Aurora Avenue is Seattle’s section of Washington State Route 99, built as the US Highway from British Columbia’s own Highway 99 to Baja California prior to I-5’s usurpation. Without completely restricting cross traffic and life the way I-5 does, Aurora still splits North Seattle down the middle with inconvenience, noise, and pollution. It maintains a continuous distinct “feel” from the Ship Canal to Shoreline, one that has an infamous reputation. Simultaneously, Aurora connects people, a vital transportation route for both cars and the 17,000 passenger-per-day E-line, second only to Link Light Rail in transit route usage (King County Metro 2018, p.47). Aurora’s speed enables access between jobs and more affordable housing north of Seattle, yet makes for an unpleasant ‘wall’ for everyone around it. Aurora-Licton Springs Urban Village (ALUV) is a community advocacy group. Their mission statement identifies their hopes and grievances:
Since the 1994 Residential Urban Village designation, the urban village has experienced significant increases in residential density. But little else has changed. Aurora-Licton Springs is missing key characteristics of sustainable urban villages such as pedestrian infrastructure, locally-serving businesses, community meeting places and facilities and well-designed streetscapes. Aurora Avenue continues to divide rather than unite the community. [ALUV, italicization added]
In a position statement on the future of Aurora, 2019 District 5 City Council candidate John Lombard noted the oddity of even considering it a distinct neighborhood, when most consider it the hard boundary between other neighborhoods:
Perhaps more than any other urban villages in Seattle, though, at the time they were simply lines on a map, enclosing areas of greater density. They were not communities. They crossed Aurora, but Aurora divided them, repelling attention. Surrounding neighborhoods focused away from it, rather than towards each other. [Lombard 2019]
The next 25 years of growth in Aurora Avenue will likely bring a completely changed neighborhood character and begin to rectify some of these issues. Analyzing its assets and vulnerabilities, what should Aurora be? Choices on the development of Aurora will have considerable impacts, and some stakeholders will be elevated while others left behind. Affordable housing developers have successfully taken advantage of the unique situation and transitional phase that Aurora is currently in, while many business owners fear the future. This report particularly focuses on the Aurora-Licton Springs Urban Village boundary area, which covers the surrounding blocks from N 83rdSt to N 115thSt (see figure 1).
Sex Work
Lined with motels built ahead of the 1962 World’s Fair, Aurora has had the reputation as Seattle’s infamous corridor of sex work since the 1960s (Gruener 2015). The 2018 US Congressional passage of the bipartisan Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) made online platforms meant to reduce harm such as Backpage criminally culpable for facilitating sex work. Since this law eliminated safer choices for sex workers last year, the Seattle Police Department has reported a significant increase in street solicitation on Aurora (Moreno 2018), which is known to carry a 13 times greater workplace murder rate compared to other forms of sex work. As Craigslist staggered the roll out of its personals section feature from 2002 to 2010, each city to get the service experienced a decline of 10-17% in the total female homicide rate (Cunningham, et al. 2019). Online platforms gave sex workers a method to independently screen clients that Aurora Avenue does not enable, such as requiring clients provide references, and maintaining a blacklist forum. Unfortunately, this misguided and harmful Federal policy is expected to correlate to an increase in violence against women in the Aurora neighborhood in the coming years.
Land Use
Although the 1999 Neighborhood Plan sought to, “Protect the character and integrity of Aurora-Licton’s single-family areas within the boundaries of the Aurora-Licton urban village,” (Aurora-Licton Planning Group 1999, p.18) the neighborhood is uniquely characterized by low-rise multifamily homes, with only 30.7 of its 327 acres (City of Seattle HALA 2016) devoted to single-family zoning until the recent Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) rezone that transitioned all of these areas to allow duplexes with the “Residential Small Lot” classification. In the early 2000s the neighborhood saw townhouses and small apartment buildings rapidly deploy across many blocks, growing the total number of housing units from 2,460 in 1999 to 3,454 in 2015. Aurora-Licton Springs is denser than most neighborhoods in Seattle as a result, with over 12,000 people per square mile.
In the course of this, Aurora Avenue itself has remained surprisingly stagnant, with most 1940s-1960s era automobile-oriented businesses, including many used car dealerships, remaining. Many of these automobile lots result in discontinuous sidewalks, making pedestrian access to the E-line bus route difficult. Leading up to the 2018 implementation of Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA), City Councilmember Debora Juarez lead the effort to put a moratorium on Aurora developments. Neighborhood group ALUV lobbied for this September 2017 legislation, hoping to prevent any new warehouses, ‘big box’ stores and suburban strip malls that were inconsistent with the goals of the 1999 neighborhood plan from being built before Aurora was rezoned from commercial-only to mixed-use urban design standards (Schofield 2017).
The existing conditions on Aurora make for a neighborhood that many find hostile. Life and Death of Great American Cities author Jane Jacobs stressed the critical importance of lively streets, with eyes and activity, for public safety, childhood development, and social life:
In the first several chapters of this book I have dwelt heavily upon the self-government functions of city streets: to weave webs of public surveillance and thus to protect strangers as well as themselves; to grow networks of small-scale, everyday public life and thus of trust and social control; and to help assimilate children into reasonably responsible and tolerant city life.
The self-government functions of streets are all humble, but they are indispensable. In spite of much experiment, planned and unplanned, there exists no substitute for lively streets. [Jacobs 1961, p.114]
The present set-back land use and high-speed traffic of Aurora Avenue provide none of these importance characteristics for a neighborhood, and it’s difficult to imagine an Aurora changed enough to accomplish them. Hoping to gain a more livable neighborhood and street, Seattle has chosen to plan the neighborhood for a future where many of the existing businesses must be displaced. Given the State Highway designation, can Aurora truly ever allow for a great street? The Aurora Avenue Merchants Association (AAMA) represents the interests of the highway’s traditional industry. Faye Garneau, the executive director of AAMA and business owner since 1950, disapproves and testified against this change in zoning, and made a strong and cynical statement to KUOW:
The idea of building apartments on a major highway, in this country, is ridiculous. It’d be like putting apartments on the freeway. You can try all you want to make it into a little neighborhood street, but it isn’t. It’s a major highway. [McNichols 2018]
Garneau believes the city is wrong in undervaluing car-oriented businesses, and ultimately that Aurora will never adapt away from this model, so why is the city trying to force it? AAMA was also wary of the City of Shoreline’s 2007-2017 Aurora Corridor Improvement Project, which brought high quality sidewalks, a street tree median, and stormwater swales with $140 million of public investment (WA State Dept of Ecology). The character is now more safely walkable, but businesses remain very suburban and the highway still carries six lanes at 40 miles per hour. These kinds of improvements are made in Seattle only as a patchwork adjacent to new redevelopments at the cost of the developer, making it difficult to garner when Seattle’s Aurora will ever get closer to being a “neighborhood street.”
Low Rent Assets
Aurora’s highway character has historically depressed property values, which presents an opportunity for retail space uses that can survive with the lower rents. In just one building at N 79th St, this includes many immigrant-owned local stores, including Eddie’s 1989 Pan Asian Restaurant, Continental Halal Spice & Grocery, Mendoza’s Mercado, and Jalapeño Mexican Restaurant, which each offer affordable meals and imported goods to North Seattle communities of color (figure 3). In addition to local businesses, international fast food franchises such as Jack In The Box, Taco Bell, and Starbucks find a space in the highway architecture, while big chains are unheard of in the neighboring Greenwood commercial core.
Aurora Commons is a public kitchen and living room that aims to serve unhoused neighbors, sex workers, and individuals who experience drug addiction with “radical hospitality” in the form of a free, safe, and comfortable place. The organization is a Faith-based non-profit, paying rent from donor support, including many different churches. They implement harm reduction practices including providing needle exchange and condoms, participate in the Seattle “Bad Date List” project for sex workers to share information on violent clients, and they politically advocate for the implementation of safe consumption sites (Riski 2017).
Licton Springs Tiny House Village
Licton Springs Tiny House Village opened in April 2017 as Seattle’s first “low barrier” authorized encampment for individuals experiencing drug addiction and unable to qualify for sober shelters and tent cities. Located at 86thAve N and Aurora, the empty lot housed 65 people with individual unit tiny houses and a communal dorm, built with donated labor, and was operated by SHARE with democratic resident self-management. The village faced growing tension and opposition from neighbors that discussed their fear of its existence using several Facebook, including Safe Seattle, led by David Preston and considered by many to be a right-wing hate group. 911 calls increased in the area closest to the neighborhood, and local news reported on concerned observations of “suspicious activity,” drawing a picture of rapidly increasing crime associated with the village. Criminal charges do not back up this narrative, however. Overall property crime in the neighborhood peaked in 2015 and has declined since then, while violent crime had a sharp uptick in 2015 and was also relatively stable for the duration of the village (figure 4).
In Winter of 2018, eight University of Washington Master of Public Health Students worked with faculty member Amy Hagopian, PhD., to conduct an evaluation of the performance of Licton Springs Tiny House Village. Their methods included questionnaires, qualitative interviews, focus groups, and quantitative data from LIHI (the non-profit responsible for Licton Springs), the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) and Seattle Police Department. Majorities of residents expressed that since moving in to the village, their physical health (50%) and mental health (63%) had considerably improved, considered the village an improvement from their previous housing or shelter (73%), and that their life has become much more stable (80%). 95% of respondents reported willingness and desire to be placed in permanent affordable housing, speaking to the lack of its availability in Seattle.
Demographically, residents of the village in February 2018 were 31.4% Black and 17.6% Indigenous American or Pacific Islander, 18.4% identified as gay, bisexual, or pansexual, 27 residents were women, 26 men, and one person was non-binary (Barrett, K., Coogan S., Less, E., Mogk., J, et al 2018). Licton Springs Tiny House Village served residents disproportionately from minority and marginalized identities compared to Seattle’s population as a whole.
In September 2018, the City of Seattle under Mayor Jenny Durkan announced their revocation of the Village’s permit, resulting in its permanent closure in March 2019. The City expects publicly-funded shelters to transition people into permanent housing within 90 days (Homelessness Response Blog 2018). The Village was unable to do this given the lack of available permanent supportive housing, with the majority of residents staying for over a year. Dr. Hagopian commented in email correspondence, “It’s very sad the Village was shut down without ensuring everyone went to permanent housing.” Seattle has limited low-barrier, harm reduction-based permanent housing able to accommodate Villagers. The 1811 Eastlake House operated by Downtown Emergency Services Center (DESC) offers a hopeful model with 75 apartments, but is insufficient for the number of people seeking low-barrier housing.
While the Tiny House Village is now shuttered, Aurora Avenue still offers affordable housing for others (see figure 5). The combination of low desirability and dense zoning allows non-profit low-income housing providers take part in the development of Aurora and create projects that would be infeasible elsewhere. DESC recently opened their six story Clement Place, providing 100 units of supportive low-income housing at N 96th St on a 0.37-acre lot (Sundell 2019). DESC purchased the lot, which was previously auto-businesses, for $1.38 million in 2017. For comparison, 1780 NW 56th St, a lot of similar acreage and zoning purchased for a market rate redevelopment in Ballard, sold for $5 million in 2016. DESC also previously built the four-story, 87-unit Aurora House building, opened in 2013, on a 0.45-acre lot that they had purchased in 2010 for $1.15 million, built to the previous commercial zoning regime (King County Dept of Assessments). Similar to what Lake City has seen with affordable Bellwether and LIHI creating much of the new construction, the most pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use buildings in Aurora are non-profit affordable housing. In other neighborhoods this building style is frequently associated with gentrification. We can expect this trend in construction to continue as funds from developments make Mandatory Housing Affordability contributions to the housing levy, from which the City makes grants and subsidized loans to organizations like DESC. DESC’s 1811 Eastlake house received $2.2 million from this fund (DESC, 2009).
Conclusion
After twenty-five years of urban village stagnation, Aurora Avenue appears to finally be changing. It currently presents a unique opportunity for affordable housing development, with relatively cheap land unheard of in other neighborhoods. Through affordable as well as market-rate development, pedestrian livability improvements may gradually heal Aurora’s dividing wall effect. With these amenities, Aurora has the potential to become the kind of street that can make a true neighborhood, in Jane Jacobs’ theory. Crucial to visioning a new Aurora, Jacobs’ avoided classism and clarified that wealthy people have produced plenty of dull, apathetic, and socially unsustainable neighborhoods, and low-income people have in many cases created good and improving neighborhoods (Jacobs 1961, p.114).
The model of design that the urban village and neighborhood plan advocates for may create a risk of displacement for longstanding businesses, including auto shops, national franchises, and immigrant-owned restaurants and markets that have found affordable leases and adapted to Aurora’s vernacular. Gentrification may also make it more costly to provide “radical hospitality” and create services for Seattle’s most marginalized communities. However, Aurora has the asset and opportunity to develop a lively street while improving equity. Neighbors, communities, and the City should act to preserve the resources that protect Aurora’s most vulnerable residents, including sex workers and unhoused people that call the highway home.
References
Aurora-Licton Planning Group. (1999) “Aurora-Licton Neighborhood Plan,” March. City of Seattle. Available online: https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/Neighborhoods/Planning/Plan/Aurora-Licton-plan.pdf. Accessed June 5 2019.
ALUV. “Our Urban Village,” available online: http://auroralictonuv.org. Accessed June 5 2019.
Barrett, K., Coogan S., Less, E., Mogk., J, et al. (2018) “Licton Springs Village Evaluation,” March. University of Washington Community-Oriented Public Health Practice.
City of Seattle HALA. (2016) “Aurora Licton Springs Residential Urban Village DRAFT ZONING CHANGES,” October 22. City of Seattle. Available online: http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/HALA/FocusGroups/September/MHA_rezone_mapping_11x17_maps_uv_profiles_lo.pdf. Accessed June 5 2019.
Seattle Office of Housing. (2019) “Rent and Income Restricted Housing,” May 15. City of Seattle. Available online: https://data.seattle.gov/Community/Rent-and-Income-Restricted-Housing/b6zn-zsinAccessed May 30 2019.
Cunningham, S., DeAngelo, G., and Tripp, J. (2019) “Craigslist Reduced Violence Against Women,” February. Baylor University and Claremont Graduate University. Available online: http://scunning.com/craigslist110.pdf. Accessed June 5 2019.
DESC. (2009) “JAMA research shows housing for homeless saves taxpayers millions,” April. Available online: https://www.desc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/DESC_1811_JAMA_info.pdf. Accessed June 7 2019.
DESC. (2010) “AURORA AVENUE DESC Design Review Proposal,” Oct 25. SMR Architects. Available online: http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/AppDocs/GroupMeetings/DRProposal3011425AgendaID3083.pdf
Gruener, P. (2015) “Why Is There So Much Prostitution On Aurora Avenue In Seattle?” Dec. 20. KUOW.Available online: https://www.kuow.org/stories/why-there-so-much-prostitution-aurora-avenue-seattle/. Accessed June 5 2019.
Homelessness Response Blog. (2018) “Tiny House Village Update: Next Steps for Licton Springs,” Sept 26. City of Seattle. Available online: https://homelessness.seattle.gov/tiny-house-village-update-next-steps-for-licton-springs/. Accessed June 5 2019.
Jacobs, J. (1961) “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” New York. Random House, Inc.
King County Dept of Assessments. “King County Parcel Viewer 2.0,”
1780 NW 56TH ST 98107: https://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Detail.aspx?ParcelNbr=2767700445
DESC Clement Building: https://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Detail.aspx?ParcelNbr=0263000015
DESC Aurora House:
https://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Detail.aspx?ParcelNbr=2291400310
Accessed June 7 2019.
King County Metro. (2018) “2018 System Evaluation,” available online: https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/transportation/metro/accountability/pdf/2018/system-evaluation.pdf. Accessed June 5 2019.
Lombard, J. (2019) “John Lombard, Candidate for City Council, District 5: Position Statement on Aurora,” April 8. Available online: https://votejohnlombard.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Aurora-Position-Paper-Updated.pdf. Accessed June 5 2019.
McNichols, J. (2018) “Aurora Ave used to be kind to the auto industry. No longer,” March 26. KUOW.Available online: https://www.kuow.org/stories/aurora-ave-used-be-kind-auto-industry-no-longer. Accessed June 5 2019.
Moreno, J. (2018) “Prostitutes back on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue after shut down of online sex services,” Sept 11. KOMO News.Available online: https://komonews.com/news/local/aurora-ave-prostitution-prompts-neighborhood-meeting-with-police/. Accessed June 5 2019.
Riski, T. (2017) “On Aurora Avenue: ‘Radical hospitality,’” March 23. Crosscut/Cascade Public Media. Available online: http://features.crosscut.com/aurora-avenue-commons-radical-hospitality/. Accessed June 5 2019.
Schofield, K. (2017) “Juarez Proposing Emergency Moratorium on Commercial Development in Aurora-Licton Springs,” Sept. 25.SCC Insight. Available online: https://sccinsight.com/2017/09/25/juarez-proposing-emergency-moratorium-commercial-development-aurora-licton-springs/. Accessed June 5 2019.
Sundell, A. (2019) “Apartment complex to house 100 homeless people in North Seattle,” April 9. King 5 News. Available online: https://www.king5.com/article/news/apartment-complex-to-house-100-homeless-people-in-north-seattle/281-3f4a104e-7320-4f57-adb6-f28129a70037. Accessed June 5 2019.
WA State Dept of Ecology. (2013) “Shoreline’s Aurora Corridor Improvement: From eyesore…to…so much more,” May. Ecology Publication No. 13-10-024. Available online: https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/publications/documents/1310024.pdf. Accessed June 5 2019.