Queen Anne Council is still suing to stop it
If you’ve spent time in any of Seattle’s residential neighborhoods in the past 3 years, you’ve probably seen slight variations of this modern mansion popping up everywhere:
With floorpans of 3,300-4,000sqft, they’re obscenely big compared to the average new construction American house size of 2,400sqft, and triple the size of the average 1920s Seattle bungalow. They provide housing to a single family despite having more space than many multiunit apartment buildings, and with landlords cashing out on a boom, they often replace the duplexes that sprinkle affordable rent into Seattle’s neighborhoods. Seattle does not have unusually large family sizes, in fact, despite the city’s rapid growth many single family neighborhoods in Seattle have lost population since the 1970s due to shrinking family size. Most importantly, you probably can’t afford the $10,000/month mortgage payment, which requires an income of well over $300,000, something very few Seattle families make. That price also essentially bars the new houses from entering the rental market in the foreseeable future. Construction of these mansions will slowly dwindle down the 90,000 renters in single family zoning and displace them to the margins. Finally, unlike apartment buildings, luxurious mansions are not taxed to fund affordable housing under the Mandatory Housing Affordability program. Once again in Washington, the lower and middle classes pay taxes instead of the filthy rich.
The City of Seattle hopes to soon stop mansions from replacing bungalows, while allowing more small homes to be fit in existing lots without displacing anyone. Seattle currently has many barriers on the construction of mother-in-law homes that have left it lagging far behind Vancouver, BC and Portland, OR in secondary suite abundance, where they proliferate Craigslist’s lowest rent studio to 2 bedroom apartments, providing affordable homes in neighborhoods of million dollar property. With the policy change, developers and homeowners would be most incentivized to add two modest <1,000sqft “Accessory Dwelling Unit” (ADU) homes to an existing house rather than build one giant mansion. The easings include allowing backyard cottages, alleyway houses, and subdivision of the existing house to be permitted on slightly smaller lots, without an off-street parking spot for each home, allowing both homes to be rentals, and allowing both an attached apartment and tiny house on the same lot. One of the many use cases for these accessory homes includes allowing elderly folks struggling to pay property taxes to “age in place” and remain in their community in an accessible and smaller space while opening up their large house to a family that needs the space.
The city’s environmental impact study details its plan to effectively ban these obscenely large two million dollar mansions. The city would finally regulate single family house size the same way they regulate apartment buildings: floorplan square footage would max out at half the size of the lot, or 2,500 on a standard 5,000sqft lot. Most new single family houses built today are 3,300–4,000sqft on 4–5,000sqft lots, reaching a floor area ratio of 80–100%, bulkier than what townhouses in multifamily zoning are permitted. Accessory homes would be excluded from these calculations to encourage their construction. The city estimates that compared to taking no action, in the next 10 years its preferred alternative would over double the total new accessory homes constructed to 4,430, while it would cut the number of older home demolitions expected by 500. Instead of zoning that incentivizes the gentrification and population-decline of residential neighborhoods, they’ll finally take a share of Seattle’s population growth while doing so with houses that match more people’s needs than just the ultra-wealthy.
Marty Kaplan, vocal leader of the Queen Anne Community Council, attempted to rile support for his lawsuit by fearmongering that, “If advanced, we will lose the very heart and soul of our city and our cherished neighborhoods as we know them,” and asking neighbors, “Do you want triplexes next to your single family house?” Marty disregards his neighbors that live in the existing thousands of duplexes and triplexes built alongside single units in areas that have since been downzoned to single family-only, a practice that was done out of “protecting property values,” classism, and racism. A quick look at public comments will reveal that the most common ‘environmental impact’ concern is parking availability. The city’s study found present utilization rates of 53% in Northeast neighborhoods, and their model expects an increase to just 58% after 10 years of the new policy.
The Seattle Times Editorial Board, who recently endorsed Republicans and their initiatives on the ballot, predictably reacted to the proposed policy with reactionary fury, asserting that, “Seattle must preserve single-family neighborhoods that are essential to its livability, character and economic success,” and that affordability must come second to this “greatest asset.”
Many of Twitter’s urbanists were quick to lash back, laughing at the idea that Seattle’s greatest asset could be “it’s suburbs,” that are of the same mass-produced Sears® Craftsman™ housing stock as any other North American city built in the 1920s (my favorite model is the “farmboi” Dutch Colonial). For many though, these neighborhoods, built just before cars became paramount and the concept of “jaywalking” was invented, are genuinely lovely places to live in a way post-war suburbs have never been able to recreate. Most houses are within a short walk of “non-conforming grandfathered” local retail shops, and 73% are within a half mile of a 15 minute frequent bus line you can rely on. The ever-unique gardens, fauna, decoration, and paint jobs provide infinite eye candy and public fruit and herbs for the taking. Most older houses are built within feet of each other on lots that are well below the now minimum 5,000sqft, and with a garage too small for any modern SUV, but fantastic for bicycles. The current zoning guidelines in this 2/3rds of Seattle land does nothing to protect the good aspects of the neighborhoods, outlawing their re-creation. More people deserve access to neighborhoods closer to groceries, gardens, parks, and libraries than freeways, and that’s clearly worth a slight sacrifice on parking availability.
There’s no need to glorify the many Wallingfords of Seattle, however, yet at least some of their problematic aspects could be changed by increased rental homes in them. In the majority of single family neighborhoods, from Queen Anne to Wallingford and West Seattle, these amenities have always been racially and class exclusive, an impact continued from their original restrictive covenants with generational wealth inequality and million dollar housing prices. Just 20% of homes in single family zones are in the rental market despite 52% of Seattle residents being renters. People that do not own property are disproportionately lower income and people of color, and right now most are barred from the amenities of neighborhoods. That’s not to mention the complete lack of curb cuts and root-torn sidewalks that make navigating the neighborhoods with a wheelchair or stroller a nightmare. Infrastructure is more sustainable and efficient with greater population density to pay for its construction and maintenance, and 30 years of ADA incompliance and population decline show Seattle’s neighborhoods can’t pay for their mutual aid.
The policy suggestions ironically might do a lot to preserve the most beloved aspects of Seattle’s residential neighborhoods, while crucially expanding access to their amenities to people that can’t buy a million dollar house, who will also add to the local tax-base (greater than their fair share, because Washington) to fund desperately needed infrastructure maintenance. The current construction pattern replaces rental duplexes that provide some class range with the abovementioned 3,700sqft houses built to code maximum, usually including a two lane wide driveway that replaces pedestrian-protecting public garden and street tree space as well as a public parking space from the street. Under current regulation, a homeowner deciding to build an ADU must also build a driveway and parking spot. Under the city’s proposed changes, this requirement would be removed, and some impermeable pavement will be prevented.
I live in a single family rental house, giving me and my minimum wage working roommates under $700 per person rent. Along with 90,000 other Seattle residents, we adapt the “American Dream” built environment to act as affordable rooming under an alternative family structure, while in consequence setting the per-house rental price far above what lower income families with children can afford. This stratifies neighborhood occupancy to 80% wealthy homeowners, many of them empty nesters, and 20% young adult renters, with little space for anyone else. The alleyway-facing half of my rental house lot is fenced off and serving as my landlord’s storage yard with a dilapidated garage and five non-running pickup trucks and vans. Were my landlord looking to expand his profit, as landlords usually are, the Seattle policy-encouraged investment would involve evicting four renters, tearing down the 1925 1,400sqft house, and replacing it with one of those houses, as is being built across the street, to sell for $2 million. I can picture the real estate listing already, “RARE Contemporary NW style and *Views*Views*Views* of Greenlake!” Clearing out the junkyard to build an alleyway house and provide housing for a few additional renters, as the homeowners next-door are currently building, would be illegal under current regulation, even though the total living space and aesthetic impact would be smaller and the green space greater than what a new mansion would result in.
The only argument against allowing these changes is rooted in a belief that renters are dangerous “transients” that should be physically segregated to Aurora from the holy and just propertied class. This argument frequently appears in the city’s list of public comments on the proposal, but I can’t believe a significant amount of a city that’s 52% renter genuinely hates and fears thy renting neighbors. More often, I think people associate the word “upzoning” and any change in the city with domineering, concrete, and expensive construction, which in their neighborhoods is more often than not present single family zoning built to code.
The sense of calm and comfort in a residential neighborhood does not depend on one singular nuclear family per 5,000 square feet of land. Strolls in the stacked flat and four story row apartment neighborhoods of East Coast cities certainly feel more like Wallingford than downtown Seattle or The Ave, accommodating p-patches, tree canopy, and streets calm enough for kids to play. If we stop listening to people like Marty and the Editorial Board, Seattle neighborhoods may become more livable than they ever have been, and certainly more sustainable and affordable than the current path is taking them. More homes here means reducing Washington’s sprawling encroachment on second growth forrest. For now, though, the policy is caught up in Marty’s appeal. Any attempt to make a change to the current course requires forever insufficient impact studies, while the much greater detrimental environmental and community impact of current policy is always overlooked as approved status quo. Letting existing policy continue is not neutral, it’s actively transforming Seattle into the concrete driveway dreams of the ultra-rich while displacing renters.
ADUs aren’t so scary
