I’ve started numbering open threads if there’s no compelling title.
A Link contractor blames the T-line delay ($) on government red tape. (This is the MLK extension to Tacoma Link, not related to the 1 Line extension to Tacoma Dome.) The article has a few quotes applicable to general ST/contractor/Link issues, too many to list here.
Did you know Toronto has a mostly-useless subway line? RMTransit says a short extension to Line 4 (Sheppard) would make it much more useful and increase ridership. Are there any comparable cases in Pugetopolis or the US?
This is an open thread. (P.S. I’m working on a single-topic article which will be ready in a couple days.)
Why is the light rail tracking slower south of intl dist. Station. Didn’t used to be like this.
I have read that there is track damage in that area requiring the slower speed. Sometime in the future it will be fixed and I don’t remember how they will handle train traffic in that area when that occurs.
The track is safe enough to be used but the slower speed is needed.
Surprisingly good YouTube video from CNBC about America’s railroads, both passenger and freight. Quite a bit on Amtrak. Just posted a couple of weeks ago. Search … CNBC Explores: America’s Railroads.
Pine Street congestion.
Somebody mentioned a week ago that Pine Street was unusually congested. I looked at it then and it was a bit high, but still within normal range. Yesterday I rode the 11 in the PM peak both ways, and congestion was much worse. Not gridlock, but repeatedly a line of cars for a block or two or three.
I think it’s due to Madison Street construction. Madison has been closed or narrowed for a block or two at a time for RapidRide G construction. Yesterday it was closed westbound at 16th, so all cars were diverted to Pine Street, and the 12 was rerouted too. This could be causing Pine to get twice the usual traffic or more. Pine is two-lane between around 16th and Bellevue, with no room for widening.
Usually when a street is congested, there’s one chokepoint in front of a freeway entrance. Pine Street doesn’t have that. Different cars are presumably going to the end of the Madison detour, to Broadway, to 4th, or to 2nd. The congestion I saw was almost every block between 4th and 16th. But it wasn’t continuous: it was a line-up for a block or two, then empty pavement, then another line-up.
Another potential contributor is that SDOT added stop signs, stoplights, and ped-crossing signs to several blocks, so almost every block east of Bellevue has those now. This could theoretically add to congestion; we can see when the Madison construction is finished how much of it is long-term. But there will be Pike-Pine construction starting this year or next year, for the 9th-to-Bellevue one-way and rechanelization project. So things may be unusual for a while. (Pike Street between 1st and 2nd is probably still closed for a woonerf-like project.)
The 11 was annoyingly late, 9 minutes both ways. I ended up waiting 15-25 minutes for it, during a nominally 15-minute period. Metro says it’s having a general problem with reliability now, due to increased congestion in many areas. The next round of service-hour increases will have to go to that, to get buses back on-schedule, before adding frequency. :(
Are they talking about the crowds from the new convention center? Or at least Sakura con did occur two weeks ago. Maybe there was another event last week
There have been large pedestrian crowds in front of both the old and new convention centers, but that hasn’t been at the same time as unusual car congestion.
Last night my wife was meeting her little brother for drinks. He lives on 1st and Seneca. There were home Mariner and Kraken games. She wanted me to drive her to 1st and Seneca at 5 pm, which of course I did.
From my driveway on the north end of MI to 1st and Seneca via the Madison exit and 4th Ave S. entrance going back to MI took 21 minutes round trip. I kid you not.
According to my wife Pike Place Market was packed.
The only downside was as soon as we got to Seattle my car reeked of pot. With the windows up. I had to switch to recirculating the interior air which I never uses but my car already smelled of pot.
Now if only there was better parking. I don’t mind paying — and like the valet parking for the market although now the cost is not far off Uber plus I can drink alcohol — but I hate looking for parking.
The comment section says one of the reasons people like you don’t take transit more often, is because of poor frequency. If the route 550 were running, say, every 10 minutes, would you have then taken the bus to Seattle and back last night?
My guess is no, he would not. This is someone with a lot of “bus stigma” who believes all forms of public transportation to be beneath his dignity, and also somebody who makes a lot of money and is more than capable of coughing up $30 to park downtown without batting an eyebrow.
However, not everybody thinks the way he does, or is the economic situation that he is. If anything, I think general attitudes towards public transportation are relatively positive in Seattle compared to most of the US. I was just talking about this today with someone I met who came from San Antonio. In most of the country, if you ride transit to visit a car-owning friend and tell them you rode it, they’ll look at you like you’re crazy and talk about how any idiot not dirt poor would have paid for an Uber. Over here, people will generally just accept it and move on, including people who don’t ride it themselves.
[ah. Ed: I tried to delete just the ad hominen phrases but there were too many throughout it. -MO]
Of course safety is a problem.
The statistics that I see show:
• Seattle crime rate is still not as bad as it was in the 1980s
• Seattle crime rate per 100,000 is still about ¼ that of what it is in rural areas, because the crime rate has increased across the board.
So I don’t see how you expect anyone running Seattle to get much done on the crime problem until it is addressed across the board. The entire USA is a violent crime problem.
Just like India, Brazil, Bolivia. South Africa, and dozens of other countries with similar problems, nobody cares about the safety of transit here because, just as you say, the majority of the people riding are lower income. The powers that be have no interest in solving these particular issues among the poorer castes because in countries such as the USA it is viewed as what they deserve for being poor.
In countries such as the USA, where this philosophy dominates, the only way to make transit safer is to make it faster. The faster it is, the more people who are from higher incomes will want to use it. The more people use it, the more interest there there will be in making it safer because those are the people that have the ear of those in power.
This web site aims to improve transit. If you want crime dealt with, contact the Downtown Seattle Association. As you have noted before, the only people who actually have a political voice here are those with money. Nobody here has that.
There was also a Sounders home game with the 3 games starting between 640 and 730 pm and attracting some 86,000 fans.
Something similar happened to me a few weeks ago riding downtown on the 49 bus on a Saturday and it took about 10 minutes to travel two blocks westbound on Pine Street between Summit and Melrose avenues. I don’t think Madison construction rerouting was an issue, but, seemingly, a swarm of Uber/Lyfts and other motorists trying to turn and squeeze onto Melrose Avenue to reach 7 p.m. dinner reservations at Manmoon, Terra Plata and Taylor Shellfish. The delays on Pine immediately cleared up after Melrose.
Thanks for a new thread, Mike.
I ride MLK most days, and watch the T-Link progress. They jack hammered and relaid track near 15th 3 times. I get the feeling we rely too much on contractors and lack in-house expertise. They had to pause to fly in a track expert for the climbing curve near Stadium.
WTF? They have been laying tracks for 20 years and ST doesn’t have an in-house track expert?
Even Timm has said that the culture of ST needs to change (albeit in a very diplomatic way) to one that is more serious about operations and management. It takes time for the institutional ship to run differently though.
I’ve said it before: ST needs more hardline management and not bend over backwards to accommodate the wishes of subordinate staff and contractors, and make excuses for their poor performance. “Seattle Nice” can’t run a rail system effectively in the long run —even though the Board still thinks it can.
Cam, the State should bankroll a workers’ collective of folks who want to learn transit building and, within some obvious boundaries, favor the collective for jobs. There’s going to be solid work through at least 2045, and after that there will be rail and fastener replacement throughout the three hundred track-miles of transitways in Central Puget Sound.
People would grouse about “featherbedding state employees” if the State just hired them, and there’d be the revolving door of workers and managers getting trained on the State’s dime and then moving to the contract companies.
A collective will create its own managers, and good ones, because the workers know that they can’t succeed without guidance and a “public face”. Folks who have been chosen to lead by their peers rather thanan external deus ex machina are much more likely to stay out of love and loyalty to the group.
Or they could just ignore the grousers, and properly staff government.
I expect that a workers’ collective would be popular. By “bankroll” it I mean that the state could purchase the necessary and quite expensive track building equipment and provide it to whoever does the actual work. That would expand the universe of for-profit contractors as well as the mooted collective, but the collective would have cost advantages because there’s less cream for management.
Flown a track expert in?
I mean, there’s a light rail line operating 140 miles south of Tacoma that has a few knowledgeable track people employed at it…
I know they’re all busy with “Better Red” and all that, but it seems like some shared resources could lead to better economy of scale.
Note that this Seattle Times story on T-line and the Crunican committee both accept that the ST projects are good ones. To me, it seems ST has great difficulty finding a cost-effective project in Tacoma. A costly local streetcar that bends back on itself seems a poor investment. The ST3 lost in Pierce County. If the connection between Tacoma and SeaTac is worth Link, why not run Route 574 more directly and much more frequently today?
There’s a steep hill in between. People don’t casually walk from one to the other. It’s only a few stops to go around, so some people will probably do it. The 24 zigzags around similar hills in Magnolia, and I’ve seen people take it from one part of Magnolia to another to avoid the hills.
I, for for one, will use it as an escalator. I walk and bike. A lot.
When living in Seattle, I used transit to supplement active transportation, by bailing me out late-night far from home, or to jump gaps that were too large to walk or bike in a timely fashion.
Tacoma doesn’t have frequent service, and the routes are confounding, so I can’t use it for much of that here. For instance, I walked 2 miles to Costco, and assumed I could take a bus to return on the straight shot down the main arterial of S 38th. Nope.
T-link will at least provide frequent service on a reasonable route. Which will be pretty unique to Pierce County. So I will use it. It remains to be seen how many others will.
Does that mean the money couldn’t have been better spent on a grid of frequent BRT service? Perhaps. But that would have gone against STs role as a support organ of the Real Estate industry, as reflected by the actions of the board, if not any honest mission statement.
574 is just fine. 35 minutes from Dome to SeaTac, even with stops all the future link stations. Link won’t be faster.
I take it, but I do struggle to talk anyone else into it. The train will be an easier sell. Trains are more pleasant and easy to understand for those who don’t use transit much. Which describes pretty much the entire population of a million people in Pierce County.
As far as I can tell, PT has organized the routes to go conveniently (for them) from Transit Center to Transit Center, once an hour.
Except that is rarely where a rider would actually want to go.
Mike, it is true what you write about terrain, but Tacoma also has existing bus services that overcome these barriers. As I am sure you know, they would have greatly benefitted from the $300 million spent on this street railway lacking transit-exclusive lanes.
Now that the Hilltop line is built, we should be considering the best way to incorporate it into a more useful railway network here (presuming we must use rail). That is with a 6th Avenue extension to TCC.
Troy – I did like your thoughts on using 6th instead of 19th. It would be a much more dense and useful line. 19th is a bit of a dead-zone, and I suspect that is why it was chosen. I don’t think there is the political will to push it through the likely strong resistance from businesses on 6th. I wish there was.
574 is just fine. 35 minutes from Dome to SeaTac, even with stops all the future link stations. Link won’t be faster.
I take it, but I do struggle to talk anyone else into it. The train will be an easier sell. Trains are more pleasant and easy to understand for those who don’t use transit much.
Yeah, but very few people will actually walk to the train station, as relatively few live close to the Tacoma Dome (or the other stations). If anything, the number of one-seat walk-up riders will go down. The same thing will probably happen when Link gets to Federal Way. There will no longer be a bus directly from downtown Tacoma to SeaTac. Instead, people will transfer. Some will drive, and ride the train. Maybe the numbers go up, maybe not. But I don’t see a big change as Link goes further south. The difference between transferring in Federal Way or transferring by the Tacoma Dome seems fairly minimal.
The big think that ST could do is just make the 574 more frequent. I’m sure they lose potential riders because it runs only every half hour. The one time it is reasonably frequent is the one time it gets a fair number of riders — early in the morning. This is before Link operates. It will be interesting to see what happens to the ST Express routes when they finally finish Federal Way Link. I could see two paths:
1) Continue running express buses to Seattle, but have them stop in Federal Way along the way.
2) Truncate all the buses in Federal Way.
My guess is they will continue to run buses from Federal Way to SeaTac early in the morning, given how many people ride then, and Link doesn’t operate then. If they go with the second approach, this is easy. The early morning buses end at SeaTac, while the rest of the day they end in Federal Way. If they go with the first approach, then the 574 will stick around, but only operate very early in the morning.
Cam, all of the business owners/workers that I have spoken with on the matter—which is admittedly few as I am just one person—supported the idea of a streetcar line on 6th, especially as a way to improve safety and access.
Some expressed concerns over the construction issues observed on the HTLE, but this will be a nearly 20-year old memory when the TCC extension gets going. Hopefully, lessons were learned so that any delay can be avoided in the first place.
I think a pressing concern is that Tacoma designs its transit system by committee/politics and has generally ignored the guidance of professional planners. To that point, once someone accepts the light rail extension to Tacoma as doctrine—which was a tough sell for me—you will find that original Sound Transit plans for our subarea were pretty competent: a light rail starter line in Downtown Tacoma to be integrated with Link when the time came; peak hour commuter rail service that can be expanded; all-day direct express bus services that can be expanded; a 6th Avenue streetcar alignment to TCC via Stadium, etc. These were all components of the 1996 and 2005 long range plans. However, by ST3 time, it seems like our area forgot what we were fighting for, or why we were a driving force in the creation of Sound Transit. Those original plans should still be built.
Making matters worse, for a variety of reasons we also lack the civic activism of Seattle where people fight for smart transit investments and better services. So, these big projects just evolve around the personalities guiding their development.
Really great to hear there is at least some support. Talking to a coworker, it sounds like there was also support from businesses for bike lanes in the past, though funding fell through. So maybe I was too pessimistic about the business support. I’ve already started seeing “NO TO BRT” signs on Pacific though.
Depressing that it is so personality driven. But also hopeful. Perhaps one personality that is of like mind to me will find a seat of power. ;)
“I’ve already started seeing “NO TO BRT” signs on Pacific”
I’ll do Sam’s work for him. Why do these people oppose BRT? Do they have a realistic impression of its impacts? Are they opposing losing GP lanes or parking lanes, or what don’t they like about it? When they say “BRT”, do they realize they’re closing the door to not only RapidRide-like minimal BRT but also high-quality BRT?
It sounds like the “NO GRANVILLE HIGHWAY” signs in Vancouver, although to a different purpose. In 1998 I flew a couple times from Vancouver to Europe because Canada 2000 and charter flights were cheaper than SeaTac flights. There was a limited-stop bus from an airport transfer point to downtown Vancouver on Granville Street, which was a wide boulevard like Aurora but residential. The bus was a precursor to a Skytrain line, which I guess was going to be elevated on Granville then, and a proposal to make Granville more like an expressway or freeway to speed up trips to the outer suburbs. Southern Vancouver and the inner suburbs weren’t having it: they didn’t want to be thrown under the bus for faster car trips to the outer burbs, so they opposed what they called “Granville highway”. The highwayization was eventually cancelled and the Skytrain line was built underground further east under Cambie Street.
Still, that was an anti-car protest (or at least anti suburban car), whereas I assume the Pacific Ave protest is pro-car. Also, why didn’t they mobilize before the ST3 vote when they could have made a difference? What do they think they can accomplish now. Stream 1 is inexpensive and simple, so it will be completed.
Mike, ST3 was rejected in our subarea, only to be overruled by King and Snohomish Counties. I don’t believe more mobilization would have changed anything.
I think some businesses were opposed to a loss of street parking, right-of-way expansion impacts, and impacts to auto traffic patterns from the median buslanes.
Also, note that Pierce Transit may cancel those median buslanes, and I hope STB and other transit outlets cover it.
By the way, all the ST2 planning scenarios envisioned truncating all Pierce expresses at Federal Way except the 574. Also, the 574 doesn’t go to downtown Tacoma; it’s a bypass between Lakewood and Tacoma Dome. ST has occasionally mused about extending it north to Westwood Village to replace the part of the 560 that Stride 1 will abandon.
When Federal Way Link starts, the overlapping part of the 574 will be the Redondo P&R, KDM P&R, and S 188th Street stops. Link will serve Redondo. It won’t directly serve KDM P&R (which has nothing around it) but it will serve KDM Link station in a more pedestrian area. The stops on 188th do have some businesses and government offices, probably of more interest to South King Countians than Piercians. They’re lowrise towers-in-the-park.
Now that the Hilltop line is built, we should be considering the best way to incorporate it into a more useful railway network here (presuming we must use rail). That is with a 6th Avenue extension to TCC.
There are similarities between the Tacoma streetcar and the one in Seattle. In both cases it is a poor use of transit funds. From a capacity standpoint, it was nowhere near the point where it made sense to run a streetcar. As a route, it is not very good. In the case of the Tacoma, it is somewhat reasonable, but too short. So they want to extend it. There are several options that could make sense, although you could easily argue that the best thing to do is just live with it as is. It is a sunk cost. From a tourist standpoint, it is probably as good as it gets (shuttling riders from the Tacoma Dome to downtown). It is possible though, that an extension reaches a “tipping point”, and the extension is worth it, especially if it takes over an existing route. This allows the transit agency to move service elsewhere, instead of just living with a redundant route.
From a routing standpoint, all other things being equal, the straighter the better. The 13 looks like the best bet from that standpoint. The problem is, it gets only about 150 riders a day*. This is surprising, because there appears to be decent density for much of the route, even outside of downtown (https://goo.gl/maps/PBU7w5WGhBp3n4zaA). Eventually this gets into very low density housing though, so I don’t see it taking over that route. The same is true of the 16 and 11, which are not as straight. This gets into the whole “the best thing to do is just run the buses more often” argument.
From a ridership standpoint, there are only a handful of Pierce County buses with over 1,000 riders a day, and most don’t make sense as extensions. In the area, you basically have the 1, 2 and 57. The 1 is by far the most ridden bus in the system (with over 5,000 riders) but many of those are on the end that will be replaced by BRT. The 2 is the second most popular bus, with over 2,000 riders a day. The 57 is a bit lower, but still respectable (1,250). So from a ridership standpoint, both 6th or 19th are about as good as you are going to get.
The 1 makes a 90 degree turn, which is not bad, and better than a lot of other buses. I could also see this part of the 1 being entirely replaced by the streetcar (which means that the 1 is replaced by BRT and the streetcar). This makes restructuring very simple. In contrast, I don’t know what they will do if and when the streetcar is extended up 19th. One option would be to have the 1 take over the tail of the 2 (that goes to University Place and Lakewood). The 57 would be modified slightly, and sent down 19th (taking over that part of the 2). That works, I suppose, and saves a bit of service. But it isn’t nearly as straightforward as taking over that part of the 1. So yeah, it would probably be best if the streetcar went up 6th, instead of looping around to serve 19th, but it is probably best if they just scrapped the streetcar extension altogether, and ran the buses more often.
* All numbers are from before the pandemic. They are probably lower now.
Ross, exactly. Accurate on all accounts.
Also, I would love to meet sometime.
The worst part of the T-line is the third phase on 19th. From downtown Tacoma, a short loop around to MLK is somewhat reasonable. (It’s redundant by only 2-3 stops.) From Tacoma Dome it has a slightly-longer redundancy, but the two hospitals will still be a draw.
With the 19th extension, a trip from downtown Tacoma has the same 2-3 station redundancy as before. But from Tacoma Dome to destinations on 19th, the entire downtown/MLK segment is backtracking, and that’s several stations. So what would really be best for them is a 19th Street bus from Tacoma Dome. Will they get it? Probably not.
Still, we must look at a route as potentially 2-3 routes that are interlined. The biggest trip patterns will be Tacoma Dome to downtown, downtown to MLK, Tacoma Dome to MLK, downtown to 19th, and MLK to 19th. 19th doesn’t have as large destinations as downtown and MLK, so Tacoma Dome to 19th will be the least-common trip pair anyway. Unless it’s overwhelmed with people going to Tacoma Community College from northeast/southeast of Tacoma Dome.
Hey Troy,
I’m looking into the Stream 1 changes you are referring to. I see this in Pierce Transit’s 2021-2022 “Key Changes” summary: (https://www.piercetransit.org/brt/)
“Some sections of the corridor that were previously identified for median, transit-only lanes will now be designated curbside in mixed-use traffic, much like Route 1 runs today.”
It’s an ominous sentence, and unfortunately it’s very vague. Do you know if there are any more recent documents illustrating their intent?
Hey Andrew,
The materials have only been made available through the agenda packet of the Pierce Transit Board meeting.
Please see the April 10 downloads.
https://www.piercetransit.org/board-meetings/
“The 13 looks like the best bet from that standpoint. ”
The 13 is hourly commuter service. 4 runs a day. Pretty much the same problem as all transit in Tacoma. Frequency.
“Why do these people oppose BRT? Do they have a realistic impression of its impacts? Are they opposing losing GP lanes or parking lanes, or what don’t they like about it? When they say “BRT”, do they realize they’re closing the door to not only RapidRide-like minimal BRT but also high-quality BRT?”
I’ll ask Connie next time I get donuts. ;)
I actually almost asked last time I was in, but she was too busy. Good donuts.
Thank you, sir.
Yeah the progress on the Hilltop extension has seemed painfully slow throughout. This is a relatively pretty small project and yet somehow ST has mismanaged it, pushed back the opening date and blown thru it’s initial estimate and adjusted baseline budget by a significant amount. It’s going to be interesting to see how useful it turns out to be in the near and longer term.
I remember when Portland talked about being able to build three blocks of streetcar track in three weeks but that was back when Portland was a well run city.
> The U.S. Department of Transportation has provided two federal Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) grants to Seattle transportation agencies. One grant of $2 million was awarded to Sound Transit and Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) to increase the general safety around the Link light rail along Martin Luther King Jr. Way South, which statistically has been the most dangerous for local residents as reported by the Emerald last year.
> The second federal SMART grant of $2 million was awarded to SDOT to establish a digital commercial vehicle permits pilot program through a collaboration with the University of Washington’s Urban Freight Lab (UFL) and the Open Mobility Foundation (OMF).
https://southseattleemerald.com/2023/04/20/sound-transit-and-seattle-department-of-transportation-awarded-federal-grants-for-improvements
The improvements to safety on mlk are welcome, mainly crosswalk improvements and leading pedestrian intervals. Though it’s not enough money to do anything larger
The digital commercial vehicles permits program looks pretty interesting. It is kind of a fancy way of saying pay for truck parking online; but still digitizing it and standardizing it across multiple cities seems useful.
https://www.openmobilityfoundation.org/about-cds/
https://calculatedrisk.substack.com/p/march-housing-starts-most-multi-family
More multi-family under construction than since 1973.
https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/newresconst.pdf
Looking at the regional breakdown, the South is strong, but their the West certainly has a lot of multifamily under construction as well. Single family has fallen pretty substantially recently. Probably not as much bottleneck issues for single family, so they were quicker through the pipe.
Hopefully that will moderate rents as this stuff comes on line.
Anecdotally, I’m seeing a lot of 5 over 1s and bigger nearing completion in downtown Tacoma.
Interesting timing on this. I was just looking at the data for Snohomish County yesterday, prompted by a reply from commenter Anonymouse about one of my own comments on the previous open thread about AADU/DADU regulations:
Anonymouse: “Do you happen to have any stats on what percentage of such units have been built since the zoning rules have allowed it? It would be a useful indicator of what other areas can expect as well.”
Well, here’s what I found looking at the permit data for new construction from Snohomish County PDS*.
Trailing 12-mo period (Apr 2022 – Mar 2023) – Total units by dwelling type:
SFH – 627
Duplexes – 52
3/4 Unit Bdlgs – 42
5+ Unit Bldgs – 678
MH – 30
ADU – 65
And the same data for the 12-mo period five years ago (Apr 2017 – Mar 2018) – Total units by dwelling type:
SFH – 1,402
Duplexes** – 44
3/4 Unit Bdlgs – 106
5+ Unit Bldgs – 439
MH – 37
ADU – 20
** There were six additional SFH conversions to duplexes not included here.
*Please keep in mind that this data is only for the unincorporated areas of the county. I’ll post a second comment about the trending pattern countywide in a subsequent reply.
My bad.
MH = mobile/manufactured homes
Neat, thank you very much for the statistics! As a follow-up question, what were the zoning changes between the two periods?
It seems that the number of 5+ unit buildings increased by roughly 50%, and ADUs tripled. SFH dropped to about 40%, and 3/4 unit buildings dropped also to about that – that last one is surprising to me.
The biggest changes to the ADU regs were made in 2021.
Here’s a link to an article in “The Urbanist” that covers the changes that were adopted at that time. It’s a pretty good explanation so I’ll just refer you to said piece.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/06/10/snoco-liberalizes-adu-rules/
Additionally, here’s a direct link to the relevant portion of the county’s Unified Development Code (Title 30), should you want to review the code’s actual language.
https://snohomish.county.codes/SCC/30.28.010
Thank you very much! The Urbanist article is probably sufficient for my level of expertise :)
Oddly, the best metro specific table I could find was from a Cleveland blog (I can’t find the original from the IPA), shows Seattle robust but still well below sunbelt rates.
https://neo-trans.blog/2023/03/16/cleveland-adds-fewest-apartments-among-major-metros/
I read the article…. not very good actually. Lots and lots of “research” from “experts”…. who I suspect started out with an ax to grind before starting their research project. You can cook the numbers anyway you like I guess.
What Noah Smith doesn’t take into account, or maybe even understand is, housing is an Interstate market. Seattle (or Austin TX) isn’t some housing micro-environment separated from the rest of the USA. Most of Seattle’s housing woes didn’t start in Seattle, or Washington State. Blame San Francisco and California (and Oregon and the rest the USA as well). As long as living in Seattle is a little cheaper (and nicer!) than life in Cali, it’s impossible to ever “catch up” on housing. Remember that California is, what? The 5th biggest economy in the world? There’s nothing Seattle can do to stop people (and the tech industry) from moving in. Look at the population growth vs. new housing units coming online over any 5 year period. There’s the problem.
Political and social beliefs aside… what’s the only solution? People need to stop moving to the N.W. Political and social beliefs aside…. what’s the personal solution to not being able to afford housing in Seattle? Just move away.
Some of the current rent forecasts for Seattle see rent (and residential property prices) stabilizing or dropping over the next couple years and that’s good news at first glance. But the math isn’t such good news… a 10% reduction in rent on a $3000 a month apartment is only $300. Any downward correction in the housing market has to weighed against decades of stellar price increases.
Downward corrections turn off the construction industry… a mild correction isn’t going to hurt, but if rents fall 5-10% a year for a couple years running, not many projects will be built. I still can’t understand how some folks believe it’s possible to build affordability in Seattle. The construction industry doesn’t exist to build affordable housing.
The road to recovery starts with letting go of White Privilege and realizing that you have no God given right to affordable housing in Seattle. The pandemic and WFH tossed a lot of lower income workers in Seattle a lifeline. Go ahead and take it…. Do some research, figure out the next boomtown… get ahead of the curve.
For some reason Tacomee the parts of the world with the most luxury housing units have the highest housing costs. I wonder if it is because those areas have the highest AMI, and highest cost of living for just about everything.
I was very surprised to see Seattle’s rep during the hearings for 1110 raise something these articles gloss over: the new luxury housing was not built on vacant land: it replaced existing housing, older more affordable housing. Areas with high AMI’s like Seattle destroy affordable housing when it is replaced by new housing based on the high AMI. Developers like to buy low and sell high. It is why the rents for the 2300 new units near U Village average $2000 to $6000/mo.
I was also surprised that the legislature in last year’s ESB 1220 required local counties to consider gentrification in creating barriers based on race, and displacing historic minority communities. This was a primary goal of King Co.’s subcommittee for affordable housing mandates to cities under 1220, but in the end the subcommittee realized what we all know: it isn’t race but wealth that displaces minorities (and whites too), and no one really has a very good plan how to solve the gentrification problem in a region with a very high AMI.
If what I hear is correct, Seattle’s rental vacancy rate will hit 6% next year, a critical metric (it is 5.2% now but rising). At 6% price pressures based on supply are supposed to go away, but the cost to the property owner from inflation and property taxes do not, just like a SFH owner, so rents and housing costs go up anyway.
So rents won’t go up due to supply but won’t go down, and rents will likely rise 10%/year until inflation and hopefully property taxes cool. But that is the same for every property owner or renter. HB 1110 does not exempt renters from inflation or property tax increases.
I hope that a 6% vacancy rate does cool rent increases because there is very little rental multi-family construction in the permitting stage right now due to market conditions and financing.
Everyone wants the high AMI you get in a high AMI area like Seattle, but low housing costs in low AMI areas, especially if you are below the AMI line which is $115,000 in Seattle. That is why WFH is so great for many who can move out of state: keep the high AMI but move to a low-cost area (which then raises the cost of housing and living for everyone else who lives there which is they tend to hate the Seattleites moving in, like all those Seattle millennials moving to SnoCo and Pierce which are kind areas compared to Montana and Idaho where being from Seattle will get you beat up in a bar at night.
“a 10% reduction in rent on a $3000 a month apartment is only $300.”
Typical Seattle rents are $1800-2200, so we aren’t in that territory yet.
One point of note regarding property tax rates: the crisis center levy will increase my property tax by 2% all on its own. This is in addition to any other increases we may see from other ongoing programs or new programs to be voted on later.
I think that the proposed levy has worthwhile goals, and the coverage I have seen makes me feel like it is worth enacting even if it is not perfect; but we need to be realistic about the impact which it (and other measures like it) will have on the housing prices, in addition to inflation, etc.
“the new luxury housing was not built on vacant land: it replaced existing housing, older more affordable housing.”
The most affordable market-rate housing is 1950s-1960s construction. It’s too new/modernist/car-oriented to be charming, and too old to have enough electric outlets or even sometimes 3-pronged outlets, and it’s decaying because nobody loves it. These are the three-story dingbats, one-story “garden apartments” with surface parking lots, and no-parking buildings with outside hallways. And small houses, which were affordable thirty years ago, but now sell for $400, $500, $600K, even if they require major repairs.
When these buildings are replaced and unused zoning capacity is available, the number of units usually doubles, triples, or quadruples. A house becomes 2-3 townhouses. An 8-unit apartment becomes a 20-unit apartment, etc.
Why is it worth replacing these buildings and multiplying the number of units. Because the population has increased massively since the original buildings were built. All the existing units are full, yet still people come or turn 18 or get divorced and need more units. There may be a short-term reversal now, but it will probably be over in two years, like the 2008 recession was. So we can slow down a but, but we can’t yet assume a fundamental change has occurred.
There’s a more acute danger. A glut of apartments, if it’s occurring, will naturally lead to developers stopping. It will take a couple years for them to finish their current projects, and then there will be a drop in new units. At some point after that, the economy will boom again or in-migration will return to higher, and it will take a couple years for developers to ramp up again. Pent-up demand will have increased during that time, as more people turn 18 or want to form new households but have been stymied. They’ll increase demand but supply won’t have ramped up yet, so the largest jumps in prices happen during those times.
“I think that the proposed levy has worthwhile goals, and the coverage I have seen makes me feel like it is worth enacting even if it is not perfect; but we need to be realistic about the impact which it (and other measures like it) will have on the housing prices, in addition to inflation, etc.”
If we want to get homeless mentally-ill people and those in immediate crisis off the streets and out of sidewalk tents, there have to be places for them to go. If we don’t pass the levy and raise property taxes 2%, there will also be an impact on our streets and in our society. That may also harm homeowners’ bottom line or make cities (plural) less pleasant and safe. It’s a judgment call which impact is larger or more important, but the point is that the alternative is not zero-cost or zero-impact.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/after-financial-collapse-of-shelter-homelessness-authority-scrambles-for-housing/
This article is getting a lot of attention on the eastside, along with concern the levy for mental health has no plan. I am pretty sure the levy will fail on the eastside and in S. King Co.; the question is whether Seattle voters will overcome the vote on the eastside.
Many eastsiders saw very large jumps in their property tax bills and 1st 1/2 property taxes are due next Monday. There are a lot of house rich cash poor seniors. At the same time it is very hard to get any kind of mental health treatment right now, mainly due to too few counselors and a rising case demand from the pandemic. Unfortunately there is no cure for mental health disease, just maintenance, and many of the psychotropic mediations come with serious side effects.
In 2016 the state budget was $40 billion and in 2023 it will be $70 billion. Inslee has a terrible record over prioritizing mental health funding, including at Western State. I just can’t believe the state couldn’t find any additional funding for mental health treatment out of that additional $30 billion for King Co.
“I will be interested in seeing if rental vacancy rates in Seattle tick upwards, and imagine they will due to new construction and WFH, and Seattle’s issues overall.”
“Seattle’s issues” won’t make a difference. I assume you’re referring to downtown crime, and other complaints about taxes and socialist/woke policies. Most Seattlites don’t go downtown regularly, so it barely affects them. When I lived in the U-District and Ballard, I rarely went downtown. Many people who go to farmers’ markets have forgotten that Pike Place still has a large farmers’ market, and don’t know what retail is downtown.
The general complaints about citywide crime, taxes, and wokeness are the same things I’ve heard for fifty years. People who believe that already live outside Seattle, or don’t care about it enough to move out, so there won’t be some large exodus. Tens of thousands of people are moving into Seattle and don’t care about that enough to deter them, so they’ll replace anybody who moves out.
The future in Seattle will probably be a continuing population increase, although not at the scale of 2012-2018 which was unique, with occasional short-term softening or reversals.
The 2012-2018 boom was caused by Amazon creating a major corporate headquarters, Amazon releasing AWS which transformed Internet usage and all-industry business investment, and Silicon Valley companies setting up offices in Seattle. None of those are likely to happen again. Explosive company expansion like Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon is a rare thing. It’s hard to imagine what the next AWS or Third Silicon Valley would be. Seattle had an opportunity to zone Northgate for another Amazon-sized campus and failed to do so. (The only highrise zoning is on the mall lot, and the mall renovation is not using it.)
Toronto’s Line 4 has some 50,000 riders as of 2018, even though it is only 5 stations and less than 4 miles.
By this metric, a substantial percentage of transit lines in the USA are “comparable cases” of being nearly useless.
> By this metric, a substantial percentage of transit lines in the USA are “comparable cases” of being nearly useless.
American transit rail lines sadly do garner a lot less ridership to their counterparts. A lot of them were/are hobbled by the single family zoning surrounding many transit stations. Though that is slowly hopefully being fixed.
The difference is, if ST had built it, it would be above ground and hugging the freeway. The Line 4 Sheppard is underground, away from the freeway, and beneath a busy arterial. Plenty of single family neighborhoods nearby, but they were smart enough not to place the stations next to them. Here’s a map of the line …
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7700848,-79.3770393,6416m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e2
Sam. Toronto subway expert.
> The difference is, if ST had built it, it would be above ground and hugging the freeway
sadly agree that is what Sound Transit would have done.
> Plenty of single family neighborhoods nearby, but they were smart enough not to place the stations next to them.
That’s not quite what happened, what they did was upzoned next to the stations. Some of those apartments you seen on google maps were originally single family housing.
For example with the Millennium line extension along broadway in Vancouver they upzoned along the corridor https://www.planetizen.com/news/2022/07/117692-vancouvers-controversial-broadway-plan-approved-amendments.
Yeah, I was gonna point this out. If you watch the video, he makes this point. Folks in Toronto often criticize the Line 4, because ridership is pretty small compared to other lines in the system (or in general). But the ridership per mile is actually fairly good (although again much smaller than the other lines).
But it would be a lot better if it went further. You would get a network effect on the line itself, but also the network. It is a short segment in the middle of long corridor. Extend it, and you have a lot more one and two seat rides.
I think the cold, snowy Toronto weather encourages more people to live in taller buildings with internal convenience retail, and to ride the subway to a climate controlled job and shopping district.
The tall buildings surrounded almost immediately by single family houses is due in large part to the zoning: https://viewpointvancouver.ca/2019/10/17/the-grand-bargain-illustrated/?fbclid=IwAR1yAeWGDUzZjG8vLaBPhwJPYh9fxm0tIuVXUbfLVYFqbT1f7zJy5H7s7D0
No doubt most have seen this by now but…
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/was-new-ban-on-single-family-zoning-exempts-some-of-seattles-wealthiest-neighborhoods/
Seems like a pretty big loophole not talked about at all during the bill’s debate and amendments.
Most housing covenants don’t mention “day care centers” either yea or nay. I suppose of one actually did ban them, the Leg would say, “OK; it’s a prior contract”.
It’s not a “loophole”; it’s what they call “settled law”.
Ok, “loophole” was probably a bad choice of words, I agree.
I meant more that I am surprised that it hasn’t come up in discussions about the bills, e.g. when The Urbanist was talking about the various versions being debated in each chamber, etc. I would have been curious to know what percentage of SFH parcels are restricted in this way.
As for it being “settled law” – how does this compare to, say, sunsetting the East Bellevue and Houghton special districts? Those were technically “settled law”, too, until the legislature decided to do away with them. cc Daniel Thompson and TIsgwm for that question, I guess :) As well as anyone else with a legal background here on the blog.
It’s odd to say that people have to follow the law whenever it changes but contracts don’t.
It may not have been talked about because not many people knew about it.
I’m not concerned about Broadmoor et al because they’re on the remote periphery that are the least important to upzone. But with every new developer-built neighborhood having a HOA, it’s a bigger problem in the suburbs and will be a bigger problem in the future. We need to figure out a long-term solution to this, as it creates what’s effectively private zoning.
The state HOA assoc. was very involved in this year’s legislative session. Many don’t know all of Mill Creek is a HOA. The HOA’s position was the HOA trumps zoning unless the state can show a health, safety or civil rights violation in the covenants. The HOA’s threatened litigation and the legislature backed down.
MI has some lovely HOA’s and they tend to be the most expensive non-waterfront property on the Island. You almost need an inside invitation to buy because the houses never hit the market. But the HOA’s that are most adamant about enforcement of their covenants are in lower income areas because they are trying to create an oasis that is safe to raise kids when the surrounding city is not and to keep out undesirables. Their number one restriction is usually on rentals. Or like many HOA’s in rural or unincorporated parts of counties with abusive zoning and regulatory limits (like our association on Whidbey Island) they want to control the scale and taste of the development when the county is influenced by builders when compared to cities like Coupeville. Many regulations in our HOA are outdated like a requirement in our covenants that a house must have indoor plumbing, but height, scale, setbacks and design are very important to prevent McMansions on the water by folks with bad taste.
Most HOA’s are formed when the property is subdivided and platted and covenants are filed with the deeds. However there is already talk about neighborhoods or entire cities forming HOA’s to counter 1110 although the vote among members must be unanimous I’m not an expert but forming a HOA after the property post platting looks legal.
The reality is HB 1110 gives cities wide latitude to encourage or discourage the upzoning in 1110 so new HOA’s are probably premature.
As noted in Tisgwm’s excellent research 2-4 plexes are not very popular among builders, especially when the regulatory limits are the same as a SFH and most SFH lots are relatively small, even when interest rates are near zero. Even DADU’s WITH a density or GFAR bonus are not that popular. By far the biggest problem is someone has to carry the loan on a four plex virtually forever while renting out the units, and today bank financing for such a development is impossible and loan rates are over 10%. Plus if you live on MI you are going to have to live in one of the four plexes if you rent out another. Seattle’s upzone to three units per SFH lot has had little impact.
For cities between 25,000 and 75,000 residents (MI has 25,400 residents) for areas not within 1/4 mike of Link the requirement is two dwellings per lot, with an allowed 2 onsite parking spots per unit, which is more than MI’s current SFH + DADU requirement. The concern is MI will have to eliminate the no parking limit for an ADU/DADU and GFAR bonus to discourage duplexes since the regulatory limits must be the same. So the impact of 1110 at least on MI will be negative if density is the goal. My guess is other Eastside cities understand the same. There is a reason zoning should be local. Local cities decide whether to discourage state zoning.
Cam’s observation reinforces something I am hearing more and more from builders: this region will soon have a glut of multi-family housing, and one of the most important data points in his link is the number of multi-family projects started but not completed. With current interest rates that are almost always floating builders are walking away from noncompleted developments because like Southport the project is underwater. Hopefully a glut of new rental units will lower rents in existing rentals, although just inflation and rising property taxes will increase rents 10%/year until inflation cools and property taxes stop rising.
“MI has some lovely HOA’s and they tend to be the most expensive non-waterfront property on the Island. You almost need an inside invitation to buy because the houses never hit the market. But the HOA’s that are most adamant about enforcement of their covenants are in lower income areas because they are trying to create an oasis that is safe to raise kids when the surrounding city is not and to keep out undesirables.”
When all cities or neighborhoods exclude all but the top 20%, where do the other 80% go? This is a harm on everyone else in the city and metropolitan area. The idea that individual neighborhoods should be able to decide this rather than elected officials with supposedly-balanced citywide plans and maybe voter approval is wrong.
” this region will soon have a glut of multi-family housing”
That’s a short-term issue. If there is a glut it will be filled up in a couple years. We can’t base long-term zoning decisions on a short-term glut.
I think you have it backwards Mike. HOA’s in lower income and working class neighborhoods want to exclude 20% to 30% of the local population because they are trying to raise families. Unless you have kids you can’t understand how vulnerable they are and you are.
There is a certain percentage of shit citizens. Folks should be able to decide they don’t want to live among them. I imagine your landlord or building Assoc. Screens tenants for the same reason.
There’s a difference between an apartment building screening tenants and an HOA doing such a thing because i can tell you that HOAs harbor a lot of problems structure wise within them that create housing inequality and insecurity in cities. Read up on the history of housing development in the US to understand how deeply problematic HOAs actually are to the fabric of American culture before trying to prop up HOAs as a “bastion of good” for neighborhoods.
Housing along with local infrastructure should not be privatized just so a few people can give themselves a false sense of security. That’s going to lead to problems down the line in a generation or two when the infrastructure needs significant maintenance or addressing housing issues in a region.
Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes has talked about this problem with the Growth Ponzi scheme of American cities and suburbs where they aren’t able to sustainably grow in a manner that keeps their town or city afloat cash flow and tax wise with bad city planning design decisions that discourages density or upzoning.
When that is something you have had happen around the world for centuries now when city and town needs change and adjust to accommodate the changing economics and population growth of a region.
You either build for the future or kick yourself later for not doing so.
Most Seattle neighborhoods are too old or individually-built to have HOAs. And “lower-income and working-class” doesn’t apply to $600K houses in Rainier Valley or West Seattle or the CD — unless they bought the house thirty years ago. Where are these lower-income HOAs that are valiantly allowing children to be raised away from their shit neighbors? How could new $2000/month apartments or or fourplex units be a threat to them, when only middle-class people can afford those apartments, and they’re in fact similar to the homeowners?
@Mike
> Where are these lower-income HOAs that are valiantly allowing children to be raised away from their shit neighbors? How could new $2000/month apartments or or fourplex units be a threat to them, when only middle-class people can afford those apartments, and they’re in fact similar to the homeowners?
Well that’s easy, see when you upzone it’ll only build new townhouses that simultaneously only the rich can afford and brings down property values by allowing the poor into the neighborhood that single family housing prevents. /s
Whoa up, guys. Anyone who creates an HOA after the passage of the law cannot make a covenant which is forbidden by that law. Existing covenants are contracts freely entered when the law presented a vacuum on topics covered in the covenants. A covenant written in 1940 had to abide by the laws in force at the time, but could restrict actions and on which the law was silent at the time.
Nothing has really changed about that, except that some things which were allowed then are prohibited now, but nobody can adopt those prohibited activities by covenant now.
So, the worry about “HOA’s being excluded” is pointless, because any new HOA will not be able to covenant itself to be exclusive in ways prohibited by this law.
Daniel, um, No, “inflation and rising property taxes will increase rents 10%/year until inflation cools and property taxes stop rising.” If the vacancy rate rises to the 6% range or past, rents will stop rising, full stop. Landlords will have to eat any increased costs, because if they try to raise rents, folks will bail to a place that hasn’t tried.
Sure, sure, moving is a PITA, and there is certainly “economic friction” from it holding people in place. But if Joe Doaks raises rent on his three-plex 10% for a couple of years running after vacancies hit that critical availability, he’ll find he’s getting nothing for a while.
Surely in all your education you ran into Econ 101.
HOA’s in lower income and working class neighborhoods want to exclude 20% to 30% of the local population because they are trying to raise families. Unless you have kids you can’t understand how vulnerable they are and you are.
There is a certain percentage of shit citizens. Folks should be able to decide they don’t want to live among them. I imagine your landlord or building Assoc. Screens tenants for the same reason.
So basically rich parents want to exclude poor people. As someone who does have kids, I understand this attitude all to well. Of course I would have been one of those shit people who was raising shit kids, because they didn’t fit the ideal racial and economic demographic for the HOA residents.
It is the same idea that lead to ghettos. Many ghettos — like the HOAs of old — are very explicit (no Jews, no Blacks, etc.). Other times it was a little more subtle (realtors won’t sell to people of color, etc.). But it is still the same basic idea: we have money, let’s make sure to keep the “undesirables” out.
The ironic part, of course, is that numerous studies have shown that kids gain more from a diverse upbringing. People always assume that black people benefit from desegregation, but white people benefit from it as well. It helps if you break out of your little wealthy cocoon. I went to racially diverse schools and always enjoyed it when we took state in things like chess or debate. It was great to win — but especially nice to kick the shit out of wealthy, entitled little brats whose parents no doubt expressed the attitude Daniel explained. Maybe if they spent a little less time trying to exclude people, and a little more time learning from them, they could compete with the more diverse schools.
any *new* HOA will not be able to covenant itself to be exclusive in ways prohibited by this law.
I get that, but what I don’t get is why you can’t force old HOAs to change their rules to allow more density. This was clearly done with racial covenants. It will be done with rules banning child care centers. It seems to me that this was just an oversight, or rather, something they didn’t want to take on right now. In that sense, it most certainly is a loophole (with “loophole” defined as “an ambiguity or inadequacy in the law or a set of rules”).
Oh, and as the article mentioned, the law doesn’t go into effect for another three months, so a neighborhood could create a new gated community within that time period.
Ross, I expect that old HOA’s with restrictions on type of housing can be made to accept new types that all other places must. The racial exclusions were outlawed by the Civil Rights bills of the 1960’s and that was upheld by the Supreme Court of the day. It probably wouldn’t be approved by today’s Court, but if anyone proposed it today, they’d be pilloried.
I expect that there weren’t the votes for the bill without excluding existing covenants explicitly. There are a lot of people who support “Rules for thee, but not for me!”
Let’s say the Windermere neighborhood isn’t protected from the banning of sf zoning. A hundred years from now, what does the neighborhood look like? I think there are a couple of likely outcomes. It looks the same as it does now. Or, there are a small percentage of luxury duplexes and triplexes on some parcels. Or, it becomes sort of like Balboa Island, with much more housing in the same neighborhood, but it’s all still wildly expensive. I guess the last one would be a win for greater density, but somehow I don’t think that’s what density advocates have in mind when they call for greater density and more housing in former sf zone-only neighborhoods.
Tom, as I noted in my original post, during the hearings on HB 1110 it was determined that the only way 1110 could supersede HOA covenants on SFH was if the legislature was to make a finding, and craft a separate bill, that upzoning was a health, safety or civil rights predicate. At the time apparently it was determined the legislature would not be able to defend such a finding by a certain lawsuit from the HOA groups, which would have plenty of funding for litigation.
I also think you may be correct that the reality was that if HOA’s were not exempt there was not the votes for HB 1110, which was getting amended and watered down weekly, and was the only upzoning bill that passed, and effectively exempted any city under 75,000 residents that allows DADU’s because their obligation under HB 1110 is two units per SFH lot, same as before with the same regulatory limits.
Plus a city if it chooses can require two parking stalls per unit, or 8 onsite parking stalls per four-plex, on a SFH lot (or two per two-plex if under 75,000 residents). The trick will be crafting development regulations that maintain the ADU/DADU and possibly GFA bonus and no parking requirement while at the same time using those tools to prohibit 2-4 plexes. It would be a shame if the ADU/DADU became more restrictive because cities must treat them the same as 2-4 plexes and don’t want 2-4 plexes (and few would be built anyway).
I have said it a thousand times, zoning is not construction.
In some ways I think we are getting distracted, and I think Tisgwm’s research for unincorporated SnoCo was instructive and consistent with Seattle’s experience with its upzoning bill in 2017: (new) duplexes, tri-plexes and four-plexes are not that popular among developers, and get less popular the more units you add. Even DADU’s with bonus GFA incentives are not that popular. Especially in high interest rate environment builders are not going to want to carry the loan on the land and plexes in order to rent them out. Forever. Not at 10%/year. (And if they have to live onsite in one of the plexes).
By far the most multi-family rental units are built in the multi-family zone because it makes sense for the builder and renter: large lots to pencil out, usually near transit and retail and access roads, regulatory limits that allow very high GFAR (GFA to lot area ratio) with almost no yard setbacks or impervious surface limits, ability to require many different sized units, and maybe most important for cash strapped cities the ability to offer additional height for affordability set asides, although builders don’t like to go below 80% AMI because market rate tenants think 80% AMI tenants look like they do. These larger projects — at least in the past — could also attract funding from large REIT’s and venture funds, especially when interest rates on any loans was so low. Many don’t know that on MI a waterfront lot costs more per sf than a lot in the town center, sometimes more no matter what size the TC lot is.
Seattle and the region are going to see a large number of new multi-family units hit the market over the next few years. These were permitted and funded long ago when interest rates were very low, tech was booming, the stock market especially REIT’s were 50% higher in valuation, and the DOC was predicting another 1 million residents over the next 20 years, and before WFH.
The new units are coming. Vacancy rates are rising. Some think there will be a glut, and that is generally how it goes with building. The key will be whether all the new units along with probably low population growth lower or stabilize rents, despite the fact the cost to the multi-family owner is going up 10%/year.
All we can do is wait and see. But HB 1110 will have almost no impact because many cities oppose being told how to zone and control enforcement and the regulatory tools, and these 2-4 plexes have never been popular among builders.
“Let’s say the Windermere neighborhood isn’t protected from the banning of sf zoning. A hundred years from now, what does the neighborhood look like?”
Dozen of unknown factors will occur over a hundred years. It’s impossible to answer that question with any reliability.
HOAs honestly should not get any special treatment in regards to this bill because of their unique status in housing laws. They’re a drain on city resources from my view and exist to keep minorities and poorer people out of housing supply.
They’re also the worst kind of local control that cause more problems for people who live within them than help because they’re often run by people who quite frankly shouldn’t be running them in the first place as they have too much time on their hands and often are hypocritical in their stances on HOA covenants. There’s a reason why HOAHell exists and people hate their HOA more than love them from research that has been done on HOAs.
You also don’t really outright own the property and the HOA can force a lein on your house or foreclosure on your house despite you owning the property deed in the first place if you get fined enough by them. That to me is downright criminal and an abuse of human rights and civil liberties when you take away someone’s right to housing because of potential petty neighbor drams from the HOA board where they hate a thing you did to your house despite it not violating HOA covenants and violating personal freedom of speech. The value
I have a couple friends who had their house and their neighbors houses be considered to become part of an HOA from a local property developer. But they basically argued against it in the initial meeting, pointing out the flaws in having an HOA for their neighborhood. And inflexibility it would have if a problem arises that could bring the neighborhood to a standstill. They eventually settled on a civic association instead of an HOA to serve their needs as a community.
People can claim that HOAs are “good” but often ignore the history of housing development of the early 20th century and the problems it created that we are still feeling a century later.
Zach, you do realize the vast majority of HOA’s are multi-family condo buildings. Their HOA’s can’t violate civil right laws. The main job of the boards is to collect dues to maintain their common areas, and to enforce design covenants every purchaser must acknowledge they read and agree to upon purchase. You make it sound like these people are devils when you don’t know them. Basically the HOA does the job a landlord does in screening prospective tenants.
For the vast majority of SFH HOA’s I doubt 1110 will impact them since they are fewer than 25,000 residents and don’t have a Link station within the HOA (anyone know of a Link station in or within 1/4 mile of a SFH HOA?).
Rght, I guess I should just ignore the mountain of problems HOAs have because I never met the people within them despite mountains of evidence that exist on many problematic HOA Boards with them being hot beds for petty neighborhood drama along with in some cases tax fraud or money laundering or embezzlement by said problem boards in many cases. It only takes rotten apples to spoil the bunch for everyone. There’s a reason majority of people hate HOAs, even for people who live within one as its often the only housing options that exist in area because they have no other choice.
And saying they’ll adhere to the fair housing act when they require in person interviews, higher credit checks than even the bank requires, etc, just to buy a home in an HOA. Which again heavily discriminates against minorities by a wider margin than white homebuyers. Legally speaking, sure fair housing act exists but in practice it does jack all to prevent other forms of discrimination during the homebuying process in a HOA even when they don’t say “we don’t want x people here in our community”. It’s just keeping the racism quiet and beneath the surface.
If you want to defend HOAs, go right ahead be my guest but maybe ask yourself why housing developments like HOAs were founded on a deeply racist history that honestly makes them not worth defending in the slightest when you start looking at them brass tax for the foundation they were built upon and the problems they create in many communities.
If you want a detailed explanation on why HOAs are not good from my view. John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight does a better explanation than I could ever do on it.
https://youtu.be/qrizmAo17Os
“you do realize the vast majority of HOA’s are multi-family condo buildings”
But this issue is about single-family HOA neighborhoods that won’t allow fourplexes, much condos or apartments. Of course condos need a multi-owner structure to take responsibility for the yard and hallways and replacing the roof.
Not all HOAs are bad. The one I live in seems quite reasonable. They allow services that benefit all the unit owners, such as landscaping and roof replacement to be done in bulk and more cheaply. Their rules are far from onerous, and I know the people that run them. The dues also seem quite reasonable, considering what we are getting. For example, a large chunk of our HOA dues covers a master insurance policy, without which, our individual homeowners insurance policies would be far more expensive.
@Zach
> If you want a detailed explanation on why HOAs are not good from my view. John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight does a better explanation than I could ever do on it.
https://youtu.be/qrizmAo17Os
I never quite understood why we (American’s) allow our HOA’s to be restrictive. I understand common upkeep for shared amenities, but nitpicking the color of the house, type of lawn etc…
Or maybe it has more to do with the board structure of many HOA’s? Not sure why it is so relatively common to hear stories of HOA’s of 10 people controlling a community of 500+ (slight exaggeration) with a myriad of absurd rules.
Are there good HOAs, sure but I find they’re often the expection rather than the rule from the people I’ve talked to who currently live in one or used to.
I’ve rarely heard of them being good for fostering community when they do the exact opposite. Creating soulless and sad neighborhoods devoid of color or charm run by a committee of neighbors who can infringe on your personal space and fine for honestly very benign things that are non issues 99% of the time.
HOAs for intents and purposes are like the charter schools of housing. It’s basically privatizing infrastructure that shouldn’t be in the first place on top of basically takes away basic human rights and civil liberties. You don’t own your home, you live in a glorified fancy apartment complex with a fancy deed paper that says “you own the home” but is worthless if the HOA board decides to put a lein or foreclosure your property for missing a fee or accumulated fines just because you repainted the house the wrong shade of beige or white or just painted it a different color entirely, built a shed in your own backyard, put up personal flags on your property, forgot to take in the trash cans at the appropriate time etc. Which defeats the purpose pf home ownership which is to own your own personal property that you can do with it as you see fit. I shouldn’t need approval from my neighbors to do what I want to my house. You’re basically treat homeowners like children than the adults they are. I’ve also seen many stories of HOAs being discriminate against handicapped or mobility impaired for any modifications to their home.
HOAs on paper sounds good but in practice rarely comes out being better than people owning a home in a non HOA area.
WL
I’d say the existence of HOAs comes from the historical context of white flight or redlining. A lot of the Inital HOAs existed to serve white homebuyers who wanted “safe and comfortable housing” in the suburbs away from “crime infested intercities” or “poor/minority neighborhoods” which included excluding people of color from purchasing said housing in many HOA covenants.
As for why they’re problematic now, it comes down to cities/states who are either cash strapped or view it as a means to be “fiscally conservative” with the view that we should just let the private marker handle said issue with little regulations or protections over HOAs and how they should exist or function for the homeowners. It’s why you end up with problems like an HOA board member fining people for building a wheelchair ramp into their own home or not allowed to install a bench in their front yard despite it not “destroying the neighborhood character” I’d go far as to say that even renters have more rights in general than homeowners in an HOA. Some people abroad have pointed out that a form of HOAs does exist in many countries but are more harshly regulated compared to US ones. As housing is considered at least culturally and legally a human right there in many places.
Zach, you do realize the vast majority of HOA’s are multi-family condo buildings.
I think most people do. When I think of the term “HOA”, I think condo (HOA fees are a big consideration when buying one).
The problem is that there is no easy term for what we are talking about. Just look at the Seattle Times article. I don’t think they ever came up with a specific definition. The headline didn’t include one, but instead the phrase “some of Seattle’s wealthiest neighborhoods”. Even the second paragraph does the same thing:
But the new rules will not apply to some of the state’s wealthiest neighborhoods — such as Broadmoor in Seattle and Innis Arden in Shoreline — which will be able to continue to be enclaves of single-family homes even as surrounding areas open up to new development.
Basically, there is your entire article summary right there (the first paragraph explained what the new rules were). And yet there is no actual definition for neighborhoods like as Broadmoor in Seattle and Innis Arden in Shoreline. They specifically avoided “HOA” for fear of confusion. It isn’t until four paragraphs in that you get an explanation:
Exempt from those requirements, however, are homeowner associations and other “common interest communities” that have internal contracts or documents governing their zoning rules. Common interest communities include both sprawling planned developments and smaller subdivisions and condos.
So “common interest communities with internal zoning rules” would work, but that is a mouthful. Personally, I prefer “gated communities”. Sure, it is vague, but we aren’t crafting or interpreting the law here — we are having a discussion, and it is nice if people are on the same page. No one here is suggesting we muck around with the rules governing condos (at least not in this instance). We are talking about changing the rules that govern “gated communities”, defined roughly as “common interest communities with internal zoning rules”. Condos don’t have that. Or if they do, they would already be in compliance. You can go through various examples, and it is pretty clear what we are talking about. Sand Point, Broadmoor, Innis Arden are all “gated communities” in this sense (even though some of them don’t have gates). Your typical condo is not.
HOA contracts and procedures is one of those things that attorneys need to be involved. Even experts in real estate law can differ. I expect the case law will be very individualized.
Most HOAs for single family developments are in new areas, so there is a good possibility that their layout is not conducive to bus route access. I just don’t see Tehaleh needing frequent bus service running through it.
Finally, I’ll add that many new developments are on smaller lots and the houses are closer together than a typical development created in the 1950’s or 1960’s. The core conversion for density seems much easier and much more needed in places built before 1980 anyway.
I’m pretty sure that a legislative body can create laws that require eventual changes in existing HOA agreements. It may have a long timeline, but it seems possible.
I think it is highly likely that there will be multiple legal challenges to the new legislation. (The legislature may have been inspired by AB 721 in California signed into law there back in 2021 and effective beginning in 2022. See link given below.) Off the top of my head, the case law here in our state will most likely focus on Viking Properties v Holm from 2005 in which our state’s high court upheld restrictive covenants relating to density limitations*. It’s going to be interesting to see if this new legislation upends the rationale used by the court in this case, and whether future litigation forces the high court to reexamine some of the larger issues involved with cases of this nature, i.e., balancing property rights against responsible land use policies, and possibly even the home rule nature of our state’s governance from the perspective of the Dillon Rule-Cooley Doctrine continuum. If the state wants to wade into this area of regulating zoning in the manner it has with HB 1110, then all of these repercussions come with that policy shift.
https://openstates.org/ca/bills/20212022/AB721/
*The court quickly dismissed the already illegal racially-based restrictions that were also part of the covenants involved.
To quote the article:
“My guess,” Spitzer said, “is that the common interest communities and various groups concerned about this said, ‘You’re going to have a fight on your hands if you do this, under impairment of contracts,’ so the drafters [of the law] just said, ‘Fine.’”
Basically they didn’t want to fight it in court. Personally I would. I would pass the law (saying it applies to these areas) and then fight it on civil rights grounds. There is a quite a bit of evidence that shows that density restrictions have a disproportionate effect on racial minorities. Many of these gated communities originally had racial covenants, that were struck down. It really isn’t that hard to connect the dots, and say that whether you currently intend to or not, these restrictions violate state and federal civil rights laws (and perhaps the 14th amendment). Given a fairly sympathetic (state) court, this seems pretty reasonable. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems worth a shot.
But again, they didn’t want to fight that battle now.
Tisgwm, thanks for the cite.
If HOA’s are exempt from 1110 why would they challenge it? Some believe the legislature could craft a health and safety bill next year and claim density falls into that to supersede HOA’s, but those would be some very powerful opponents, and I think Tom is correct exempting HOA’s was as much a political calculus as legal. HB 1110 was the only bill to pass, and barely. I thought it was a stretch for the legislature to claim the GMA includes density mandates within developed areas when the GMA already protects undeveloped areas. The claims used for 1110 including future population growth and amount of zoning capacity today (the proponents of 1110 conveniently forgot the GMPC just found every city met its 2044 housing targets already, even based on future population growth estimates that make ST’s project cost estimates look honest).
Probably the only HOA’s that might be impacted by 1110 are those in cities over 75,000 residents and don’t allow a DADU (and many don’t). Of course, any new construction will be responsible for their share of HOA dues. Cities like HOA’s because the city is not responsible for the cost of maintaining the internal roads. Most of Phoenix is HOA, and the city does not have to pay for the maintenance of the internal roads. I owned a house in Phoenix from 1995 to 2012 in HOA and one of the major costs was road repair.
Most HOA’s have zero transit access, so like cities they would be allowed to require two onsite parking spots per unit. 8 onsite parking stalls for a four-plex on a SFH lot with the HOA’s more restrictive regulatory limits (which 1110 does not impact for cities so I don’t see how HOA’s would be impacted for height and yard setbacks, building envelope, and vegetation requirements) does not leave a lot of GFAR for the plexes.
I can understand those who think some wealthy gated communities like Broadmoor and The Highlands should not be exempt, but those neighborhoods have been exempt from many things for many years because they are rich and powerful. That won’t change. I just think the legislature figured if those folks were invited to the party 1110 would never pass. The cost per sf for the land is the highest in the city, and ARCH’s number one rule for affordable housing is begin with affordable land. So is the motivation affordable housing or wealth envy?
Of course all of this is about those who rent, which in Seattle is around 50% but 1/3 outside Seattle. I will be interested in seeing if rental vacancy rates in Seattle tick upwards, and imagine they will due to new construction and WFH, and Seattle’s issues overall.
In the end, after all the cities and interests got done with 1110, I think the legislation is mostly about not offending the suburban areas by making the impact of 1110 meaningless. If a city wants to really upzone it can, if it does not want to it won’t. For a long time, whether transportation bills or any bill, the eastside has called the shots, and even progressive eastside legislators get very nervous around upzoning SFH, which is why they really didn’t with 1110. Even Seattle will see negligible housing growth from 1110, because it goes from three dwellings per lot to four, with the same regulatory limits. At some point a builder loses money as GFA/unit gets too low, so cutting the same pie into different pieces often does not make more money for the builder who has to carry the loan, forever, because I don’t think the new units can be condominiumized (which ironically would need a HOA).
Ross, 1110 barely passed, after being amended a zillion times once Issaquah got involved at the Senate (at the last second as always). My guess is if the HOA’s were covered it would not have passed. That is how sausage is made. It has nothing to do with racial covenants. Those no longer exist. Yes, there are probably few Blacks in Broadmoor, but then there are few Blacks in The Central Dist. anymore either, and it was once 85% Black. Density didn’t help them.
@Daniel T
You’re welcome. And I agree with your take on the politics regarding the viability of passage without the carve-out.
“I never quite understood why we (American’s) allow our HOA’s to be restrictive. I understand common upkeep for shared amenities, but nitpicking the color of the house, type of lawn etc…”
Multifamily HOAs are sometimes good, sometimes bad, depending on who runs them, how competent they are, and what their viewpoints are. Multifamily buildings intrinsically need common management for the yard, maintenance, and periodic replacement expenses. Single-family HOAs have less purpose because individuals maintain their building and yard. The HOA may fund common amenities like a golf club or private road.
Historically, both HOAs and zoning come out of private covenants, which emerged in the late 1800s. Developers built speculative neighborhoods with restrictive covenants to exclude minorities, food-producing animals, apartments, and non-genteel exteriors. The first ones in New York had curved roads to make the houses further away from public transit so that people without carriages couldn’t live there.
Zoning started in the 1920s to implement that citywide in the better half of cities (the half away from industry).
In the early and mid 20th century, developers were mostly local, and many buildings were built individually by their owners. In the 1980s, Wall Street investors got into real estate, and drove the worst aspects of speculative tract housing into overdrive. HOAs eventually became more common along with it, as a way to position the neighborhood for the top 20%, “people like us”.
The rules on door color, window coverings, TV antennas, political signs, etc, are all an attempt to make the units identical so that none violate the “top 20%” sensibility or stand out.
“Or maybe it has more to do with the board structure of many HOA’s?”
It has to do with the United States. The US had a particularly vicious kind of chattel slavery from Barbados, and Southern aristocrats brainwashed poor whites to see blacks as morally inferior, so that slave revolts wouldn’t turn into general class revolts. Inequality corrodes society, so in the late 1800s and throughout the 1900s certain opportunists at the top stirred up hysteria against immgrants and minorities to benefit themselves. And industrial districts where lower-income people lived were genuinely polluted and unhealthy.
All that led to attempts to create exclusive neighborhoods for upper-class whites and those who could join the club. And when suburbia exploded after WWII, middle-income greenfield developments tried to do the same, on a more modest scale. Then state and federal regulations required it (e.g., wide streets, ubiquidous parking, single-use neighborhoods, no trailers), and it became the norm and the vast majority of housing.
Single-family, residential-only, car-dependent suburbs were a vision in the 1950s and 60s and guided construction. Looking back, it appears that the majority lived in that then. But the TV shows showed how people aspired to live, not how they actually lived. Construction had been nonexistent between 1929 and 1945 due to the depression and war, so most people still lived in pre-WWII neighborhoods or rural areas. It was only in the 1980s that the majority of kids grew up in “suburbia” — my generation (GenX). Some of us didn’t like it, and went back to the cities. In the 1990s the back-to-the-city movement, condos, and urban villages became more visible. School integration was parallel with that. All this led to more people questioning the assumptions of HOAs and suburban-style regulations.
I have lived in 3 different HOA’s:
1. The first was around 1986 in a condo in a complex on lower Queen Anne just up from the old Tower Records with a friend. The complex was maybe 10-12 units. The Board was incompetent, the owners didn’t want to pay dues, and they had just been given a $10,000 assessment for a new roof because the Board had never saved for that, and the owners wanted to pay very low dues. Since I rented I didn’t have to care, but this is typical for most boards doing a thankless job. The only restrictions were rentals had to be I think one year.
2. In 1995 my brother and I bought a place in Phoenix. Phoenix was in a bust then. The unit was in an association (HOA) near the Biltmore Hotel that included houses and townhouses, but was pretty run down with mostly rentals, many short term that led to a lot of partying. Then around 1995 Mrs. White became president of the Board. She raised dues, enforced dues, rigorously enforced all the covenants like how long you could leave out your garbage bins, eliminated short term rentals and discouraged any rentals so all the partying went away, and over the years fixed the pools, hot tubs, gate, painted the exterior of the houses (part of the HOA) redid the landscaping (part of the HOA), and repaved the roads. Over time most of the folks living there owned (Mrs. White hated renters), and the place was transformed, and naturally prices increased dramatically. Mrs. White was terrifying, but she did it all for free. I sold my 1/2 to my brother in 2012 and she was still President, and I am sure she is today if alive.
3. In 1997 my wife and I built a house on Whidbey in an association of around 30 homes. Since I am a lawyer I found myself on the board with folks I had never met, despite not wanting to be, and my first job was to stop WSF from moving the terminal at Keystone next to our community and destroying a beautiful waterfront park. That only took around three years and 600 hours of my time. We also had a community well. You never want to own a well or community well. Ultimately the state required the much larger association next to us with around 450 homes and the former water engineer from Vancouver Canada running the water district to take over our well (which was a tiny well but very old so had an allocation for around 1000 houses, but unfortunately drained a field that had once had livestock — Ecoli — and saltwater intrusion). Today we don’t have much to do because there is no common space, but the assoc. brought us together. The county fortunately owns and maintains the access road. The wetlands act closed out development of the lots across the road behind us that are 450′ deep. The covenants are mainly used to limit the scale and design of houses because in unincorporated Island Co. the regulatory limits are massive, and you can build a McMansion. Around 10 years ago we had to have a vote of the association to readopt the covenants and the vote was 100% to maintain the covenants.
I like HOA’s based on my experience, but I would be terrified to buy a multi-family condo these days because it takes a ton of due diligence to really know what shape the building is in, and condos are very hard to sell unless someplace hot like Issaquah Highlands. Those looking to rent look for apartments, and those looking to own want a SFH, even if they have to move to SnoCo or Pierce to get it.
@Mike Orr
Fwiw….
Some HOAs actually take care of front yard maintenance as well. My inlaws who live in a newer subdivision in Sammamish have that type of deal for their property. For them it was a “selling point” in their new home purchase decision-making.
There are three levels of severity with single-family HOAs limiting density:
A. A few peripheral gated neighborhoods like Broadmoor.
B. Widespread HOAs near arterials/transit/villages.
C. Blanket HOAs everywhere.
(A) is a minor issue. (B) is problematic. (C) would cripple the city and tie its hands. So if this does affect only a few Seattle single-family developments, we’re lucky. We’ll have to look closer at suburbs like Bellevue and Sammamish to see if they cover a majority of the city. The single-family neighborhood I grew up in in the 1970s did have a HOA. (It was built in the 1950s.) Generally you can tell because the neighborhoods have developer-names: Sherwood Forest, Bretton Woods, Tam O’Shanter, etc.
(These were called “neighborhoods” when I was growing up. Later I learned that a neighborhood is supposed to be something at most a mile wide and with everyday retail there, so that you could walk to all of it. These were so not that.)
Mike,
Wondering where the prescriptivist position that neighborhoods are “supposed to be with retail there”. Looking at Wikipedia, I see the following definition:
“Researchers have not agreed on an exact definition, but the following may serve as a starting point: “Neighbourhood is generally defined spatially as a specific geographic area and functionally as a set of social networks. Neighbourhoods, then, are the spatial units in which face-to-face social interactions occur—the personal settings and situations where residents seek to realise common values, socialise youth, and maintain effective social control.”
You are certainly welcome to have the aspirational position that neighborhoods “should” have retail, but it is not clear to me that this is accepted as truth by the vast majority of people.
For completeness, here are the top three (and most relevant) Wiktionary entries:
The residential area near one’s home.
He lives in my neighborhood.
The inhabitants of a residential area.
The fire alarmed the neighborhood.
A formal or informal division of a municipality or region.
We have just moved to a pleasant neighborhood.
Here is the relevant Merriam-Webster definition:
a
: the people living near one another
The whole neighborhood heard about it.
b
: a section lived in by neighbors and usually having distinguishing characteristics
lived in a quiet neighborhood
I see no mention of retail in any of these.
To give some examples you are also familiar with: I am relatively certain that you would consider Bridle Trails, Somerset, and Enatai “neighborhoods”, and yet neither has any meaningful retail. I suppose that you might consider Somerset a planned community but the other two were not planned, as far as I know. If you consider none of them “neighborhoods”, then please correct me, of course.
Please don’t take this as nitpicking. I think that there is real danger in activists (and, Mike, as one of the moderators of this blog I do consider you to be one) prescribing their own values to a larger category of people as is actually true, and that sort of confirmation bias is dangerous when we attempt to have both meaningful conversations and make progress towards changing the world in the way we desire.
I’ve noticed on Zillow that many homes in Sammamish belong to one neighborhood HOA or another. The dues are small compared to a similarly priced downtown Bellevue or Seattle condo, where dues on a $2M condo might be $1500/month, but dues for a $2M house in Sammamish might be only a couple hundred dollars per year. I’m not sure if people who choose to move to Sammamish like having a neighborhood HOA, they’re indifferent, or dislike it, but they couldn’t seem to avoid buying a house in the area that belonged to one. I think people who tend to dislike neighborhood HOA’s dislike them not because of the cost, but because it limits their freedom to do as they please with their house. “Nobody’s going to tell me I can’t park my truck on my lawn!”
“Nobody’s going to tell me I can’t park my truck on my lawn!”
I may not like being told I can’t park a truck on my lawn. But I love rules that ensure my neighbors can’t park trucks on their lawn across the street. That’s why the marketplace created covenants and HOAs.
“In 1995 my brother and I bought a place in Phoenix. Phoenix was in a bust then. The unit was in an association (HOA) near the Biltmore Hotel that included houses and townhouses, but was pretty run down with mostly rentals, many short term that led to a lot of partying.”
So this is a situation that doesn’t really exist here. Run-down areas aren’t in HOAs. HOAs are pretty much all upper middle-class areas, and with any conceivable kind o,f change they’ll remain upper middle-class areas, unavailable to even those with a lower middle-class income, much less working-class.
I had a friend/client who was a big burly contractor who did some work on my house. Drove a F-250. He was recently divorced and bought a house in a HOA near 160th off 405. Very middle-class HOA, and this guy was a kind of don’t tell me what to do kind of guy.
So he installs a hot tub in the wrong area, and his color choice to repaint his house is rejected, he gets into a huge fight with the HOA and won’t remove his hot tub, the assoc. hires a lawyer and liens his house. So he comes to me.
I told him that is not how HOA’s work. First he was male, second he was single with no kids because usually the wife makes the acquaintances, third he was big and gruff looking, and fourth he drove a F-250. I told him to buy some white wine and have a mixer at his house with some appetizers, which he did because he was actually a college educated (engineering degree), funny and nice person although he didn’t look it.
Next time he saw me he was pretty angry with me because suddenly he was on the board. Turns out the assoc. had some abandoned cars in the ravine he removed with a winch and some friends/workers and took to the scrap yard, and he was chosen to deliver written notices to other HOA members who were not following the rules. He moved his hot tub a bit, painted his house an approved color, and all was forgiven, and the board waived the lien in consideration of him removing the cars from the ravine.
As usual, he becomes a big fan of the HOA and his fellow members although he didn’t like white wine. He would fix things at houses, and they would give him casseroles and chocolate cakes. He becomes one of the sticklers for the rules, because he didn’t want some riff raff coming in stinking up his community, as he put it, because as a contractor he dealt with a lot of riff raff without any of the sentimentality you see on this blog.
@Daniel
> …Next time he saw me he was pretty angry with me because suddenly he was on the board.
> As usual, he becomes a big fan of the HOA and his fellow members although he didn’t like white wine
Uhhh this seems like a story of perpetuating the problems onto the next entrants.
I recognize HOA’s definitely have a place for shared upkeep and maintaining some rules; however it is also definitely taken too far in America what rules they can institute. This kind of institution where the rules are implemented whether you are friends with the board or not really isn’t a good mix considering a house is such a large investment. I’d rather not have to bet on keeping or losing one’s house on if the HOA board likes white or red wine.
WL, I think you are trying to force your value set onto those who choose to live in HOA’s (74 million of them based on Tisgwm’s excellent research). They just ask to be left alone. If you choose to not live in a HOA leave them alone is my approach.
There are lawyers who practice with vinegar and some with oil. I prefer oil. Maybe I am not talented enough to use vinegar, but those lawyers who do use vinegar are not very pleasant people in my experience.
Like my friend, 90% of the time the problem is a lack of communication, or understanding the other person, which like so often on this blog leads to demonization.
A beer or glass of wine can bridge that gap. Sometimes legitimate disputes still exist after a glass of wine although they have been tailored. Then the lawyers get involved but it gets very expensive very fast, and my friend could have lost his house.
He moved his hot tub from the property line so it complied and painted his house an approved color which increased its resale value. He met some nice neighbors, and became a member of the board and neighborhood and avoided tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys fees and costs. In my book that was good legal advice since the white wine and appetizers cost maybe $100.
One of the tragedies of urbanism IMO is people live among a sea of strangers. You are surrounded by people you will never know. So many live alone, and live in a sea of loneliness although surrounded by a swarm of strangers, many of whom are your neighbors one day but gone the next. That sounds like a lonely life to me like when I lived alone in London during graduate school. Swarms of people but I didn’t know any of them. I think a HOA is just a vehicle to get to know your neighbors and preserve the character of your neighborhood when as you note your home is the most important purchase you will make.
“those who choose to live in HOA’s (74 million of them based on Tisgwm’s excellent research).”
Not all 74 million necessarily want to live in a HOA. In some areas there aren’t many other choices. In this area sales listings are pretty low and have been for fifteen years, so you have to take what you can get.
“One of the tragedies of urbanism IMO is people live among a sea of strangers. You are surrounded by people you will never know.”
That has been increasing in suburban areas too. It’s common in suburban houses and apartments for people not to know their neighbors, more so than when I was a kid.
“They just ask to be left alone. If you choose to not live in a HOA leave them alone is my approach.”
Not everyone has that luxury, Florida, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Texas cities all have large swaths of housing that are locked behind HOAs and you can’t opt out of it. Along with that not everyone likes their HOA. Over half of the people in HOAs do not like their HOAs from the research and surveys that has been done on this subject. So that argument that everyone likes their HOA that’s in one is a complete lie and a strawman if I ever saw one.
And no it’s not communication failures, it’s a policy failure to privatize and create little governments or kingdoms within governments. You have too many cooks and people who are woefully unqualified to be doing the job. It’s like Parks and Recreation, with no redeeming qualities.
@Daniel
> WL, I think you are trying to force your value set onto those who choose to live in HOA’s (74 million of them based on Tisgwm’s excellent research). They just ask to be left alone. If you choose to not live in a HOA leave them alone is my approach.
You do realize that 74 million is 22 % of the usa population? That means large portion of the new housing stock is hoa’s. Also have you seriously never heard about HOA horror stories.
> He moved his hot tub from the property line so it complied and painted his house an approved color which increased its resale value. He met some nice neighbors, and became a member of the board and neighborhood and avoided tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys fees and costs. In my book that was good legal advice since the white wine and appetizers cost maybe $100.
What I got from that story was that if he made one wrong move he might have lost his house.
It is akin to praising a successful gofundme for medical bills — instead of questioning why was someone resorting to donations in the first place.
> Like my friend, 90% of the time the problem is a lack of communication, or understanding the other person, which like so often on this blog leads to demonization.
I don’t think a situation where a lack of communication involves losing one’s house is really acceptable. Your story really just highlights how absurd American HOA’s have become. Let’s say your friend brought red wine instead to the party, would we now be talking about how he lost/forced to sell his house and moved to a different neighborhood?
Uytae Lee’s CBC Vancouver story about the history of the Vancouver Special
https://youtu.be/Zr18Su01YHE
tl;dr Created and popularized an affordable and efficient to build multifamily house due to loopholes in Vancouver’s housing code back then.
Along with going through the typical cycle of generation criticism. 1st generation built it and understands why it was important at the time to build such houses. 2nd generation critiqued it with architecture critics and social elite viewing them as “bland, ugly, lot monsters that lack charm and destroying our neighborhoods”. Which led to no more being built. And 3rd generation reevaluated the 1st and 2nd generations viewpoints. And has grown to love & be nostalgic about the Vancouver Special, who see it as an important part of Vancouver’s history in terms of architecture and a practical housing solution. With it now becoming a local symbol of pride within the city itself by various local businesses and artists who grew up either in them or were a facet of the local neighborhood.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/luxury-construction-causes-high-rents
“But we don’t think the new construction actually causes rents to go up, right? Because we know that the actual cause of rising rents is the underlying increase in demand. We know that the high-earning people are moving in and pushing up rents because there are economic opportunities to be had in Austin. And we know that the new market-rate housing construction is a response to that rise in demand, rather than the cause, just like umbrellas are a response to rain…right??”
Great article. Thanks for the link. I am familiar with this study: https://furmancenter.org/files/Supply_Skepticism_-_Final.pdf, but not the other ones.
If you want to find out if your neighborhood had restrictive covenants, here’s a pretty long list of city and county neighborhoods that did …
https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants.htm
That’s a list of covenants with racial restrictions, which have been unenforceable since 1948, so relevant to very few suburban neighborhoods around here. Other covenant restrictions were routine in suburban SFH neighborhoods through the 1970s, though, so there are a lot more neighborhoods with development restrictions. They remain common on denser multifamily developments. The newer or denser the existing development, however, the less likely it matters much. Nobody is removing a ten-year-old house for a duplex, permitted or not.
There’s a mythology that covenants are primarily racially motivated, but most local covenants post-date that and there is so much else in there. When I owned a house near Woodinville (1978 construction), there were something like 15 densely written pages of covenant restrictions. They are nothing if not comprehensive.
Old HOAs often fall into disuse. I don’t think that makes the covenant unenforceable, however, though it at least means there is less likely somebody making it their business to enforce it.
There’s a mythology that covenants are primarily racially motivated, but most local covenants post-date that and there is so much else in there.
Yeah, maybe, but there sure are a lot of properties that had racially restrictive covenants: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/mapping.social.movements/viz/RacialRestrictiveCovenants-Seattle/Story2.
But sure, new gated communities don’t have that. They find alternative ways to discriminate (by focusing their discrimination on the poor). Sometimes they are looking for the same result — but other times they aren’t. They just don’t want to be around poor people. Or they don’t want their neighbors painting their house an unusual color.
I find it funny that America still thinks it is the “land of freedom” while so many are forced to live within these restrictions. Sometimes they have it forced on them (existing neighborhoods can become a covenanted community). It is like the “freedom” of the racist southerners. They want the freedom to own people, and if they can’t have that, at least they want the freedom to prevent black people from enjoying basic human rights. Not as bad as all that, but the same basic idea — some people want the freedom to tell other people what they can and cannot do.
Communities with covenants are rarely gated. These are very common among neighborhoods built right through the 1970s, maybe 1980s. In other words, lots of regular suburban plat neighborhoods just like the ones where most suburban residents live.
It’s hard to understand what you mean by “forced to live within these restrictions”. HOA busybodies can be annoying. But nobody is forcing anybody to live in a particular neighborhood and covenants are voluntary arrangements that improve or protect the value of a home sold. That’s why they exist.
Suburban era developers weren’t into adding restrictions that reduced the sale price of the homes they were producing. Quite the opposite. There are lots of valid and unobjectionable reasons to protect ones property from value-deprecating actions by neighbors. The outdated rhetoric about racial covenants skates right by that because it’s easier to be self-righteous about racism than about all the other restrictions that go into a typical covenant.
“There are lots of valid and unobjectionable reasons to protect ones property from value-deprecating actions by neighbors.”
The problem is the rules that claim to do this but are really specious. It’s hard to see how property values would be harmed by TV antennas, blue doors, a new kind of window blinds, or blackout curtains. The prohibition on TV antennas just forced people to subscribe to cable more than they might have otherwise. Oh good, we don’t have any low-class cheapskates who can’t afford cable or don’t want it. That really raises our property values, not. And it would be just awful if different houses had blue doors, green doors, yellow doors, and pink doors.
Covenants can fall into disuse, yes. That plot in Lakewood, where my grandparents dedicated 10 acres to creating a tennis/swim nonprofit, had a covenant against housing (except a caretaker’s cottage). In the 2000s the club wanted to build condos on the open-space half and sell them off. The covenant prevented them from getting a mortgage for that. They asked us to release them from the covenant. I didn’t mind, but my older aunts/uncles felt strongly about open space, that a promise is a promise, and that we’d given them discount financing in exchange for that covenant. The club sued to get the covenant vacated. The trial court refused to, but the appeals court did. The appeals court thought the covenant was old and shouldn’t be expected to last forever, and we no longer owned land nearby so we couldn’t be considered personally harmed. (One uncle lived in a nursing home a mile from the site, but that didn’t count, or the court didn’t notice it.)
So yes, covenants can sometimes be terminated or fall into disuse. But each individual case depends on what the current owners are like now, what the covenanteer is like, and the aribitrary decisions of courts which may rule one way or the other. So you can’t count on particular covenants falling into disuse in all locations, or whether somebody will try to enforce it or whether a court will agree with them. So it doesn’t solve the general problem of covenants that leave lots single-family-only in spite of city zoning reforms.
Mike, if you don’t like the rules don’t buy in that HOA. They are written in white and black, and the agent is required to give you a copy. Instead you go around wanting to change everyone’s world to be like yours, and most folks wouldn’t want your world, although it may be great for you.
Have you ever read your 10-page single spaced lease? Can you stick an antenna or air conditioner out your window, or hang laundry from your window? Can you remodel your apartment without the landlord’s consent. Does the landlord screen every prospective tenant very closely including criminal and financial background checks (which they don’t do in a HOA). What about late-night noise, smoking in the building, or where to put the garbage and recyle, and all the rest. What about buzzing in guests? Can you paint the exterior of your door any color you want? What about parking. Can a tenant just park wherever they want?
Don’t you get it? An apartment complex IS a HOA, except the rules are made by the landlord rather than owners in the HOA or in some cities like NYC a co-op. I have way more freedom in my SFH than you do in your apartment.
And by the way, how many ” low-class cheapskates who can’t afford cable” do you have in your very expensive historical lower Capitol Hill building? You throw a lot of stones for someone who lives in a glass house.
“if you don’t like the rules don’t buy in that HOA.”
The problem is if there’s no place else you can buy. Or if you can’t live in additional housing that doesn’t exist because of HOA restrictions. As I said, these are minor issues if the HOAs cover only a few peripheral developments. They become a major issue if they cover most of the housing.
“Have you ever read your 10-page single spaced lease? Can you stick an antenna or air conditioner out your window, or hang laundry from your window?”
Yes, my lease has those same stupid restrictions. But it’s a one-year lease, so I’m only committing to it for a year at a time, and I’m not the owner so I can’t expect owner’s rights.
” if you don’t like the rules don’t buy in that HOA”
HOAs are not legally obligated to disclose HOA bylaws and covenants to you when homebuying till you make an binding offer. Which isn’t a great way to sell yourself as a homeowners association if you aren’t willing to disclose such information up front alongside other information about the house.
“Don’t you get it? An apartment complex IS a HOA, except the rules are made by the landlord rather than owners in the HOA or in some cities like NYC a co-op. I have way more freedom in my SFH than you do in your apartment.”
They’re not and there’s a big distinction, tenants rights and apartments/landlords are heavily regulated compared to an HOA. You have little protection if the HOA puts a lein on your house or decides to foreclosure for whatever reason. As a tenant, there’s a legal process to eviction, you have rights as a tenant, and the landlords cannot overstep their boundaries without the proper procedures. If things go wrong with an HOA, you’re hung out to dry with little recourse to appeal. That is why people do not like HOAs, they’re a unregulated industry that does whatever the heck they want without any recourse for their actions till too late. Like for example, HOAs treat disabled people like second class citizens for any of their needs that they do when modifying the property to work for their needs (ramps, benches, etc. Compare that to an apartment complex where ADA compliance is required by law with only exemptions existing for older properties that were grandfathered in.
You can defend “Apartments are HOAs” till you’re blue in the face but realistically they are not in any way whatsoever.
Here’s a though:
Create an HOA consisting of owners that consider a 15-minute (that’s the 15-minute walkable/bikeable version) city an asset that will pay dividends.
If ‘gated communities’ can restrict movement within their boundaries, then a TOD HOA should be able to ensure their own quality of life by restricting automotive traffic.
Seabrook attempts to be this, though not exactly a transit mecca.
There are some places I’ve been in Arizona where you park on the periphery and walk or golf-cart in the middle. They seem to be modeled more as a company town for retirees with some money. Trying to suck every dollar out of you before you die.
This seems like a great idea. Will you volunteer to start it in your own community, then? Totally understand if you cannot dedicate the time, just wondering, since it was clearly something you feel strongly about.
If you do start it, I think it would be great to hear back about how the organization process will go.
I am sure someone could start a HOA that bans cars like Seabrook in this area. I don’t know what you do with post office vans, and Amazon/UPS delivery trucks, Uber or Door Dash, garbage trucks, or ambulances, police, fire, repair trucks et al. You would want flat land in a hilly area if everyone has to walk. If the only difference is you take a golf cart that is silly. Imagine taking your golf cart to the gate to catch a bus.
What I do know is you can forget about a “15 minute” HOA because you won’t be able to attract any retail to a HOA that requires folks to walk to retail and requires them to carry it home, because even HOA’s that do allow cars don’t have retail (which is why those HOA members have cars). Plus the walk to the HOA gate then to a transit stop near a HOA would be more than 15 minutes. In some areas of suburbia closer to 15 hours.
If multi-family housing is your drug why not buy an urban condo building and eliminate the onsite parking, if the lender will allow you to do that. There is your HOA right there, without the need for a big piece of wooded property like so many HOA’s, or yards. Good luck selling those units without onsite parking in any city with crime like Seattle. That is what doomed the plan to convert The Smith Tower’s tower into condos: no onsite secured parking. Those condos were going to be expensive, and folks with money like to drive in sketchy areas like Pioneer Square. I think the most recent price for a parking spot in a downtown Seattle condo was $50,000 so folks like them.
Skip the traditional Issaquah HOA with cul-de-sacs for a carless HOA. There is a reason no suburban developer has built one yet. What you want already exists: a condo in a walkable urban environment within walking distance of transit and retail, and that ain’t a HOA in suburbia because they moved to the HOA exactly to get away from that. If your HOA is near U Village then you would have walkable retail without cars. Same with Bell Sq. and one day Northgate Mall. Maybe Kirkland. Of course those places are not cheap if money is an issue.
If this entity is created on a route between two other entities,(be they 15-minute walkable, gated communities, or exclusive neighborhoods) they then could change the travel patterns of the other communities, couldn’t they?
or could they?
How do cities decide how to deal with drive-thru traffic anyway?
> Create an HOA consisting of owners that consider a 15-minute (that’s the 15-minute walkable/bikeable version) city an asset that will pay dividends.
> If ‘gated communities’ can restrict movement within their boundaries, then a TOD HOA should be able to ensure their own quality of life by restricting automotive traffic
HOA’s and many suburbs created already restrict automotive traffic, in fact a lot of them were built in mind to mitigate the negative side effects of cars. That really isn’t the issue, the problem is that they also restrict all other modes of walking and biking too. Aka car suburbs use cul-de-sacs (rather than say a pedestrian path), but since pedestrians can’t cross practically forces everyone to drive to get anywhere. Or say windy roads rather than grid to discourage through traffic, but then needs to make the roads extra wide for fire trucks and again any attempts to lower the speed limit has heavy push back because the windy path makes exiting your suburb take forever to reach the arterial road.
Some cities actually actively discourage such cul-de-sacs or penalize new developments if future transit and/or pedestrians will have to take a really long path to get through.
> How do cities decide how to deal with drive-thru traffic anyway?
Seattle has tried out neighborhood healthy streets discouraging through traffic.
TOD is usually multifamily or at minimum townhouses. Detached TOD houses may be possible, but the longer the distance between units, the less it’s TOD because only a few of the houses have a short walk to transit.
“you can forget about a “15 minute” HOA because you won’t be able to attract any retail to a HOA that requires folks to walk to retail and requires them to carry it home, because even HOA’s that do allow cars don’t have retail (which is why those HOA members have cars).”
In countries where 15-minute TOD is ubiquitous, people still have furniture. They use delivery services more for large items, and taxis for large grocery runs. When I mentioned large grocery runs to a guy in Zurich, he said, “There’s a supermarket a block from my apartment so I don’t need a large load; I can go whenever I need a few things.” In the past it was the norm to shop every day or every couple days; it was only when US stores became larger and more car-dependent and they started pushing more of the food-storage burden onto customers, that large weekly or monthly runs became commonplace. Parents used to tell their kids to pick up a few things on their way home from school. Like that Sesame Street clip, “A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter.”
European 15-minute neighborhoods outside city centers tend to allow cars, but they’re not needed as much because so much is within walking distance and transit is better, so fewer people have cars. Yet cars are available when you don’t want to use a delivery service or have some other need that falls through the cracks. Pedestrianized blocks may allow some local car access in a woonerf style, or allow truck deliveries between certain hours.
One thing I’ve noticed in downtown Vancouver and the West End is full-sized supermarkets and drugstores, and I’ve read there are schools somewhere. Davie Street has more than one supermarket. They’re in the bottom floor of buildings or in a dedicated one-story building, with no space around it. Parking if it exists is in back.
In Tokyo, our airbnb had 3 full-service grocery stores within 2 blocks of the place. If you allow 5 to 15 story apartment buildings and zoning doesn’t prohibit retail, your store options are virtually unlimited and at your fingertips.
10 minutes walk away there were blocks and blocks of just cooking supplies. Multiple stores of high-end knives, fantastic cutlery, pots, pans, incredible spice stores. Everything. And we get none of it, because our previous generations zoned with cars and racists at the top of their list of priorities.
The housing was incredibly cheap, even in central Tokyo. The airbnb, had 11 queen sized beds, 3 stories, a rooftop deck, and was cheaper per night than a tiny hotel room we got in Vancouver’s gas town.
WL, if Vancouver prices are more similar to Seattle prices, despite zoning being more favorable in Vancouver than in Seattle, then that suggests that it is not (simply) zoning that is causing the discrepancy between Seattle (and Vancouver) on one hand, and Tokyo on the other.
I think zoning plays an important role. But too often we focus on zoning as the panacea. And your own last example suggests as much.
Didn’t Seattle ban most Airbnb’s? Here are some other options in Tokyo although you don’t get 11 beds. https://expertworldtravel.com/tokyos-5-most-expensive-luxury-hotels/
I am pretty familiar with the Japanese. Historically Japan has been the most racist nation, and I am not talking about cutlery stores. Japan’s history toward its Asian neighbors has not been kind, to say the least. Still isn’t. I think it may be the most homogeneous nation in the world. Try being Korean in Tokyo.
And just to raise a point I have raised before: Tokyo has over 10 million residents who have an AMI 1/3 of Seattle. Someone in Tokyo spends a much higher percentage of their income on housing which is why so few live alone and there are apartments that are 170 sf or the size of three tatami mats.
Vancouver has the highest housing prices in North America, comparable to San Jose. The TOD downtown and in the West End was built in the mid to late 20th century, and was affordable for decades. In the early 2000s you could get a 12th floor condo with a great view for $75K. Then in the late 2000s things changed.
As to why, Vancouver is Canada’s Los Angeles and San Francisco all rolled up into one. The only large city with mild winters, West Coast permissive values/innovation, rapid population increase, a world-class city target for foreign tycoons parking their money in Western real estate, and (some assume) BC Bud money laundering. So it has a lot of headwinds on housing prices. Basically it can’t build fast enough even with relatively permissive zoning.
@Anonymouse
> WL, if Vancouver prices are more similar to Seattle prices, despite zoning being more favorable in Vancouver than in Seattle, then that suggests that it is not (simply) zoning that is causing the discrepancy between Seattle (and Vancouver) on one hand, and Tokyo on the other.
It’s about the job to housing ratio. You can technically also ‘solve’ the job to housing crisis by banning new offices or say with single family homes too if one doesn’t have a greenbelt and builds massive enough freeways. (You’ll need a lot more lanes the farther and farther from downtown). And while Vancouver does have looser zoning compared to Seattle, is still relatively restrictive still compared to European counterparts. Or basically all the English countries (Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand) with restrictive local zoning practices have high housing costs.
On the housing side of production for Vancouver, Seattle metro area’s green belt isn’t as restrictive. Though it’ll probably require a bit more math to compare apples to apples
> Housing construction has increased in recent years, but is still not keeping pace with historical levels. Although housing construction has increased in the past decade (starts by 46%, completions by 95%), it is not keeping pace with population growth when compared against historical levels. The per capita construction rate decreased significantly in the 1990s and has yet to recover to the levels seen during the 1970s (see chart below).
http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/PlanningPublications/MV_HousingDataBook_2022.pdf
I did try to find and compare job to housing ratios for Vancouver metro area, but I am not quite as familiar with their statistics and am unsure if it is comparable to what the US census keeps tracks.
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2023/04/07/car-free-cities/
Someone already stole your idea, Jim.
That’s all nice “Trees and flowers and chirping birds” kinda stuff, what I’m talking about is putting some teeth into it.
Does my 15-minute city have to accommodate the vehicle traffic of the adjacent cities?
Actually, Kirkland already does something like this.
Right, so we’re all in agreement that zoning is not the only issue, but rather zoning relative to rate of job production, household size, etc. Great.
What I’m basically getting out of this is that we see zoning as the preferred solution because it aligns with our views of what housing should look like, even though we all agree it’s only a partial solution, and we gloss over other things that we should also advocate for – for example, that tech companies could in fact distribute their jobs to more locations, and match the rate of growth in a region with the likely housing stock increase – because we are not as versed in those aspects of society, and do not feel comfortable advocating for those other partial solutions. Also fair enough.
Thanks both for your answers.
“, if Vancouver prices are more similar to Seattle prices, despite zoning being more favorable in Vancouver than in Seattle, then that suggests that it is not (simply) zoning that is causing the discrepancy”
Vancouver has a fair amount of density, but there’s a lot of single family home zoning as well. Naturally, that limits the housing stock in a significant part of the city, causing prices to increase and causing people to live much further from their preferred location (as indicated by housing prices).
“and (some assume) BC Bud money laundering. ”
It’s less some assume and more of an open secret in BC. CTVs W5 (think 60 Minutes or 20/20) did an exposé on money laundering in BC Casinos.
Inital Story: https://youtu.be/ddsGyJ-7Zw0
Follow Up:
https://youtu.be/s8l4dLbCaUU
With the River Rock Casino in Richmond, BC dubbed “The Laundromat” by people who knew what was really going on there. And on some level Vancouver has been dubbed “the Laundromat of Canada” at large as well beyond money laundering in BC gambling. As people have wondered for the last couple of decades as to whether dirty money was flowing through BC real estate and other financial ventures and seems to have been more or less confirmed by various investigations by local and national reporters.
There has been winds of change on the issue since NDP became the ruling party in BC which had previously been run by BCLiberals for over a decade and a half. They’ve slowly but surely implemented policies that have made it harder to launder or park money like the empty home tax, stricter requirements for real estate purchases and homebuying by foreign buyers, and people considered suspicious open to court orders on questionable assets sources they have that are in BC.
I don’t think it’s going to reverse it but it has slowed the problem from growing larger.
Yeah, these do exist, but they will set you back a pretty penny.
https://www.daybreakutah.com
Daybreak has it all! (including a minor league baseball team) It’s a wonderful. walkable. It’s filled with the same type of Liberals who bought up Wallingford and Green Lake…. College educated high income folks only please!
@Anonymouse
> What I’m basically getting out of this is that we see zoning as the preferred solution because it aligns with our views of what housing should look like
Let me clarify a bit, the problem is really *local* zoning. How the incentives align in many American cities lead them to approve lots of offices/retail and disapprove housing production. Even if say San Francisco was to stop building offices, the next city over would just keep building them. That is why California’s solution to the housing crisis is the ‘regional housing needs assessment’ calculating jobs and housing needs per metro area.
> for example, that tech companies could in fact distribute their jobs to more locations, and match the rate of growth in a region with the likely housing stock increase
I guess that can kind of work, but also a lot of jobs aren’t just tech companies. Secondly you still need the other metro areas to build the housing then. I mean if bay area doesn’t build the housing and then people move to seattle/los angeles which also don’t build enough housing this is just shifting the problem from a metro area one to a national scale one. And even Phoenix, Austin, etc… are complaining now about how California isn’t building enough housing.
“tech companies could in fact distribute their jobs to more locations”
Large tech companies have been doing that a lot. They’ve spread their offices to several cities and gone beyond the tech-superstar cities.
The problem with asking companies in general to spread to more locations is that many locations won’t rise to the occasion with transit and walkability and housing, so you’re making people work in worse situations, and some of them are really bad.
I remembered seeing some data regarding the number of residential community associations in an interesting paper I read last year on affordable housing in “The Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy”, but I couldn’t remember the actual numbers that were quoted so I had to look them up. The organization called Community Organizations Institute tracks this sort of thing and laid it out like this in their 2021 report:
“In the U.S., there are roughly 356,000 community associations, which are home to more than 74 million Americans*, according to the 2020-2021 U.S. National and State Statistical Review for Community Association Data, published by the Foundation for Community Association Research. An estimated 5,000 new community associations are expected to be developed in 2022.”
Additionally….
“Homeowners associations account for about 58–63% of the totals, condominium communities for 35–40%, and cooperatives for 2–4%.”
Offered just for some additional context for the discussion above.
*27.5 million housing units
https://www.caionline.org/PressReleases/Pages/CAI-PUBLISHES-2022-EDITION-OF-COMMUNITY-ASSOCIATION-LIVING;-RESOURCE-SUPPORTS-RESIDENTS-LIVING-IN-CONDOMINIUMS-AND-HOMEOWNE.aspx
Was a couple weeks ago news, but I don’t think it was posted on here. Pretty encouraging that Edmonds’ Aurora Avenue might add sidewalk bike lanes, especially as it’s part of the new complete streets legislation.
> A protected bike lane along a state highway? It’s poised to become reality, thanks to a new state law upgrading the standards that the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) will use to coordinate adding bike and pedestrian facilities when basic maintenance is planned….
> Fulfilling the bike network on SR 99 in Edmonds requires a four-and-a-half-foot bike lane in each direction that does not appear in the original plans. The new proposed design adds the raised bike lane, protected by a planting strip, alongside the seven foot sidewalk along the highway. The real time changes we see to accommodate the extra nine feet of space required are planned buffers and planting strips narrowing and the 12-foot business access-and-transit (BAT) lanes shrinking by one foot each. Otherwise the six travel lanes along the highway are unaffected. Small changes that would have been left on the table.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/04/06/washingtons-complete-streets-mandate-starts-to-pay-dividends/
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/metro-transit-workers-sue-over-order-to-limit-use-of-amharic-language/
This is simply ridiculous. This shouldn’t be happening in Seattle, and it should t be happening at Metro either.
It seems like Metro could have done better.
Wow, this is pretty shocking and disappointing to read. Linguistic diversity is one of the coolest things about this country, and humanity as a whole. People who only speak English get to be surrounded by it 24/7–but god forbid someone speaks their own native language in their presence, right?
@Sam
Ya. I concur. I’m an English speaker, but I sort of get along in a couple of other languages. Just enough words to get along.
I always admire people who are fluent in multiple languages. I’ve never quit made it there, but I can’t understand why you would want to punish someone who has.
I can’t believe this would happen if they were speaking Spanish.
The ironic thing is that Amharic is a very beautiful language (more beautiful than English, imo).
@Sam,
Well, Amharic might be a beautiful language, but it is not nearly as beautiful a language as German.
Which gets to the core of this problem, because I guarantee you that if these two employees had been speaking German to each other there would not have been a complaint filed.
Btw, there are now two Sams. I am the Sam who first started reading the New York Times at the age of 2 and 1/2, is assignment editor for the comment section, is fluent in 27 languages, including Amharic.
Oh, and I am not the Sam who complained about the language thing at Metro. If I were going to complain about languages or race, I’d say something like, could an effort be made here to link to and cite more blogs and content creators with more poc?
I confirmed they’re different email addresses. Sam 2 (the one who isn’t a New York Times rocket scientist or Troll Number 1), please change your handle to something unique to avoid confusion.
The *other* Sam has at least a dozen handles in the recent past. Sam, it would be helpful if you could stick to one handle (and not one that is already in use).
Here are two interesting articles about issue discussed on this blog before.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-incredible-shrinking-transit-plan/ar-AA1ah6L1?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=be4753a618b14bc8baee4f943067d291&ei=35
https://therealdeal.com/national/2023/04/19/wework-faces-delisting-from-new-york-stock-exchange/
I wonder if WSBLE won’t be the successor to Austin. Austin seemed to move pretty quickly on scaling back its project to meet actual budgets, but ST simply won’t address affordability, and instead continues to insist DSTT2 will cost $2.2 billion (plus $160 million for CID N), and despite a current estimated cost of $15 billion apparently N KC has that kind of extra cash lying around. Instead, the Board claimed a “realignment” in which projects are extended concurrently with ST taxes in a high inflationary market resulted in an additional net $6 billion of revenue, down from Rogoff’s $12 billion deficit estimate a few months earlier.
The problem for WeWorks is if leaving the house to go to work an employee will go to the office, especially if there are certain in office requirements, and if not prefers the casual workplace of home (often with the kids). With high-speed broadband in nearly every urban or suburban home WeWorks really could not offer anything special for the extra cost, and hassle of getting ready to leave the house. The irony is today WeWorks could lease the same office space for a fraction of what it paid pre-pandemic, except there are no customers.
I brought up the Austin light rail “realignment” a couple open threads and agree that I fear Seattles light rail is going to have some severe scale backs.
I guess it is kind of an interesting exercise to calculate what “realistic” light rail can be built if using the original budget for the west Seattle to Ballard segment
Given how bad WSBLE has become, scaling back is not necessarily something to fear. It would mean the end of the dream of fast rapid transit to Ballard, but ST has already made it into something that may not help much with that anyway, and with the incredible disadvantage of a 10-minute transfer between everything in southeast Seattle and everything in northeast Seattle.
ST2 should continue full steam ahead, and the short extensions to Redmond and Federal Way, and the three Stride lines. Everett and Tacoma are those counties’ problems.
If WSBLE is downscaled into something like the WS-SODO stub and a Smith Cove-Westlake line, the issue will then evolve into improving bus service to Ballard as a fallback. SDOT is already working on route 40, and could do more on it and the 44. People won’t be able to count on fast access from Ballard to the rest of the region, but we could at least make it somewhat better access.
Doing some napkin math, the original cost of the 5 billion ballard + 2 billion west seattle (7 billion total) is now 12.5 billion or around an 80% total cost increase.
Copying the Austin light rail realignment why not propose multiple:
A) full tunnel, but shortened to SLU only. Service will start with the boring machine will be buried and the extension from interbay to SLU will be deferred with a second boring machine. Considering it’s currently going around a billion per mile, with 4~5 billion from SODO it can probably only reach SLU
A2) still full tunnel, just remove SLU station or ‘merge’ denny/slu station and remove the cid south station and only keep cid north station to try reaching interbay exit portal.
B) elevated through downtown, affordable but much more visual/construction impacts, virtually? politically impossible
C) at-grade with 2 train cars build both Westlake ave/15th ave.
West Seattle is bit simpler
A) full tunneled and just reach delridge.
B) fully elevated and remove avalon station. Do not implement the medium tunnel to bring the costs down back from ~3 billion to 2 billion
C) fall back completely to at-grade on 1st avenue and maybe go down delridge way instead?
So people in Rainier Valley who are losing the U-District and Capitol Hill will lose Ballard too, and have no access to North Seattle except with a 10-minute transfer walk? I wonder how many people who switched from the 48 and 9 to Link will switch back and demand more bus routes.
> So people in Rainier Valley who are losing the U-District and Capitol Hill will lose Ballard too, and have no access to North Seattle except with a 10-minute transfer walk?
I mean I don’t prefer shortening it to SLU, that’s just how the math works out to get it back to the original cost. The new downtown tunnel per mile and each underground station really costs a lot more than the original projections.
The only way I see to reach Ballard with the original 5 billion dollars (and still use tunneling) is to completely cut out almost all the stations besides the minimal ones. Skip South of cid station, only build Pioneer Square (north of cid) station and Westlake, then skip denny and slu station completely heading straight up 5th avenue, build the Seattle center one on denny ave and then skip the Smith Cove one only building the interbay one. Then for ballard build it as an moveable bridge with the station there at-grade. Cutting out 4 underground stations would save ~3 billion and the shortened path would help slightly. The movable bridge would save ~0.5 billion.
What’s more likely is that the line to Ballard gets truncated at Interbay or truncating in Uptown if we are really scraping for funds. The ridership demand is in the central core with a smaller percentage originating in Ballard.
“I don’t prefer shortening it to SLU, that’s just how the math works out to get it back to the original cost”
I see how it’s worthwhile to calculate that, but I also can’t help thinking about what that would be like on the ground for passengers. With ST’s suggested phase to Smith Cove, passengers from Rainier Valley would take Link to Smith Cove bypssing the greater downtown congestion, then transfer to the D for a short trip to Ballard.
If Link terminates at SLU, I assume it would be at a 40 stop, and people would have a longer bus trip to Ballard, meaning a longer trip total, and going through the Fremont bottleneck.
The original motivation for rerouting Link to SLU was because of the new highrises there, to bring high-capacity transit to the area. But with a bad split-spine transfer, the only Link passengers that can easily access SLU are from the south line, and that’s only a third of future Link passengers or less. And it misses the all-important Eastside, which has industry and economic similarities to SLU that will generate trips between them, and which Link was supposed to be a good connection to.
So when I see the possibility of just DSTT2 or just DSTT2+SLU and no Ballard, my thoughts turn from “This is mediocre and expensive” or “The long transfers are a major problem” to “I really don’t want this, please don’t build it, what’s the point of tearing up downtown for a tunnel that doesn’t go anywhere?”
@Alonso
> What’s more likely is that the line to Ballard gets truncated at Interbay or truncating in Uptown if we are really scraping for funds.
I know it is more likely (as in the option A2), I was listing out multiple options if one had to adhere to original 5 billion dollar limit. Also 5 billion dollars is not enough to reach Interbay. It costs around a billion ish per (deep) underground station right now with the South of CID, Pioneer Square, Westlake, Denny, SLU, Uptown that’ll be ~6 billion by itself.
> The ridership demand is in the central core with a smaller percentage originating in Ballard.
While that is true, uptown to downtown really isn’t that far just 1.3 miles. For many transit trips one might as well just stay on the bus.
“ What’s more likely is that the line to Ballard gets truncated at Interbay or truncating in Uptown if we are really scraping for funds. The ridership demand is in the central core with a smaller percentage originating in Ballard.”
The Ballard Station is projected to get more boardings than all of the West Seattle stations combined.
However, the Board doesn’t much care about ridership.
They better start caring though. New Starts money from FTA does require some cost-benefit analysis. New Starts money is needed or the affected ST3 big projects will have to be scaled back by around half!
So people in Rainier Valley who are losing the U-District and Capitol Hill will lose Ballard too, and have no access to North Seattle except with a 10-minute transfer walk?
We had to destroy the village in order to save it. Seriously though, if the train doesn’t get to Ballard, it is quite likely that it is a net negative for transit riders. Never mind the cost — it wouldn’t be worth doing, even if it was free. The folks from the south end would be worse off, and the value added is not enough to make up for it. The only stop worth transferring to would be the Seattle Center, and for that there is the monorail.
The easiest transfer will be at SODO between the 1 Line and 3 Line. It’s only a two escalator change. The CID and Westlake transfers look like it will be at least 4 for either. Granted it doesn’t make it easier to get to the Eastside (2 Line), but I suspect SODO will be the more popular transfer point between North and South Seattle unless a rider hops on a 2 Line train.
Escalator counting is important. Each one may not be working 5 percent of the time according to ST adopted performance standards . If a rider has to use 4 in each direction (in addition to 2 to get in and 2 more to get out of the end station), that’s 16 escalators for a round trip!
The math: 0.95 ^ 16 = 0.4401
That’s right folks, ST would be happy if a rider experienced all working escalators only 44 percent of the time that they use Link for a round trip.
No one wants to talk about SODO transfers but we should! ST is hell bent to make that transfer needlessly difficult by requiring two escalator rides.
That works if you’re going to West Seattle, but if you’re going to North Seattle or Capitol Hill you’ll miss the double-frequency provided by line 2, so the wait will be twice as long on average. And you’ll be transferring in a concrete industrial area with no short-terrm stopover destinations.
Rainier Valley to U-District:
ST2: One-seat ride. (Not: Transfer at Westlake or CID and wait 4-5 minutes at the same stop.)
ST3: Transfer at SOOD and wait 8-10 minutes, or transfer at Westlake and walk 10 minutes and wait 4-5 minutes. “Sheesh, I’ll just take the 48. I thought Link was supposed to be better than it, and it was for a while. The right hand giveth, and the left hand taketh away.”
Yeah, I see what you are saying Al. If they build the second tunnel, SoDo will be one of the better transfers in our system (mainly because most transfers are really bad). But as Mike points out, frequency matters. You’ve got an average wait time of five minutes with your initial train, and then an average wait time of five minutes with the transfer. You can’t even time the transfer, the way you can with the initial trip. It is possible that ST will time them, but I really doubt it.
Combined, you have an average wait time of 10 minutes, which is equivalent to catching a bus every 20 minutes. If the 48 runs every 10 minutes (or more often) it starts looking very attractive. Given that it will take a very long time before the second tunnel is operational, SDOT will probably have improved the 48 by then as well (making it much faster).
Even if people continue using the train, it is a clear degradation. I don’t think the new line makes up for that unless it goes to Ballard.
Hey Troy,
I’m looking into the Stream 1 changes you are referring to. I see this in Pierce Transit’s 2021-2022 “Key Changes” summary: (https://www.piercetransit.org/brt/)
“Some sections of the corridor that were previously identified for median, transit-only lanes will now be designated curbside in mixed-use traffic, much like Route 1 runs today.”
It’s an ominous sentence, and unfortunately it’s very vague. Do you know if there are any more recent documents illustrating their intent?
Oops. Misplaced this post. Reposting in the appropriate place above.
Hey Andrew,
The materials have only been made available through the agenda packet of the Pierce Transit Board meeting.
Please see the April 10 downloads.
https://www.piercetransit.org/board-meetings/
> https://www.piercetransit.org/file_viewer.php?id=6662
It looks like they are running out of money. They have funding for 200 million, but the project cost is 300 million. (Federal grants are 75 million, Sound Transit provides 60 million)
Also they learned that the roundabouts they want to implement lack transit benefits, so the FTA will not reimburse them.
> Maintain an FTA rating of MEDIUM or higher
Notably with any redesign, the FTA will lower the rating if they remove too many dedicated lanes. I am kind of curious why the project currently has so little BAT lanes.
The plans from a while back included a mix: https://seattletransitblog.com/2020/05/16/pierce-transits-first-bus-rapid-transit-line-to-split-between-mixed-and-exclusive-lanes/. From that picture, it looks like the plan was to have center running from 72nd to 78th. It looks like that is gone, and the bus will run curbside in that section (and north and south of there, where they had planned on running curbside). It may actually be better, as the bus was supposed to run in the left lane, but not in a bus lane.
Overall it isn’t great, but eventually it can be fixed. It is also possible that this will still work out reasonably well. Sometimes you can get 90% of the benefit for half the cost. Hard to say. If you view the project as permanent, it is disappointing, but it should be seen as a first step.
I think that exclusive lanes might have gotten eaten away a little more than in 2020, but not sure.
Looking at the amount of traffic in the northern portion, above 512, and especially above 38th Ave, there is absolutely no reason not to take a dedicated lane. The traffic is light, and incredibly fast, with a ton of crashes. Reducing the road to 1 general purpose lane in each direction would not only speed the bus up, but it would pay huge dividends in safety and quality of life and active transportation opportunities in the communities this urban highway goes through.
Talking with the state DOT, it doesn’t appear that ST and they are in discussions. With the WADOH new complete streets mandate, this is a huge lost opportunity. The current design is pathetic.
Sorry. WSDOT.
Sorry. WSDOT.
A bit late in this open thread, but since we were talking about zoning and how it interplays with other aspects of affordability…
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/nyregion/affordable-housing-nyc.html
Note that while zoning is mentioned as an aspect of the affordability problem in NYC in the article, many of the solutions bandied about here (rent control, public housing, etc.) are already enacted in NYC and the problem is just as severe as it has been in the past couple of decades. None of which says zoning should not be relaxed (here or in NYC) – only that it is not, as I have stated above, a panacea for the underlying problem.
New York is still underbuilding relative to it’s population/jobs. I have not found an example of a city that has high housing costs and where they actually built lots/approved of housing relative to their job growth. From 2001 to 2018 NYC increased jobs by 770k but only built 407k units of housing (typically want around 1:1 ratio). It is helped by the surrounding suburbs building more housing.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19336176/Screen_Shot_2019_10_31_at_2.18.43_PM.png
Recently Hochul tried to pass legislation to force new york cities to allow for 3% growth but that failed. https://www.thecity.nyc/housing/2023/3/15/23642328/hochul-housing-crisis-legislature
> None of which says zoning should not be relaxed (here or in NYC) – only that it is not, as I have stated above, a panacea for the underlying problem.
The underlying problem is exactly local control of zoning. All of these other solutions are bandages for where cities repeatedly approve more jobs than housing.
I’m not sure I follow you. You point out that NYC has tried various alternatives to upzoning, and they haven’t seemed to work. Then you conclude that upzoning isn’t a panacea. That seems rather contradictory. If anything, it suggests the opposite — that the most important thing to do (especially in New York) is to change the zoning.
Sorry, you’re right – I was not clear. My point was that NYC already has a lot more missing middle housing allowed/already built, of the form that we clamor to change zoning to support here, and it has not, in the past, solved the problem of making the city affordable.
I agree with your (Ross’) point that additional zoning changes in NYC should also be part of the equation, but the fact that already more permissive zoning has not “solved” the problem suggests that it will not do so in the future, either. I also agree with you (Ross) when you imply that the other measures have also not solved it, though.
Al S pointed out that most cities have not grown as fast as needed to keep up with job growth. To me, this suggests that what is needed is not consolidation of job growth in large cities, but rather the opposite – distribution of jobs closer to where housing is easier to build (together with improving zoning to allow for non-SFH housing to be built in those areas).
I think a number of people made the point, higher up above in other subthreads, that housing is not a local problem but rather a country-wide one, as long as people keep moving to where the jobs are. This is fundamentally the problem, IMHO – we need not a “federal housing policy” but rather a “federal job distribution policy” in conjunction with a relaxation of the zoning. Push jobs in places other than the coasts. Build new tech jobs in Wyoming and Mississippi and so on. Get the younger people to move there, get the zoning relaxed to enjoy the lifestyle they want to enjoy. In the process it will also help make the electoral college and Senate saner.
Will it happen? No, of course not. But that would be a solution worth building towards. Simply changing zoning in Seattle or NYC will not.
For those wanting to read the “Contractor blames red tape for Tacoma light-rail project delay” story without paying the Seattle Times subscription fee, it was reprinted in Mass Transit:
“https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/infrastructure/news/53058183/wa-contractor-blames-red-tape-for-tacoma-lightrail-project-delay”
It includes such gems as:
“The panel, led by former Bay Area Rapid Transit general manager Grace Crunican, said frayed contractor relations threaten Sound Transit’s ability to attract bidders, as the agency builds future rail and bus lines in three counties, for an average $4 billion a year 2024 to 2037, “a sobering amount of work.” ”
The article makes a good case for how the financial difficulties of working with SoundTransit due to their organizational and past payment difficulties leads to increased costs, as bidding on projects has to include their payment and negotiation difficulties.