The Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA), a Mayor-Murray inspired “grand compromise” between for-profit developer and affordable housing interests, started to take legal shape in the last few weeks with a series of new council bills.
The first item, approved September 28th, was a work plan to address the HALA recommendations (with the notable exception of allowing duplexes and triplexes in some single-family zones). Broadly speaking, the Council plans to enact various affordable housing programs in the near term, with the upzones happening in 2017. According to Sarra Tekola of Mike O’Brien’s office, “The upzones in 2017 are not delayed, with the environmental review, DPD and public process this will take a year.”
There are a total of 15 separate pieces of legislation in the plan, a number of reports, and two additional bills may be required.
In 2015, the Council planned passed “framework legislation” for the Commercial Linkage Fee on November 9th 9-0. It also renewed and revised on September 28th the Multifamily Property Tax Exemption (MFTE), a tax break to encourage inexpensive housing construction. These items do not come into effect until the upzones do in 2017. Still to come, the council will also adopt an agreement with regional partners to set up a revolving loan fund for transit oriented development.
In the first half of 2016, the Council would pass legislation authorizing a much larger Housing Levy on the ballot and authrorize a “credit enhancement program” for Yesler Terrace. New laws would also remove barriers to housing for people with criminal records, strengthen Tenant Relocation Assistance if a report calls for it, and reform both Design Review and Historic Preservation Review.
Later next year, the Council would amend the standards to encourage construction of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), and regulate the “short term rental” (e.g. AirBnB) market, based on a report earlier in the year. It would outlaw discrimination against renters based on source of income. It may also create a formal program to preserve existing affordable housing, based on the outcome of a staff report.
2017 is when the best stuff comes: upzones and changes to development standards linked to the Commercial Linkage Fee and MFTE in the deal, as well as reduced or eliminated minimum parking requirements in urban centers, urban villages, and frequent transit corridors.
Throughout the whole period the Council will seek to transfer public property for development via specific legislation, where possible. Missing, of course, is course is the bulk of the HALA committee’s recommendations on single-family zones, withdrawn soon after the proposal, despite it being the best tool to accommodate larger families in Seattle.
I’m concerned at the idea of “transfer[ing] public property for development.” I would prefer to see public property remain in public ownership, since once it’s gone, it’s gone. Instead, the city can work with long-term leases, partnerships, or – best of all – simply continue to own the developments or at least the land beneath them.
I disagree. There’s an opportunity cost to holding on to property, plus it takes money to maintain. If the city plans to do something with the property in the foreseeable future that’s one thing, but if it’s truly surplus they should sell it and use the money to make improvements to infrastructure.
If it’s suitable for housing, then the city should keep it and put publicly owned housing on it. It should not be handed over to private interests which may not put affordable housing on it. The city also has a poor track record for getting good prices on “surplus” public land.
There’s also the time-honored option of the city *leasing* the land for long periods. If the city doesn’t need it now but thinks it may need it in 10 years, it’s much better than outright sales.
I’m very cornered about this work plan as described because in some ways it puts the most controversial items last, after lots other changes have already been enacted. While I understand the desire to move quickly on affordable housing legislation, I think this approach will invariably result in a fragmentation of the HALA’s recommendations and invariably lead to an a la carte approach rather than comprehensive package, with upzones taking the biggest hit.
Perhaps there are compromises, but unless the entire HALA package is passed at once I can guarantee you that there will be people saying “we don’t need an upzone, look at all of the other things we’re already doing to address affordability”.
I agree. I’d like to see an upzone first or concurrent with the other improvements.
That’s what I worry about. Legislation that defines future legislation is just a schedule; it doesn’t guarantee that it will be enacted or won’t be substantially watered down. A cynic might say the upzones were put last so that there’s a chance to stop them before then. That’s how the Metro cuts worked: the lowest-hanging fruit was first, and the things people least wanted to cut were last in the hope they’d be canceled. And they were canceled.
“there will be people saying “we don’t need an upzone, look at all of the other things we’re already doing to address affordability”.”
They may as well say that right now because that’s what they believe. But objectively, there’s no way that all of HALA can fully address affordability, so the first few set-asides and developer fees certainly won’t. It may get the low-income housed, but middle-class people will still struggle to afford $1600 median rents, which may be $1900 by 2017. Anybody who thinks the first few things will bring up the vacancy rate substantially and thus ease pressure on rents is either delusional or lying.
I believe the affordability legislation is actually conditional on the upzones happening. That’s part of the grand bargain. In principle, a future council and mayor could choose to repeal those provisions without actually enacting the upzones.
“It may get the low-income housed (or otherwise able to live in Seattle), but middle-class people will still struggle (with every element of life.)”
Epitaph of the Democratic Party, and the term “Liberal” for at least forty years. Reason that the people who need liberal government the most hate the term, and the Democrats, the worst.
It’s hard to know how high or low an income this peaks our at, but huge number of people who dress, drive, buy, and think at middle class level would be living on the Government property sheltered by bridges if their cards all got canceled.
People whose actual income is the low end of what’s left of the working class are painfully aware of their real situation. Reason for all those far-right bumper-stickers on pickup truck bumpers. Also, debt is a terrific suppressionary tool. To a debtor, generosity means he starves. So does ticking off the boss by asking for better money and conditions.
Better off debtors have never in their lives seen their debt be a problem. Tempting for somebody to try to make it one. So to before I get off-topic like I’m tempted to…Mike, what to we do about this, housing and the rest of it?
Mark Dublin
The headline is really misleading. The HALA agreement is not “taking shape”. It has been gutted. Once again, a mayor has ignored a commission’s good work, and we are left with a mess (the last time being the 99 tunnel).
We will have a few feel good measures. We will have a nice little levy that of course, Seattle will support. Because our brand of left wing conservatism loves to have taxes, while we simultaneously blame everyone else for our problems (rich developers or landlords). To be clear, we need public housing — the market can’t possible produce enough on its own for those most in need. But because of overly conservative, overly restrictive zoning regulations, the public money will provide very little public housing. Meanwhile, those who don’t quite qualify will be out of luck again. We will at best allow even higher buildings on the tiny sliver of lands that we allow to grow, and then wonder why rent is so damn high.
If the zoning regulations were radically weakened — for instance, if height limits and FAR limits and number-of-families-in-building limits were repealed entirely — I could conceive of the market producing enough housing. Maybe. But you’re nowhere close to making that possible.
If the market doesn’t produce enough housing, then no one else will. It is crazy, really, when you think about it. Right now there are developers, big and small, basically saying “Hey, you know that new big house we are building — how about we add a couple doors and set it up so it can handle three families. While we are at it, how about if we convert that big old house down the street to a triplex?”. But basically, the city is saying “No, you can’t do that there. But don’t worry, we will build enough housing somewhere.”
Exactly where will this new housing be built? Not in the single family zoned area, which means it will essentially compete with other apartment buildings. Maybe they will squeeze more apartments into the units — essentially building more units than the market would build. It is hard to see how that would happen given the fact that the market wants to build Apodments, but the city won’t let it. We are basically just having a feel good lottery for the working class so that the wealthy in this town don’t have to see an apartment building go in next door.
The only way you can build enough places is if you open up the vast majority of the land to development, which means opening up the single family zoned areas. That is by far the cheapest way to develop. Both because it opens up the most land and because construction costs are so low. That is the only way you can possibly build enough units to meeting the middle end of the market.
To be clear, when you do that, you still have to deal with folks whose needs are met by the market, but it becomes a lot easier (your dollar goes a lot farther).
“gutted” is an overstatement for one item out of fifty.
Not when it guts the most important part. Here is the key here: Most of the land that can be developed in this city is currently zoned single family (somewhere around 60-65%). There will be little change there. At best there is talk of amending the ADU laws, but it remains to be seen exactly what that will entail.
If you ban discrimination based on source of income, how can a landlord practically gauge risk of non-payment of rent?
Landlords can relax, Kyle. Based on recent experience, based on the balance sheet, worst risks should be mortgage bankers. But if precedent holds, the Federal Government should bail them out again- also making them ineligible for usual income limits, so they’re forced to rent from you.
Also based on experience, good gauge for a reliable tenant is a lazy moron in a very high position, since these people hardly ever get fired and never miss a paycheck.
However, you want to check carefully with employers to avoid getting somebody who does valuable work very well. Your only real problem with these people is that they’d rather live under a (public) bridge than rent from you, so you’ve got no leverage.
Guaranteeing a perfect match between landlord and tenant. Proof? Find me one city in the Northern Hemisphere where this mode doesn’t apply.
Mark Dublin
What does source of income really tell you anyways? I’d argue that someone receiving cash from a means-tested-benefit has a more predictable source of income than someone who is an at-will employee. You could be terminated at any time. This is based on the assumption that landlords generally discriminate against those coming with Seciton 8 vouchers and fixed incomes.
I can’t imagine wanting to be a landlord in Seattle. Maintaining property is expensive. Renting properties is not a charity.
I think source of income is partly about preferring Amazon and Microsoft over miscellaneous employers.
“I can’t imagine wanting to be a landlord in Seattle. Maintaining property is expensive.”
Why are landlords doing it then? They were profitible in 2000, and rents have gone up faster than inflation or expenses since then, so they’re making a windfall. The developers didn’t build those dozens of new buildijngs involuntarily.
What is the mentality of an image, a streetscape without a tree, a 4-story apts behind cars.
Super-pollute-mobiles! Painted in lots of nice colors! Buy1 Too Day! or naught. frickincars.
In that picture there are four trees in front of that apartment building. A fun fact about deciduous trees is that they lose their leaves in the winter.
They lost me when they decided coating our absurdly high number of single family neighborhoods in zoning was an OK outcome.
The rest is window dressing and market interference.
What a spineless bunch.
Coating in Amber by zoning, I should say.
Coating in amber implies it will never change. This is just this round. The new council could reverse it, or the one after that, or a HALA 2. The current plan I believe allows a flexibility in unit number as long as they all fit within the single-family FAR and setbacks. That’s not much but it’s not nothing either. The next step will be to raise the flexibility to allow as many ADUs and row houses as Vancouver. Perhaps we can gradually get it raised incrementally. The opponents also cited one possibly-legitimate fear, I can’t properly aticulate it but something about developers targeting all single-family lots because they’re lower cost than multifamily. The pause may give time to negotiate an in-between level that either excludes the most legitimate fears or shows them to be unfounded.
I’d like to see a court ruling declaring “single family” restrictions to be an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. Probably should be pushed by a cult which declares all of its members to be a family and moves into a single-family house using the maximum number of people allowed in a “family”. It’s none of the government’s business to be defining “family”.
It would still be legal for cities to put in craziness like FAR restrictions, unfortunately, which also need to be repealed entirely.
Zoning is on questionable legal grounds, and according to a book I think “Dead End”, it has just been able to avoid a direct legal challenge in court for a long time. The original single-neighborhood zonings were thrown out in the early 1900s; the courts ruled that cities had to have a citywide plan to avoid the challenge that it’s discriminating against zoned neighborhoods and residents. That’s why cities developed citywide zoning plans even if they didn’t need them yet. Some of those plans are still questionable, such as not matching its number of residents and income profile, or declaring the entire city single-family and requiring a variance for every multifamily building (which requires custom review, allows custom meddling by NIMBYs, and adds custom costs), but at least the city can say it has zoned the entire city and not given some parts the advantage of no zoning. The question now is now much these citywide plans would stand up to a full court challenge. Fully, partially, or not at all?