441,00 per unit] in California through existing programs.”

Seattle’s Budget = Amazon’s Stock Price

Speaking of being blunt, Erica didn’t hold back in her report on Mayor Wilson’s $2.5 billion budget proposal last week. And I quote: “JumpStart is Basically Just a Slush Fund Now.”

JumpStart, of course, is the 2020 tax on high-end salaries proposed and passed by former lefty city councilmember Teresa Mosqueda to pay for affordable housing and other progressive priorities. Now, according to a recent economic study commissioned by Seattle’s own Office of Economic Development, it increasingly covers the city’s regular budget shortfalls. Since 2024, when a newly elected city council majority changed the law to eliminate the original JumpStart spending plan, more than half of JumpStart revenues are used to cover the gap between city budget expenditures and general fund revenue.

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I’m not here to cry about that. True believers like me have lost that fight. But here’s a problem with  budgeting-by- JumpStart that everyone should note: The report found that “Seventy-five percent of JumpStart revenue comes from just 10 companies.”

This is emblematic of Seattle’s worrisome status as a one-crop town (big tech). “In summary,” the report states, “the city’s fiscal health now depends on the marginal location and compensation decisions of a handful of employers. It also depends, indirectly, on the stock prices of those employers.”

Zeroing in on the city’s largest company, the report continues: “When Amazon’s stock rises, Seattle’s tax base rises with it; when it falls, the base contracts. (Amazon’s stock price alone has ranged from roughly $85 to $245 over the past three years.) But it means that a fiscal base already concentrated in a few firms is further exposed to the single most volatile attribute of these firms—one the city has no ability to forecast or influence.”

Existing Third Places > New Startups

Wilson explicitly acknowledges the challenge by incorporating her recent “Resilient Economy” executive order  into her budget proposal. Seattle has “become increasingly concentrated on the tech sector,” the EO states. It commits the city to convene a task force “to develop and implement strategies for diversifying and growing Seattle’s economy.”

And while the specifics of the order focus on making it easier to permit and establish startups in tech-adjacent fields, that strikes me as being more top-down than middle-out. As I noted a few weeks ago, the thing that makes Seattle attractive to the talent needed for new startups are third spaces—i.e., existing businesses.

I wish Wilson’s proposal did more for the bars and restaurants and coffeeshops that are already permitted, but increasingly struggling: 67 percent of brick-and-mortar, small, independent businesses told OED they are under more financial stress than during the pandemic. “[Seventy-one] percent reported lower foot traffic than a year earlier, and only 12 percent said customer demand was sufficient to cover their cost structure.”

Josh@Publicola.com

City Council, Development, housing, Mayor Wilson, Transportation

Greater Seattle: Councilmember Foster Breaks the MHA Logjam
Construction workers packed city council chambers last Friday, September 18, to support city councilmember Dionne Foster’s tax holiday on  housing development.

By Josh Feit

Councilmember Dionne Foster > Mayor Katie Wilson

You couldn’t have a clearer juxtaposition. Mayor Wilson tried to cut a deal between housing developers and the affordable-housing left to accelerate housing production. And Councilmember Dionne Foster tried to cut a deal between housing developers and the affordable-housing left to accelerate housing production. Wilson put it off.

Foster moved it forward.

The city currently has an affordable housing program known as Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) which makes developers either add affordable housing to their projects or pay into an affordable housing fund whenever they build new projects. Ironically, the MHA program seems to have slowed housing production. Since MHA kicked in back in 2019, housing applications are down 94 percent and permits issued are down 66 percent. This means less housing supply, which increases rents for everybody—while also bringing in less money for affordable housing. To get production going again, developers wanted to cut MHA fees by 80 percent for two years on projects that are already in the pipeline but have stalled due to the fees. Their argument: A smaller fee on some production will generate more money for affordable housing than a hefty fee on minimal production.

Wilson’s efforts ended with a plan to convene a task force (with a goal of cutting a deal on the fees in early 2027). Enter Foster. She brought the parties together and surfaced math that showed two things: MHA revenues had dwindled to a minuscule portion of the Office of Housing’s affordable housing budget (6 percent down from 39 percent a few years ago) and millions in revenue were being left the table from unrealized development. Developers estimate that lowering the MHA fee would trigger about $24 million in affordable housing funds by greenlighting projects they already have cued up, but can’t move forward thanks to the fee. This is millions more than the anemic $11.7 million MHA has brought in so far this year at the full fee, and down from $67 million in 2020, before developers started forgoing projects.

That would also bring in an estimated $225 million in new construction sales tax and create up to 6,700 new units. Oh, and it would create new construction jobs, which is why labor packed a meeting of Foster’s housing committee on Friday to support her legislation to lower the fee by 80 percent for two years.

Despite the obvious boon for affordable housing, you still can’t convince the left that developers should get tax breaks. And so Foster’s deal—which, of course, still has to pass—includes keeping the full MHA fee in place on any new projects in vulnerable neighborhoods such as Beacon Hill, the Central District, and the Chinatown-International District where development is often considered synonymous with displacement.

It’s worth noting, though, that almost all the projects developers are trying to get moving again under the 80 percent discount are on vacant lots or lots that aren’t currently residential.

Wilson applauded Foster on her proposal. From the sidelines.

Inclusionary Zoning > No Inclusionary Zoning

So says Foster herself, who has added a resolution to her MHA-holiday ordinance clarifying that despite the temporary reduction in the MHA rate, she believes developer fees need to be a “core part” of the affordable housing equation in the future. Using developer fees to fund affordable housing is known as “inclusionary zoning,” a policy that conditions issuing permits for market-rate projects on the production of affordable housing.

Foster’s resolution calls for adding inclusionary zoning requirements in neighborhood residential zones—formerly single-family zones—that are currently exempt from MHA fees. Her resolution directs staff to “develop legislation implementing an inclusionary requirement for new market rate residential development in Neighborhood Residential zones … [and] estimate how an inclusionary requirement for new market rate residential development could … contribute to meeting the need for housing affordable to lower income households.”

This startled some urbanists who cheered her MHA holiday ordinance, but then wondered why she’d do a 180 by adding the fees where they currently don’t exist. Given the slumping post-MHA housing production numbers, urbanists ask why Seattle would tax something its wants to encourage—housing.

Foster, who wants to be “transparent that [her] vision” supports inclusionary zoning, says she doesn’t believe MHA is solely responsible for the falloff in housing production; she cites Trump’s tariffs, for one. However, she also says she wants to make sure the fees don’t stall development and wants staff to “recalibrate” MHA fees “to find the right balance.” (As Erica reported last week, Foster differentiates her resolution from a council proposal last year that would have simply applied the MHA fee structure as is.)

“Right now we are doing a short-term fee reduction to help get development back on track in the midst of lots of negative macroeconomic factors we weren’t facing a decade ago,” Foster said when asked about the seeming contradiction in her approach. “And as we look towards the future, I believe inclusionary zoning should continue to be a part of how we build a city that works for everyone. We just have to get the dials right. The resolution focuses on determining the right path to include neighborhood residential in that recalibration.”