Greetings Neighbors,

Each of us has until Friday, December 20th to submit one or more comments on Mayor Harrell’s One Seattle Comprehensive Plan. We know you care.

The following are some of our thoughts; please add your own. Please make time to share your concerns and help shape Seattle’s future. (There is one location for general zoning comments and another for neighborhood-specific comments.

https://one-seattle-plan-zoning-implementation-seattlecitygis.hub.arcgis.com/
 

SFG CompPlan Talking Points

Preservation and Construction 

Seattle should incentivize the construction of multi-family housing throughout the City. Seattle should revise the housing provisions of its land use code (e.g., Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) and the Multi-Family Tax Exemption (MFTE) to produce sufficient housing affordable to low-income households (both owners and renters) to move away from the conclusion of BERK 2021 (“Market Rate Housing Needs and Supply Analysis”):

If trends continue, Seattle will become increasingly exclusive to higher income households.

Seattle should plan for sufficient frequent transit so that owning a car is optional. The City should target affordable housing to be in close proximity to light rail and Rapid Ride stations and stops.

Affordability

According to Gov. Inslee, half of all new housing needs to be affordable housing. 

In HB 1110, the State defined “affordable” as <60% of AMI for renters and <80% of AMI for owner-occupied. OPCD says they’ve complied with HB 1110, yet there is no definition of “affordable” in the One Seattle Plan.   

We can’t manage affordable housing without a goal definition and goal.  

Much of the One Seattle plan for affordability rests on the assumption that simply building more housing will increase affordable units. It will, but it takes 40 years. Seattle’s hot market is causing older housing to be demolished or rehabbed down to the studs. We cannot rely on this trickle-down housing myth to solve our housing crisis.  

Unless they are subsidized, all new housing units are unaffordable, especially to renters.  

While the CompPlan’s implementation of HB 1110 allows such housing types as duplexes, triplexes, quads, sixflats, cottage and courtyard housing and townhouses, it doesn’t require any of these more affordable types. In fact, the Builders only build what is most profitable, that is, townhouses. In effect, we are zoning to be a city of townhouses. Because infill Builders only build for sale, any “affordable” sixflats near transit will be sold as condos, not rented. 

Infill Builders will never build rentals. It’s not in their business plan. Therefore all new housing created by HB 1110 will be unaffordable—unless it’s built by nonprofits or by homeowners themselves.

The MHA is broken. Rather than half of all new units being included in their buildings, as the City Council was told to expect, developers are paying an “in-lieu fee” on 88% of units, avoiding mixed-income buildings and mixed-income communities. The MHA fees only cover about ¼ of the cost of a unit, leaving most of the balance to be made up by taxpayers. The City should require affordable housing units on site in multifamily projects. 

Displacement

The CompPlan considers displacement of communities of color, but not of seniors, whether low-income homeowners or renters. The OPCD outreach poster lists four types of displacement: physical displacement, economic displacement, commercial displacement and cultural displacement, but no anti-displacement plans are posted. Instead, “more housing choices” and “encouraging affordable housing” are listed, including implementing HB 1110, which we’ve already demonstrated does not require—and is unlikely to create—any affordable rental housing.  

Large numbers of townhouses displace seniors, people with mobility issues and families with small children. Since new townhouses are sold, never rented, they are exclusionary--not useful to over half of Seattle’s population. 

Trees and the Environment  

Seventy percent of Seattle’s trees are in residential neighborhoods. In the previous five years, Seattle’s tree canopy went from 28% to 26%, primarily because of development. The City’s goal is 30% canopy. 

Do not confuse street trees with trees in private yards that shade and cool houses. They are not equivalent. Do not confuse saplings planted by developers with mature trees that create shade, hold soil and filter water. They are not equivalent. Do not confuse covered porches with open space. They are not equivalent! 

Sidewalk Safety

The CompPlan is silent on sidewalks, even though it proposes to create a good deal more walkability. No walkability exists without sidewalks. Seattle is missing 11,000 blockfronts of sidewalks. The previous Transportation Levy provided for 250. The new Levy provides for 350. So we have gone from a 400-year plan to complete Seattle’s sidewalk network to a 250-year plan. We need a 20-year plan and we need it in the CompPlan, since the Transportation Levy does not have a plan to build x sidewalks in y years with z funding. 

Ask the City Planners and Your Councilmember
 

• Please add the definition of affordable that is in HB 1110--<60% of AMI for renters and <80% of AMI for owner-occupied units and apply it to all programs. (The Downtown Development Assn. set this level when they wrote the MHA.) 

• Please add a plan to loan the cost of construction of an ADU to low-income homeowners in exchange renting it at 80 % of the median rent for their neighborhood. (Backburnered by OPCD—Mayor’s request?) Please eliminate all permitting fees for this program and provide one navigator within the department with numerical ADU production goals. 

• Please change the definition of “family-sized” from 2 bedrooms back to 3 bedrooms. (Two bedrooms are usually for couples and roommates.) Almost no three-bedroom apartments are being built, unless they are subsidized.  

• Please eliminate the MHA fee-in-lieu and just require developers to include affordable units (at 60% of AMI) in their residential projects as is done in New York (20%) and San Francisco (10%). (Look up inclusionary zoning.) 

• Do not give away upzones that increase potential building capacity and profit, without getting something for the Commons.  

• Eliminate permitting fees for private homeowners who wish to add an ADU to their owner-occupied property. Work with King County to eliminate the sewer hookup fee on an ADU in an existing house. 

• Eliminate the fee that Builders and Developers can pay to eliminate trees on their property. Instead, reward them for incorporating large trees into their plans. The tree code must be revised to preserve more mature trees on residential lots, or our tree canopy will continue to shrink.  

• Please include some actual anti-displacement plans, such as low-or no-interest loans for low-income homeowners to create ADUs that would be required to be rented at 80% of market   

• The Seattle Displacement Coalition long has championed one-for-one replacement, the deal that Vulcan offered to the residents of Yesler Terrace. The residents got a certificate guaranteeing them a place in a new midrise building in their same neighborhood. (Note that the City misrepresented this as applying to homeowners; it does not.) 

•  Developers are required to build sidewalks only in multifamily zones. Apparently, Neighborhood Residential (NR) is not a multifamily zone, even though it allows 3 or 4 units to a parcel. Because builders and developers are responsible for most of the development in formerly single-family neighborhoods, they should be responsible for building sidewalks or asphalt walkways where they are missing. 

• Where both drainage and sidewalks are missing, partner with SPU to complete missing sidewalks with drainage.

• We need a 20-year plan for sidewalks and we need it in the CompPlan, since the Transportation Levy does not have a plan to build x sidewalks in y years with z funding.

• Require developers to pay for maintenance of any new trees they plant for three years, because only some homeowners and few renters are doing this.