Heidi Groover takes a break from the scary ” home” price beat to point out that it isn’t all that hard to buy a condo in Seattle ($).
There is a lot of media directed at people shopping for single family homes, but the number of possible houses within a certain distance of Seattle is finite. It’s natural for a growing metropolitan area to have a center city where single family homes become rarer, and the only way out is to allow denser forms of housing. Despite shortcomings,, Groover’s reporting suggests policy is basically working to provide ownership opportunities.
More reporting like this, please. Single-family homes will be a less important part of the market, and statistics that reflect that will be critical to understanding how our policy mix is working.
A 3-bedroom condo across the street from me sold in less than two days on the market. It’s probably not necessarily that condos are easy to buy, it’s that 1-bedroom and studio sized homes are easy to buy.
My point here is that family-sized housing is extraordinarily expensive in Seattle. I’m not just talking about single-family houses, but also 3-bedroom condos and townhouses.
I agree that condos could be the future, but then we need to incentivize family-sized condos to be built. If you search for 3-bedroom condos in Seattle you can clearly see that barely any have been built in the past 20-30 years, as they are almost all in buildings from the 70s and 80s.
So true! My current and prior condo buildings (renting in) have 200 units between them, precisely 0 with more than 2 bedrooms (and even 2beds are rare).
The other big issue with condos is storage – kids have instruments, sports gear, toys, bikes – today’s condos have no room for this! My storage locker can only fit one adult bike, Christmas decorations, two boxes, and an extra chair. Closets are quite small in the secondary bedrooms. And forget it if you have 2 kids!
0-1 bedroom condos are awful for 2 adults working from home, though for people with necessarily in-person careers (nurse, plumber, etc) now may be a good time to buy.
I’m not sure how you incentivize bigger condos without discouraging smaller ones. Next thing you know, folks can’t afford to live in a condo or apartment, so they share a big apartment with another family. I raised a couple kids in a one bedroom apartment. It wasn’t the end of the world. The kids shared a bedroom, I slept in the living room (as I would if I lived alone and rented a studio).
We should simply allow a lot more density throughout the city, and let the market decide. Get rid of the density limitations and the parking requirement, but keep the height limit, and do so for the entire city (and hopefully some of the inner suburbs as well). Houses will be converted to apartments, new townhouses will spring up, as will multi-plexes and small apartments. Some of the places will have three bedrooms, of course; whether families will afford it or whether they get snatched up by folks who want more room for their stuff is another matter. At least places (of all types) will be a lot cheaper.
Fair enough, but I think you might be a bit of an outlier in terms of your ability to manage a family in such a small space. In my experience Seattle’s lack of 3-bedroom options pushes most families to the suburbs and Seattle is increasingly just a place for yuppie renters.
My point here is just that the current “let the market decide” approach is once again leaving out “missing middle” housing. From my experience struggling to find housing for my family it seems like Seattle has two housing types: single-family houses on large lots and 0/1-bed apartments.
My point here is just that the current “let the market decide” approach …
What?!!! The market isn’t allowed to decide! That’s my point. Most of the property in Seattle is locked up. It can only be a house. It can only be “for families”. Is that helping? Of course not. It is making things worse. It is forcing families into small, expensive apartments, or, as you say, outside of the city.
it seems like Seattle has two housing types: single-family houses on large lots and 0/1-bed apartments.
Exactly. And that’s because of the zoning. More importantly, they are both extremely expensive. Again, because of the zoning. There are huge numbers of people that simply want a place to live, without roommates. But the city won’t let builders meet that demand. They restrict the number of places, which in turn keeps demand for apartments — any apartment — extremely high.
There is no “missing middle”, because it is outlawed. OK, not entirely, but very little of the city allows it. It is not like they aren’t building it — it is just that it is extremely expensive. Here is a place that would be great for kids: https://www.redfin.com/WA/Seattle/1451-NE-120th-St-98125/home/175124835. It is half a block from a park. It is a couple blocks from the school. Unlike so much of the multi-family housing in Seattle, it is not right on a busy street, but half a block away. The problem is, it costs over 600 grand! Most families can’t afford that. It should be half that.
You seem to imagine a world where 1 bedroom apartments are cheap, but 2 and 3 bedroom apartments aren’t. That world doesn’t exist, anywhere. The reason 2 bedroom apartments are expensive is because 1 bedroom apartments are expensive. Same with 3 bedroom apartments. And row houses. And small houses on small lots. It is all due to the overly restrictive zoning rules. The reason that house is 600 grand is because in most of that neighborhood, you can’t build a house like that. You can’t build an apartment building (with units of any size). The zoning actually *does* encourage building town houses and cottage housing, and large apartments (by restricting how *small* the units can be, but allowing the units to be as big as the builder wants). But because there is so little land for multi-family housing, it is expensive.
Oh, and let’s say you do somehow get people to build a lot of three bedroom condos. What is to prevent individuals (without kids) from buying them? What will make them affordable to families, but not to people who just want more room?
The reason they build so many one-bedroom places in Seattle is because there is so much demand for it. If that demand is met, then they will build bigger places, with more bedrooms. But until then, trying to encourage building bigger places will simply lead to higher housing costs for families of all sizes.
Ross, you don’t need to rush so fast to disagree with me ;). I’m not suggesting that we restrict the current apartment/condo zones to only have 3-bedroom apartments at all.
I’m only suggesting that simply opening up all zones of Seattle to all apartment sizes and letting the market decide the mix would likely result in pushing more families out of Seattle.
The idea that the free market would build housing for struggling middle-class families with 1-2 children rather than young urban professionals with a 6-figure salary at 25 years old is naive at best.
Mhmm not sure if you’re suggesting a minimum condo size. That’s what Irvine CA did in the past to ensure only wealthy or older people would have housing. Forcing students and poorer people to commute from else where.
I hypothesize that the lack of three-bed condos is an indirect result of the fact that so much of our land is zoned single-family. The majority of households in our city are just one or two people, which means that we really should have quite a lot of two-bedroom and smaller homes. However with land prices being what they are, building homes of this size in single-family land makes little economic sense. Essentially all the demand for small homes has to be satisfied in the small slivers of the city that allow denser development, plus those are also the areas where we allow commercial spaces to exist. Those low-rise and commercial zones are already doing a lot, it’s no surprise that three-bedroom homes aren’t a high priority for the people developing the bigger apartment/condo buildings.
Let’s loosen up the zoning in the rest of the city. Doing so will probably result in some one-bedroom fourplexes in places where big houses are the only legal option. Conversely, we’ll probably see some family-sized homes in the bigger buildings where we currently have strong incentives to cram in more smaller units.
Exactly.
The main problem is that in *most* of the city, you can’t build anything more than a house on a large lot. Even the low rise rules are far too restrictive, with setbacks, which effectively limit the ability to build on small lots (https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/SDCI/Codes/MultifamilyZoningSummary.pdf). This is big deal, as it is one of the big reasons that Tokyo, for example, has such cheap housing prices. To quote this excellent video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w): So while land is expensive in Tokyo, the ability to purchase small parcels of land makes it possible for middle class families to own a home, whether it be a condo, or a single detached house.
Loosen up the zoning, and you get more housing of all types.
Hard agree
Since every newborn American child has a lifetime Carbon footprint larger than that of one born anywhere else other than Coal King Australia, making “room for kids” a high priority for zoning regulations universally is an mistake. The opportunity to live in a desirable place be a reward for self-discipline and avoiding the narcissistic desire to replicate oneself as some sort of “gift to the world”.
Throughout the world women are choosing to have ever smaller families. They should be rewarded for the wisdom. To continue burdening the carrying capacity of the planet with cohorts of ill-educated stair-step families of Evangeliban — of any faith — would be a catastrophe. I very much hope that the final version of the Child Tax Credit plans recognize this by limiting the number of children eligible.
The faster humanity reaches ZPG the more quickly it will reach Carbon neutrality and can begin recapturing that already released. At that time women who desire larger families so that their descendants have relatives on whom to depend can do so. But not yet.
Good God, man, get a clue. There are no financial rewards for having children. There are some very meager ones for *raising* them. There is a big difference.
Oh, and no one thinks “Oh goody, I’ll have a kid so that the government will give me a little bit more money”. The cost of raising kids is way more than the small pittance that the government is giving out. No, the child tax credit are about reducing poverty in children. If anything, the additional money will decrease the likelihood of additional children, as it will allow more women to pull themselves out of poverty, and avoid the irresponsible sexual behavior that often goes with it.
Reducing poverty leads to increased status of women which leads to fewer kids. People have talked about this since the early 1960s. If you have talked to people — from all walks of life — you would have noticed this, and picked up on it even if there weren’t studies about it.
The tax credits — now going out to every family (except the very wealthy) — is one of the great accomplishments of Biden’s first term. It is the biggest anti-poverty legislation since LBJ, if not FDR. Suggesting it be limited to family size is ridiculous.
Yes, of course the primary purpose is to alleviate child poverty, and that’s a big benefit. I should have said that the credits can be given to all children who now live or have been conceived at the time of passage, but should be limited such that new births to 2+ families are not incentivized.
I understand this is draconian, but the problem is draconian as well and American children are big future emitters. It’s baked into our sprawl infrastructure.
Are eight billion humans not enough for you? We cheer when the decline in the Forest Elephant population — fewer than 50,000 — slows. That’s a tiny rounding error when compared with our selfish desire to produce more of ourselves.
It doesn’t actually matter whether Americans or Europeans have kids or not; it won’t move the needle on world population. What’s driving world population growth now is Asia. Soon Africa will replace it, and after that the population will stabilize. Births per woman worldwide are already going down as more women get opportunities for family planning and education. It’s just that there’s a lag of twenty years between when women start deciding that and when the number of women of childbearing age peaks.
What Americans should be concerned about is the amount of space and utilities per person, not whether they have kids. There’s a happy middle between tiny sardine apartments and space-wasting three-car garages and blank lawns. The problem with most people insisting on a house, and a detached and large house at that, is that it takes more energy and water to heat and cool and maintain those houses, more miles of utility lines, and it pushes everything apart so that hardly anything is in walking distance of your house.
My friend who’s in her late sixties grew up in Summit and central Capitol Hill, and raised her own child there. She said in the 70s the Summit area apartments were filled with families with children. So it is possible, and it used to be the norm. We’ve all seen My Three Sons and Leave It to Beaver, when the norm was two children per bedroom. Her husband grew up exactly like that, in southeast Brooklyn, in a 600 square foot Levittown-like house with two bedrooms. The average house size in the 50s and early 60s was 800-1000 square feet. The old mansions you see were for families with four or eight kids and maybe a grandparent too. Then starting in the late 60s, the small houses started gradually growing to 1500 and 2000 square feet, and ballooned to 2500 and 3000. Do people really need that much space or are they just getting greedier?
Then there’s the cars. A two-car garage is often half the house. So half the land is sunk into car storage. And every car needs 2.5 parking spaces: one at home, one at work, and a shared one at the supermarket and other third places. And each car space needs a shadow space in front of it so the car can get in and out. And hundreds of thousands of cars require many car lanes to fit them all. All this also pushes things apart.
Another thing is yard design. Blank lawns are monoculture ecological dead zones, slurp up water, and most front lawns rarely have any humans in them. 20th-century “open space” plants are also a problem. Fortunately, more and more homeowners are replacing these with native plants and shrubs, bee-friendly pollinating plants, tall grasses that absorb stormwater runoff, edible plants, and other pretty flowers.
Mike, Of course it matters whether Americans and Europeans have children, because the Carbon footprint of an American or to a lesser extent a European child is MUCH greater than a Southeast Asian or African child, and will be for a very long time.
Is unbridled population growth in less-fortunate countries a good thing? No, but it’s a less bad thing than population growth in the technological countries where we trail Carbon emissions like wafts of Vaping exhalation. I include China in the technological countries, even though it is only middle-income.
And I agree with you that what we can do here in North America is to squeeze together more, and especially stop gobbling up sensitive ecosystems like the Puget-Williamette Lowland for McMansions.
Condos are a legal type of ownership. There are many other legal ways to legally own real estate.
I’ve known condos that are built like single family homes. I’ve know plenty of townhomes that are not condos — and some that are.
If the point is that denser housing is our future — fine. However, its ownership vehicle can take a number of forms. We shouldn’t confuse the concepts.
Yeah, the often misuse of the term “condo” is a bit of a pet peeve of mine as well. It’s become a common shorthand for describing certain multiple-unit buildings whether it actually applies or not. Your illustrations of its misuse mirror many of my own anecdotal examples. For example, where I presently live there are four homes near my own property that appear at first glance to be just your normal SFHs on their own lots. However, if one were to look up the property records for these homes, one would quickly discover that these houses are actually detached SFH condominiums (i.e., not fee simple ownership).
The area where I live is unincorporated Snohomish County and the county does a very good job of delineating its land use codes. The following shows the current residential land use codes for SFH (the county uses the class designation SFR) and MFH (the county uses the class designation MFR) parcels. As you can see, the term condominium has a very deliberate meaning in the scheme utilized.
RESIDENTIAL
Single Family Residences (Household, Single Family Units):
110 Single Family Residual – Senior Citizen Exemption
Residual (added 10/8/2007)
111 Single Family Residence – Detached (One Structure)
112 Single Family Residence – Detached (Two Structures)
113 Single Family Residence – Detached (Three Structures)
114 Single Family Residence – Detached (Four Structures)
115 Single Family Residence – Detached (Five Or More)
Single Family Residences – Common Wall Housing (Household, Single Family Units):
116 Common Wall Single Family Residences (Not Condominiums – See 142)
Single Family Residential Condominiums:
141 Single Family Residence / Condominium – Detached
142 Single Family Residence / Condominium – Common Wall
143 Single Family Residence / Condominium – Multi Family
144 Single Family Residence / Condominium – Project
145 Single Family Residence / Condominium – Converted
from Apartments
Multiple Family Dwellings (Household, 2-4 Units):
121 Two Family Residence converted from SFR (Duplex)
122 Two Family Residence (Duplex)
123 Three Family Residence (Tri-Plex)
124 Four Family Residence (Four Plex)
Multiple Family Dwellings (Household, 5 or more):
130 Multiple Family 5 – 7 Units
131 Multiple Family 8 – 11 Units
132 Multiple Family 12 – 15 Units
133 Multiple Family 16 – 20 Units
134 Multiple Family 21 – 30 Units
135 Multiple Family 31 – 50 Units
136 Multiple Family 51 – 100 Units
137 Multiple Family 101 – 200 Units
138 Multiple Family 201 – 300 Units
139 Multiple Family 301 Units Or More
Also, the county has put together an excellent matrix of the various residential building options that are available in each of its designated zones, which can be found on the page linked below. Within this matrix, the ownership options, such as condominium, are clearly indicated.
https://snohomishcountywa.gov/5367/Residential-Development-Options
Tisgwm, in your example who owns the properties? Does one entity own all four houses and rent them out, or are there four separate owners — one for each house — but common ownership of the common property, like in a normal condo building?
It doesn’t seem like this type of ownership creates any more density than a SFH zone, if density is a goal.
The answer to your question is the latter. All four properties are owned by separate parties. To the best of my knowledge, the property was developed thru a nonconforming variance application to county PDS (or whatever it was called back then) which was granted and the homes were built some 20 years ago. Two undeveloped lots from the original 10-acre plat were combined to create the condominium agreement and resulting parcel. The common areas include some street frontage and the private access road to the two SF detached units in the rear of the property. For the casual passerby, the homes look like your standard (fee simple) detached SFHs with some front and back yard spaces, but they are indeed condominiums.
As far as the density is concerned, the way the two parcels were developed increased the density by 100% (four homes instead of two). Now if this developer had just held out for a few more years to when the county upzoned this neighborhood, he could’ve built far more homes. The 2005 comp plan update changed the land use from urban low density residential to medium density (and subsequently to high density in the 2015 update). My own property’s zoning has gone from R-8400 to MR (Multifamily) during that process.
Thanks for getting my point!
The free simple townhouse (non-condo) form of ownership here in Seattle is actually not that common in other parts of the country. If every lot doesn’t have street frontage, you have to create a condo ownership development with common areas for access in many places. In contrast, Seattle allows for the townhouse lot to be sold and the adjacent lot owner must allow for a portion of their property to be “access”.
I think the nuances of land and building subdivision are not fully appreciated and sometimes confused since it is a bit unusual here. Anywhere else, all those townhomes like we have in Seattle would have to be approved as condos to be saleable.
Both the STB and Seattle Times article seem to suffer from a false equivalence. Just because the future isn’t SFHs doesn’t mean the future is condos. This isn’t a binary option system, after all.
I mean what else could the future be. There isn’t anymore commutable land left to build sfh.
Detached townhouses and apartments mostly. The ADU/DADU experiment is a failure twice over now. The missing middle is a farcical nonstarter, with no demand behind it to justify current let alone future supply. Rowhouses are the rattraps of earlier centuries.
But “ownership” without physical land, beholden to the whims of an HOA? An idea whose time never was and never will be. It’s the real estate equivalent of cryptocurrency, and best left on the rubbish heap of history.
@A Joy
I guess you meant ‘condos’ as in 5 over 1’s I assume?
Sure you can build detached townhouses and apartments (um this is the same as a condo just rented out instead?). Confused why you dislike rowhouses they’re mainly the same thing. Besides the slightly more positive connotation of townhouses I guess and the slight separation. Also the missing middle includes townhouses.
I’ve been inside the iconic row houses of London. You know, the ones in Westminster, within sight of Hyde Park? The worst house in the old Yesler Terrace was world’s better than the best rowhouse there. They’re so incredibly skinny that the staircases take up a significant amount of the square footage, and so tall and packed together they effectively blot out the sun for a good chunk of the year.
Detached townhouses at least come with a tiny plot of land that is yours, and the ones I know of are devoid of HOAs. They’re also usually more well built than a rowhouse.
Detached townhouses are the best of a bad lot. I technically support them, but that’s damning them with faint praise.
@A Joy
Sure it’s fine if you dislike buying one, but I don’t see how that is relevant to blocking others from living in them?
@AJ — So it is terrible to be beholden to an HOA — a democratically elected board made up of your neighbors — but OK to pay rent to a landlord. Row houses are “rattraps”, but townhouses are OK. There is no demand for the missing middle, which is why we should do our best to make it illegal.
See, this is why people think you are a troll. It isn’t that you take contrarian positions, it is that your arguments are nonsensical. Someone could get on this blog and make the claim that spending money on transit is stupid. They could make various arguments, and folks would make various counter arguments. It could be a spirited debate, with a few issues left unresolved (based on an unknown future) while others come down to priorities.
Yet there is none of that with your “arguments”. They are simply ramblings that don’t make sense. That is why I, and others, are tired of responding to them.
What we fear, however, is that someone might read your comments, and be swayed by them. For as we all know, people are not always swayed by logic, but by “gut” emotions. Case in point, the Trump wing of the Republican Party, which is to say, the majority of Republicans.
Just to be clear, that is an example — an analogy. I’m not saying you are a fan of Trump — only that your arguments have as much reasoning behind them.
I won’t debate your points one by one, because it gets tiresome. Like a good troll, you will only come up with other nonsensical statements to back them up. I will say this though:
Mixed middle housing is often considered the most attractive streetscape in the world. From the Painted Ladies in San Fransisco, to the row houses of Amsterdam, they are popular. From Montreal to Paris; from Brooklyn to wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, the form is quite popular. Like an impressionist painting, not everyone will find it attractive. But many do.
Second, mixed housing can definitely lead to lower costs. It is widely credited for the relatively low housing costs in Tokyo. Again, many would not like this. Many would find Tokyo ugly. But given the choice of living in Tokyo, where housing is affordable, and a city like Seattle (where it isn’t), I would choose Tokyo. The biggest reason Tokyo is affordable is its zoning. The more our zoning resembles Tokyo’s, the more affordable our housing will be.
WL: We talk about disincentivizing cars for a number of reasons. Why should condos be treated any differently?
RossB. Ah yes, here come the personal attacks. You also have quite a few Strawmen in there today too. HOAs and landlords are entirely separate things with separate issues. I never said one was better or worse than the other. Detached townhouses do tend to be better maintained than rowhouses in my opinion, and their separation at least allows sunlight to reach the street.
I never ever mentioned making missing middle housing illegal. I just pointed out its numerous and obvious failures and lack of demand. Hell, I thought you’d be delighted in your victory when it came to changing my mind on detached townhouses, which as others have pointed out is missing middle housing.
See, this is why I only engage you when you directly reply to me. You don’t bother to directly address or refute my positions at all. You argue against this image of me you have developed in your mind, and what that image says to you. I am not responsible for what your brain twists and warps my words into. That’s all on you.
You have finally caught on to the reason why I continue posting here though. This blog is an echo chamber, parroting the same thing over and over to a bunch of yes men. I am absolutely posting for the person who reads this blog but does not post or have an entrenched position and can therefore be reasoned with. Your fear is exactly why I am here.
“Mixed middle housing is often considered the most attractive streetscape in the world.”
By who? Where’s your data? Was this middle housing explicitly defined in that poll/study? I’ve seen your evidence before. It’s often pushed by groups with slanted agendas, often footnoted to refer to studies that don’t even address the same point as the article that footnoted them. So I hope you forgive my skepticism.
“Second, mixed housing can definitely lead to lower costs.”
Can, sure. But that’s a far cry from likely will. It can rain frogs too. That doesn’t mean I should expect it to happen tomorrow. Tokyo’s not a terribly dense city (more dense than Seattle, sure. But it’s not even as dense as NYC.). Yet you still seem to cling to it as some sort of “proof” that we should strive to emulate it.
In before height does not equal density, density does not equal housing, or whatever trite saying you want to toss out this time.
@A Joy
> WL: We talk about disincentivizing cars for a number of reasons. Why should condos be treated any differently?
Because there is a housing crisis? This is just nimbyism if you’re blocking them for others because you yourself hate them. At least with cars that makes a bit of sense because of traffic, I’m not sure what the rationale behind preventing others from living in a rowhouse is.
WL, is there no climate crisis? No crumbling automobile bridges, no pothole ridden streets? No transportation budget shortfalls?
The city’s position has been that subpar sheltering is not an acceptable solution. Tent cities, be they in the jungle or Nickelsville, are attacked. The city tried to tear down microhousing in Northgate in the middle of winter. Using that exact same logic, condominiums and row houses should be unacceptable as well. “But people want to live in condos.” People want to drive cars too. But they’re a problem in our environment. We have emissions standards. We have habitation standards too. Which is yet another reason Charter Amendment 1 is so bad. It suspends those habitation standards, the equivalent of letting leaded gas guzzling cars drive throughout the region.
@ A Joy
> The city’s position has been that subpar sheltering is not an acceptable solution. Tent cities, be they in the jungle or Nickelsville, are attacked. Using that exact same logic, condominiums and row houses should be unacceptable as well.
Are you seriously comparing condos and rowhouses to tent cities, while somehow also being okay with townhouses? Like the only literal difference between most rowhouses and townhouses is that they share a wall. I’m not sure if you’re advanced trolling or just really really nimby but don’t want to admit it.
Plus how does banning condos or rowhouses even help you from attaining a house? It really only serves one purpose — stop others from living nearby.
WL, have you been in a traditional, classic rowhouse? Because I’ve been in several, and I cannot fathom how anyone who has cannot immediately tell the difference between it and detached townhouses. Just being in a neighborhood with rowhouses should be sufficient to see how they drain the life from their surroundings.
“Are you seriously comparing condos and rowhouses to tent cities, while somehow also being okay with townhouses?”
Nope. I’m comparing condos, rowhouse, and tent cities to leaded gasoline cars that would fail emissions testing and pollute the environment.
Plus how does banning condos or rowhouses even help you from attaining a house?”
Who said anything about me obtaining a house? I was forced out of Seattle due to the high cost of living. I’d love to return, but don’t anticipate ever getting the opportunity. I’m one of the displaced. And no amount of SFH elimination and en masses building of condos is ever going to change that.
I had skin in this game. Until it was flayed from my bones. I think that gives me some understanding about what will and will not heal the wound. People who think condos will help Seattle’s housing crisis desperately need some perspective. But I doubt that would happen even if they themselves were priced out of the city.
@Mao, so now we know “the rest of the story” don’t we? “Priced out of Seattle” is roughly synonymous with “My skills are too limited to command a wage sufficient to live in Seattle these days” isn’t it?
…do you think that’s a good thing, Tom? That people can just be forced out of where they want to live because they don’t meet some arbitrary threshold?
@TT, I’m disabled. I don’t get the luxury or opportunity to command a wage sufficient to live in Seattle. I get to toss my hat in a lottery once every two years for a less than 10 percent chance to get on a years long waiting list for 0% AMI housing. My position isn’t Maoism. It’s basic humanitarianism. Your position that I do not deserve to live in Seattle because I am physically unable to produce capital reeks of elitism, and maybe worse.
@Mao, well, there is little justice in the world, isn’t there? I’m certain that you did not deserve to become disabled and probably were not at fault. But the simple fact is that in any society wealth and opportunity are not “fairly” distributed.
Views of Puget Sound, urban lakes like Washington and Union, the Olympics and Mt. Rainier are rare and desirable to millions upon millions of people. There is no way to award them in a way that is fully “just”; none.
Incumbency has the superficial advantage of “attachment”; people have families and friends in the places in which they grow up or live for a long while. But if incumbency is favored by state action, the environment is recognized as a shared good and therefore protected from incursions, and height and density are limited to appease incumbents, eventually everyone stays where they were born. The dynamism that makes cities so valuable to humanity ceases.
No matter how the rules are refined to make them “fairer”, the people who benefit will do so to the detriment of some other people who would have claimed the benefit under a different set of rules. That is true for any “good” of limited supply.
I don’t know how to make this better, but I do know that the American solution has been to allow people openly to compete for desirable goods. We generally are repelled by “insiders” trading on asymmetric information flows or “connections” to decision makers. We certainly aren’t perfect at preventing such corruption, and punishments are very differently levied on different groups of people who transgress these norms and legalities. But that is generally our professed preference.
So far as I can see, letting “the market” price these goods openly is the least corrupt way to distribute them. Should government ensure the every citizen — even every resident if fiscally possible — should be decently housed and fed? Yes, without doubt. But not necessarily in the most scenic, pleasant places in the country.
Ness, well, in the absence of massive takings of existing housing and the rebuilding of existing cities, what else is the short-term solution? There are not nearly enough housing units in the cities and towns bordering Puget Sound to house everyone who wants to live along it. Not nearly.
So you would exclude the creative people who can contribute to the world-class economy of Seattle in order that people who can’t really afford to live in a world-city?
That might feel good and righteous, but it is stupid.
Yes, such people must be housed and if necessary fed, but somewhere within six hours’ travel that they can afford in order to maintain family relationships.
Go ahead and call me a monster, but if you do be prepared to put your money where your mouth is by shouldering the financial and congestion burdens of housing them in Seattle proper.
There should be a “can” after “world city” in the fourth paragraph from the bottom.
@TT
“Views of Puget Sound, urban lakes like Washington and Union, the Olympics and Mt. Rainier are rare and desirable to millions upon millions of people. There is no way to award them in a way that is fully “just”; none.”
Who’s asking for a view of the lakes or the mountains? I’ve been in Section 8 housing. There’s no grand vista visible from them. Not even from the top floor. Again, you need a sense of perspective.
“Incumbency has the superficial advantage of “attachment”; people have families and friends in the places in which they grow up or live for a long while. But if incumbency is favored by state action, the environment is recognized as a shared good and therefore protected from incursions, and height and density are limited to appease incumbents, eventually everyone stays where they were born. The dynamism that makes cities so valuable to humanity ceases.”
Incumbency is the only reason why myself and many others haven’t ended up living on the street. Your superficial advantage that stifles dynamism is all that keeps some people alive. And I will fight tooth and nail with whatever energy I have left in my body to support those lives over any ephemeral dynamism or vibrancy one might want. Cities are for people, not kitsch, tourism, or questionable aesthetics. That’s what makes cities valuable for humanity. Not “dynamism”.
“No matter how the rules are refined to make them “fairer”, the people who benefit will do so to the detriment of some other people who would have claimed the benefit under a different set of rules. That is true for any “good” of limited supply.”
And you find this acceptable? Are you willing to just throw up your hands and say “Then let them die, and decrease the surplus population.”? We’re not talking about commodities here. We’re talking about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Life trumps profit. At least it should.
“I don’t know how to make this better, but I do know that the American solution has been to allow people openly to compete for desirable goods. We generally are repelled by “insiders” trading on asymmetric information flows or “connections” to decision makers. We certainly aren’t perfect at preventing such corruption, and punishments are very differently levied on different groups of people who transgress these norms and legalities. But that is generally our professed preference.
So far as I can see, letting “the market” price these goods openly is the least corrupt way to distribute them. Should government ensure the every citizen — even every resident if fiscally possible — should be decently housed and fed? Yes, without doubt. But not necessarily in the most scenic, pleasant places in the country.”
The American solution has never worked for the most desperate, least well off, or the disabled. Ever. Open competition has been shown to be the driving force and primary creator of graft and corruption. We don’t even live in capitalism any more as a direct result. We now live in a corporatist state. The free market in the US has never been free, instead designed to favor the business over the individual in almost every instance. Heck, businesses have the rights of people with none of the responsibilities.
People have the liberty and I’d argue Constitutional right to live in the region they desire, for whatever reason they want. So if the disabled want to live in the most scenic, pleasant places in the country, they should be accommodated there. That doesn’t mean they should get a mansion overlooking the most beautiful parts of the region. But it does mean they should and in a fair and just society need to be part of the community.
@A Joy, you can only accomplish your goal of asserting a “Constitutional right” that everyone can live exactly where they want to regardless of their ability to pay for it by enormous taxation and wealth transfers and remarkable environmental degradation of the desirable places through population overload. That’s a simple fact.
I very much doubt that there is a functioning majority of voters anywhere in the US to implement such a Utopian vision.
And please remember that while all of the housing in Seattle certainly does not have those views, everyone living in the housing without views can walk or if they cannot walk can be taken to a nearby hill and partake of some portion of those views. And there are also Amazon, Microsoft and Boeing to gather long queues of gifted people who want to work for or with them.
Therefore even “Section 8 housing” in Seattle is vastly more valuable than most housing in Oklahoma City. In fact, Zillow says it’s more valuable than the 80th percentile of housing in Oklahoma City where the wind comes sweeping down the plain.
Your understanding of “dynamism” is surprisingly shallow. It has nothing to do with aesthetics or tourists, though better aesthetics often follow the wealth that cities create. What I mean by “dynamism” is the creative stew that attracts talented people to make art, new processes and products, and share their insights for human betterment.
Cities have always done this, mostly because exactly the economic sorting that desirability forces is effective in bringing the creative people closer together. That process benefits everyone, even those living hundreds of miles from the creative centers.
I grant that these are not “fair” realities, there’s no doubt about that. But nothing is “fair”, except the opportunity for people to experience life. Those lives may be filled with joy and happiness or of suffering, but the opportunity live them is truly the only thing that is shared equally among all people.
“@A Joy, you can only accomplish your goal of asserting a “Constitutional right” that everyone can live exactly where they want to regardless of their ability to pay for it by enormous taxation and wealth transfers and remarkable environmental degradation of the desirable places through population overload. That’s a simple fact.”
While I seriously doubt this, if it is the case then we should get right on that.
“I very much doubt that there is a functioning majority of voters anywhere in the US to implement such a Utopian vision.”
So the tyranny of the majority then? Something this country was built to stand against? You’re actually using the abandonment of rationality as an excuse to do nothing?
“Your understanding of “dynamism” is surprisingly shallow. It has nothing to do with aesthetics or tourists, though better aesthetics often follow the wealth that cities create. What I mean by “dynamism” is the creative stew that attracts talented people to make art, new processes and products, and share their insights for human betterment.”
More elitism then. Newsflash: People in rural areas have that same “creative stew that attracts talented people to make art, new processes and products, and share their insights for human betterment.”. It isn’t exclusive to cities at all. Your dynamism happens anywhere people meet people. Cities don’t create this type of dynamism at all. People do.
“I grant that these are not “fair” realities, there’s no doubt about that. But nothing is “fair”, except the opportunity for people to experience life. Those lives may be filled with joy and happiness or of suffering, but the opportunity live them is truly the only thing that is shared equally among all people.”
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…
Note that isn’t the Right to Suffering, or the Right to Opportunity Without Equity. The very foundational documents of this republic states that what is “fair” within its confines is infinitely more than the ability to merely experience life.
You may see me as Maoist. In that same vein, I see you as a Randian objectivist.
Perhaps I am in some ways, but mostly because I’ve learned that people are extremely selfish when it comes to their life trajectory and that of their children. I was an idealist when I was young, and thought that something more vigorous than the anti-poverty plans of the 1960’s and ’70’s were appropriate. But I’ve found that though Dr. King was right when he said that the long arc of history “bends toward justice”, it is a pretty mild curve and there are lots of cars backing up on the roadway.
So I have concluded that mankind is not “perfectible” and will never live in peace and harmony. The best we can do is to reduce corruption to as little prevalence as possible and try to keep people honest in their dealings with one another.
The United States is becoming more humane; people are a bit more willing to help each other out. But what does the reaction of farmers who were the recipients of some $30 billion from the Trump Administration in 2019 to quiet them down about the loss of sales to China and are now whining about the $4 billion for Black Farmers Aid in the recovery act say about mid-America?
It’s saying that they don’t want to share, that’s what. Not a lot of creative stew at the country store, except maybe comparing calibers.
Look, I’ve said over and over that these forces making life more difficult for poor people — which are essentially “the Invisible Hand” at visible work — are not fair; people with connections stand on the scales when they see the opportunity. But don’t think that a more “Socialist” system will remove that tendency; it’s built into our animal DNA. Remember we have canine teeth as well as molars, though they’re not daggers like wolves and cheetahs have.
When the simple allocation of things by currency or other forms of money is replaced by the allocation of things by other criteria it means that people who would have received goods under a strictly financial system will no longer receive them. Instead they will go to people who have schmoozed gatekeepers, lobbied for special privileges for their group, or threatened violence or disturbance within society. Those are the “currencies” which will dictate the flow of valuable “goods” in the resulting society where standing on the scales is a necessity rather than a disapproved event.
This has been demonstrated over and over.
It is certainly not an argument against systematic state support for less-fortunate people. As I have said several times, folks who don’t have the economic value added to live in the creative cities certainly deserve help to live somewhere nearby to maintain their connections. But any artificial “rent control” system — and yes, that’s what you’re advocating in essence — will get more and more rotten as the years go by.
So far as your peroration, you’re wrong. There’s is no mention of “equity”, which is generally a rough synonym for “equal outcomes”, in the Preamble. It says that folks are “created equal”, which implies that status at birth should not handicap anyone’s chances in life. Grant that it still does, meaning that we still have much work to do. But much has been done. That’s part of the arc bending, and a good reason to spend more on young people to be sure everyone means to express their best.
Then, it states that what is guaranteed to them is “life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” [emphasis added], not success in attaining it. Since, really, happiness is an “inside job”, the government can’t really do much to increase it above its natural level. It can certainly decrease by screwing up, though.
“everyone has the means…”
I am not sure I follow Al S.
Most forms of property ownership are fee simple, which means you own the property and the land, or part of the land. In some areas like Hawaii historic trusts own large parcels and lease the property out, usually for 99 year term leases, common in London.
Hawaii has fought to condemn some of the property in these leases to fee simple because as the lease gets shorter and shorter less and less maintenance is put into the property, and they become difficult to sell. At the end of the lease you own nothing, and the building owners have neglected any kind of maintenance or upkeep for many years. The property does not realize its highest potential which can lead to blight and less tax revenue. Bad and abusive land use polices, and a bunch of “variances” and “deviations” are not good for any neighborhood.
In the PSRC’s 2050 Vision Statement Snohomish Co. sought and received a rezone of its rural lands:
“The most challenging recent issue involved the growth target for rural Snohomish County. The county would like a higher allowance for growth permitted outside its growth boundary. While their motion was narrowly defeated in earlier committees, County Executive Dave Somers proposed a final amendment to raise the allowable number of homes by about 5,500 units over 10 years.”
“His argument is straightforward. Snohomish County’s rural growth was 20%, lowered to 10% in Vision 2040. They achieved this target. But it was again lowered to 3% in Vision 2050 which they believe is unattainable. So Snohomish proposed to allow a growth target of 4.5% in its rural areas. “We need to be able to keep our commitments and be realistic about it. From a planning perspective it’s very important to us,” County Executive Somers said.”
“Representatives of other counties and jurisdictions spoke for and against the amendment. King County Executive Dow Constantine reviewed his earlier opposition to the proposal, but signaled support due to the addition of other language. Mayor Becky Erickson of Poulsbo also spoke in support, focusing on being realistic about infrastructure and not underbuilding in places that need new roads.”
https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/11/05/vision-2050-has-passed-on-to-visions-2024/
This just shows that with the anticipated growth of Snohomish Co. (which I think the PSRC inflated) rural lands will need to be upzoned as well as residential zones. Many of the new residents will be moving to Snohomish Co. for a SFH (why else move there) and don’t want to live in a condo in a Snohomish Co. UGA, which some might think is a contradiction in terms.
Tisgwm makes a good point: if you want to increase density change the zoning, whether from SFH to multi-family or rural to residential SFH. Many rural jurisdictions — especially counties including King — were way too lax on granting variances and deviations which led to bad development, and led to many affluent unincorporated areas of King Co. to annex or incorporate, which is why King Co. lost most of its affluent areas. I have to think Snohomish Co.’s rezone in the 2050 Vision Statement was heavily lobbied for by the King/Snohomish Co.’s master builders assoc.
When subdivisions are platted there is a state statute for long plats (over 4 lots) and short plats (4 lots and under), with a bunch of criteria. One criteria is usually the planning dept. wants to avoid numerous access roads or driveways onto the local street or arterial, so requires an interior road serving the parcels with one or two access points. This actually disadvantages the developer because the area of the access road is deducted from the total to subdivide (total number of lots) and the area of the subservient parcel the road runs over which reduces the gross floor area ratio to lot area ratio (smaller house) for that lot.
So I don’t think whether fee simple housing is called condominiums or row houses or townhouses is that relevant, except common ownership of property has its downsizes as the posts on HOA’s prove. If Tisgwm is dissatisfied with the upzone of his previous SFH zone I am sure he can sell at a profit and buy one of the new SFH homes built on Snohomish Co.’s upzoned rural lands. It isn’t as if Snohomish Co. has inadequate rural lands.
It’s pretty simple really. In many places, every residential property lot has to have direct street frontage. You can’t build any residential building unless the parcel has street frontage.
I’ve lived in seven states as an adult, and seen subdivision laws work differently. Cities in our region that allow fee simple townhouse subdivisions for residential without street frontage attached to each lot are a bit unique.
This nuance means that many of our townhouses don’t have to be subdivided and developed as condos with common areas for street frontage.
“It’s pretty simple really.”
Agreed. The gist of my earlier comment was simply to reaffirm Al’s original point, that being that the use of the term “condominium” to denote a particular development option is a poor one. As I (and Al) attempted to illustrate, townhomes may or may not be condominiums. Likewise, detached SFH’s may or may not be condominiums as well. It’s misuse has become so common in discussions about development and density that the distinction that the term is actually meant to convey is frequently overlooked, even when it actually doesn’t apply to a given situation. Imo, such discussions would be better off just sticking with the actual building options in play, such as those spelled out in the aforementioned residential development matrix utilized by Snohomish County PDS, or, in the case of Seattle, those listed on the zoning summaries or the actual land use code itself*, both linked to below.
http://www.seattle.gov/sdci/codes/codes-we-enforce-(a-z)/zoning
https://library.municode.com/wa/seattle/codes/municipal_code?nodeId=TIT23LAUSCO
*If one looks through SMC Title 23, its land use code, one will see very limited references to condominiums (23.49, 23.58A, 23.58C).
1 How many Seattle Transit Blog writers or commentors with families currently live in a condo within the city limits of Seattle today.
2 If zoning changed next year, how many of the same group of writers and commenters would give up their house for a condo with shared green space.
Just curious.
My kids have all grown up. When they were younger, we rented apartments and condos. I was saving for a condo (in Seattle) but met my wife, who had just bought a house, in the north end of Seattle. That’s where we live now. I would consider moving to a condo, but I doubt my wife would. It would also be a big hassle (to move everything). It is a possibility as we get (even) older.
Maybe the entire zoning code shouldn’t force everyone to cater to my household size: https://seattletransitblog.wpcomstaging.com/2015/03/11/no-demons-here/
https://www.psrc.org/sites/default/files/trend-middle-housing201811.pdf
Here is a pretty good analysis of housing by the PSRC from 2018. It discusses what is often called the missing “middle” in housing, which is a kind of townhome/low story multi-family housing between a single family house and an expensive high rise.
In 2018 the price differential for the lowest cost housing — missing middle — was $448,000, while the average cost for a single family house was $650,000, not a significant difference when square footage is considered.
The report states towards the end:
“Detached single-family represents 81 percent of the ownership housing stock in King County, and 86 percent of the stock in Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties combined. Two housing types that best approximate middle housing — attached single-family homes (or townhomes) and multifamily structures with 2-19 units — comprise just 6 percent and 5
percent of King County’s ownership stock, and even less (3 percent and 3 percent) across the balance of the region.”
There were some reasons for this. One was the long tail on warranties on new condo construction which the legislature relaxed in 2019 hoping to create more affordable condo home ownership (which actually is resulting in developers demolishing the older and more affordable multi-family housing to build new, higher end condos) , and two, the relatively low profit margin for builders on this kind of development. Plus IMO the high number of properties that are owned by investors. It is a shame Seattle is over 50% rental now, and owner occupied neighborhoods are preferred by many, especially parents.
A third is the GMA which restricts sprawl. For example, yesterday someone argued housing in Dallas is less expensive than Seattle due to the number of housing starts. But Dallas is almost twice the population so of course there are more housing starts, but Dallas-Fort Worth is 340 sq. miles while Seattle is 83.9 sq. miles, and Dallas has fewer restrictions on sprawl (and lower labor costs).
Cities like Dallas and Phoenix solve their housing issues by going out, not up, which allows for more of the preferred housing — SFH — and lower costs per sq. foot. In this area we try to solve housing affordability by removing the most effective remedy, allowing more development in the areas in the enormous four county region, King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap. There is plenty of land for housing for all, and developed land makes up only 3% of total acreage in the U.S. We just don’t allow it, and that is a value choice. So that means we have to squeeze more folks into the land we do allow to be developed, and not everyone wants to be squeezed. So prices go up.
A good example is Bellevue, whose development plans include SFH and expensive high rises, but little of the “missing middle”, because a majority of citizens don’t want it, at least in SFH zones, and they pay the taxes for their city. Messing with SFH zoning on the eastside is the third rail of politics.
One of the factors I believe is driving housing prices in this region is the belief housing costs will never go down, and so any investment — even despite property taxes, interest on mortgages, and maintenance — will turn a profit in the end. A lot of folks forget about 2009. Just a minor housing bust would probably burst the housing bubble in this region, certainly among the investor class.
$500,000 for a townhome is not especially affordable IMO, and prices don’t always go up, especially for condos that also come with HOA fees. However, what the pandemic has done is increase the differential between the cost of single family homes that have exploded in price because that is by far the number one housing choice if affordable (and what isn’t affordable if the price will only go up over time), luxury high rise condos, and the “missing middle”.
I also think what is often missed, and either AJ or Al raised, is the “affordable” housing we are creating is geared toward one or two persons per unit, and little for families. That is why even though mostly zoned SFH the eastside’s density is not that much different than Seattle neighborhoods, because the houses have kids living in them (and kids are people too, just more lovable than adults). Seattle like San Francisco is losing children fast.
A word I think is worthless — and very naïve — is “NIMBY”. If you don’t live in a city or community who gives a shit what your “values” are when it comes to zoning, which has nothing moral about it (and took the Supreme Court to authorize). Seattle should have learned upzoning land does not house poor folks. Land use is just politics. Not surprisingly folks who live in SFH neighborhoods prefer SFH neighborhoods. Hardly surprising, and recent sales and prices support that, but nothing is moral either way.
I disagree with some of Seattle’s zoning because I really don’t understand it except from a political standpoint. It won’t create affordable housing. The “missing middle” housing tends to create weird neighborhoods, with anemic retail. It is like upzoning light. It has also led to a strange phenomenon in which density has left the city core, and moved in bits and pieces to residential neighborhoods. I don’t get it. Mercer Island is a better urbanist design than many areas of Seattle, because it has one town center in which all the multi-family housing and retail are concentrated.
But I don’t live in Seattle so who gives a shit what I think about Seattle zoning. I figure Seattle neighborhoods can make their own decisions about what they want to be. I think some on this blog want to destroy SFH zones, like they want to eliminate the cars, because they think they are inherently immoral or prevent some great Urbanist utopia, when Seattle’s zoning has prevented a true vibrant urban core.
What does any of this have to do with transit. Absolutely nothing, except ST and some transit advocates are desperate to manufacture through zoning the ridership ST claimed supported spending almost $100 billion through 2041 on light rail in some pretty undense areas with poor first/last mile access that have no intent to amend their zoning to meet ST’s inflated ridership projections.
@Daniel
Kinda confused, the point of the missing middle housing was that upzoning housing didn’t necessarily have to be giant skyscrapers. It was already geared towards alleviating NIMBY concerns. Your supposed solution is to build even more skyscrapers, that solution kinda works for Bellevue where they used to empty parking or large business parks to convert (Also what tysons corner in VA or Vancouver did) But Seattle doesn’t have such large swaths of ’empty’ land to convert.
For the just build sideways solution you also need massive freeways like Texas if you want it to be within a commutable distance. I’m honestly not quite sure where you’d place these massive freeways. Regarding sfh zoning that was fine in the 70s for all cities to have it when there was plenty of land. It’s been 50 years later and it doesn’t really work if every city only has sfh. The problem isn’t with any single city — the problem is that all the cities have single family zoning. It’s kinda like global warming except instead of a global problem where the countries need to work together this is a regional problem where the cities need to work together.
Daniel, DFW is in a vast plain stretching from tge Boreal Arctic of Canada to the coastal marshes of the Gulf Coast. If you rotated the 90 degrees and whomped it down such that Arlington were where downtown Seattle lies, the urbanized area would stretch from “Everett”, represented by the western edge of Fort Worth to “Plano” a bit southeast of Enumclaw and would cover Puget Sound down to Tacoma and both Lakes Washington and Sammamish. DFW would be about where Microsoft is (and gobble up Redmond). The Snoqualmie River valley would host Lewisville.
If you really think that the tangle of freeways and toll roads that define The Metroplex could and should be built in the Puget Sound region, you should run fir governor. I’m sure all your fellow Eastsiders would vote for you.
RE: “Cities like Dallas and Phoenix grow out, not up.”
Certain areas of Dallas have population densities over 13,000 per square mile, which is definitely not Mercer Island.
Loose zoning laws in Texas may allow sprawl, but they also mean that if there is a market for an apartment building, an apartment building gets built. If Mercer Island were in Texas, it would probably be covered in 20 story buildings by now.
Shouldn’t these apartment and condo buildings be put close to transit? Rather than, say, where they put Cavanaugh Apartments and its surrounding apartment buildings in Magnolia? Where even road access isn’t that great?
@Jimmy James:
“1 How many Seattle Transit Blog writers or commentors with families currently live in a condo within the city limits of Seattle today.”
“2 If zoning changed next year, how many of the same group of writers and commenters would give up their house for a condo with shared green space.
Just curious.”
Not many answers.
I would add:
3. How many are male, because transit means walking and waiting on streets, in the day and in the night, carrying very little. In my experience, “urbanists” are overwhelmingly male, and childless.
I don’t live in a condo (and most condos I know have zero “shared green space” which is a real problem on Mercer Island today because everyone in a condo has a damn dog) and don’t live in Seattle.
But I have kids. One in high school, one back from college (apparently they never truly leave). Both have jobs (and one drives to school), which means we now have four cars with three onsite parking spots (one garage stall is filled with stuff like garbage/recycle/yard waste bins, bikes, paint, tools, a second fridge, and other crap since the neighbors and city frown on yards that look like rummage sales). Kids get big, and have big friends, and suddenly the house seems quite crowded again, although my wife loves it.
There is a recent blog/article by a bike rider on The Urbanist about the Bellevue City Council “refusing to comply with state law” and reduce parking requirements for east Bellevue. The Urbanist claims Bellevue has already spent $40,000 in attorney fees with the state refusing to lower parking requirements near transit, as though Bellevue gives a damn what the state thinks, or $40,000 (or east Bellevue) means anything to Bellevue.
Here is the author’s bio:
“Chris is a UW Environmental Sciences graduate who moved to Bellevue in 2015. When he’s not busy being an urbanist fox on the internet, he’s working on the Eastside to support efforts reducing greenhouse gas emissions and going to city council meetings to denounce the hegemony of automobile infrastructure. Follow him on Twitter at @Deutski1.”
https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/05/21/east-bellevue-community-council-blocks-necessary-parking-reform/
There are two very good reply posts on the same article:
—————————————————————————————-
“I live in Kenmore. Our community has experienced substantial growth of multi-family housing in the “downtown” core. Most of this was built with reduced residential parking. Yes, we have bus service about 4 times per hour, assuming you want to go to downtown Seattle. Want to go north to Lynnwood? Or even 1 mile north? Sorry, the buses don’t cross the county line.”
“In the evening, the on street parking is absolutely full for blocks around the these new buildings. It is a horrible mistake.”
“HINT: Buses don’t go everywhere people want to travel. Bringing home a load of groceries on a bus is a nightmare. Sometimes you have to take your kids to soccer practice. Etc. Nothing will make you feel poor like not having a car. Not having a car means your kids cannot participate in Little League or many after school activities. Is this what the “politicians” really want? To create a system where the “haves” and the “have nots” are now divided by owning personal transportation?”
“Having reliable personal transportation is a requirement of most jobs. “I missed the bus” is not an excuse most employers are willing to tolerate.”
—————————————————————————————–
“Hi Chris. There is a reason soccer is used as an example. I coached youth soccer for 8 years with Northshore Youth Soccer Association. This is in the burbs. NYSA has over 8,000 players ages 5 to 18, both boys and girls. There are severe field shortages. Games for any given team are played over an area from Maltby to Bellevue, Lake City to Issaquah. Try getting your kid to a seasons worth of games and weekly practices on public transportation.”
“You could learn a lot from coaching youth sports in suburbia. Many families have multiple children. I have 3 boys that were all playing at different levels for different teams. Do you think I could have gotten all of them to practice and Saturday games on a bus or bicycle?”
“Yes, not EVERYONE needs a car. But if you cluster low income housing near transit lines, and then reduce the number of parking stalls based upon proximity to the transit stations, you are in effect removing the ability of some poor families to own a personal vehicle. You have created another barrier for the less fortunate to participate in community activities. It is called segregation and institutional racism.”
“Think about it. This is what you are championing.”
——————————————————————————————
Now, do you think the “urbanist fox” or the two persons who replied reflect the majority of eastsiders?
If I were not married to a woman, or didn’t have kids (and animals), maybe a nice condo like at Lincoln Square might make sense (except I love to garden), or maybe living in Seattle if it ever gets its house in order would have made more sense without ever having kids, except my wife would be afraid to walk around. But I would still drive. But actually, I would have enough money to retire to Hawaii or the South of France.
People who are single don’t understand marriage, and those without kids have no idea what pro ball is, and both of these determine whether someone can ride transit. How lovely to wake up each day only worried about yourself.
My guess is eastside readership of The Urbanist and STB is not too high. Transit is a big yawn on the eastside, because the size, topography, and family unit exploit all of transit’s flaws: expensive for more than one, can’t carry anything, not safe, not good with kids, doesn’t go where you want to go, bad first/last mile access, and slooooooow. Plus very, very expensive in public subsidies.
What Bellevue’s council is telling the state is we are not going to lower parking minimums because we know people who live in East Bellevue will all own cars if they can because transit really does not work on the eastside, and we don’t want our streets turned into parking lots. Are east Bellevue citizens “urban foxes” clamoring for more low income housing without parking because they are brown? Of course not, just like West Bellevue.
Bellevue knows developers, and knows reducing parking requirements does not create affordable housing, it simply creates a greater profit for the developer by moving the cost of parking to public streets. Then everyone complains about car prowls.
Bellevue knows just like Seattle citizens no one is giving up their cars, and of course cities never require renters to sign a pledge to not own a car if there is no parking, because the property owner could never sell or lease the unit. So street vibrancy and possible bike/bus lanes become parking lots, which kills parking for retail (which has happened on Mercer Island, and now we are having to convert dedicated bike lanes to retail street parking).
I wish transit advocates would give up two goals:
1. To eliminate cars so that everyone is forced to ride transit. Just make transit better for those who must ride transit, even despite the ghastly cost.
2. Stop trying to manufacture the density that never existed for 90 miles of rail, or feeder buses, through zoning, which I think has a lot to do with animosity at the “privilege” of cities with lots of SFH. Upzoning will NOT create affordable housing, and all those multi-family units will have tenants or owners who have cars, probably parked on the street. ST will build 90 miles of spine, but ridership will not increase dramatically over buses, although transfers will.
The way to compete with cars is to make transit better, and I am not sure transit has gotten all that much better over the last 20 years. More expensive for sure, but better? Not on the eastside at least.
So what’s your solution? Increase taxes on higher income brackets and pay everyone else $500,000 so they can afford a 4 car garage in the suburbs?
Even if 95% of people in a neighborhood own cars, why should the remaining 5% be forced to pay for a parking space they don’t need?
If the issue is developers freeloading off the street parking, issue permits to existing residents and make it clear to the developer that future residents of their building won’t get them. You can accommodate guests by allowing 2-hour parking without a permit and giving each resident a couple of guest passes they can lend to visiting friends. You can also exempt vehicles with obvious contractor logos (e.g. plumber, carpenter, etc.) altogether.
The point is, the decision on how much parking to build should be made by someone with an actual financial stake in the project, not some arbitrary one-size-fits-all formula. The key is to regulate the street parking so that the developer is forced to make an honest assessment about the building’s needs, rather than expect the residents to freeload.
Also worth mentioning – most of the “full” street parking typically comes not from multifamily buildings not having enough parking, but from single-family homeowners choosing to freeload off the street, so they can use their garage for general storage, rather than car storage.
I’d be curious to see how much of new residential TOD near Link stations are condos vs apts. Historically, home ownerships has been linked to wealth-building. If the vast majority of new station-area residential are apartments and not condos, is a traditional avenue to wealth-building being denied to people who want to live near transit?
“So what’s your solution? Increase taxes on higher income brackets and pay everyone else $500,000 so they can afford a 4 car garage in the suburbs?”
Solution for what? What problem are you talking about? $500k isn’t going to buy you a four car garage and house in the suburbs. Maybe a DADU in Seattle.
I agree with Bellevue’s current requirement for onsite parking. At least one stall per unit for multi-family, three (two covered) for a SFH, like most eastside cities. I think it is naïve to think folks will give up cars if you deny them onsite parking. Like the reply poster noted, denying folks in affordable housing the ability to own and park a car hurts their work and mobility opportunities, and is institutional segregation and racism through zoning.
Is there some other problem you are talking about?
Adding parking now means you’ve significantly increased the cost of each unit, which also means you’ve denied lower income people the opportunity to live there at all.
As far as denying anyone the right to own a car, the commenter’s complaint makes it quite clear that this isn’t happening. People are using on street parking, which apparently the commenter thinks should be reserved for exclusive use of those who already lived there, or something?
Street parking has traditionally be in this nebulous area where it’s supposed to be reserved for residents of existing buildings, not new buildings, but the city doesn’t want to come out and officially say that, since they have to maintain the illusion that a public street is open to everybody. So, they require every new building that pops up to build enough private parking that it will never, ever fill up under any remotely conceivable circumstance, so that no new resident or visitor of the new building will ever have reason to park on the street, even though they technically can.
It’s a cop-out solution that leaves residents of the new building paying the price, since all those unused parking spaces required by the city cost money to build and take up valuable land, which ultimately gets passed down in the form of higher rent. If the intent of the city is for the public street to be a private parking lot of existing buildings, the city should just come out and say it (and charge the residents of existing buildings reasonable rent for the space).
Having been a condo owner and president of a condo HOA for over five years, my advice to everyone I know is: Never. Buy. A. Condo. I would also extend that to any property that has an HOA.
Owning a condo is a different kind of hassle. Usually there’s at least one control freak on the board making up inane rules.
You can still have crappy neighbors ruin your experience in a SFH, but you don’t deal with upstairs stomping neighbors, general noise, or lack of control over your housing.
18 years in a condo. Still there.
I know the downsides to condos, but would you explain why you advise people to avoid them? Never buy a condo. Ok. But, why?
@asdf2
“Street parking has traditionally be in this nebulous area where it’s supposed to be reserved for residents of existing buildings, not new buildings, but the city doesn’t want to come out and officially say that, since they have to maintain the illusion that a public street is open to everybody. So, they require every new building that pops up to build enough private parking that it will never, ever fill up under any remotely conceivable circumstance, so that no new resident or visitor of the new building will ever have reason to park on the street, even though they technically can.”
I don’t think this is correct. Street parking — at least today — is designed for retail, which is a fundamental need for Urbanism and transit, although I think some urbanists and transit advocates don’t see that.
I don’t think the solution to oversubscribed street parking by residential users is less onsite parking in new buildings. The reality is the one stall per multi-family unit was inadequate in the past because most multi-family units on the eastside have more than one tenant (spouse, girlfriend, visitor, roommate, kids), because developers sold cities on the notion folks in multi-family housing would take transit. This one stall per unit is the standard Bellevue wants to maintain in east Bellevue, and the state wants to lower or eliminate.
Onsite parking does not markedly increase the cost of this housing because it is usually surface parking surrounding the building, or placed on the ground level under the building. And if the development is subsidized affordable housing, any additional cost is borne by the city.
The ultimate problem is more cars than parking stalls, at least in dense areas, which leads to street parking. Enforcing street parking limits is difficult and expensive, especially after the sixth circuit ruled marking parked cars with chalk to determine the time they are parked is a violation of the 4th amendment. There is also the political risk by removing street parking, from both businesses and residents.
Another option is to require residents of multi-family housing to sign a declaration under oath they will not have more cars than the allotted parking stalls, which would force property owners to be honest about the actual availability and cost of parking without parking on the street, or somehow eliminate car ownership in multi-family buildings, but I don’t see that happening. As the reply post on The Urbanist I reposted noted, many would see this as racist, and disadvantaging those living in affordable housing.
If Seattle has 460,000 cars, banning them somehow would be politically impossible. Banning car ownership in east Bellevue where transit is poor and the areas served are huge, and where many families live, would be unfair IMO, especially since west Bellevue is never going to have their cars banned. The actual residents of East Bellevue are not clamoring for more multi-family housing to have lower parking limits (or for affordable housing for that matter, but naturally affordable housing goes in East Bellevue).
“Also worth mentioning – most of the “full” street parking typically comes not from multifamily buildings not having enough parking, but from single-family homeowners choosing to freeload off the street, so they can use their garage for general storage, rather than car storage.”
This statement of course is not correct. On the eastside most SFH must have three onsite parking spots, two covered, which is much closer to the actual car ownership. The SFH neighborhoods are not dense, and so “street” parking is not much of an issue.
It is the multi-family buildings with one stall parking requirements that are the problem, and of course that is where we see the street parking problems. In Seattle many urban SFH have many tenants, and so in a way are multi-family housing, and many of those houses were built with one car garages. If you go to Honolulu you will see the solution there is to turn the yards into onsite parking stalls, which is not very attractive.
Mercer Island is a good example of all of these issues. There is no street parking issue in the SFH zones. But the town center saw a number of mixed use developments that were mostly housing, with one stall per unit on the claim town center residents would walk the short, flat distance to the bus or train. Guess what? They didn’t. And very few units have one tenant or owner, and each tenant has a car.
So we have a street parking problem in our town center. This causes three issues:
1. It eliminates street parking for small, independent retail. Large properties like QFC or Walgreens have large parking lots (that they now have to patrol), but the smaller retail businesses depend on street parking, especially when we have seen a reluctance of residents to use the underground parking even if available.
2. We are now eliminating dedicated bike lanes in the town center — once a centerpiece of first/last mile access to light rail except very few ride bike to commute on Mercer Island — to restripe the bike lanes for retail parking because the citizens want more retail, not more expensive housing, in their town center.
3. It turns the town center into a parking lot, and is unattractive.
Eventually the goal is to create a parking management plan that forces non-retail street parking back to its source. As one citizen noted, there should not be so many cars parked on the street at 7 am with frosted windshields, which means they were parked there overnight.
The city bought three license plate cameras that will allow parking enforcement without striping the tires, and the goal is to force the street parking back to its source so street parking can be dedicated to retail, although town center residents who don’t want to pay $180/month for onsite parking or who have one stall but two or three cars are not happy.
To approach this issue with a goal to reduce or eliminate cars on the eastside is very naïve (and hasn’t even worked in Seattle). Transit for the most part is poor on the eastside, and folks prefer to drive, even poor folks, especially women and those with kids (which in large part is why they are on the eastside).
All Bellevue is saying is if a private developer wants to build a multi-family project and of course charge market rates they need to include at least one stall per unit, and even tenants in affordable housing will want and probably need a car, even though we know one stall/unit will still be inadequate and the fight for street parking will get even worse.
The High Cost of Residential Parking;
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-11/how-parking-requirements-make-housing-less-affordable-in-2-charts
Generous Parking Requirements reduce housing affordability:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235360401_Parking_Requirement_Impacts_on_Housing_Affordability
Another one:
Generous Parking Requirements reduce housing affordability:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235360401_Parking_Requirement_Impacts_on_Housing_Affordability
Condos are dumb and shouldn’t exist. They only exist because of bad incentives by the federal government to encourage individual home buyers. There was no such thing as a condo before the ~60s.
What’s the end game for a small apartment building condo project? It’s nearly impossible to get everyone to sell, leading to underutilized land. It’s much easier for one property owner to evict everyone and redevelop. Not to mention the massive HOA mismanagement in nearly every condo project. How often do you hear a horror story about leaking roofs in condos that cost 10x what they should to fix? I’ve heard many horror stories.
Also, condos bread nimbys. Just look at Escala. They’ve filed dozens of lawsuits against new buildings because they thought it would destroy their property values. And just the other day there was a lawsuit against a new waterfront building litigated by a different condo building closer to downtown. Seattle has succeeded at building housing because our look of condos, and we need to keep it that way.
Condos exist as a way to achieve the long-term security of home ownership without the extremely high costs associated with single family homes, since condos consume much less land per capita.
I’ve lived in condos for the past 12 years and condos allowed me to buy a home in neighborhoods where, at the time, I was unable to afford the cost of a standalone house. Both the condos I’ve lived in have had well-run HOA’s.
Yes, you have HOA does to pay, but the HOA dues replace much of what you would spend on utilities, insurance, and maintenance in a comparable home without an HOA. Of course, there is always some portion of the HOA does that goes to management overhead – which is a waste – but, in a well-run HOA, it’s not anything close to the majority.
How do you find a good HOA, or tell whether a property’s HOA is good or bad before you buy it? Sometimes you’ll know somebody in the complex and can ask them, but in most places you won’t know anybody, and if you hear reviews you don’t know whether they’re true or not.
Um you request a copy of the HOA’s finances and board meeting minutes. As they are required to give any prospective buyer by law.
That’s how I knew one building I looked at hadn’t been charging enough in fees and was staring down the barrel of a $5,000 assessment fee to every unit because they had deferred maintenance for so long everything was breaking at the same time. Instead I ended up in another building that had been collecting the correct amount of dues and was actively preparing to have the roof redone with no special assessment because they planned for it.
It’s the same reason some houses have new roofs and others have a big blue plastic tarp on it for 4 years (my old neighbors).
“For decades, cities have required developers to include parking as part of their building plans, a “minimum” standard that’s only now starting to relax in places. That shift in focus does create new challenges: cities must find other places for parking (ideally, shared facilities), or better yet, craft programs that discourage residents from driving in the first place (like Seattle’s). But for metros struggling to make housing more affordable, rethinking parking policy is a clear place to start.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-11/how-parking-requirements-make-housing-less-affordable-in-2-charts
Ok, so this solution is to reallocate the cost of onsite parking to public shared parking. All three of the links are from urban planners who are not fans of cars (or probably East Bellevue). I get it: there is a desire to eliminate cars among urban planners and transit advocates, so ridership estimates and enormous public investments in transit are justified. I also have friends who hate transit, and the incredible public subsidies, and would love to eliminate transit, but that is not going to happen either.
All I know is Seattle has 460,000 cars, a figure that just recently stopped increasing faster than population growth, so discouraging cars might be a noble goal among urban planners but not among Seattle citizens. So I guess I don’t understand the concluding quote in the article: “or better yet, craft programs that discourage residents from driving in the first place (like Seattle’s).”
Eliminating onsite parking has not discouraged Seattle residents from owning cars (and driving so far); it simply has moved parking to the streets. Ideological urban planning based on changing human nature usually is unsuccessful.
I don’t know where these “other places for parking” are, unless you are talking about street parking, which has trade offs like eliminating bike and transit lanes. Building stand alone public parking like Donald Shoup suggests requires a TID (which is funded in part by taxes on the local properties) or the local jurisdiction. So under a TID the property owners pay for the parking (not unlike the TID for the waterfront park) and in the other the public pays for the parking, rather than the developer.
There are many things that increase housing costs. Elevators, green building, onsite bike storage, air conditioning, lumber, labor, union vs. right to work states, prevailing wage, ADA ramps, square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, amount of affordable housing set asides, public amenities, new fire and international building codes, but what really determines rents is the market.
If a builder can build a building without parking for cheaper (labor or parking) but still rent out those units for market rates the builder will, and so the one who profits is the builder. I am sure cities could eliminate all the other things I list that some renters might not use and reduce the cost of the building, especially square footage, although that does not necessarily reduce rents if market based.
The reason rents in buildings without parking are lower is because there is no parking. Buildings without parking are for the poor, which some of us think is unfair.
I don’t understand why some think poor people don’t want or need a car. Rich people all have cars, there are 460,000 cars in Seattle , I am sure there is at least one car per household on the eastside, probably more than 2. But if you are poor and live in multi-family housing you can’t own a car and must ride a bus in East King Co. of all places.
Bellevue is not stupid, especially when it comes to development, and how builders think. Bellevue knows its residents, rich or poor, want and probably need cars, and they have to be parked someplace, either onsite at the building, or some “other places for parking”. They know the state’s reduced parking requirement is political ideology, not something actual citizens want. Bellevue just has not drunk the urbanist cool aid, and does not think eastsiders will give up their cars, and Bellevue is not going to pay the developers’ parking costs for them. Bellevue knows how much profit the builders in Bellevue are making. After all, Microsoft is building a 3 million sq. ft. underground parking garage, when Microsoft was a prime sponsor of East Link.
The question then is where to put the cars if folks won’t give them up no matter how many fees or hurdles are placed on car ownership, and who pays: the government (citizens) or the builder. Because no one is giving up their cars.
Not eliminate, just reduce; no-one on the east side is looking to ban parking, just make it more expensive/difficult. It’s a question of shifting the mode share, not completely abandoning cars.
Look at Amazon’s new building: it’s adding 1,700 parking spaces – that’s a ton of new parking spaces! Clearly more parking so more cars and more traffic. But it’s also adding 7,000 jobs, which means the mode share will be ~25% SOVs, or very comparable to downtown Seattle’s mode share and lower than Amazon’s SOV mode share in SLU (~50%).
Is there a floor below which people won’t get rid of their cars? Sure – there are people who drive to work in Manhattan and Tokyo. But there are plenty of people who would rather not drive if they had a compelling alternative, and then even more people who would like to drive if everything was free but also would be happy to take a fast, reliable bus if it saved them $200/month in parking expense.
Why shouldn’t the market gods that you worship to rain down housing upon us not also be the ones that rain down free parking?
“If there is an actual demand for apartments [or condos or whatever] existed, then the market would build them” should also apply here, and become “If there is an actual demand for parking, then the market would provide them.”
If parking isn’t built as part of a development then maybe there wasn’t such a demand for parking?
If you are having to pay an additional $60,000 or more for a unit with a parking spot, then how, exactly are poor people you claim to champion supposed to actually live there? They will wind up having to live further away from their place of employment instead.
We have lived in city SHUs, country acreage, little condos and bigger condos. Loved ’em all. And all have their advantages and disadvantages.
What is not being built are smaller 3 and 4 bdrm condos and apartments, particularly one floor and with elevators. Tons of narrow townhouses going 3 and 4 stories high and amounts of space occupied by stairways.
I know a small 4 bdrm home is not ideal, but it is still a home and a families castle, storage area be damned. Two people with children and earning minimal wages need to be housed and accommodated. They fill extremely useful economic functions even in high priced towns.
“Not eliminate, just reduce; no-one on the east side is looking to ban parking, just make it more expensive/difficult. It’s a question of shifting the mode share, not completely abandoning cars.”
What is the policy justification or morality for forcing citizens to shift modes? What is the difference to a working class or poor eastside citizen between banning cars to making them unaffordable, for them but not the wealthy eastsiders?
If it is carbon emissions then the goal is EV’s (including Metro, despite the cost of electrification reducing levels of service which screws the poor too), and Microsoft’s 3 million sf parking garage will have charging stations for all those Tesla’s (because all those Microsoft workers living on Capitol Hill when East Link was dreamed up moved to the eastside because they got old, and now drive EV’s).
If the justification is traffic congestion during peak hours, then transit is perhaps a better mode (at least grade separated rail) without making cars more expensive or difficult, although that is a big perhaps depending on frequency and coverage, along with transfers. Still you have to park the car somewhere when commuting by transit.
If it is some kind of ” equity” between rich and poor, making owning and parking a car more expensive does not affect the rich, it affects the poor who can’t afford the additional cost and now must spend so much additional time taking transit when they must work, often on the eastside in areas poorly served by transit, or first/last mile access.
If the goal is some kind of urbanist utopia, that is great if you are male, young, unmarried and have no kids (or no job). Unfortunately Seattle’s zoning is hollowing out the downtown core where urbanism should thrive, and moving it to the neighborhoods in a light form. But if retail/restaurant parts of downtown Seattle banned cars but provided parking along the perimeter I would support that.
My guess is the real justification of “mode share” is to validate ST’s crazy ridership estimates (e.g. the PSRC 2050 Vision Statement), and the enormous sums this region is spending on light rail by forcing folks to take rail. Transit on the eastside sucks, and East Link won’t make a difference except for white collar commuters to Seattle who can access East Link (which means commuters in Issaquah will still be on express buses, after having driven to the park and ride). But we are going to make damn sure a poor or moderate person on the eastside, in East King Co., can’t afford to own a car (even though I suspect nearly everyone on this blog owns a car if they can afford to).
If you want one single mode that creates equity, creates no carbon, creates affordable housing by increasing where folks can live and still work, and is truly equitable, that is working from home, although that will devastate transit ridership, which is why transit advocates are not big fans of working from home.
It is a crime we force middle class workers who can’t afford to park to spend so much of their lives standing on buses and trains all going to the same urban workplace downtown for work at the same time, when the partners of course are driving in expensive cars and writing off the parking, like me.
The other possibility for true equity in transportation will be fleets of electric self-driving cars that folks will use like Uber/Lyft for most short trips, and at that point we can subsidize accounts for the poor so they have exactly the same transportation as the rich, and door to door access.
What you really meant to say in your post is “Not eliminate, just reduce” car ownership for poor and working class eastside folks, so it gooses transit ridership. If you simply make something more expensive or less affordable it does not affect the wealthy on the eastside, except maybe reducing traffic congestion and making their commute easier.
First Hill has several condo high-rises with large 3+ bedroom units, built either pre-war or in the 1980s. From what I can tell, these units are populated primarily with empty nesters and childless professionals. There are a few children around but not many. Interestingly, 3-bed condos, even nice ones on a high floor, seem to sell for a lower price per sq foot than nearby 3-bed or even 2-bed townhouses. Personally, I much prefer to live all on one floor in a condo/apartment than to be constantly going up and down stairs in a townhouse, but others seem to prefer townhouses.
Be wary of living in a condo, not only for the myriad of rules that some homeowner associations have, but for the financial stability/instability of HOAs. One I’m aware of had an absentee HOA president (lived out of state) for decades. Board members used their volunteer positions to push for pet projects and other items benefiting their particular unit. Result: benign neglect of common maintenance. Subsequent boards were mostly interested in landscaping. Result: decks are leaning downward, water damage throughout is significant, pest infiltration is significant, and to fix all of these would cost millions for a place where many of you reading this make more in six months than they have in their bank account. One-third of the owners have moved in the past 22 months, and a relatively small assessment was just passed that is less than 1/20th of the funds needed. As it’s a small complex with many retirees remaining, just one default on the assessment means that everybody else divides up that amount. Before you buy into a condo, check it out thoroughly.
Single-family houses and rowhouses now have homeowners’ associations too. The only way to avoid them is to buy a non-developer-built, non-tract house, where an individual homeowner built it.
Yes the dreaded “Gated Community” HOA. Pushed by developers as “enhancing property values” when no study has ever shown that it does that any better than simply living in any desirable location regardless of what kind ownership status it has. In reality its just a con between developers and the local municipality to offload the entire cost of street & other public maintenance onto just those homeowners. So woe be to anyone still living there after 30 years when the road starts to crack and potholes breed like rabbits.
I have been part of two HOA’s.
In 1995 my wife and I bought a vacation townhouse in Phoenix. At that time Phoenix was just coming out of an economic slump. The community was in a nice area near the Biltmore Hotel (and had a gate on one side and a golf course on the other, typical of Phoenix), but was run down, and was mostly short term and long term rentals. Then Mrs. White became President and ruled with an iron fist.
The Board prohibited short term rentals under 30 days, raised dues, fixed the pools and painted the exterior, and began to issue citations for non-compliance. IMO she was a very effective HOA president, if autocratic. I am not sure there was an election for Board President over the next 20 years we owned our place. Mrs. White was President for life apparently, and didn’t like owners who didn’t live there full time anyway, although we never rented our unit out. That woman changed the entire community.
Earlier, in the 1980’s, I rented a two story condo on lower Queen Anne overlooking the old Tower Records. I knew the owner of the unit. The “president” of the HOA was a stoner, and there was no reserve at all for unfunded maintenance, and the quality of the building was pretty poor, but it had great views south toward Seattle.
Then the property across the alley was permitted for a building that would block the views of Seattle, and so no one wanted to pay dues or assessments because the value of their units had all declined quite a bit and no one would buy, although the Board sent out an assessment for $10,000 for the roof and plumbing which made the owners crazy because their units had all declined in value and they couldn’t sell them. My “friend” offered my roommate and me his unit at a “good price” before we learned about the new view blocking building, but luckily I had no money back then.
J.S. raises a good point about fences, and the deleterious effects fences can have on neighborhoods. I spent four years fighting to rewrite Mercer Island’s residential code, mainly to preserve mature trees during development and reduce house to lot area ratios, but fence height was a contentious issue too. Fence height, material, and how solid it was was limited, unless it was a backyard which could have some additional height, because a neighborhood isn’t a bunch of fence walls. Like J.S. says, if the neighborhood is safe it is safe without tall fences. If you want some privacy plant some nice hedges.
A very real emerging challenge is accessibility for adults as they age. They cannot negotiate even two steps easily.
Ironically, these are often people who have been home owners since the 1960s and 1970s, and bought homes for a spouse and 2-4 kids that long since became adults and moved away.
It’s converting these dwellings that seems to be a major challenge. It’s not practical for these people to tear down their houses and build something new. It’s possible for them to sell — but after 30-50 years in the same home there is a strong emotional attachment. Where do they live during the development process?
The solution is often not demolishing the house and building something new in most cases. That requires developers, banks and years of design, approvals and construction.
The solution may be instead either selling entirely to a young family or dividing the building so that either an extended family member or a second renter can move in — unless the house can be converted into two condos.
Seattle has been getting there with half-lot houses so there are two homes on a final single lot. However, this conversion usually involves at least one set of stairs so for someone over 80 it’s not viable for daily housing. The ADU policy helps a bit too, but it still has limited applicability.
To me, this gets at the core challenge — matching housing type and ownership to age and lifestyle. Baby boomers are now retiring — asset rich but often not enough saved elsewhere. Young adults are unable to buy anything unless they work at a high paying job and have a down payment saved.
If there was nothing but thousands of acres of vacant land, housing type debates are easy. When an area is already developed, the housing type is going to follow the needs and wishes of current residents, and be incremental and complex.
I dated someone years ago in Brookline MA who lived in a stacked duplex that had been converted into a two-unit condo. I see this as a good legal option that needs to be more facilitated than we make it. The point being that not all condos have to be for 20 units or more. It works particularly well in extended family situations.
So — as an expanded legal structure — condos have some useful applications that we don’t often make consider or advise. Maybe it’s not making this about radical density choices but instead making this about expanded incremental choices for single-family homeowners. After all, people choose housing rather than housing choosing people.
This is a really insidious thing about single-family zoning. Living somewhere 30-50 years, I’d bet the attachment is less to the actual structure than to the neighborhood. You form an attachment to friends in the area, build connections to a church or other social club, grow accustomed to visiting a particular supermarket, having a drink at the neighborhood pub, visiting a neighborhood park at sunset, this sort of thing.
Bigger houses with stairs and extra bedrooms to clean can become more of a burden than a joy as you age, but what are you supposed to do when that’s the only type of housing anywhere near you? Moving into something more practical also requires you to move into a completely different area where such things are legal to build. The result is what we see: plenty of seniors clinging to their family-sized homes, falling behind on maintenance, all because there’s a distinct lack of small ground-floor garden apartments on quiet streets anywhere nearby.
How do you tell if a HOA is ok? My first condo one of my kids was on the board honchoing our lawsuit regarding building faults, so I knew all. The second condo I read everything from beginning applications for finance and permits onward to every board meeting and other related documents. So again I knew all, or more accurately as much as anyone. There have been other problems and some partial surprises. I did not get a professional unit inspection. I think you learn more from reading those minutes from several previous years all the way up to the most recent meeting.
Warning: do not buy a coop or condo it that information is not available.
Having been adjacent to someone in the condo buying process recently, I can say it’s nearly impossible to get access to all the HOA documents in this state until you’ve already put an offer in on the unit. At which point there’s very few avenues to pull out if something is amiss in the documentation.
And even if you could get them beforehand, in the current market places are going days or hours after being listed, so good luck finishing reading things in time to make an offer.
As someone who has bought multiple condos in the Seattle area, a standard purchase and sale agreement gives you a defined period (I think, about 5 business days) to look over the HOA documents. Within that period, if there’s anything you don’t like, you can cancel the agreement and get your earnest money back. Definitely, read the documents closely as soon as you get them, and do not procrastinate.
Now, I suppose if you’re purchasing in a very hot market (not the case for me), you might have to waive this right to get your offer accepted. But, that’s the price you pay for choosing to buy in a very hot market.
If you waive your financing contingency, as many do in this hot market, you can be SOL. But yes, if you keep your standard contingences there really isn’t an issue as the Closing process is intended to allow for both the purchaser and the lender time to review the relevant documents and make changes / back out of the agreement if needed.
Awhile ago I was closing on a condo in Seattle and then the day before closing my lender says “no” because they found an issue in the HOA documents. Thankfully I had financing contingency so got my money (but not my time) back, and once I understood the issue I was very thankful we did not close.
I agree with Robin – at most HOAs, assuming they are operating in good faith, reading through the minutes is probably the best way to learn about the condo structure & community culture.
If I’m not mistaken and unless it’s been changed recently, the standard WA Form 28 (Condominium PSA) includes a 10-day period for the buyer to verify all related property information and disclosures. Under this clause, a timely notice from the buyer regarding a materially inaccurate fact or omission would terminate the agreement and the earnest money would be returned.
My realtor-broker relative who works in the condominium market frequently once informed me that he always adds a contingency to cover buyer review of the HOA materials (financial statements, minutes, CC&Rs, etc.) to the PSAs he submits on behalf of his clients. I’m sure that in the process he also informs these buyers of the trade-off they are making, i.e., submitting an offer that may be viewed as less competitive by the seller, particularly in a hot real estate market.
https://www.noradarealestate.com/blog/seattle-real-estate-market/
Here is a link to a May 14, 2021 update on housing, specifically for King, Pierce and Snohomish Co. The two primary take aways are the steep reduction in inventory, a 34% decline from last year which is creating an imbalance in supply and demand (the article expects a rebalancing for the three county area in six to 12 months), and in Seattle an increase in housing listings, especially for condos. The article states:
“Only in the city of Seattle, the extreme inventory crunch is decreasing to give a little relief to homebuyers, especially with regards to condos. More supply of new resale listings is adding to the unsold inventory. Here, the total listings for condos increased by 30.81% as compared to last year. Measured by months of inventory, the housing supply is 0.69 months for single-family homes (still quite tight) and 1.71 months for condos. The median price of single-family homes increased by 7.36% to $875,000 and the median price of condos increased by 4.48% to $490,000.”
[I was surprised by only a 7.36% increase in SFH prices considering the historically low inventory and interest rates].
The article concludes:
“Right now the homebuyers are trying to take advantage of low-interest rates, and the local real estate agents are struggling to meet the demand. According to local realtors, as buyers seek to cash in on record-low interest rates the market is predicted to remain this way until at least April of next year. If interest rates weren’t historically low, buyers would be unable to afford the escalating cost of housing.”
“The ongoing combination of very low mortgage rates and escalating prices has both buyers and sellers taking advantage of the market. Buyers are finding well-priced homes in good condition, and sellers are seeing many multiple offer situations. With the virus and increased flexible work-from-home options, people can move to suburbs and outer areas in search of value and lower population density.”
I am not sure why homeowners are choosing to not list at this time, except perhaps the pandemic and uncertainty of the future, working from home, and the ability to buy another home. I personally believe record low mortgage rates which determine the house/condo a certain monthly payment can buy, plus the belief housing values in the Puget Sound Region will never decline, along with maybe working from home, are all factors.
The increase in listings in the Seattle area compared to other areas indicates to me some impact from working from home, and possibly Millennials making the move to a SFH. Since these are listings, and not rentals, I don’t think those who moved out of Seattle during the pandemic because everything was closed is a factor.
The large number of cash offers also worries me investors are bidding up the market. I believe Congress has decided to investigate whether the panoply of benefits homeownership gets under the tax codes and other codes should apply to absentee investors, which I think is long overdue. A city like Seattle should not be over 50% rental.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/brookland-manor-residents-planned-to-watch-a-film-on-gentrification-some-said-they-got-a-firsthand-look-at-how-it-works/ar-AAKnws9?li=BBnb7Kz
Good article on gentrification.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/in-gentrifying-dc-apartments-for-large-families-are-quickly-disappearing/2016/08/29/b93276d6-6aec-11e6-ba32-5a4bf5aad4fa_story.html
This article is linked to in the first article.