Compatible New Neighborhoods

"De-stereotyping Seattle Zoning", plus Appendix— view or download at page bottom

Research on this paper began just prior to the appointing of Mayor Murray's advisory committee with the presumptuous title of Seattle Housing Affordability & LIvability Agenda, aka HALA, and in due course its recommendation— surprise: same conventional wisdom responsible for the problem, aka, profit-fulfilling strategy common to a problems industry.

Don't Escalate Land Prices "Brooklyn Avenue: LR3 Case Study—download at page bottom

Independent search for truly "inclusionary housing" began with a 2010 Affordable Housing Ordinance Survey (also downloadable at page bottom). Various projects being built in the University District were then analyzed and one project's site used to reverse engineer a potential ordinance for Seattle incentivizes the moderation of land prices, contrary to HALA.

Compatible New Neighborhoods

Seattle knows how to build compatible new neighborhoods. The current problem is a family either has to have the means with which to buy the new home on their own (liars' mortgages worked briefly) or sign up, be screened, and if lucky enough, win the housing assistance lottery. Seattle's ability to subsidize the workforce needed to keep the city running far exceeds its pocket book. The urban village strategy cleanly and clearly detailed by the 1994 City Council's Comprehensive Plan has been increasingly waylaid by fancy and fancier lip-service to cover the increasingly "significant negative impacts" of the city's self-centered hegemony and its problems industry need to perpetuate itself by prescribing the problem. Nonetheless, in the not that distant past, affordable housing was all the local development industry built. We might ask: What has changed?

Highpoint Hope VI

New Holly Hope VI

Rainier Vista Hope VI

"Naughty townhouse builders of the immediate past caused Seattle's lowrise residential capacity to not meet expectations" so said those promoting "modernization" of Seattle's lowrise multifamily development regulations.

An administration slightly more interested in the unvarnished truth had this to say in 2002:

http://www.seattle.gov/dclu/news/LHS_Background_Report_0213_WEB.pdf

If the document had not disappeared, one would find on its page 30 that Highpoint Hope VI (the project at the top) produced a one-year anomaly where 1/3 of the units built in Seattle's L-3 zones— the workhorse apartment zone, were single family units. The report concluded on its page 34:

" Since 1990, the density of new development has averaged about 70% of the allowed limit. In the last six years, this average has been even lower: new development has averaged about 65% of the maximum allowed density. This decrease is due to more lower-density housing types such as townhouses and four-plexes being built, and a decrease in average built density of stacked flat units, due in part to both changes in Land Use Code that have increased restrictions on development standards, and the housing [ownership] market, where the demand has increased rapidly.

Assuming full redevelopment of the 1,621 redevelopable parcels at 800 square feet of lot area per unit, 13,250 housing units could be built. However, if recent trends continue parcels will likely be developed at about 1,153 square feet of lot area per unit, and only 9,194 units would be built - a potential deficit of 4,056 dwelling units. What these numbers equate to is this: while over half of what has been developed in Lowrise 3 zone is below the density target, there is still substantive opportunity for increasing housing within Lowrise 3-zoned areas on redevelopable parcels.

Beyond reaching growth targets mandated by state law, increasing housing opportunities can help alleviate the pressure on costs caused by a high demand for housing. The challenge is to ensure that any land use regulation that increases housing opportunities are changes that will ensure quality development that fits into our neighborhoods."

Known at the time and since confirmed, the lowrise zones provide 1) the most affordable, adaptable housing in existence and 2) the most affordable housing to be constructed (wood frame). Low-rise mixed-use zones also enable wood frame construction, although most of it has been aimed at higher incomes and/or the zones themselves targeted for upzoning to prohibitively costly construction with corresponding land prices. With townhouse mania blockbusting lowrise neighborhood after neighborhood, SHA's sum total waiting list grew to over 6000 households, with many of those waiting decamping to exactly where the Regional Council—obsessed with "bending the trend"—decreed urban households should not go.