The Affordable Housing Consortium (HDC), whose membership “encompasses all of the major nonprofit housing developers in King County, as well as local housing authorities, financial institutions, service providers, consultants, architects, building contractors, attorneys, accountants, and government agencies,” is celebrating the 9th Annual Affordable Housing Week, May 13-17.
Founded in 1988 as the Seattle Housing Development Consortium, the HDC serves as an advocate, broker, and convener for affordable housing in King County. Today, the HDC has over 200 member organizations.
With focus on the decadal updates to comprehensive plans across the region this year, the theme for this year’s Affordable Housing Week is “Planning for an Affordable Future”. The HDC writes on their event page:
King County’s exacerbated need for affordable housing is a regional problem and impacts all municipalities. This Affordable Housing Week, we hope to catalyze a transformative shift in land use planning for affordable housing across our region. This is an opportunity to urge cities across King County to adopt new and effective strategies that address our urgent affordable housing needs.
Events associated with Affordable Housing Week include building tours, educational seminars, and construction groundbreaking.
The Week kicks off at Seattle City Hall at 9am today, with speakers including King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci and representatives from the Washington State Department of Commerce, Puget Sound Regional Council, King County Affordable Housing Planning Team, Seattle Office of Housing, Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development, and the Bellevue Planning Department. The keynote speech will be delivered by Dr. Jenny Scheutz, Fellow at the Brookings Institute, and author of “Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing Systems“.
First step, end the Seattle Housing Affordability Law. It requires ALL builders to build housing they must include housing for below market valurle or contribute to the Affordable Housing Fund. Ask Anita Adams on how she wanted to build housing on her property for her family and the city of Seattle wanted to extort $75,0000 from her
Money rules over everything, starting with laws. You can’t make builders “pay” or
“build” affordable housing. First the builders might not build any new housing and invest their time in money in projects outside the City limits. That’s easy enough to do. Second, if you force builders into providing affordable units, they might just factor the cost in across the other “free market” units, pushing the overall price of housing higher.
New housing is expensive housing. There’s no rule or law that adding density will make housing affordable. There’s historical data showing the exact opposite. The more people who move to Seattle, the more construction is going to happen and housing prices will go down. This isn’t the old USSR. Seattle doesn’t have a planned economy, so we’re only guessing about the future.
There are two kinds of people in America… the landed class of home owners and renters. Two thirds of Americans own their own home. That’s why it’s near impossible to change the housing market politically.
Money rules over everything, starting with laws. You can’t make builders “pay” or “build” affordable housing. First the builders might not build any new housing and invest their time in money in projects outside the City limits. That’s easy enough to do. Second, if you force builders into providing affordable units, they might just factor the cost in across the other “free market” units, pushing the overall price of housing higher.
Agreed.
There’s no rule or law that adding density will make housing affordable.
Uh, yeah there is. It is the law of supply and demand. Pretty simple law: limit supply, cost goes up (everything else being equal).
The data is quite clear for housing as well. In most of the country the cost of housing is quite close to the marginal, physical cost ofconstruction. That is how a free market is supposed to work. In several parts of the country though, there is basically a cartel — a limit to how much housing can be built. In those areas, the cost of housing is based on the zoning. Seattle is now one of those areas. https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/hier1948.pdf
Two thirds of Americans own their own home. That’s why it’s near impossible to change the housing market politically.
Except that:
1) In many cities (like Seattle) renters outnumber home owners.
2) Many home owners (like me) want more density.
3) Some owners would benefit with more construction options. Some would lose.
There are plenty of people in Seattle who own land that is worth more than the house. This basically means the house will be torn down no matter what the zoning. If they allow more development then the value of the land goes up. The only people that would not come out ahead are those who own dense housing. For example if you own a townhouse you might not like the fact that they can now add them anywhere. On the other hand, if they allow townhouses to be split into three units (Brooklyn style) then maybe the do come out ahead. The only folks that could see their “investment” go down in value are those that bought condos. But then again, most of the people that buy condos aren’t buying with the expectation that it will go up in value. Thus even if people are only focused on their own financial self-interest, they would support upzoning.
The biggest problem is ignorance and self interest that is not financial. I understand the latter. People want their neighborhood to look the same, or mostly the same. But a lot of people are fooling themselves (or just don’t understand the issues) if they think that restrictive zoning isn’t the reason housing prices are so high (or for that matter, why there are so many homeless).
” In most of the country the cost of housing is quite close to the marginal, physical cost of construction”
That was the case until the late 2010s.
“In several parts of the country though, there is basically a cartel — a limit to how much housing can be built”
That’s almost all of the country now. They’ve reached the limit of apartments they can add, and in some cases the unused single-family lots, and there’s still demand for more housing, so it pushes the prices up. It’s the same thing that happened first in the Bay Area, then in Seattle, and is now happening in most of the country. There continue to be reports of rising housing prices squeezing locals in Oregon, Idaho, San Bernardino, other Washington counties, etc. The places that are exempt have liberal zoning (Dallas, Houston, Chicago), or are depressed and don’t have jobs (so people can’t move there and make a living).
Mike Orr,
I think zoning is pretty much a red herring here. Seattle’s housing industry has built full tilt for over 20 years. I don’t believe changing the zoning brings new labor to the trades. What’s happening in Seattle and California is high housing costs push contractors and tradespeople out of the area, making building more housing much harder. Everybody I know in the industry has their home ownership is the main goal of working in the industry. That’s not possible in Greater Seattle currently.
Utah is planning an extra 300,000+ stater homes. Units that people own, not some mega corporation. Home ownership makes housing the commodity, the product. Rental units make the people who rent them the real “product”, not the units themselves. As long as Seattle has more renters than owners, the market will be subject to manipulation and the “product” (the renter) will pay the highest rate the market will allow. Locking in housing costs with a 30 year mortgage is the only pathway to stability, regardless of zoning.
Utah is willing to spend State money only if it means the tax payers benefit with higher rates of home ownership. Washington State doesn’t want to spend the money at all and there’s this wacky idea that just changing zoning will magically fix the problem. (for the record, it’s way easier to build housing in Utah that Washington with the fees and zoning the way they are. Seattle sees every new project as a way to jack $50k or much more out of the builder in permits and fees. Seattle has a bloated city government addicted to building permits and fees. Tough to change that.)
Here in Ogden Utah, I can build an apartment in the basement and have an owner occupied duplex in any single family home. Most every house in this neighborhood has two kitchens in them, most have swung back and forth between family housing and duplexes for students (we’re a little over a mile from Weber State). The cost of inspections and fees to duplex conversion are right around $10,000. I can build a second home in my backyard for right around $20,000 in permits and fees.
Seattle needs this sort of “development”…… and yet the zoning and permit and fee structure make it impossible. That’s because the King County Master Builders Asso. writes all the zoning. And the kleptocrats in the Seattle City government keep bumping up the bribes… err, I mean permits.
Real progress in zoning reform would need to take people of modest means into account. Seattle isn’t about to do that.
https://www.builderonline.com/building/regulation-policy/inside-utahs-plan-to-build-35-000-starter-homes-in-a-hurry_o
” In most of the country the cost of housing is quite close to the marginal, physical cost of construction” – need to include the cost of land in that cost.
“Seattle’s housing industry has built full tilt for over 20 years.” Eh – I think Seattle proper has been building ‘at capacity’ really only since 2017.
“push contractors and tradespeople out of the area” – most construction workers already commute in from the edges. Part of the solution is for also encourage strong housing growth outside of Seattle but still within the UGA (for example, along the Link & Sounder stations)
tacomee, one thing you might not be taking into account is there are those who believe that zoning reform is really a trojan horse to turn red areas blue. They can’t come out and say that’s their ultimate goal, of course, so instead they say they want to make rents more affordable by increasing the housing supply.
Btw, I’m not saying I believe this theory. I’m simply relaying what some others have said.
” In most of the country the cost of housing is quite close to the marginal, physical cost of construction” – need to include the cost of land in that cost.
No, I don’t.
That is an actual quote from paper I cited (https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/hier1948.pdf). Did you read the actual paper? My guess is you didn’t, which is why you don’t get it.
I really don’t understand why people argue these points without bothering to read the actual papers. Either I got the key points or you should read it yourself and tell me what I got wrong. It is pretty frustrating to have to constantly copy paragraph after paragraph from a study that is actually pretty easy to understand. You don’t need an economics degree to get the gist of it. It is like reading the Human Transit book. Sure, Jarrett Walker cites dozens of peer-reviewed studies to support his ideas, but you don’t have to read those. You can just assume that he knows what he is talking about, and that the scientific consensus on those issues matches his assertions. Same here. The paper really isn’t that long. You can always just skim over the references. For example:
These data suggest that America can be divided into three broad areas. First, there are a number of places where housing is priced far below the cost of new construction. These areas are primarily central cities in the Northeast and the Midwest, such as Detroit and Philadelphia. These places were the subject of our previous work (Glaeser and Gyourko, 2001), and in these areas there is almost no new growth. In general, these places had significant housing price appreciation over the 1990s, but values are still below construction costs.
In large areas of the country, housing costs are quite close to the cost of new construction. These places generally have robust growth on the edges of cities where land is quite cheap. These areas represent the bulk of American housing, although they seem to be somewhat underrepresented in the AHS.
Finally, there is a third category of cities and suburbs where the price of homes is much higher than the cost of new construction. Manhattan and Palo Alto are two of these places. Indeed, many of these places are in California, but the 1990s saw an increase in the number of these areas in the Northeast and South as well. While there are a number of areas with extremely expensive homes, they do not represent the norm for America. However, both poor and non-poor people suffer from higher housing costs in such areas.
Do I need to read the Glaeser and Gyourko paper? Of course not. This is all fairly basic. Let me continue with the paper, since it gets to your point:
What is it that creates places where the cost of housing is so much higher than the physical construction costs? We offer two basic views. First, there is the classic economics approach which argues that houses are expensive because land is expensive. According to this view, there is a great deal of demand for certain areas, and land, by its very nature, is limited in supply. As such, the price of housing must rise. Traditional models, such as the classic Alonso-Muth-Mills framework, take this view.
Our alternative hypothesis is that homes are expensive in high cost areas primarily because of government regulation, i.e. zoning. According to this view, housing is expensive because of artificial limits on construction created by the regulation of new housing. This view argues that there is plenty of land in high cost areas, and in principle new construction might be able to push the cost of houses down to physical construction costs. However, the barriers to building create a potentially massive wedge between prices and building costs.
The authors go on to provide evidence for their hypothesis. Here is the kicker: This idea — that high costs are the result of zoning regulations — is now generally accepted. Plenty of experts have looked at the same idea different ways and they all come to the same conclusion.
I think zoning is pretty much a red herring here.
…
Seattle needs this sort of “development”…… and yet the zoning and permit and fee structure make it impossible. Real progress in zoning reform would need to take people of modest means into account.
Huh? Seattle needs zoning reform, but zoning is a red herring?
Generally speaking, when people in Seattle talk about “zoning” they mean all of it. Permits, design review, FAR — all of it. Yes, I know that some of it is technically not zoning (which is why sometimes people will say things like “regulations”) but it is the same basic idea. The paperwork, not the actual construction.
Is that what you are getting at? That zoning (e. g. changing the FAR limits) is not enough? If so, join the club. But adopting what Spokane adopted (which is to get rid of FAR, have really small lots, etc.) would make a huge difference. Simply smaller lots would make a huge difference. If they allowed 1,000 square foot lots with no setbacks it would look like Brooklyn fairly quickly in this town. Just in my neighborhood there would be a huge difference. Instead of a few dozen (very large) houses (sitting on large lots) there would be a hundreds and hundreds of houses.
Of course if they allowed more apartments/condos there would be a lot more apartments/condos. A lot of people would rather own their own land, but a lot of people are happy renting, or need to rent while they save up to buy a house (or condo). The point being that if the city allows people to build, they will build. The only thing standing in the way is the regulations.
AJ,
I’d guess that new housing that creates the kind of urban sprawl we’d all rather avoid are maybe 3 or 4 times as popular as urban infill….. and that’s in Greater Seattle. In Utah the ratio is close to 10 to 1. Houses in, say, Maple Valley sell like hotcakes…. I worked on a whole lot of them in the ’80s, ’90’s…. I’ve been busy nonstop for 35 years in greater Seattle. The only reason building grew in Seattle in around 2010 was a shortage of suburban lots to build on outside the City. There are hundreds of pieces of land in places like Kent and Tacoma that could have multifamily housing built on them tomorrow and they all “pencil out” moneywise. The reason they’re not being developed is a lack of labor and money. The building industry has done a hard pivot to doing far less projects…. for a higher return. The construction industry loves hight dollar projects with big returns. What industry doesn’t? Current zoning… as well as the current proposed zoning for the future really cater to this sort of development model.
The new NIMBY mantra is…. “well, of you’re going to build something in my neighborhood, it needs to tasteful and high end”. The problem is right now the NIMBY vote and contractors have an unspoken agreement to keep housing costs (and profits) high in Seattle. The new zoning changes have zero to do with affordability.
Sam,
People need to spend less time on the internet and worrying about politics. I know so many young people who spend so much time dreaming of these wild socialist changes where rents or magically affordable and the nobody pays back their student loans. A world where houses are torn down in Wallingford and affordable 4 plex building go up. A world where personal sacrifice and investment are not needed to live “the good life”. That’s not America.
I’ve voted in every election since 1983. I’ve done my part to be a citizen. But I spend most of my time looking out for #1. Buying a house wasn’t just a pipe dream…. I was willing to make sacrifices to make it happen. I’m not a fan of mixing your personal finical goals with your political ideology. Right now there are only about 13 places in the USA Liberals want to live in. That’s the biggest driver of Seattle housing costs…. Liberal desire (not zoning). I guess if you’re a Liberal with money that’s good, but if you’re a Lefty with modest means, Seattle can be pretty toxic for you. Don’t blame the government. Blame your rich Lefty friends. They pee’d in the pool. At what point do young Lefties look around and leave? It’s a big wonderful country out there.
Tacomee, I like your housing posts. I like the view from the trenches. Too often I think some think zoning magically results in new construction.
When you state there are hundreds of undeveloped single family home building sites in this 4-5 county region including Kitsap you really mean tens and tens of thousands of sites. Recent county studies have estimated King Co. alone has the existing zoning capacity for 800,000 new units if fully built out. Look at all the surface parking lots in Seattle.
Now that Seattle money is looking for a SFH in the $500k to $750k range not available in Seattle except the most marginal neighborhoods all these outer building sites are becoming profitable to build, and these couples want to own a SFH. People talk about limiting sprawl but the bast majority of this 7500 sq mile Puget Sound region is zoned for development, some with bigger lot minimums and some with greater FAR.
Ogden UT is interesting. Well educated, around 81,000 residents with an AMI of around $67,000 in 2022 which is 32% less than the AMI for the state of UT ($89,168).
Seattle’s AMI is $117,000, but more importantly 70,000 households earn more than $420,000/year, and over 50% earn over $200,000. This puts tremendous pressure on the 70,000 households that earn 2% of the city’s income, or under $50,000.
I like the idea of duplexes or DADU’s if the property owner lives onsite which helps a homeowner get into home ownership without consolidating duplex ownership into rental landlords.
But someone earning $200,000 to $400,000 doesn’t want to share their house. Nearly every city allows DADU’s but requires the owner to live onsite if renting out one of the units,(Seattle does not) and now under HB 1110 must allow duplexes (for cities under 75,000 residents) but you rarely see either in the expensive SFH neighborhoods. Who wants an ADU or duplex if you can afford to not have one.
Ross is probably correct townhouses make more sense for smaller households, but new townhouses are much more expensive than the 0% to 60% AMI King Co. wants all new construction to meet. Plus they need to be near walkable transit unless they have adequate onsite parking minimums.
The two keys to HB 1110 were cities could enforce parking minimums on any upzoning in the SFH zone and maintain their regulatory limits for things like FAR that apply to SFH. Ross’s goal of town houses in the SFH zone really requires a different set of regulatory limits for a SFH vs. town houses for the same SFH lot, and most cities are opposed to that (Redmond instead is just rezoning SFH zones multi-family but Redmond is an outlier on the Eastside, and still those new multi-family units must be affordable to those earning 0% to 60% AMI so I don’t know will build them).
Today homeownership in this area also depends on interest rates and a down payment which can be 20% depending on credit. That is $100,000 for a $500k home or townhouse.
The best way to lower housing prices is to lower AMI and demand, which means city is declining which isn’t good. This new idea builders will voluntarily build 0% to 60% AMI new construction is unrealistic.
I agree with you that a lot of educated Seattle progressives are really interested in making housing costs or rents more affordable for the 100% to 120% AMI segment, but King Co. under 1220 doesn’t worry about them. It wants new construction in the 0% to 60% AMI range, and insists it be in the urban areas near walkable transit and retail which often is very expensive land.
“Seattle’s housing industry has built full tilt for over 20 years.”
The size, shape, and location of the buildings is distorted by zoning and regulations. The same number of laborers could doubtless build more units and make more areas walkable if they were allowed to. Ten houses need ten foundations in different locations, compared to one 10-unit apartment building in one location. And that 10-unit building might not be allowed or competitive given the limited number of multifamily lots, so it might instead be a 100-unit building that requires more labor and concrete.
“Seattle sees every new project as a way to jack $50k or much more out of the builder in permits and fees. ”
Did you just say Seattle makes it harder and more expensive to build? That’s what the zoning regulations do too.
The state should explore investing in public housing, alternatives to property tax, and encourage nonprofit forms of ownership that disconnect the high cost of land from the building ownership/occupation cost.
“the NIMBY vote and contractors have an unspoken agreement to keep housing costs (and profits) high in Seattle”
Now you see where the barrier lies. NIMBYs want to limit density below market level. Urbanists who want infill are the opposite.
“one thing you might not be taking into account is there are those who believe that zoning reform is really a trojan horse to turn red areas blue. ”
And there are those who think that’s a troll. One, Sam admits he may not believe it. Two, it tried to turn the topic from housing alternatives to inflammatory red-blue polarization. Three, there’s no evidence that such people actually exist (those who want to upzone to turn an area blue. Four, King County has been blue for years, so it can’t be turned blue.
Sam suggests some NIMBY’s construct impossible affordability mandates to thwart upzoning or increased density in the SFH zone, although it really is state and county progressives mandating these 0% to 50% AMI mandates (although Sam is correct the mandates are so impractical they accomplish the goals of the NIMBY’s who are fine with no new construction, but allow remodels, which is why no growth non-progressive cities were the ones demanding affordability mandates in HB 1110 and builders and realtors vehemently objecting)).
Mike writes that in order to solve our housing affordability issue we need to create “non-profit forms of ownership” that somehow disconnect the cost of the land from ownership costs (which means rural America to me where land is cheap), enact a state and city income tax, and invest even more into publicly owned housing although the cost for that housing is much higher than private construction and the need dwarfs the public funding.
If I’m a NIMBY in a SFH zone and don’t want increased density requiring Mike’s set of goals is better than anything affordability mandates accomplish, although both do the trick.
Who wants an ADU or duplex if you can afford to not have one.
Who wants a Kia if you can afford a Lexus. It is a good thing we prevent people from making Kias. Oh wait, we don’t. But we sure as hell prevent people from building affordable housing. Holy cow, do we ever. No condos, no apartments, no townhouses or rowhouses — only houses on big lots. Then we wonder why the houses are so expensive.
Ross, you are proposing ways to create more 100% to 150% AMI housing by lowering minimum lot sizes, increasing FAR, allowing more dwellings per lot, and limiting parking minimums.
But that is not an issue or income band the state and county zoning policies are concerned about. The county’s own analysis found King Co. has the zoning capacity before HB 1110 for 800,000 new units. Zoning capacity is not their concern.
The Dept. of Commerce suggests half of all new housing units through 2044 must be affordable to those earning between 0% and 50% AMI. King Co. mandates 90% of new housing units be between 0% and 60% AMI, and be in urban zones near walkable transit.
You are trying to solve a problem state and county zoning laws and policies are not trying to solve.
SB 1220 the county is using specifically excludes the SFH zone.
HB 1110 leaves regulatory limits and parking minimums in the SFH zone up to the cities, and there are no affordability mandates for any units. Some cities like Seattle and Sammamish (and most Eastside cities) probably are not going to change the regulatory limits in their SFH zones, and some like Redmond seem more interested in changing SFH zoning to multi-family rather than trying to mix the uses in the SFH zone because multi-family type housing is difficult with SFH regulatory limits, especially in expensive cities that tend to have more restrictive regulatory limits in their SFH zone.
The reason Harrell is focusing on increasing zoning in the existing multi-family zones is that is the only zoning that counts against Seattle’s affordability targets under King Co. No new construction in Seattle’s SFH zone no matter what the cost counts towards Seattle’s affordability mandates (0% to 60% AMI) for new construction.
I get your concern and desired remedies, but they are not what the state and county are focused on, which is 0% to 50% AMI, not brand new town homes geared toward those earning 100% to 150% AMI because what good are those to someone earning 30% AMI, which unfortunately is below the cost of the new construction so now the focus is on preserving the older more affordable multi-family AND multi-generational housing, or preventing displacement.
Now if you have a way to create new 0% to 50% AMI construction without public subsidies (but not in the SFH zone because that doesn’t count) the DOC and county (and Seattle) would be interested in that.
All Tacomee is really saying is zoning is meaningless if builders won’t make a profit under the zoning.
That is the rub.
Fact Check,
Thanks for a rundown on the latest zoning rules. I honestly understand most of it, but it’s a lot more complicated than it needs to be. With building regulations, I think there’s always a back door built into excess complication. Streamlining zoning would be a good step in the right direction. The State legislature certainly could have made things simpler with the Statewide changes.
The reason that home ownership is such a good idea is that it’s possible to get the funding to move things forward. How many Seattleites could afford a $350k mortgage? There’s a huge pile of personal credit there can could be tapped to build housing. Low income housing is certainly needed, but it costs over $350k a unit and the money needs to come from somewhere. When we’re talking about housing for lower income people (0-60% of AMI) filling that need in King County adds up to billions and billions of dollars. It’s a good idea, yes! let’s do it! But where on earth is that sort of money going to come from? Social housing has to best sounding idea ever…. with the worst math behind it. There’s never going to be the funding to make it work. We’re not Europe.
I plan on building an apartment in the basement here in Ogden because I might retire here and the rent earned would cover taxes and utilities. But then again I’m not rich. Seattle is full of people just have so much money…… they’ve bought up all the houses and keep much of the construction industry busy with stupid remodels. Good luck getting them to change their ways. We have to face the fact that Seattle has become a playground for the rich.
“Mike writes that in order to solve our housing affordability issue we need to create “non-profit forms of ownership” that somehow disconnect the cost of the land from ownership costs (which means rural America to me where land is cheap), enact a state and city income tax”
I was thinking of land/real-estate related taxes, not an income tax. I’m not an expert in this but there are two models I’ve heard of:
1. Tax the land, not the buildings. Real estate is the land and buildings together. What’s skyrocketing is land costs, because the supply is limited.
2. Tax at the maximum zoned capacity, not the current use. That was mainly aimed at owners who sat on a surface parking lots for decades, waiting until prices rise enough to make a killing. This would give them an incentive to build or sell. The downtown surface lots are gone now, but this could be applied to the one-story car dealerships in Lake City, remaining lots in Rainier Valley if there are any, and one-story big-box stores.
3. A nonprofit buys the land and puts it into a permanent trust. They sell the right to build and own a house for a low price. The homeowner can only sell it for a similar low price.
More units on a lot — whether ADUs, townhouses, small apartment buildings, or large apartment buildings — means the land cost is divided among more households, so the cost to each one is less.
“Sam suggests some NIMBY’s construct impossible affordability mandates to thwart upzoning or increased density in the SFH zone”
I don’t see NIMBYs believing that or Sam suggesting it. Increasing housing as a pressure-relief valve on long-term prices is a different tactic from below-market quotas. Sam Said “they want to make rents more affordable by increasing the housing supply”, which sounds like the first.
NIMBYs want low density for aesthetic reasons, and to prevent lower-income demographics from living there. Supporting affordability quotas could backfire if anyone builds those affordable units in their neighborhood.
Never mind that it’s sometimes people like their own relatives who need those affordable units.
Ross, you are proposing ways to create more 100% to 150% AMI housing by lowering minimum lot sizes, increasing FAR, allowing more dwellings per lot, and limiting parking minimums.
Just to be clear, I am proposing to create a lot more housing for all income levels by allowing it in Seattle (where people want to live). Very low income people would still need public housing, just like they did fifty years ago, and just like they do in countries that allow more market rate housing (like Japan). They all go together. Market rate housing can cover quite a range of income levels for a city as big as Seattle (not to mention many of the surrounding suburbs, which would suddenly find themselves in a housing bubble). So if you make say, 50 grand a year you can afford a market rate place. Not in Laurelhurst, but in some place like Lake City or South Park. Those that make less than that — especially if they have kids — would likely need assistance in the form of more public (AKA social) housing. Market rate housing would be cheaper, and a lot more public housing could be built for the same amount of money.
This is really nothing radical. It is what existed not that long ago. At the time, the zoning really didn’t matter. We were one of those cities where “the price of housing is quite close to the marginal, physical costs of new construction”. Then we became one of those cities where “high prices have little to do with conventional models with a free market for land. Instead, … zoning and other land use controls play the dominant role in making housing expensive.”
Land would not necessarily be cheaper. But housing — a place to live — would be cheaper. That means that a house on a big lot would still be expensive. But in neighborhoods like mine (which are nothing special) you would see a lot more housing of various types, just like you see in Japan.
The alternative is to do what Austria has done, which is to build a huge amount of public housing. That would be a lot more expensive, and it isn’t clear if it would be legal unless we changed the laws. Not at that scale.
Those are pretty much the only models that work:
1) Allow builders to build a lot of housing; also build public housing.
2) Build a huge amount of public housing.
The former is a lot cheaper.
Let’s bring some simple math into this thread….. If (and this is a huge if) affordable housing could be built for around $330k per unit…. that’s 3 units per million, right? How many units would a billion dollars buy? Where on earth would Seattle get the money to move the needle on housing affordability?
Even if Seattle did make progress on housing affordability….. what’s stopping incoming immigration from reversing any progress? There’s a lot of people wanting to move into the Emerald City.
And let’s get to the real numbers here. How many households in Seattle have a housing budget of 100k (or even more)? How many high earner households not living in Seattle are wanting to move to Seattle over the next 10 years? Just how many construction workers are there? What projects do you think builders want to really work on (because they absolutely have a choice here)?
Do you want to spend money on affordable housing? Or transit projects? (and please don’t say both…. there’s a limited amount of money)
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Seattle’s housing problems aren’t about zoning. Seattle has been overrun with rich people who just don’t care if a house in Wallingford costs 2.5 million. High AMI households have moved in and put everything out of wack. Zoning isn’t going to fix that. A billion dollars in public housing isn’t going to fix that.
If your household income isn’t over 200k, maybe Seattle just isn’t the city for you.
@Tacommeee
Even if one had 10 billion dollars and could build cheaply, if zoning is not loosened where would you build the housing? Just demolishing a single family home and rebuilding that same single family home does not produce any additional housing units without changing the zoning first.
WL,
We’ve been over this before. There’s plenty of places, hundreds, thousands even, city lots on major arterials (think highway 99 and the like) that could be built out with crappy apartment buildings for the “service class” to live in. Think SeaTac. That’s currently happening as we speak. If you’re working class in Seattle, look at NYC housing. The Money lives in the City. The workers commute farther every year, pushed farther out by “The Money” .
As far as Seattle…. and the neighborhoods you want to live in, like Wallingford and Capitol Hill, well, those places mostly belong to high income people and will likely totally belong to high income people in the future. As long as your household income is 300K or so, you belong. Below that and you’re not going to able to afford it. It has absolutely nothing to do with zoning, and everything to do with economics. Tearing down a house in most Seattle neighborhoods and building 4-6 units…. the pre-construction costs would be over 300k per unit. Then there’s the cost of construction and a healthy profit for the builder. What do you think those units would need to sell for?
Nobody really cares about affordable housing in the housing industry.
So yeah, I think the zoning changes in Seattle, but it’s got nothing to do with housing affordability. It’s to meet the demand for housing for high income people who love Seattle and are willing to spend a million dollars or more to live there. The market forces are against the working class here. Zoning doesn’t change Amazon or other tech outfits from importing jobs faster than housing can be built. Rich bastards want a spare apartment in Seattle just to have it so they can visit a couple of times a year and sell it down the road for a healthy profit. That’s the problem, not zoning.
Let’s bring some simple math into this thread….. If (and this is a huge if) affordable housing could be built for around $330k per unit…. that’s 3 units per million, right? How many units would a billion dollars buy? Where on earth would Seattle get the money to move the needle on housing affordability?
Agreed, which is why the Austrian model just won’t work (for Seattle). In contrast the Japanese model could work just fine. Basically that means building a lot more market-rate housing. Eventually the cost to own a place is similar to the cost of construction. Not the cost including the land or regulations, but the cost to actually build something. This in turn brings down the cost of existing housing. I don’t know exactly what the cost of construction is, but I would guess somewhere around three to four hundred thousand for a townhouse, and about half that for a condo. I know that sounds crazy, but there are new houses and townhouse being built in the south for less than that (https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/the-most-affordable-places-to-buy-a-new-home/). Labor costs are lower (of course) but similar prices are found in Tokyo (where labor costs are higher than the Northwest).
But assume for a second that a new townhouse costs 400 grand and a used one costs 300. Also assume that a new one-bedroom condo costs 200 grand, and a used one costs 150. Rents would be much lower. The vast majority of people who want to live in Seattle could afford to live in Seattle. But not everyone. That is still too much money for a lot of people. Those people need assistance, and for that there is public housing (or Section 8 vouchers). The latter is problematic (as some landlords won’t accept vouchers). Of course if prices drop (for used places) then suddenly (some) landlords get a lot more generous in terms of whose money they will accept.
This would mean a huge building boom in Seattle (most of it via private money). At the risk of sounding like a Republican, you can really build a lot with the free market (if you allow it to build).
If you’re working class in Seattle, look at NYC housing.
Yes, NYC housing is literally the city that put this issue on the map. Remember the phrase “The rent is too damn high” from 2005? That was in New York. It led to this book: https://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO which led to a similar article in The Atlantic. This led to lots of people (myself included) realizing that the problem was not the increasing popularity of cities or stratification but regulation. Here we are, twenty years later, and New York has the same problem. Holy Cow, New York City has shrunk! This is crazy. It makes no sense. How can a city with extremely high housing prices actually shrink? Imagine if food worked that way. Kale suddenly becomes a lot more expensive and yet twenty years later the farmers are producing less kale then ever! WTF?
It only makes sense when you consider the regulations. To stretch my analogy a tiny bit, the government basically told farmers they can’t grow kale. That is the way it is with housing. People don’t quite understand this, but much of New York is zoned single family (just like Seattle). They don’t allow it to grow the way they allow Tokyo to grow. So the results are what you would expect — only the rich can afford kale — sorry, housing.
@tacomee
you assert always two claims that cannot simultaneously exist at the same time. 1) zoning will destroy seattle / other cities 2) zoning will do nothing.
If you truly believe zoning won’t really affect the city then why are you say afraid of upzoning.
> We’ve been over this before. There’s plenty of places, hundreds, thousands even, city lots on major arterials (think highway 99 and the like) that could be built out with crappy apartment buildings for the “service class” to live in. Think SeaTac. That’s currently happening as we speak.
Tacomee even those were done by zoning changes….
For a specific example like https://www.edmondswa.gov/government/departments/development_services/planning_division/highway_99_planning_project edmonds needs to make zoning changes for apartments to be allowed on that corridor. This is all zoning…
“It has absolutely nothing to do with zoning, and everything to do with economics.”
So why aren’t we building more Capitol Hills? Why isn’t any neighborhood in the Eastside or Renton or Kent becoming like Capitol Hill, so that people have more choice and don’t have to live in Seattle? Some suburban neighborhoods are densifying but they’re not getting the high walkability, small narrow storefronts, traditional architecture, limited number of parking lots, nightlife, or as many frequent transit routes that Capitol Hill has that make people want to live there.
Some people want to live near something unique like the Space Needle, downtown, the premier arts/nightlife district, or a water view. Others just want to have the generic amenities that Capitol Hill has and don’t care if it’s in Kent or Tacoma. So build those clusters that are really comparable and competitive, and people will disperse to them, and more spaces will open up, and that will alleviate the crunch of people piling into a few neighborhoods.
Simply put, zoning laws are racist and the Supreme Court was wrong to say they were Constitutional.
Isn’t there a role for more effective ways to reduce construction costs and speed housing creation?
Given the much higher labor costs in our region, it would seem to be most effective to build as much as possible elsewhere and get it transported here, for example. Even a local indoor housing construction factory can build things without having to deal with the weather and save time and money. Plus middle housing is much less difficult to finance and build off-site than an apartment building is. Finally, it’s a better way to reduce the carbon footprint of building from scratch on-site.
I find it really notable that governments don’t look more into working with factory housing industry types as well as major home builders to look for these kinds of solutions. The driver of housing cost ultimately is labor, and the industry even could more easily look to the use of robotics in varying ways to build housing.
Let’s begin by admitting that housing is a bespoke concept currently and that by definition makes it expensive. We wear very little bespoke clothing and install limited home furnishings in our homes because it’s not cost-effective for most of us. As long as housing is primarily bespoke, it’s going to be expensive.
Then we need to revisit zoning and building regulations to make them more favorable to factory housing techniques. That seems to me to the more effective government response to housing affordability than does the web of taxes and subsidies that we get from these housing levies — which does nothing to reduce the ultimate housing costs at the end of the day but rather just moves money around.
The driver of housing cost ultimately is labor
Except in various places (like Seattle) where the driver of housing costs is the zoning (and other regulations).
In terms of construction, we already have those sorts of things. The extreme example is a manufactured home. But it is common to have various pieced manufactured offsite, and shipped in. Even the onsite work is quite efficient. A friend of mine is a carpenter and he does remodels. Everything is custom. He told me about the opposite; how they assemble even a small subdivision. It is basically like an assembly line except each piece comes out on a separate day. One day they lay all the concrete. Another day they put in the frame. Another day the plumbing or electrical work. There is a lot of efficiency as a result. it is pretty easy to imagine a small lot with a dozen townhouses being built quite cheaply as a result.
I didn’t just pull the 300-400K for a townhouse out of the air. They build them for less than that in the South, and about that in Tokyo (where labor costs are much higher). Given what it takes to build McMansions and what they sell for, this is in the ballpark as well.
I remember years ago the Nixon administration commissioned a study to look at housing costs. (I wish I could find the study.) In it they looked at everything including more manufacturing (which has happened anyway). They concluded — even back then — that the best way to reduce the cost of housing was to allow smaller lots. Funny how not much has changed in that respect.
Ross Bleakney,
Japan has a declining population. If you want to live there, go right ahead. Bringing up Europe or Japan isn’t bringing anything useful to the table.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/couple-priced-seattle-housing-market-114200704.html
It’s possible to move to Japan… or the Ozarks… and find cheaper housing. The problem with this blog is the strange entitlement believing Seattle can be retrofit to suit their situation.
WL
There has been zoning changes continually in the history of Greater Seattle. What you’re missing is…. Zoning always serves Money. Remember that when Seattle zones density over the next 2 years and then it mostly benefits well heeled people moving in. That’s what happened over the last 20 years. Why would it change? It’s a free market after all.
Also…. just how many units of low income housing would 10 billion dollars buy? Less than 10,000, right? There are currently over 10,000 people on low income housing waiting lists in Seattle.
14% of residential properties in Japan are empty, or 9 million homes, more than all of NY, due to declining population and in some cases young people moving to the city. They are called “Akiya” or abandoned homes.
Although mostly focused in rural areas it is migrating to cities like Tokyo and Kyoto. Since housing isn’t appreciating few young people want to own it or inherit it and the costs to maintain. Japanese don’t have the cultural connection to owning Americans have, and traditionally elderly parents have been cared for by children so didn’t need the nest egg of a home, although more and more have no children to care for them which is straining government budgets that never anticipated this Medicaid type cost for a population that has a very long life expectancy.
Akiya isn’t due to over building but declining population, which is affecting every first world nation whose organic birth rate is below the replacement rate. Without out of country migration King Co. would be losing around 20,000 residents/year.
Builders are very aware of this which is part of the reason building permit applications have declined along with interest rates. There is a surplus of market rate housing at 100%+ AMI but little housing at 60%~ AMI when that 60% AMI would be 120% or 180% AMI in much of the U.S. or the world including Tokyo that has a pretty low AMI.
“Remember that when Seattle zones density over the next 2 years and then it mostly benefits well heeled people moving in. That’s what happened over the last 20 years.”
What do you think would have happened if we hadn’t changed zoning? Amazon and other jobs would still have expanded, and prices would be even higher — like what happened in California. Or the companies wouldn’t have expanded since they couldn’t get enough workers, or would have expanded elsewhere instead, and we would have fewer jobs.
Japan has a declining population. If you want to live there, go right ahead. Bringing up Europe or Japan isn’t bringing anything useful to the table.
I disagree. You are espousing a radical idea: zoning doesn’t matter. I am simply pointing out that it does. To support my case:
1) The science, which very clearly supports my case.
2) Case studies. There are cities with less restrictive zoning that have kept prices low in exactly the way that the scientists would predict: They built enough places to live. The population has grown quite a bit, along with new places to live. Why didn’t cities like Seattle and New York City (which clearly have similar demand) not build in the same manner? Zoning.
Oh, and Tokyo is not declining (not yet anyway). In the last ten years they added about 800,000 people (or a city the size of Seattle). In contrast, New York City has actually shrunk. So if the key was to shrink, then why is New York City more expensive than ever, while Tokyo (which continues to grow) so cheap? Zoning.
I keep bringing up Tokyo because it is such a clear cut example. It is easy to assume that once a city gets to be a certain size or becomes really popular it will be extremely expensive to live there. But that simply isn’t the case. Just to reiterate:
1) Huge demand to live in Tokyo (the world’s largest city).
2) Huge amount of new housing built.
3) The zoning is very liberal compared to peer cities around the world (New York, London, Paris, etc.).
If Tokyo — freakin’ Tokyo! — is cheaper than podunk Seattle, it is clear we are doing something wrong. We simply aren’t letting the market work (nor are we being all socialist and building enough social housing). We are restricting the ability to build housing which of course has sent the prices sky high.
Look, if you want to disagree with all the experts, go ahead. You are free to believe the earth is flat or that evolution doesn’t exist. But don’t expect such radical beliefs to go unchallenged. As of yet you have nothing to support your case other than this bizarre belief that Seattle is somehow different than every other city in the world. We are a special little snowflake, and the science that applies from Asia to Europe to the rest of North America just doesn’t apply to us. We special.
Everything serves money as it is demanded… it’s like saying building car factories serve money. Of course it does. Or building sewage pipes serves moneys etc…
If no one was willing to buy it one would not be building it
The average median income in Tokyo is less than $4000/mo. Everything except tourist related items is cheaper in Tokyo even though there are 32 million residents in greater Tokyo in an area equal to Snohomish, King and Pierce Counties combined.
If you are going to compare housing prices (or any prices) gasyou need to compare AMI.
“Japan has a declining population. ”
Factoring out immigration so do we.
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2024/3/22/us-demographic-projections-with-and-without-immigration
If we build an effective wall, we are going to be shrinking. By around 2050, even with immigration, it’s projected that most every country, including the US, will be peaking in population.
But that is the overall country-wide population. Regional population is what matters, as housing is largely a regional issue. Seattle doing a shit job of building units means that Tacoma’s rents go up, but rents don’t necessarily go up in Kalamazoo. Our region is speculated to be a haven and a draw for a lot of reasons, and as Florida sinks beneath the sea, and Salt Lake City dries up and becomes a toxic dustbowl, people may just favor a region with ample fresh water and high bluffs. Crossing fingers on the fire, volcano, and earthquake action. We need to plan for that.
No hard feelings Ross Bleakney,
If the solutions to the world’s problems were solved at places like Yale or Columbia…. why is the world such a mess right now? There’s a university study supporting everything….. and nothing, because it’s just studies, not real life with real money.
Look, I’m 100% changing the zoning for whole USA. High time to do so. What I see happening is wealth tweaking the new rules…. so they’re not that unlike the old rules. If you’re young and without family fortune or a high dollar career, Seattle may not be your town.
I remember listening to Mayor Norm Rice give a press conference about how his high fullootin’ Urban Villages were going to make Seattle housing affordable again….. as I was driving to Tacoma to look at a little crapstic house to buy because I didn’t have the money to buy in Seattle. That’s not a university study, it’s history. Sure, there’s going to zoning changes! But will they move the needle one bit on housing affordability? History says no. The basic Jr. High math says no.
I’m out of here for awhile… but I will close with this. Do not make life choices based on political change. That’s counting your chickens before they hatch.
“Also…. just how many units of low income housing would 10 billion dollars buy? Less than 10,000, right? There are currently over 10,000 people on low income housing waiting lists in Seattle.”
It doesn’t appear you understand how the system works. There are two pieces to the housing puzzle:
1) Housing the homeless and the imminently homeless
2) Unzoning, so housing stock increases and rents moderate, so that everyone else doesn’t start falling into the 1) category.
If we spent 5 or 10 billion building homes, we wouldn’t just move people in, pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, and call it a day.
What they do is is move people in, and right off the bat the clock starts ticking. Month one, they pay some sort of rent. Month 2 a bit more. Month 12, the hope is they are fully self-sufficient and they are able to, with the help of ample mental health service and job training, be close to self-sufficient and a fully functioning member of society again. And then that low-income apartment is freed up for the next person. So you don’t need 20,000 apartments, you just need enough to work people off the streets.
No, it doesn’t work for everyone. There is going to be some folks that are so mentally or physically disabled that they will never be able to keep a roof over their heads without help. There will also be folks who’s income will never be sufficient to completely pay for rents, and will require some subsidy. But that subsidy is far cheaper if they are renting out of the private market. That’s why you must do both 1) and 2). If you don’t have a healthy affordable rental market to transition folks to, the system breaks.
Since this thread and original article are about AFFORDABLE housing, or 0% to 60% AMI according to King Co. and not 100%+ AMI housing in general, what is going to have to happen is closing the wealth gap in King Co.
I don’t know how to do that, especially since we are losing working class King Co. residents each year and replacing them with foreign high paid tech workers, or how to deal with the 70,000 households with 2% of the income. Telling cities to zone for that and builders to build it is stupid. That just means nothing gets built.
King Co. NOW says the key is preserving older, existing more affordable multi-family and multi-generational housing where they use to live but so much has been gentrified there isn’t enough to go around and new construction, even 200 sf micro-units, cost $1200/mo. for one.
Upzoning won’t do it although maybe it will help those on the margins in the 100% to 150% AMI if it’s near walkable and safe transit so they don’t also need a car, but not afford a single family house in Seattle and that is what most dream of. Or affording a $850k townhouse in Ballard.
The problem is we don’t have enough 0% to 60% AMI households on this blog or at The Urbanist so we chase housing remedies we hope will bring down our desired housing just enough so we can buy and be out of the rat race. Unfortunately our dreams are Wallingford at 150% AMI ($165k which every else is a fortune) when at best it is Georgetown or Columbia City, or Kitsap Co.if you want a house.
So far no one in this area or other very wealthy U.S. cities has found a solution that actually works in the real world. This region spends around $1 billion on supportive and affordable housing each year but it is a drop in the bucket and so much is wasted.
I don’t think there is a solution, at least not in America unless maybe AI wipes out tech employment so this area goes back to the Seattle of the 1970’s. I’ve never seen a very wealthy city with a high AMI with affordable market rate housing. Even with a high income partner or spouse it is a stretch if the down payment is 20%, which means around $200k cash.
“I don’t think there is a solution, at least not in America”
So 80% of the population is eventually going to become homeless and there’s nothing we can do about it?
If the solutions to the world’s problems were solved at places like Yale or Columbia…. why is the world such a mess right now?
Um, because they ignore those problems. The scientists warned us about global warming back in the 1960s. We basically did nothing about it until fairly recently and still haven’t done much. Are you saying those scientists are wrong? Seriously, are you a climate denier too?
There’s a university study supporting everything….. and nothing, because it’s just studies, not real life with real money.
Bullshit! Show me your study refuting the study I cited! For that matter, show me the other studies refuting the other studies I cited. The Yale study I cited was not an outlier study. It is accepted within the academic community. You are simply putting your head in the sand and pretending it doesn’t exist.
It is also obvious! Why did they build three big houses on that lot down the street when they could make a lot more money by building a six story apartment building? Seriously, how the hell do you explain that? You can’t! The only answer is zoning.
Upzoning won’t do it
Bullshit! You are saying that if they allowed developers to build large apartment buildings everywhere in Seattle that nobody would bother to build middle class housing? That is absurd. They are building that now! The problem is, they aren’t building enough of it because of the zoning. It is illegal to build middle class housing on my block. A few blocks away you can, but on my block the only thing you can build is houses. Not rowhouses, but houses on very large lots.
Look, I get why people don’t want to do the things that we have to do about climate change to stop it. I get that. But denying that climate change is real is just bullshit.
Same goes here. I get why you don’t want to see large buildings in your neighborhood filled with working class people. I get that. But don’t pretend that no one will build those if not given the chance. They build those everywhere in the world they are allowed to build them. They would build them on my block if given the chance.
Al S.
Portland is all in on this sort of thing. They call it “timber frame” housing or some such craziness, but it’s basically moble homes. The city plans on paying 3X market value for them, due to the fancy name.
I’m all for modular construction and zoning changes…. but building offsite may just bring a bigger payday for the developer because it does nothing to change market demand. Rich people would love to buy up a little prefab house in Seattle and use it as short term rental (or leave it empty) and show up less than a month a year.
I’ve brought this up here before, but Washington State should just build a couple of 100k+ cities out in Eastern Washington for scratch. Retrofitting the cities on the I-5 corridor is proving too expensive and slow. As for as transit… it’s pennies on the dollar for a new town. Build it right the first time.
As far as the environment… with alternative energy projects and low water use planning, I doubt the new city has that much of a bigger impact than the farm land it would replace. If the progressive set can’t figure out how to make a walkable town center surrounded by a 25,000 unit trailer park…. they don’t have much future in America. Utah seems poised to build stuff like that. Even Texas. Seattle and the Left Coast? Backward NIMBYs really. Even the so called “progressives” can’t think outside the box.
I think we need to reach the point where middle income people just give up the ghost in Seattle.