Countdowns: Lynnwood Link (August 30).
Transit Updates:
Sound Transit has posted ridership data for April, showing stable ridership from March to April. No, the 2 Line isn’t listed, yet.
The Urbanist writes on Metro’s continued labor capacity issues.
The Federal Way Link overhead power system is being connected to Angle Lake Station. This will give the ability to store more trains south of Angle Lake Station when Lynnwood Link opens. Various service reductions are in effect south of SeaTac Station through June 22nd.
ST is asking for input on TOD design at Federal Way Station through June 3.
ST has a survey on Stride station names through May 31. Nathan listed the alternatives in an earlier open thread. There’s also a survey on TOD design at Federal Way Station through June 3.
Seattle Subway has a petition asking the Sound Transit board not to pursue the new South Lake Union alternatives for Ballard Link. ST staff are against it too.
Local News & Miscellaneous
The Seattle Times ($) reviews the recently-released 2023 population estimates showing a slowdown in Seattle.
Berlin and Nuremberg in Germany are considering TSB maglev train lines. We wrote about TSB technology in December.
Ron Davis writes about how increasing density doesn’t lower the cost of housing per se, but increasing supply does.
In New York City, curbside parking might be an endangered species (NYT, free).
This is an open thread.
It’s hard to align what is described in this article with what is/has been happening on the Lynnwood Link Extension per testing, but it sounds like we can expect to see substantially increased activity on LLE going forward.
Good news.
https://www.shorelineareanews.com/2024/05/lynnwood-link-enters-training-and.html?m=1
Sounds like they’re entering Pre-Revenue Service testing, which usually takes 2-3 months. Given that opening is just 3 months and 1 week away, that’s right on time.
@Nathan,
ST announced a little while ago that they were moving into simulated service testing. So that should be old news.
And there shouldn’t be any dead tows during simulated service testing. Fit and function has already been verified, and Link LRV’s have been operating under their own power on the line for at least a month and a half now. And apparently at line speed.
So, ya, that article is a bit mixed up. I’m sure they will still discover issues and need to work along the line. That is normal. But those pickups should also be relatively minor.
But hey, progress is progress. The transit world is about to change dramatically, and for the better,
Houghton P&R converted into a temporary park featuring a skate park, pickleball courts, community garden, a bike course, and more.
https://www.kirklandwa.gov/Government/Departments/Parks-and-Community-Services/Find-a-Park/Former-Houghton-Park-Ride
Tacoma Link was projected at 2000-4000 daily boardings. Ringing in at 2900, and growing.
I’m actually pleasantly surprised.
And that’s ignoring all the teens from Stadium who I see filling trains that don’t tap.
Teens ride free. So they don’t have to tap. Tho it would be nice if they did for data collection purposes.
Another engineer, wrong. Just because youth have predictably turned “free, but tap,” into “free, so why tap?,” doesn’t mean they aren’t supposed to tap.
The trains likely use APCs and count everyone, regardless of whether they tap
@Sam– Actually, right. The statute requires transit agencies to make youth access a “low barrier” program, which essentially means it’s an honor system. Operators and fare ambassadors do not challenge riders who claim to be youths. They should tap. They should have tickets. They should be counted. But none of that is *required*.
Your conclusion was wrong. You equated the youth fare being free to them therefore not having to tap. “Teens ride free. So they don’t have to tap.” That statement isn’t correct. Now you are trying to shift the argument to statutes and honor systems, and I won’t allow that.
From the Pierce Transit website …
“All youth 18 or younger ride public transit for free!
If you are a rider age 13 or older please tap your Youth ORCA card, also known as Free Youth Transit Pass, when you board. Please note: if you received your card at school, to ensure that it provides free rides up until your nineteenth birthday, update your youth card expiration date by registering it online. Otherwise, the card provided at school will automatically “convert” to an Adult card.”
Also, “another engineer,” I want you think of a new commenter name. I have never cared for handles that start with the word another. I’ll help you think of a new one if you can’t think of anything.
My son never received a card, and I think he might have to go to Seattle to get a youth card. Which is a non-starter.
When I talked to PT, they said either tap or show student ID. I reality, neither is necessary, and it only confuses the drivers.
It’s a different world down in these parts. Maybe 1% of the population as an Orca card, and expecting students who have never had one, and don’t need one, to try and figure out how to get one is ludicrous. Even if they were required by law to, it would be a ludicrous law.
We are trying to get our youth to use and get used to and be comfortable on transit. They are our next generation of advocates.
Creating massive barriers does the opposite, bean counters be damned.
“Youth who do not have a Youth ORCA Card or Student ID can still ride for free. Just get on board!*
https://info.myorca.com/youth-ride-free/
Pierce Transit gets it. Sam does not.
Cam, I guess you are right. “Youth who do not have a Youth ORCA Card or Student ID can still ride for free. Just get on board!” I was just going by what Pierce Transit said.
@Cam,
Thanks for clearing this all up, looks like you (and another engineer) were right — youth don’t need to tap.
I sort of wish they did have to tap. It builds good habits for adulthood, and it does help with data collection as another engineer states.
It would be pretty simple to just mail all the junior high and HS students youth Orcas if the transit agencies gave a shit. They clearly don’t .
@Cam,
I don’t know what schools do now, but when I was a kid we all had school ID cards. I’d just add the ORCA functionality to that. No need for multiple cards.
My son thinks, before things were free, he knew a few kids who would take it upon themselves to request them from the school, if they qualified for a free one (they had to live more than 2 miles from the school and not be served by a bus route, or something…). After kids started riding free, they stopped bothering. There probably is still a week or two at the beginning of the school year where they distribute youth cards to those who know to ask for them (but why would they?), but I’ve never seen it posted or advertised in any of the correspondence, and I read it all.
It looks like he could upload a picture of his student id, and eventually get one in the mail. Or he could go down to the Tacoma Dome during a weekday with ID and get one.
Again, pretty unnecessary barriers, that would probably significantly suppress student ridership if it were required, just to bump daily ridership up a few hundred.
I’m a stats geek, and love the most accurate data. But if collecting that data interferes with my primary mission, I just let it go. Same rules apply.
” Or he could go down to the Tacoma Dome during a weekday with ID and get one.”
Getting permission to miss his classes, of course.
If they want to ride the monorail for free, they have to get a Youth ORCA card. I don’t know any other agency requiring that. But the monorail and Washington State Ferries are the only services with turnstiles.
How does WSF handle letting kids without cards through the turnstiles?
The issue of checking youth fares is probably a lot more simple than younglings five or under. I was reminded of this when the bus I was riding yesterday had four younglings at a bus stop were waving at the bus. As per policy requiring a responsible adult, the driver did not stop. Maybe one of them was older than six. I don’t know if the state law took supervision requirements seriously, and whether that oversight puts unintentional liability on the state.
One of the major contributing factors to driver shortages Post-COVID is that Metro continues to abide by its very antiquated hiring policy. An applicant goes through so much verfication and training only to start off part-time at terrible hours. How competitie is that to remote or hybrid work and flexible hours elsewhere?
True. The unions are a big problem too. All the easy routes are sucked up by old timers leaving shit for the newbies. In real companies, the worst stuff often falls on the longer time employees…. that’s what they get paid the big bucks for.
How is that fair ? If they did things like that, they would have very little retention of employees.
In most public transit jobs, (Union or not.), Shifts are picked by seniority. New drivers understand that they will get tough pieces of work to start, but will eventually work their way into a piece of work they actually like.
Companies can do other things to mitigate that process like limiting spread time, or offering shift differentials for difficult to fill times a day or certain routes.
Michelle S.
Actually in non-union jobs, the boss just tells you what to do and you do it. I made a living laying tile over bad sheetrock. If the framing and sheetrock (or hardy board) are level and straight, it’s a pretty easy job. Any rookie can do it and that’s how they learn to do the tougher patterns and deal with crooked underlayment.
As a journeyman you have to do the hard jobs and do them right.
The disaster that the unions at Pierce Transit and Metro built are a group of 50 year old drivers taking all the easy shifts and routes (for decades) and this always changing lineup of young drivers who quit (to drive cement truck or something with less political bullshit and more uniform hours… plus better pay up front) Now the geezers are retiring and Metro has a lack of any experienced drivers. Please go drive a bus if you want! It’s honest work and you’re an asset to the community. But the union stuff isn’t going to sit well with you at all.
It’s not a unique problem. It’s Boomers and Gen X dealing young folks off the bottom of the deck. See our “housing problem” for details….
I’m with Michelle on this one. It would be a really bad idea for a company to treat their experienced employees worse than the new ones. It really doesn’t matter what the work is. I’ve worked a bunch of different jobs and they never did that. Off the top of my head I’m thinking fast food, security, movie theater ticket sales, landscaping (that was brutal) and software. At Taco Time I got to know the boss. It was interesting to see her juggle the schedule. Her regulars (i. e. folks that had been there a while) got the 9-5 slots. Kids like me (working in the summer to save money for college) got rotating crap. Twenty years later, while working as a security guard (and taking care of kids) it was the same thing. My first real profession was software and again I started at the bottom and eventually worked my way up.
Of course there are exceptions, but those are based on exceptional skills. A cyber-security expert that used to work for Google is not going to be handed a crappy project off the bat. But that is essentially a different job. A doctor is not going to be treated the same as a CNA. But an experienced CNA is going to get a better shift than the new CNA.
It doesn’t matter if the employees are unionized or not. It has to do with rewarding experience. Talk to any boss and they will tell you that hiring is a pain in the ass. The last thing you want to do is have an experienced worker leave because they don’t feel rewarded.
Holy cow, your argument is completely backwards. We know for a fact that it is difficult to hire drivers. It is a national, if not international problem. There are particulars that make it difficult (we test to see if you’ve smoked weed in your off hours even though it is legal here). It takes a while to train them. There are hoops they have to jump through. The last thing in the world you want to do is see a bunch of experienced workers leave. Management is busy trying to speed up the hiring process but you can bet your ass they are also doing whatever they can to keep their existing employees employed. Giving them crappy shifts would be a terrible idea.
Oh, and in general the union is one of the more attractive aspects of the job. Drivers have a ton of options right now. If you are thinking about the next year, or even the next couple years then there are probably better options out there. But someone focused on the next twenty years is probably better off at Metro, because of the union. If and when the economy has a downturn and there is a surplus of workers someone at Metro is safe, whereas a lot of drivers would be out of luck.
I’m not saying there aren’t aspects of the hiring process as well as the job that can’t be reformed, but the union is one of the few attractions to the job.
Agreed. A friend started at PT at 50(!) and a year in he’s already got a decent route. Not his ideal, but not terrible. He started full-time, and he has lots of opportunities for OT.
He’s crossing his fingers he can make it 10 years, and retire, because the pension the union negotiated will keep him housed and fed in his “Golden years.” And the union has also gotten him 3 decent pay raises, so now his up over $30 an hour, base. substantially more driving OT.
Metro is now hiring directly to full-time. Eliminating a bunch of peak-only routes enabled Metro to get to the point it could do that.
Read the Ron Davis post…. oh my, some people just can’t learn. Another rant on housing using “peer reviewed university studies” to support his arguments. I think most of America realizes that much of university research is completely disconnected from real life. The poor dude even brings Tokyo as an example of “good” urban planning. The USA is not Europe or Japan. At what point does the Left bring something new or even logical to housing debate? Something with actual math supporting it? Here’s a quote from the post….
“But we don’t say silly things like “if a ton of people lived in tall buildings on this street, housing would be cheaper.”
We say things like, “if there were as many houses as there are people that really want to live here, housing would be more affordable.”
What?!?! “If there were as many houses as there are people that really want to live here, housing would be affordable”. ?!?!? That’s like saying “If my grandpa was still alive he’d be really really old”. Mr. Davis doesn’t seem to grasp the Seattle housing problem whatsoever. Once again, here’s what Mr. Davis can’t seem to understand.
As long as America allows the freedom of movement…. Rich Liberals will continue to flock to the dozen or so cities they love and those places will not be affordable. If you just think of Seattle as “San Francisco North” it’s easier to understand. There is a huge group of people who wish to move to Seattle who have more money than the local population. Build as many new housing units as you want to…. every time somebody from California outbids a local for housing.. There’s just no real housing affordability in a free market system in highly desirable markets (like Seattle).
This dovetails well into light rail and TOD housing plans. This is where the local population gets pushed out to…. an hour commute on transit to “The City” and cramped little apartments. Workforce housing. I’m guessing this is market supported so it can easily happen. My question to the group would be…. How do you feel about living in Federal Way if (when?) you get priced out of Seattle? Remember, housing is not about zoning… it’s about desire.
So…you want the only housing option to be single family, so the only affordable housing requires a 3 hour commute?
Oh Glenn in Portland,
Please reread my post. I didn’t use the words “single family homes” once.
But let’s live in reality here. People make 3 hour commutes in The City of Roses everyday. Because they can’t afford a house in Portland and likely because they don’t want their kids growing up there. The Urban growth boundary in Oregon just made people move out father, right? Life is just a series of choices…. buy a house in Otis and do a hellish commute 2-3 times a week OR rent a sketchy apartment in North Portland and watch the rent go up…. or the neighborhood get worse… or both.
I’d pick Otis, but to each their own. But let’s not start thinking we can take away people’s free will. People will always skirt around any rules if it suits them. Portland is chock full of people wanting to live a smaller town outside the circus the city has become.
Every cloud has a sliver lining. Portland’s homeless problem is every bit as bad as much of California’s now. That’s got to slow down immigration somewhat. The real problems for housing and urban decay in both Washington and Oregon start in California. San Francisco couldn’t get its shit together and the tech bros moved North. That’s the story of the last 25 years.
Ron Davis is a Seattle Lefty BTW…. he actually knows a lot about development. That’s why his post is such total crap. He should know better.
“People make 3 hour commutes in The City of Roses everyday. Because they can’t afford a house in Portland and likely because they don’t want their kids growing up there. The Urban growth boundary in Oregon just made people move out father, right? Life is just a series of choices…. buy a house”
Lower-income people don’t have houses. You’re conflating lower-income people who don’t have a choice but to live in an outer suburban apartment, vs people who choose to live in the fringe because they insist on having a house and yard.
Who needs facts, data, and research when you’ve got The Personal Feelings of politically biased people on internet blogs?
Thanks Brandon.
I’m glad you see Mr. Davis for the political axe grinder he is. Was there any part of that article that made any sense at all? Because we’ve all heard this housing song before. “Peer reviewed university studies” blah, blah, blah… “Tokyo!” blah, blah, blah…. Social housing in Austria! blah, blah, blah.
Jesus. There’s a reason Davis lost his City Council election. He’s bringing nothing to party.
tacomee, I don’t think Brandon was referring to Ron Davis.
For someone with a law degree from Harvard I have always thought Ron Davis was more heat than light. His posts don’t seem well constructed. More like rabble rousing to one’s audience of 11,000.
I am not sure why someone would bring up Tokyo as a model of urban planning when the city is the size of Snohomish, King and Pierce Counties combined, and no urban planner would argue having 32 million residents living in one city is a good idea. Is Mumbai good urban planning? It is why the PSRC tries to disperse jobs and employment throughout the Puget Sound Region even though the three-county region’s population is 1/10th of Tokyo’s.
Davis ignores some critical facts. The 2020 census found housing growth in Seattle had kept pace with population growth since 2010. Danny Westneat had a recent article noting housing production in Seattle is outpacing population growth over the last two years, which has slowed to around 5000 new residents last year. Although some think post-pandemic the Office of Financial Management’s future population growth estimates from 2019 to 2024 are high based on actual growth since 2019, the fact is the OFM projects around 40,000 new residents statewide per year, which isn’t that much. It isn’t as if 1 million new residents will show up tomorrow, or builders should build for 1 million new residents before they show up. What the OFM and GMPC are saying to cities is start to think about ZONING for the new residents, except King Co. already has existing zoning capacity for 800,000 new residents.
After the GMPC issued its housing growth targets every city in King Co. Except Sammamish figured that was it, they were done, they had zoning mostly in their dense zones to meet their future housing growth targets. None was affordable, but the GMPC doesn’t require affordability.
What Davis fails to distinguish is housing vs. affordable housing, and what state and county policies consider “affordable” housing.
The GMPC in 2022 allocated future housing targets to cities through 2044. Few cities plan to zone for more than that number. King Co. has mandated that nearly 100% of those future housing targets must be affordable to those in the 0% to 60% AMI band, AND all affordable housing must be in a dense zone within walkable transit so the person does not need a car that can cost $1000/mo. for gas, insurance, maintenance and parking. This basically has been the PSRC’s vision since at least 2010.
So there you have it. If a city doesn’t plan to voluntarily increase its GMPC housing growth targets and every new unit must be in a dense zone, that leaves the SFH zones out.
Housing affordability is based on a federal formula that states housing costs should not exceed 30% of someone’s gross income. If all of those new units must be affordable to 0% to 60% AMI then that means very small and very dense units in large scale projects which that might pencil out for the builder, but I doubt it.
Although some want to upzone or rezone the SFH zones King Co. does not – or doesn’t care – because it doesn’t believe that NEW housing will ever be affordable to those earning 0% to 60% AMI, and since most cities don’t plan on exceeding their GMPC housing growth targets and nothing in the SFH zone can meet a city’s affordability mandates upzoning the SFH zones isn’t something that is on the front burner. Urbanists care for some reason, but not King Co. or most councils.
Davis wants to sound dramatic and moral but King Co. would argue his rant is just the opposite, because none of the housing he is proposing through upzoning would be affordable to anyone earning less than 100% or even 200% of AMI. How do you upzone Wallingford to create 0% to 60% AMI housing? You can’t. To focus on that is immoral, according to King Co. His argument that a shortage of housing can increase prices can be correct, but there isn’t a zoning or housing shortage, and new market rate housing is rarely if ever affordable to those earning 60% AMI or below. So Davis is completely missing the issue which is a shortage of housing affordable to those earning 0% to 60% AMI.
The final issue is politics. The Seattle City Council fundamentally changed last year. The 8-year update of the comp. Plan was supposed to occur in 2022 but due to Covid was extended to 2024. The prior council had stacked the planning commission with progressive urbanists who want to upzone the SFH zone and planned to do that in the new comp. plan, but Sara Nelson and her majority don’t, and neither does Harrell. In the suburbs it is the same. Since there is no legal or moral grounds to force Nelson or Harrell or the suburbs to upzone the SFH zones, and being more conservative much more of their base comes from the SFH zone, they don’t plan to upzone the SFH zone or exceed their GMPC future housing targets that must all be in a dense zoning within walking distance of transit when most Eastside SFH zones have no transit at all. Some like Davis think his heat is light, but it isn’t
In my opinion the greater issue is how to get builders to build 0% to 60% AMI. Otherwise all King Co.’s mandates will do is grind housing construction to a halt, which many cities won’t mind. .
@Fact Check
> Is Mumbai good urban planning? It is why the PSRC tries to disperse jobs and employment throughout the Puget Sound Region even though the three-county region’s population is 1/10th of Tokyo’s.
I find it kind of funny/ignorant you bring up Mumbai, when Indian cities are actually one of the sobering examples of overly strict zoning. They have very strict zoning, which means there is insufficient housing built so informal housing is built instead.
“In Delhi, the floor space-to-land ratio is usually 2. In Los Angeles it can be as high as 13, and in Singapore it can get as high as 25.” “In Mumbai 1.33 is the norm”
https://marketurbanism.com/2019/04/26/human-cost-zoning-indian-cities/
“The scarcity of housing supply in Indian cities is attributed to stringent zoning regulations, primarily the Floor Area Ratio (FAR), which restricts how much floorspace can be developed on a given land size.”
https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/impactevaluations/affordable-skylines-unpacking-impact-zoning-relaxation-india-guest-post-geetika
“The USA is not Europe or Japan.”
Just because it’s a different political entity with a different social structure doesn’t mean there’s nothing in their city designs or transit infrastructure that may be applicable to American cities.
“At what point does the Left bring something new”
It’s not a predominantly political argument, much less a far-left issue (which “the Left” is often used to mean). It’s an argument on economics, housing, and walkability, which has people from all over the left-middle-right spectrum, even if the average proponent may be middle-left.
I don’t feel like getting into the “housing is cheaper if you build more of it” vs “no, it won’t” debate, since I’ve already said a lot about it and I’d just be repeating myself.
“Rich Liberals will continue to flock to the dozen or so cities they love”
Why do they flock there? Partly for the convenience, which gets into walkability and transit. And partly because in some red states they’re losing their voting rights and personal freedoms and basic services, so they want to where they can have them. And why talk about “rich liberals” when 90% of liberals aren’t rich? Why not talk about average liberals, or average people?
So we could make more cities more viable for people who care about walkability and transit by… making other cities more walkable and with a wider variety of housing. Then “liberals” wouldn’t concentrate in the few cities that have them.
Why liberals are in a few select cities is realistically that is where the good paying jobs or that their industry is there, as a lot of said people work in services and similar type jobs.
Like I just graduated college with a Bachelors in Hospitality Management and my specific degree and field in hospitality (events) is going to be in first and second tier metros with a mish mash of third tier and tourist destinations in there for good measure because they all have convention centers or meeting/convention like spaces or great for incentive travel. I can’t really move to much smaller or rural areas because the pay is going to be realistically terrible or low.
Alongside job and promotional opportunities aren’t really there. It’s why the economy of the rust belt and other rural areas is still in stagnation compared to the coastal metros with some exceptions in the Midwest like Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Detroit (surprisingly).
Like for all the talk of “just move somewhere cheap” it ignores that it is an overly simplistic assumption that no one ever considered that even though most people I know have considered it and then concluded when they actually looked at less populated regions that it wasn’t worth it for the opportunity cost it entails. I mean it’s why people aren’t clamoring to Aberdeen/Hoquim compared to Olympia for instance. A friend of mine has joked that Aberdeen/Hoquim is “like visiting a place where the parade left decades ago”, could say the same about Chehalis/Centralia among other small WA cities or towns that had a thriving industry at one point that died within the last 50 to 70 or so years.
Are there exceptions, sure like Walla Walla, Tri-Cities, Wenatchee, and Yakima.
Seattle will continue to be main reason to move to here because it is realistically where most of the jobs are. Tech, Science, Professional Business Services, Medical, Aerospace, Financial, Tourism, etc.
You either build for the future or kick yourself for not doing it sooner.
Zach B
Here’s the problem with building for the future, city-wise. Nobody knows what that is. In 1977 both Detroit and Seattle were both down on their luck. I’d guess popular opinion at the time would favor the Motor City for a comeback over Jet City.
How could have either City planned for next 50 years?????
Let me give you some advice about the hospitality industry. My niece is a “resort accountant”….. that just an account who’s done all of her work for hotels and resorts. As you know, it’s sort of specialized work. She’s moved all over the place…. Reno, Vegas, Montana and now Wyoming… as a lesbian in her early 30s, with 10 years work experience, she’s beginning to think where she’d like to work instead of just fallowing opportunity from place to place. But honestly… she’s got to experience a lot of places and meet a lot of different kinds of folks. She’s one of my favorites because of the fun factor to hang out with. This might be your chance to see America! Good luck!!
> Here’s the problem with building for the future, city-wise.
Upzoning doesn’t cost much besides changing the law to allow private developers to build.
“Let me give you some advice about the hospitality industry.”
Please stop doing this because
A. I never once asked you for advice, not once and yet you keep doing it.
B. I have 8+ years experience in my industry so I know what I’m talking about in what I said about job prospects.
C. You have given out a lot of terrible advice that you think is wisdom but is actually very unhelpful advice as it’s very outdated and frankly unrealistic to a younger person’s perspective or circumstances.
This is something you need to hear from someone 30-40 years your junior.
Just stop, listen intently, take in and process what someone is saying before speaking with what you want to immediately say in response.
You have a nasty habit of interjecting with an opinion from the hip and not doing enough listening because you think your answer is generally right. That is genuinely unhelpful and honestly makes you look arrogant and condesending to younger people who probably didn’t ask for your opinion from the hip in the first place. Sometimes it’s better to just listen, nod and take it in rather than espousing for the sake of espousing.
“How do you feel about living in Federal Way if (when?) you get priced out of Seattle?”
That’s something I’ve been thinking about for years, as I may someday get priced out of Seattle and have to move to Kent or Federal Way or Tacoma or Lynnwood or Everett. The answer is somewhat bleak because I really, really don’t want to live in an area with only infrequent transit, large parking lots in front of big-box stores, feeling like a third-class citizen, and having extraordinary hardships for most of my trips. That’s why I’m so keen on making the suburbs more walkable and with more frequent grid-like transit, for everybody who has been displaced to those places or would like a lower cost of living.
I feel your pain Mike!
Believe it or not, I’m not some sort of “housing troll” who shows up on this blog once a week to piss you off. I have a real interest in real solutions. Ron Davis is a bitter guy who just lost an election. I don’t think he has any solutions.
I think the right question might be…. “How to we make Federal Way better” instead of “How to make affordable housing in Seattle”. I understand why people really want, and I mean really want, affordable housing in places like Capitol Hill. It’s a great place I love! I also understand that market forces likely make that impossible. So what’s option #2? On a National scale, it’s migration away from the coasts to more affordable housing in the Midwest. On a local scale it’s reforming satellite towns and suburbs into nicer places to live.
There’s even a racial aspect to this…. King County has been losing White people and gaining immigrants. These newcomers can’t afford Seattle and are settling in places like SeaTac and Tukwila. These are the market forces we’re dealing with….. the key is a plan to prevent endless strip mall type sprawl.
Davis is a political hack who does understand that the days of low income and even moderate income people living on Capitol Hill are likely numbered. But he doesn’t say that…. he posts some word salad that implies all sorts of “pie in sky” stuff with no plan of action. He’s the problem, not the solution. As long as hucksters are pitching crap like social housing and bringing up European solutions, nothing will get done.
The main problem with the suburbs is they’re following the same urban village model as Seattle but in an even more limited way. So the walkable or semi-walkable parts of the city are only 20-30% of the land, and unsurprisingly they’re the most expensive (excluding shoreline views and the like. I’ve sometimes looked a bit at Lynnwood or Greenwood or Kent and found I’d save only around $200 per month. So then I ask, is $200 a month worth it for more frequent transit options, a variety of stores I can walk to, and seeing neighbor-pedestrians, and the answer is always yes. Even if the difference were $400-500 I’d still probably think it’s worth it, and I’m thankful I can afford to choose.
What I’d like to see is some of the lesser commercial districts in the suburbs become more like Greenwood/Ballard/Capitol Hill or such — places like Crossroads, Kent East Hill, the 99 corridor in Snohomish, The Landing, Tacoma Mall, etc. More mixed-size neighborhoods instead of big-box stores and breadbox apartments, smaller blocks, put the parking in back, no large setbacks, local businesses rather than just large chains, and bus routes at least every 15 minutes full time. That would allow people who want walkability and transit to spread out to more places, and even people who aren’t specifically looking for it but are OK it would benefit. That includes a lot of lower-income people.
Mike Orr,
I totally agree with all this. The big reason I’ve always fought against Sound Transit is all of their projects never go South of the freeways in Tacoma. Except for the rapid ride project down Pacific Ave…. then the bastards completely messed that up. Don’t get me started on the bus service upgrades we could have had for the price for the rail line to the Stadium District.
Tacoma Mall makes so much tax revenue for Tacoma… and the city government squanders most of it on downtown. When can we start work on a housing and transit plan for the Mall area? South End? Eastside? Lincoln District? Anywhere but downtown?
Here’s another thing many “outsiders” don’t understand about T-town. If you’re White and live in North Tacoma…. the center of the City is downtown. If you’re not White and live anywhere else…. the Tacoma Mall is likely your City center. It’s why I fight with Troy so much.
“The big reason I’ve always fought against Sound Transit is all of their projects never go South of the freeways in Tacoma. Except for the rapid ride project down Pacific Ave…. then the bastards completely messed that up. Don’t get me started on the bus service upgrades we could have had for the price for the rail line to the Stadium District.”
I agree that ST does little for Pierce County. Regional transit that ends at Tacoma Dome is like how U-Link for north Seattle was (terminating just over the ship canal at Husky Stadium), or the former 26/28 overlap for north Seattle (separating at 34th & Fremont, just over the Ship Canal). And PT’s underfunding, and unwillingness to aggressively pursue its long-range plan prevents the rest of the gap from being filled. But all this is a “Made in Pierce County” problem: it’s Pierce politicians that made ST’s network the way it is, and neglect PT.
The ultimate problem is a failure to look higher and see the potential Pierce could have. My dad grew up in Lakewood/Tacoma and I still have an uncle or two there, so I’ve long heard about Tacoma being a place to live and set roots in long-term. But when I look at Tacoma, I see the 20th-century turn to car orientation/dependency. It’s all over PT’s schedule, the strip-mall retail layout, the large residential-only areas. I walked north from Wright Park to see the north-central neighborhoods and I almost cried: you can see the pattern of “streetcar suburbs silently turning into automobile suburbs”. I lived through that in Bellevue in the 70s and 80s and I can’t go back to it, or start over to try to improve the landscape, or die before it’s fulfilled.
You know Tacoma better than I do, so you know which secondary areas would be the best starting points for my less-expensive walkable neighborhood vision. I’m looking for existing commercial districts (to minimize nimby opposition) on low-hanging-fruit corridors for transit. You mentioned the Lincoln District, which I don’t know, but from the map it’s a few blocks from Pacific Ave, so the someday-Stream-vision would serve it.
A treat is coming on Monday for you. You won’t like all of it. (the article’s suggestions).
“There’s a reason Davis lost his City Council election.”
I don’t know who Ron Davis is or what he ran for; one of the staff gave me the link, and because it was about housing I put it in.
I’ve only been in Tacoma for 4 years, but I’m much more optimistic than you, Mike. My optimism does not necessarily extend to transit, but I don’t see N. Tacoma turning into Bellevue. The roads are narrow, the sidewalks are good, people drive pretty slow. Other than the massive mistake that was I-705 and Schuster Parkway, and State route 163 (Pearl St), I don’t think there are any multi-lane roads on the north-end, except a portion of 21st Ave, and there is a plan to fix that.
Tacoma has been much more aggressive than Seattle about zoning SFH areas out of existence, with Home in Tacoma pushed through, even before the state made their moves with the missing middle SB 1110. Stadium, Old Town and North Slope all have a nice mix of apartments interspersed in the historical old homes, which often have been cut into apartments themselves. I find the whole area incredibly walkable, with grocery store, pharmacies, hardware stores, hospitals, primary care and dozens of restaurants and bars an easy walk from my house. I’m incredibly privileged to be able to live here. But it’s not incredibly exclusive, with apartments I walk by every day under $1000/mo.
Downtown and hilltop do have some excess capacity and some obvious candidates for changing from 4 lanes, to 2 with a middle turn lane, to improve safety, but much of it is also very walkable, with some preserved small store fronts from a better era. They put in a bike boulevard on Fawcett and plan to do the same on J.
The south-end on the other hand, is horrifically damaged my all the very fast, very wide roads. One to two blocks on either side of Pac Ave is basically a long corridor of blight, with cheaper housing going in, because it’s one of the few places that in the past had been zoned for it, but it’s an incredibly hostile place to try to survive outside of a car.
The Lincoln district could be a real gem if they narrowed 38th to 1 lane in each direction and slowed things down, but as it is, the 38th destroys the hopes for improving that neighborhood. There are some large private developments going in along 38th, and it is much more walkable than most of south Tacoma, but until 38th is fixed, it is fatally flawed.
The West End is hopelessly car-dependent, and Hwy 16 really creates a huge barrier to trying to walk or bike to and from east to west. It’s beautiful, and has some retail, service, gyms and parks I do frequent, but it’s hard to access. My son takes transit or bike to get there, and I do too on occasion, but it’s a challenge.
The East Side has always struggled, with some of the worst under-resourced neighborhoods, anchored by Salishan, a huge public housing development. It’s well-kept and attractive, but when I go there is just feels eerie. The parks and playgrounds are empty, and I can sense fear. This was Council Member Ushka’s area of passion, and she did a lot for the neighborhood including the Eastside Community Center, where her memorial was that I attended. She will be sorely missed.
One neighborhood you might want to explore is McKinley. It’s got a nice retail corridor, and it served by transit, and though it is still mostly SFH, they are more modest and affordable, and I sense it will see a multifamily boom in the near future.
Regarding transit in Pierce County, I have heard some rumbling in circles that their is a push to get a bond measure on the ballot. It would be ideal if it was this fall, with a large turnout making the odds of passage greater, but it doesn’t sound like they got their act together quickly enough for that to happen. I am optimistic for 2025 or 2026, however.
If you are serious about considering Tacoma, I’d also look closely at South Tacoma (as opposed to the Southend, which is on the other side of I-5, and is dominated by Pac Ave), near South Tacoma Way and 56th Ave. It’s got a strong, old retail corridor, and it reminds me somewhat of Georgetown 25 years ago. Transit there is decent, for Tacoma, with Route 3 and a Sounder station.
“I find the whole area incredibly walkable, with grocery store, pharmacies, hardware stores, hospitals, primary care and dozens of restaurants and bars an easy walk from my house.”
Where is the walkable area? I walked on I Street and Alder Street from Wright Park to N 30th. I saw almost all houses and apartments, and it seemed like a long walk to anything.
Yeah, I suspected you walked on I, which turns into 21st. It’s the worst road in the northed, other than the highways.
From my house, near Frisko Freeze, I can walk to Stadium District, with a Thriftway grocery store, pharmacy and a number of restaurants and other .stores
I can walk east to 6th Ave, with probably the best strip of retail and restaurants in Tacoma.
I can walk south to Hilltop, which has a Safeway, and a bunch of restaurants and stores along 11th and along MLK.
I can walk north to 3 bridges with a bunch of services, coffee ship and restaurants and bars . You would have eventually gotten there if you had continued along I St.
All that is within a mile of where I live. While not right outside your apt, it kind of reminds me of N Capital Hill back in the 90s. If Tacoma had annexed Lakewood, Spanaway and Parkland like Seattle annexed 85th to 145th, Tacoma would have a similar size and feel of whay Seattle was, when I moved there 30 years ago. And frankly liked that Era much better than Seattle’s current incarnation.
I don’t know who Ron Davis is or what he ran for;
Ron Davis ran for District 4 (https://seattle4ron.com/). He lost by about 300 votes to Maritza Rivera. He was endorsed by plenty of establishment politicians as well as several organizations (including The Urbanist). If we did political endorsements anymore he would have gotten it. Davis probably would have won in most years, and probably would have won if we held city council elections on even years (as we should). But turnout was low, and the city is still in the midst of its law-and-order period (that came from the George Floyd protests). Various people have been successful in blaming the city council for problems that are nationwide (e. g. the pandemic, fentanyl, etc.) or due to the (old) mayor. In short it was a “Seattle Times” election, and Davis lost, like so many others.
He has appeared on radio programs as a progressive voice. I don’t think he writes a blog, but he does send out periodic emails that are similar. They are essentially just political essays. I think they are fairly thoughtful and I agree with most of what he has to say.
Ron Davis is a bitter guy who just lost an election. I don’t think he has any solutions. Davis is a political hack who does understand that the days of low income and even moderate income people living on Capitol Hill are likely numbered.
This comment is clearly against the rules. I would edit it, but I think it is important that you understand what you did wrong here. The rules are fairly simple: argue against the ideas, not the person. What you engaged in was not only a logical fallacy (https://www.txst.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/Ad-Hominem.html) but it is a violation of the comment policy.
It is also complete bullshit. You cite no examples of his bitterness and I’ve never read any. He isn’t a political hack (or he wouldn’t have gathered all of those endorsements). He has plenty of solutions that can be easily found by looking at his old campaign website. (Oh, it is funny that you know enough about him to proclaim him “bitter” and a “hack”, but not enough to know whether he has any solutions.) As for Capitol Hill, why did you specifically mention Capitol Hill when it isn’t in District Four (an area he would represent if he won)? My guess is to drive home your straw man argument (another logical fallacy — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man). People are not focused on the affordability of Capitol Hill. People are talking about Seattle and Capitol Hill is only a very tiny part of it. Affordable housing is quite possible in places like my neighborhood (since it is close to Lake City) and people like Mike would probably prefer living there versus living in Federal Way.
So what walking route(s) would you recommend, to see Tacoma’s lesser-known potential? Besides the obvious downtown, 6th Avenue, and Pacific Avenue?
What’s the most promising street on the Hilltop? I spent a summer near S 19th & Cushman, so I got a feel for 19th and 25th. The north-south streets I couldn’t tell which was the most promising; there were buses on Tacoma, Yakima, and MLK.
Hilltop is definitely anchored by MLK. It has T-Link, many historically black businesses, lots of restaurants, most of the hospitals in Tacoma, a few bars, 2nd Cycle (think Major Taylor), some new market-rate and lots of subsidized housing. Tacoma Housing Authority has been busy up there, because rents are rising. There is a strong concern that Washington’s most dense, diverse, historically black neighborhood is vulnerable to displacement, and they are trying to counteract that as much as possible. I consider 11th and MLK the heart of Hilltop, though that’s just 1 person’s opinion, and an outsider at that.
Yakima Ave is fast and dangerous. Pretty much the worst road in downtown from a walker and biker perspective, and it leads into I St and 21st (discussed above) It is starting to attract some residential, because it’s on the shoulder, and can have views.
Tacoma Ave is really downtown, or maybe just the eastern edge Hilltop. It has potential, but again, mostly for commercial and residential. It has the courts, jail and the main Library and a few other interesting businesses, including restaurants, coffee shops, bodegas and a brewery or two. Also with views, and leads into St. Helens and Stadium districts, with a lot more businesses. The city has, with tax incentives, been attempting to get a Town Center built just below Tacoma Ave on the south side of downtown, with a real grocery store and a bunch more housing, but I think it is in bankruptcy again.
As it happens, I’ve done a whole series of “urban hikes” through the pandemic and beyond with a friend who comes down from White Center, so I can recommend a number of them.
It depends on what distance and interest you have. We usually stay under 5 miles, and either do a loop, connect to transit for the return, or arrange a meetup and a ride. We focus on ending at a restaurant or brewery, and usually our focus is a it’s a mix of density and views, though with Tacoma it’s not possible to avoid neighborhoods entirely, and some neighborhoods, the architecture is worth the walk. I find the old housing stock of higher quality than much of Seattle.
I usually start near where I live near Stadium, but you would likely choose the dome as a starting point, arriving via transit. Briefly:
– Stadium to the Dome. Stadium, Hilltop, Brewery Blocks Tacoma Dome. Return via T-line, or walk via waterfront, and up St. Helens.
– Stadium-McKinley-Dome. Stadium, Hilltop, Lincoln District, 34th St Bridge (nice views), McKinley District, Back to the Dome. Hop on T-Line to return. This is longish.
– Stadium to Narrows Brewing. Following 6th, to Titlow, then walk the water. I left a truck for return trip.
– Stadium along 6th to UPS to Proctor to 3 bridges and back to Stadium. Also longish.
– Stadium to Old Town to Ruston. Also left my truck for return.
– Stadium to Hilltop, down 11th to Pac Ave, then climb back up St. Helens.
I’d also like to add some South Tacoma walks Like South Tacoma Way to Lincoln to McKinley, South Tacoma to Lakewood or Steilacoom or McKinley to Fife or to Puyallup, but these are very long, and I’ve done them only by bike in the past.
Fun fact: Hilltop residents were already concerned about growing gentrification and displacement around MLK in 1988.
“It depends on what distance and interest you have.”
I’m just wondering what are the most promising streets to visit, to see current or potential walkability. I’ve been on 6th Ave and MLK. So far I’m hearing S 11th Street, and S 38th west of Pacific Ave. And the City of Tacoma would like to recommend Tacoma Mall.
Cam, how flat are your suggestions? I can walk for an hour or two, mostly flattish, depending on the day. I’d also prefer starting/ending points on a frequent route or a priority route like the 1/2/3.
If you did the Proctor route, you would see all the homeowners who have been priced out of Ballard. It’s the hottest neighborhood, with a Safeway and a Metro. Market, coffee shops, restaurants, schools and a library. Though they are fighting it tooth and nail, but some multifamily is being built there. It’s walkable.
Also currently walkable are North Slope, Stadium, St Helens (North Downtown), Hilltop, Lincoln (4 Groceries, 2 Asian and a Mexican a bit further up at 56th).
Places I have an eye on with potential are McKinley and South Tacoma. There are certainly others, with a fair amount of low-income density to the southwest of the mall, and businesses popping up around there, but it’s very car-centric and unpleasant. University Place has developed a mini-mall and town center along Bridgeport with a fair amount of housing and a whole foods and Trader Joe’s, up the street.
The routes are mostly flat, or down, as my hiking partner can’t climb up. I use T-Link as an escalator.
Honestly the buses aren’t usable due to frequency. I do them solo, but would never ask a friend to wait an hour for a bus.
Tacomee
It’s not controversial at all in economics that building and approving more housing will increase the supply which will decrease the price. People just love to cherry pick the few articles which say the opposite.
The only real other thing that confuses people is that housing supply and demand is mostly regional as having jobs in one place and extra housing in the other state over isn’t really counted together.
I think people just don’t understand cause an effect. For example imagine kale suddenly got really popular. The price goes way up. Farmers respond and grow a lot more kale. Prices continue to climb and kale gets more and more popular. At this point someone could say “Hey, we’ve been growing more and more kale and prices continue to go up! Clearly growing more kale is not the answer.”
Of course eventually the farmers would saturate the market and the price of kale would drop back to what it was originally. It would basically reflect the cost of growing it. The same thing basically happens with housing. It happens more often because people see the cranes (in contrast to farming, which they largely ignore).
If we’re going to compare housing with kale farming, note that:
• there’s only so much land that is suitable for farming any particular crop
• below a certain price, the farmer doesn’t make any money. In the USA, this is moderated by various USDA policies that attempt to moderate boom and bust cycles that would ultimately bankrupt some farmers. There’s also such things as USDA loans for certain farming efforts.
Several years ago, I went through Cashmere, Washington. An entire section of downtown was filled with vacant buildings. All of this while the Puget Sound region was having its pre-2019 housing boom.
I equate this to climate and soil factors limiting the amount of places you can grow certain crops: some places just have very limited appeal to people wanting to live there.
It seems to me what is needed is a housing effort more like the USDA effort at encouraging crops while trying to keep any one market for a particular housing type to be oversaturated.
> there’s only so much land that is suitable for farming any particular crop
Well that’s the benefit of apartments. A 5 story apartment can provide 200 housing units versus 10 single family housing homes. It’s completely on another scale, the only reason we even have this problem is from single family zoning enforcing low density
Exactly.
When I bought my place in 2005, the choice was single family home for $149,000, shovel money to an apartment building owner, or get a $500,000 condo an hour away from my workplace.
It seems to me this price disparity points to a severely limited supply of condos.
I often wider what the discussion would look like if we looked at housing in square feet rather than number of units.
In the 1920’s big Victorian houses often took in boarders or were split into apartments. So a big 2800 square foot house could have 7 residents. That’s 400 square feet per person.
In the 1950’s, many new tract homes had less than 1500 square feet with four residents like two adults and two children. That’s 375 square feet per person.
Nowadays, our economic system encourages developers to build studios and one bedrooms. Many of these are above 400 square feet per person yet considered bad because of the limited living space provided. Plus, it takes lots more money to add all these extra kitchens and bathrooms. Finally, our building codes have made it infeasible to retrofit older homes for different layouts — so they instead get demolished for new structures that can only be financed by large development companies.
Maybe this simple shift in analytic measurement could result in a more practical set of actions to resolve the housing affordability crisis.
I don’t think it’ll change the discussion that much. Much of the talk about ‘small apartments’ I find are bad faith arguments by single family homes only proponents. They claim that they are for ‘larger apartments’, then why not allow increasing the FAR ratio which would actually allow those? Rarely have I seen an american person bring up small apartments that is actually interested in larger housing and is really just trying to maintain the status quo of single family housing zoning only.
> Nowadays, our economic system encourages developers to build studios and one bedrooms.
It’s the city local zoning not economic system. Seattle’s even relatively progressive against the rest of the nation allowing higher single staircase buildings than most other cities. (If one mandates two staircases then basically you have to build a hallway which means only studios and two bedrooms makes sense)
@WL:
“… then why not allow increasing the FAR ratio which would actually allow those? “
Even though you said it wouldn’t change the discussion, this very thing would! Our codes and discussions are unit obsessed. Our residential zoning could be managed with FAR instead and we could have a very different outcomes.
“It’s the city local zoning not economic system…”
The economic system responds to zoning. How many people can build a 65-foot tall apartment building — and wait a few years through property purchase, approval permitting and complex construction with steel and concrete at the bottom, for example? The two are fundamentally connected.
Good point Al S.
I’ve thought about this lot over the years. At no point in my life have I ever lived with more than 400 sq ft of “personal space” until the last 5 years. Much of my life it was 3-4 people in less than 1200 sq ft with one 6’X8′ bathroom.
Strangely enough I owe some of my success on never really having enough money to have my own place. Had roommates to save to buy a house, then had roommates to help pay the mortgage. Got married. Kids showed up. Friends needed a place to live. Life happened. I’m blessed!
This is why I think much of hate people feel towards single family homes is misplaced. Tearing down houses for one bedroom apartments may do nothing for density. Back in the 80s I lived with 4-5 other people in house in Wallingford. Good times I tell you. good times. Now that house has two people living in it? With two expensive cars in the driveway. One of them is an electric BMW. The owners are in their 60s. Californians. Nice people. I stopped to talk when they were doing yard work. This really is the problem…..
WL, I don’t hear the “bad faith” arguments you do from SFH communities. They are pretty direct. They don’t want multi-family rental housing because they don’t want lower income (single male) transients walking to a bus if there is one, and they object to greater FAR or lot coverage because it reduces the rural feel of their neighborhoods, both of which they think will lower the value of their neighborhood. Surrey Downs couldn’t be more direct. Today they have the upper political hand.
They don’t care about someone’s inability to afford to live in a SFH zone. That’s why they moved there. I can’t afford to join the tennis club but I doubt they care. But then neither does King Co. which has made a finding no amount of upzoning will ever create housing affordable for someone earning 0% to 60% AMI in a single family zone.
It is King Co. today effectively mandating smaller future units due to affordability mandates. The greatest affordability crisis is for low income families who once could rent a SFH in a less expensive neighborhood. Plus the GMPC does not consider size when allocations housing growth targets. A studio housing one person counts the same as a SFH housing a family of four, or a multi-generational house with 8 living there. So cities trying to meet those targets (most have done this since the 2035 Vision Statement) zone for more smaller units. Plus Seattle is unique because so many live alone. So even two bedroom units are rare, and very expensive.
I live in an urban zone. As someone who has lived in other large cities my two complaints about Seattle are apartment rents and the lack of really good urbanism. There is just so much vacant space in Seattle’s “urban zones”. I would like to see more infill housing development in the urban zones to hopefully create more retail density and walkability, and more affordable apartment rents.
I think fighting to upzone the SFH zones today is a loser political fight that doesn’t help those renters who don’t want to own a car and would like to see more development in the urban zones to create retail vibrancy. I don’t want all the builders to disperse to the SFH zones to build million dollar townhomes with a two car garage per unit that does nothing to make urban living more affordable and help create some actual retail vibrancy and density in Seattle’s urban zone.
So although it doesn’t affect me I agree with King Co. on this. Seattle needs a s%#t load of infill urban development for such a large city if it is ever going to have good urbanism. Sometimes I think we focus on the SFH zones so much we miss all the underdeveloped land in the urban areas where folks actually walk.
I don’t care about the SFH zone. I don’t want to live there. I do care about the crummy urbanism in Seattle because THE URBAN ZONES have such anemic density, which means anemic retail density unless I guess I want to go to U Village.
> WL, I don’t hear the “bad faith” arguments you do from SFH communities.
I suggest reading any facebook, youtube, reddit or even this blogs commentators about upzoning.
> I think fighting to upzone the SFH zones today is a loser political fight that doesn’t help those renters who don’t want to own a car and would like to see more development in the urban zones to create retail vibrancy. I don’t want all the builders to disperse to the SFH zones to build million dollar townhomes with a two car garage per unit that does nothing to make urban living more affordable and help create some actual retail vibrancy and density in Seattle’s urban zone.
Assuming you’re being earnest — which I’m not quite sure, I’m also not sure what are you so worried about. Most of the upzoning of single family homes currently is just to townhouses and the larger upzonings only occur next to the existing urban zones. Lastly, even for the urban zones they don’t allow as much as you think, a lot of it restricted to 3/4 story buildings.
> I don’t care about the SFH zone. I don’t want to live there. I do care about the crummy urbanism in Seattle because THE URBAN ZONES have such anemic density, which means anemic retail density unless I guess I want to go to U Village.
It’s the one and the same issue. The predominant reason urban zones are not upzoned further is to ‘protect’ the sfh zone with lower density closer to them. Secondly the urban zones do not sprout out magically, they are created from sfh zones.
It is always hard to tell if someone is arguing in good faith. I’ve heard people say things like “They added a bunch of apartments and rent is still high. Adding apartments doesn’t reduce rent!”
Are they arguing in good faith (and just ignorant) or are they throwing nonsensical arguments out there. In a torrential downpour my rain jacket will eventually get saturated. I will be wet inside, but not nearly as wet as I would be without it. Should I claim that it is useless in preventing rain, and actually caused me to get wet?
I can’t tell if people are familiar with the concept of “all other things being equal”. I feel like you don’t need a formal education to understand it, but I guess they teach it in philosophy (“ceteris paribus”). It seems like a lot of arguments are made by people who ignore this concept or are arguing in bad faith.
There are similar arguments out there, some of which are clearly straw men. For example you hear this one from the NIMBY left all the time: “Upzoning won’t create housing for the extremely poor!”
This is true, and no one said otherwise. But upzoning — all other things being equal — will make it much easier to produce housing for the extremely poor. Not only will you bring down the cost of middle-class housing (all other things being equal) but the cost of building public housing becomes a lot cheaper, which leads to more of it.
I have heard earnest arguments from people who simply don’t prioritize housing. The most common are aesthetic in nature (“I don’t want to live next to a six story building”) or based on traffic or parking. Arguments based on class are rare now and those based on race are hard to find around these parts. But it is common to find arguments based on the big three (aesthetics, traffic and parking). I feel like some compromise is necessary when it comes to aesthetics. While some YIMBY’s argue for six to eight story buildings everywhere (like Paris) you can build very dense housing that is no taller than allowed for houses (like Montreal or Brooklyn). That is why it makes sense (from that standpoint) to focus on all of the city. If they allow 3 story houses they should allow 3 story dense housing as well.
Traffic concerns are a bit misguided in my opinion. Yes, increased housing will increase traffic, but to a certain extent we are going to have traffic in much of the city anyway. If the population sprawls then things tend to be worse and the solutions are a lot more expensive. To a certain extent we are at a tipping point now inside the city anyway. Traffic will be bad. The only way out of it is to build more transit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox).
When it comes to parking I could see some compromise (e. g. give existing owners permits) but to a large extent I think it is just one of those problems that shouldn’t carry much weight. There are public concerns (water/sewer/garbage) and private ones and I consider parking a private one. I don’t think the city has any obligation to provide public parking any more than they need to provide a place for me to wax my skis. It is a pain to do it in my garage, and it costs money if I take them somewhere, but that doesn’t mean that the city should provide that service.
I do care about the crummy urbanism in Seattle because THE URBAN ZONES have such anemic density, which means anemic retail density unless I guess I want to go to U Village.
OK, this is a new argument. First of all it is bizarre that you go to U Village instead of the U-District since I find the sprawling car-centric nature of the U-Village not very urban at all. I am not opposed to it. It reminds me of those luxury towers downtown. I would rather have them here than in the suburbs. But the U-District is far more urban in my opinion.
As for your overall point, I think it is worth noting that a lot of people don’t care. They don’t have a car, but they also don’t mind taking transit or riding a bike for the trips that are farther away. They may like the convenience of a place like Capitol Hill where everything is right outside your door, but they might be just fine living a few miles away in a decent, quiet apartment. Who are we to tell them that they need to pulling down $100K a year just to buy a tiny house?
Furthermore, places like Capitol Hill are way more likely to become the type of urban areas you have in mind as the city grows. It doesn’t have to grow right there.
For example consider Magnolia. On the one hand it is urban in that it is in the city and fairly close to downtown. On the other hand it is full of single-use land (classic American postwar suburbia). Not only is the land zoned single-family, but there is nothing else there. If you are in West Magnolia you can walk a really long distance before you encounter anything other than a house (or park). Not a grocery store, restaurant, bar, dentist office — nothing. It is an extreme example of what you are talking about. Now imagine that because of the zoning the population in those areas doubles. It becomes much easier to run the buses twice as often (ever 15 minutes instead of every 30). Now the Magnolia Village is bustling. It suddenly becomes way more popular as a place for people who live not that far away. It becomes, essentially, a lot more urban.
Which gets to what makes the most sense in that regard, which is changing the commercial zoning. This too is way too restrictive. You really shouldn’t have places like Magnolia (or much of West Seattle) where there is no commercial establishment in miles. Corner stores (at a minimum) should be legal. If I want to open a neighborhood shop selling groceries I should be able to. Likewise I shouldn’t have to walk miles and miles just to buy a Snickers.
” why not allow increasing the FAR ratio”
FAR seems like an arbitrary restriction with little justification. Who cares what the FAR is? Why is a 4-story building with half the footprint of a 2-story building better than a 4-story building with the same footprint as the 2-story building? A simple zoning height is more straightforward: you don’t like tall buildings. As idiotic as it is that a 6-story building is undesirable while a 2-4 story building is OK, at least a pure height limit is simple and intuitive. But when you say you can have a 3-story building but it can only cover half the lot or less, why? What benefit is that except catering to nimbys?
> “But we don’t say silly things like “if a ton of people lived in tall buildings on this street, housing would be cheaper.”
> What?!?! “If there were as many houses as there are people that really want to live here, housing would be affordable”. ?!?!? That’s like saying “If my grandpa was still alive he’d be really really old”. Mr. Davis doesn’t seem to grasp the Seattle housing problem whatsoever. Once again, here’s what Mr. Davis can’t seem to understand.
Ron Davis is talking about people who say ‘denser housing isn’t cheaper’ which you have cited many times. When it is about the overall regional supply versus demand.
> Build as many new housing units as you want to…. every time somebody from California outbids a local for housing.. There’s just no real housing affordability in a free market system in highly desirable markets (like Seattle).’
Why does this “free market” restrict house building predominantly to single family housing? Zoning is literally the opposite of the free market. Sure there’s some obvious ones like don’t allow factories near residential homes — but we’ve taken it why too far in the opposite direction where now new apartments can only be approved near freeways
[Ad hom attack]
I know how you feel about my personal advice…. so here’s some more.
Only fools believe their personal problems have political solutions. If you believe changing the Seattle zoning or social housing or any other political change is going to help you in your personal quest for affordable housing, I’d think twice about that. There are plenty of “ex-renters” sleeping in tents who always thought they’d “get by” somehow in Seattle. Now they’re 55 and homeless. Nobody cares whatsoever. The rent monster is real. Don’t be a victim.
With that I’m out! Keep dreaming about your affordable four plex in Wallingford you all! I got to get back to real life.
> Zach B.
Not sure if you’re replying to the wrong thread? but anyways.
> Only fools believe their personal problems have political solutions.
The single family homes only zoning has been tried for 50+ years, it’s time to move on. And again the only real “danger” is that apartments and townhouses will be built. You and others make it sound as if it’s some great calamity that will befall Seattle if it upzones lol. Oh no a 5 story apartment is built or a couple 3 story townhouses is constructed, society will collapse.
I know how you feel about my personal advice…. so here’s some more.
Only fools believe their personal problems have political solutions. If you believe changing the Seattle zoning or social housing or any other political change is going to help you in your personal quest for affordable housing, I’d think twice about that.
First of all, enough with the condescending “personal advice”. It has no place here. You are threading on thin ice.
Second, this is not a “personal problem”. It is a societal problem. Saying it is a personal problem is also condescending and again, not appropriate.
Clearly the cost of rent (and homelessness) is a societal problem. Societal problems are definitely solved by political solutions. That is really the whole point of political solutions: to solve societal problems. For example, poverty amongst the elderly used to be a major societal problem. There were a lot of old people who couldn’t work any more and were broke. Then FDR came up with a political solution (Social Security) and this county is much better for it. You are free to call FDR a fool for thinking that he might make the country better but I think most historians would disagree with you.
In this case other countries have already solved the problem. It is easy to think they are radically different, but they aren’t. We aren’t talking about cheap rent in Botswana or Tibet. We are talking about fully developed countries with economies and political systems very much like ours. It is like health care. We can ignore what the rest of the world is doing and pretend that no one in the world has a better health insurance system than the various ones in the United States or we can borrow from the experience of others and apply the same ideas.
Oh, and by the way, we didn’t actually invent Social Security. Germany implemented a similar program back in 1889, designed by Bismarck. Borrowing good ideas from other countries is nothing new.
WL, I don’t know what personal problem Tacomee is referring to, but you are really referring to REzoning the SFH zone, not upzoning, because you would need much greater regulatory limits plus a change of use to allow multi-family buildings. A city can certainly do that, and Spokane has to an extent except the regulatory limits are the same as a SFH, I just don’t know if it is feasible west of the Cascades with the current political makeup.
For your idea to work the comp. Plan needed to be updated in 2022, not 2024. Harrell and Nelson look set against rezoning the SFH zone or upzoning beyond HB 1110 (including amending the regulatory limits), and even Redmond on the eastside is not going there. Whether SFH zoning has existed for 50 years doesn’t automatically mean it should be repealed, or those who live there won’t fight to keep it. It is going to be a nasty fight.
Probably the biggest hurdle is state, regional and county policies don’t support rezoning the SFH zone, or think that will address the problems they are trying to solve (affordability for the poor, life without a car, and sprawl) and of course those zones have a lot of political clout. Housing construction has kept up with population growth if you believe the census numbers, population growth is slowing if you believe the OFM, and King Co. has more than adequate existing zoning to accommodate future population growth, even based on the OFM estimates, if you believe the GMPC. So what is the problem upzoning the SFH zones is attempting to solve?
But more than anything, the new housing in the SFH zone would not be remotely affordable for the segment the county is concerned about, 0% to 60% AMI which the county insists be in the urban/multi-family zones near walkable transit, and will consume a city’s GMPC future housing targets. . Million-dollar townhomes or rent higher than apartment rents in the urban/multi-family zone with the need for a car are not what housing policies are focused on today (although builders and realtors are which is why HB 1110 contains so few affordability mandates, although that may change next Legislative session), and that kind of sprawl is contrary to PSRC policies going back to the 2035 Vision Statement that cities have adopted for more than a decade that allocates new housing growth in urban/multi-family zones near walkable transit.
The very first parcels builders will develop if the SFH zones are rezoned are vacant parcels because they are the cheapest, although generally the farthest out, and most of the three county area is zoned for SFH development. That is the size of Tokyo with the same sprawl but 1/10th the population.
If you really want to get some traction on rezoning the SFH zone then mandate that all new units must be affordable to someone earning 0% to 60% AMI, and find a way to get frequent transit – including micro transit – to those remote SFH zones before rezoning. Then advocates for rezoning the SFH zones would have some moral authority with the county housing policy makers.
Personally I am an urbanist. I like urban living. I believe density begins at the very center like in Europe and moves out only when the inner zoning is maxed out so you get some walkable, vibrant urbanism which is what Seattle is really missing, and early zoning screwed up. Seattle is way too large for its population and so has very little true density, and rezoning the SFH zone would only exacerbate that IMO. I don’t want to live in a plex in Broadview. I want more urban housing and retail density, not in some remote part of King or Snohomish Co. Ideally we can figure out a way to do that with office towers downtown with Seattle’s limited population growth and the high cost of conversion.
> If you really want to get some traction on rezoning the SFH zone then mandate that all new units must be affordable to someone earning 0% to 60% AMI, and find a way to get frequent transit – including micro transit – to those remote SFH zones before rezoning. Then advocates for rezoning the SFH zones would have some moral authority with the county housing policy makers.
@Fact Zone
That is the same as not upzoning at all. It is not financially possible to build at such low rates. No bank will give out loans to a builder to construct on such a plot of land.
> Housing construction has kept up with population growth if you believe the census numbers
No the housing units in Seattle metro area is still below job number increase. Typically one wants the ratio to be around 1 to 1. Seattle is a bit better around 1.43 jobs to housing unit versus say bay area with their horrible over 3.19/3.46 jobs per housing unit but much cheaper metros are at 1.0.
(The data is straight from the us census, note it is covering from 2008 to 2019, the metro areas could have built less or more in the past)
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0621-EC-1.png
Even the one seattle plan suggests approving “King County has set targets for Seattle to accommodate a minimum of about 80,000 housing units and 160,000 jobs” worsening the job to housing ratio.
> [Ad hom attack]
> Only fools believe their personal problems have political solutions.
It’s alright, I’ve head it all before. people at the zoning meetings will twist/switch positions as long as it’s safeguarding single family zoning.
If I didn’t have a house, then one must be greedy for housing.
If I did have a house, then one is greedy for trying to upzoning one’s land.
If the price/rent is too expensive, then it’s only for the rich.
If the price/rent is too cheap, it’ll allow poor people to move in.
One should only build a magical goldilocks building that is simultaneously affordable but also just unaffordable enough to keep out the ‘undesirables’ (sarcasm).
Bismarck is often credited with first implementing social security, but it really was a war tax.
Bismarck needed to raise revenue to continue his war but knew the population would oppose such a tax. So he came up with “social security” that collected taxes immediately and would pay benefits beginning at age 65 when very few in the 1880’s lived until 65.
Pretty much the same when SS was adopted in the U.S. in the 1930’s and there were very few beneficiaries and life expectancies were lower than 65.
Social Security has been a valuable program in the U.S. where the goal was legitimately to reduce poverty among the elderly, but that was not Bismarck’s goal.
“Oh no a 5 story apartment is built or a couple 3 story townhouses is constructed, society will collapse.”
It was so amusing the controversy over upzoning Broadway from 4 to 7 stories. People said it would harm the neighborhood. Never mind that just a few blocks away, Bellevue Avenue had had 7-story buildings for a decade or more, and they weren’t hurting anybody.
About Seattle – OPCD | seattle.gov
In 2019 Seattle had 367,806 housing units, which was a 19% increase from 2010 according to OFM.
Population Growth in Seattle during the period 2010 to 2020 was 21.1% (17.5% for King Co.). Since average households are more than one person housing growth exceeded population growth. Housing costs increased because AMI increased and new construction displaced older more affordable housing.
Market rate housing for those earning more than 60% AMI is not the issue for county housing policies. Otherwise planning is left up to the city. Housing affordable to those earning 60% AMI and below is the issue, and whether one agrees with it or not the county has mandated all that housing go in dense zones and no zoning in a SFH zone counts against those affordable housing targets.
If you understand that you understand Harrell’s housing plan.
Harrell and the council can exceed Seattle’s GMPC housing targets and rezone the SFH zone if they want to and still meet Seattle’s affordability mandates, but I don’t think they want to.
“Typically one wants the ratio to be around 1 to 1. Seattle is a bit better around 1.43 jobs to housing unit”
The Seattle city limits were 0.75 in the 2010s growth spurt. Your stat is over half of Pugetopolis. Seattle needs at least 1.0 so that new workers can live in the city rather than having to commute longer distances from less-dense suburbs. And it needs to be above 1.0 to make up for the losses that displaced people to South King County and further in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, and for the people who wanted to live in Seattle but didn’t even try because housing was so tight.
Probably the biggest hurdle is state, regional and county policies don’t support rezoning the SFH zone, or think that will address the problems they are trying to solve
Nonsense. If anything the state is mandating upzoning that the city is basically ignoring. At best they are following the letter of the law, and not the spirit (which is to add a lot more housing in the SFH zone). There is no pushback from the state or county when it comes to upzoning too much. There is no legal reason why Seattle can’t adopt policies similar to Spokane’s, or even more liberal. There is the politics of course, but that is true everywhere (including Spokane). These things ebb and flow, and Harrell (for whatever reason) proposed something that is quite likely out of step with the majority of the city. It is quite possible that if things had worked out differently that González would be mayor and we would have a plan more like what Spokane has.
But more than anything, the new housing in the SFH zone would not be remotely affordable for the segment the county is concerned about, 0% to 60% AMI
Nonsense. I’ve already explained to you why this is wrong. First of all, they are building housing of this nature now. Apartments in Lake City are not meant for rich people. Second, the reason why they are rare is because of the zoning. This is just common sense (based on obvious game theory) but the studies confirm it. The only reason that housing does not match the cost of construction is because of zoning. If prices matched the cost of construction then of course they would be affordable for those making 50% AMI (and well below that). It isn’t that expensive to construct housing, especially dense housing.
As for those making nothing (0%) that is what public housing is for. But it can’t do much unless we tax the hell out of people and change the zoning. The reason that Austria can build so much public housing is because they can build so much housing. If you outlaw dense housing (like we do in this country) you simply can’t do it.
You keep fixating on the AMI numbers, but you are missing the big picture. In every other market they build things for people of all means. You can buy a cheap phone or an expensive phone. This is possible mainly because the government doesn’t put limits on how many phones you can build. If they did, then suddenly we would only have expensive phones, and folks would be talking about how we need to make phones for those with lower incomes. The only reason that people aren’t doing that with housing is because of the zoning.
@Fact Check:
Of course the percent of units increased faster than the population! Most of those new units were one bedroom or studio apartments suitable for one or sometimes two very intimate people. The prior housing stock has more stand alone homes and larger apartments where two, three, four or five people can comfortably live..
So if we want to address the housing supply, we can’t somehow assume that the proportions are equal in the future because our small unit market policies haven’t changed .
It’s one reason I keep saying why we need to assess the additional livable square feet of residential buildings rather than only the number of units. The City, the media and advocates won’t look at this measurement —and they should!
“state, regional and county policies don’t support rezoning the SFH zone”
What policies are those? Where does the state/county forbid upzoning SFH areas in Seattle? What “support” does Seattle need for it?
Somebody mentioned the PSRC not wanting cities to go over their growth quota, but the quotas are minimum, not maximum. A city isn’t “robbing” other cities by taking too much growth. Most of the other cities don’t want it, and are only grudgingly accepting it because they have to. Dreams of a lucrative Lynnwood/Issaquah/Federal Way downtown center don’t stand or fall based on whether Seattle builds above its quota or not. Housing units aren’t directly jobs or offices. Any excess housing will be absorbed by PSRC undercounting, or people choosing cities they’d rather be in rather than the only ones available, or at worst they’ll be filled up a few years later when slower growth catches up.
“This is possible mainly because the government doesn’t put limits on how many phones you can build. If they did, then suddenly we would only have expensive phones”
That’s what it was like under the AT&T phone monopoly. While the government didn’t limit the number of phones, Big Bell kept the prices of phones and long distance high, and had only three models to choose from, and long-term leased phones instead of owned phones, and it was slow to invest in long-distance and data infrastructure because it would rather profit more on less service than profit less on more service.
Deregulation opened up the market, caused long-distance rates to drop, gave people a choice of long-distance carriers, made phones available in retail stores, and allowed many more companies to offer all kinds of phone models.
Zoning is also regulation. Restrictive zoning is like a monopoly that favors single-family homeowners.
Housing costs increased because AMI increased and new construction displaced older more affordable housing.
And because they didn’t build enough housing (obviously). Increased demand (because of lots of new jobs) and not enough supply. This begs the question — why didn’t they build enough housing? The answer is again obvious: zoning. They would build cheap-ass apartments on my block (to replace houses that used to be cheap-ass) if the city would let them. But alas, they don’t.
the county has mandated all that housing go in dense zone
Wait, just to back up here, the only affordable housing is dense housing. So now you are saying that “new construction displaced older more affordable housing” but then you are also saying that is the only kind of housing that we should build?
As for the county mandates I think you are confusing things. They are simply saying that you can’t put public housing in the middle of nowhere. But in a city like Seattle — which you could argue has no places like that — you can achieve these same goals by upzoning everywhere (and adding sufficient public housing).
@Fact Check
> In 2019 Seattle had 367,806 housing units, which was a 19% increase from 2010 according to OFM.
> Population Growth in Seattle during the period 2010 to 2020 was 21.1% (17.5% for King Co.). Since average households are more than one person housing growth exceeded population growth. Housing costs increased because AMI increased and new construction displaced older more affordable housing.
Of course the population growth would be broadly correlated with the number of housing units — everyone else who couldn’t afford Seattle ended up having to live farther away. I mean Renton, Kent, Auburn etc… housing prices didn’t magically increase from nothing.
> Housing costs increased because AMI increased and new construction displaced older more affordable housing.
Housing costs increased due to the housing demand (from jobs) outstripping the housing supply (restricted by zoning). Also the “older more affordable housing?” typically it is very expensive single family homes or on commercial lots. I’m not sure where you got this idea that new apartments are predominantly replacing some cheap rental units.
There’s always some exceptions but you browse yourself https://www.seattleinprogress.com/ it’s usually 4~6 townhouses replacing one million dollar single family home or apartment complex built over commercial land
I agree that if Gonzales had become mayor and the council had not flipped so dramatically rezoning the SFH zone more aggressively would be more likely. At the same time over the next four years this council will appoint a much more conservative planning commission.
I also agree this council and mayor could “upzone” beyond HB 1110 if they wanted to, but state and county policies don’t require it, or really address it, and the PSRC since at least 2010 has recommended the vast majority of new market rate housing go in dense zones near walkable transit.
The one demographic that has been left out according to King Co. is those earning 0% to 60% AMI so that is the demographic county mandates address, and all those units must be in dense zones. So a city either has to allocate its GMPC housing growth targets to 0% to 60% AMI or go above its GMPC housing targets. A city gets zero credit for any zoning changes in the SFH zone because the county assumes that housing no matter how dense won’t be affordable for the 0% to 60% AMI demographic and they would need a car.
Upzoning the SFH zone beyond HB 1110 especially regulatory limits is just a political debate. I don’t think Harrell, and especially Nelson who seems to relish in rejecting prior council progressive policies, want to do that. We will find out. It isn’t an issue I am passionate about. Seems like sprawl to me.
But everyone would love to see better downtown urban and retail vibrancy, and Harrell is keen on increasing population in the downtown core. . I love the park and Market but after that downtown is pretty dead especially at night. 3rd is a huge problem at night and crossing it so retail is suffering east of 3rd. I think that if there is one thing Seattle is missing as a city it is a vibrant downtown.
You can do whatever you want with the SFH zone. I don’t want to live there. I just want a more vibrant downtown. How do we get that when everyone wants it. Shouldn’t we first focus on things there is overwhelming consensus on?
Social Security has been a valuable program in the U.S. where the goal was legitimately to reduce poverty among the elderly, but that was not Bismarck’s goal.
Maybe, but by the time the plan was implemented in the US it had been implemented in Germany for over forty years, and it had been implemented by 34 countries. I didn’t mean to imply that we copied Bismark exactly, only that we didn’t come up with the idea. The US is a very innovative country but we do (and should) borrow ideas from other countries.
Interesting summary of the history of Social Security can be found here: https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html .
@Fact Check
> You can do whatever you want with the SFH zone. I don’t want to live there. I just want a more vibrant downtown. How do we get that when everyone wants it. Shouldn’t we first focus on things there is overwhelming consensus on?
I’m not quite sure why you think there is such a strict divide for upzoning between the sfh zone and not the sfh zone. Outside of perhaps the downtown core every urban village will border sfh and so it becomes contentious even to upzone within the urban village.
Even for most recent downtown upzonings, Mayor Harrell only upzoned like 3 blocks and only on one side of the street. Secondly, building new apartments downtown has the lowest benefit to cost ratio as you’d need to knock down an existing apartment building to build new one — which really isn’t adding much to the supply. Third, since I’m sure you might bring this up, office to apartment conversions is not a panacea. It is highly expensive to convert them and even if it was easy, one office worker only takes up like 100 square foot, the aggregate office square footage just isn’t enough for housing units.
If one really wanted to avoid upzoning ‘lots’ of sfh we could of course upzone less parcels but with a higher height for more apartments. Or if that isn’t desired than lower heights but upzoning more parcels works as well. But upzoning nothing at all is not a solution — unless if one counts the bay area 2,3+ million dollar single family homes as a solution
Al S, you make a good point and I remember you bringing up multi-generational housing among Black families in South Seattle before King Co. figured it out when working through ESB 1220, which has a disparate racial impact statement requirement. That is why Harrell’s plan limits heights in S Seattle and multi-generational housing is such a hot topic under the county’s housing policies displacement rubric suddenly.
One of the realities is there are few Black urban planners and I don’t think the county and regional planners understand Black communities very well because so many are single white males who live alone or with one other person.
To be honest I think it was unrealistic for the Legislature to tell counties in 1220 to solve housing affordability, and I think King Co.’s approach is unrealistic because builders won’t and can’t build market rate housing for 0% to 60% AMI, and cities like Bellevue plan major developments including along East Link like the PSRC has been recommending for 14 years that don’t pencil out at 60% AMI. From what I hear Bellevue plans to ignore the county mandates, but has no intent to change its SFH zoning because its policy is to build housing in dense zones near transit.
These multi-generational households often have a very low net sf per person and very low cost per resident. Maintaining them has become a policy goal. One thing the legislature did in 2022 was eliminate or reduce restrictions by cities on how many related individuals can live in a house, from around 6 to 13 if memory serves.
“Housing costs increased because AMI increased and new construction displaced older more affordable housing.”
“And because they didn’t build enough housing (obviously).”
What would have happened if they did build enough housing? The existing vacancy rate would be 5-10% as it was from the 1970s to 2003 and rents were cheap. Some of those units are decaying and cheaper (group A); others are luxury and more expensive (group B). The number of new units (group C) would be equal or slightly higher than the number of new jobs, so the vacancy rate would remain stable. Higher-income, luxury-minded people would choose the new units. Lower-income and frugal people would choose lower-end units. If one landlord tried to jack up the rent, people would go to the next building a block or two away that didn’t, so the increase wouldn’t stick. Increasing AMI wouldn’t matter as much: they still couldn’t make rapid rent increases stick. Seattle’s housing trajectory would have continued like it had in the 90s and early 00s. By now we would have more housing, more residents, and lower rents than we do now.
But housing didn’t keep up. The top 20% filled the new luxury units (group C) as expected; that’s disproportionately the higher-AMI newcomers. Not all of them could fit in the new units, so those who couldn’t, occupied the next-lower level of units (group B), the older luxury ones. The people below that (the previously-richest middle-class Seattlites) occupied them too.
That left fewer units for the below-median population. The people who couldn’t quite fit into group B went down to group A (the decaying units). That created more competition for those units, so middle-class people were competing against working-class people. Lower-income people lost and got displaced to South King County or further. Landlords jacked up rents, and middle-class people put up with it because there was no “next building a few blocks away” to go to, so it was either pay that or move outside Seattle. That’s what created the rent-rising spiral.
The same thing happens with for-sale houses. Until 2008 the normal time-on-market was six months, and prices rose relatively slowly. In the crash sellers withdrew, and never fully came back. The time-on-market shrank to 3-6 weeks. So more buyers were competing for the same number of units, and owners were able to jack up prices. When you’re the only one looking at a unit and you can think about it for a week or two and it’s still available at the same price, prices remain stable. When three people are lined up to buy it the first day or the first three weeks, and bid up the price so that they can get it rather than someone else, then prices rise. The same thing happens in the rental market when the vacancy rate goes below 5%. It was down to 2-3% during the biggest rent jumps, and may have even gotten down to 1%.
Another factor is, there’s not one rental market or one house market. There’s different overlapping markets at different price points and neighborhoods. Lower-income people flat-out can’t afford the higher-end markets. Higher-income people can choose any of them, and most tend to choose the higher-end ones (Newer units in more desirable neighborhoods with better schools), but some are frugal or like diverse neighborhoods so they choose the lower-end ones. One neighborhood may have 200 brand-new units to fill, while the next neighborhood has a shortage and can command more of a premium. This has played out repeatedly in various neighborhoods over the past twenty years.
WL, I support greater height limits in urban zones and urban villages. Often the problem is the local neighborhood assoc. I think Capitol Hill should have much higher height limits although some argue that would result in Trump style towers and Yuppies displacing locals. Same with Ballard and S Lake Union. According to Mike 7 stories is the max. for CH. That seems way too low. Look at Bellevue where height limits are massive but street level retail is required. Bellevue Way is a little posh for me (but not my girlfriend) but I love the retail density.
I am not an expert but converting office buildings to housing has cost and structural issues. But a commercial real estate agent was telling me yesterday downtown office buildings except the true class A have declined in sale value per sf nearly 90% from their peak. So someone is going to have to dosomething with them. I don’t know why Harrell wouldn’t remove all zoning restrictions downtown.
I don’t know how but I would love to increase the number of people who live downtown. Most vibrant cities I know have a lot of people living in the downtown core but not Seattle for some reason. Probably because pre-pandemic office buildings were cash and tax machines.
“the PSRC since at least 2010 has recommended the vast majority of new market rate housing go in dense zones near walkable transit.”
It’s trying to avoid low-density sprawl. That means more single-family neighborhoods. It also doesn’t want apartments in the middle of nowhere far from services or transit. An example would be the outer parts of Issaquah, or isolated parts of eastern Renton or Kent.
Seattle has a lot of areas in between those. They’re not in “regional centers” (the dense zones you’re talking about), but they’re still close to them and on main arterials. Look at Wallingford, Broadview, 35th Ave NE, eastern Capitol Hill, around Mt Baker Station, and the core of West Seattle.
Mt Baker is a middle-level village (now called “urban center”) — intended for a couple multistory office buildings, shopping center, or institution. But the zoning allows 7+ story buildings for only a couple blocks around the station, then it tapers down quickly within another couple blocks to single-family, to avoid offending the nimbys. That’s a lost opportunity. Another is the gap between MLK and Rainier. In West Seattle, urban-style buildings in the California corridor are allowed only on California Avenue itself and in the Triangle… just one or two blocks on either side the zoning slams down to single-family. That creates a linear walkable corridor, which is less effective than a 2-dimensional walkable area of several blocks by several blocks.
Those shoulder ares could be upzoned. They’re already close to transit, retail, services, and an arterial. To the public it would look like just “expanding the villages”. Then more people could live in those areas, and have walkability and frequent transit, and there would be more locations available for affordable multifamily projects, small apartment buildings, and row-house clusters.
These are the low-hanging fruit that we should upzone first.
Fact Check, don’t forget over 50% of Capitol Hill land area is single family. Its single family area is so vast, by my estimation, 20 Surrey Downs neighborhood could fit into it. Also, do you realize that kitty corner from Capitol Hill Station are 1 and 2 story retail buildings? Just 1 and 2 story!
“According to Mike 7 stories is the max. for CH.”
The max for Broadway (since the mid 2000s), and Bellevue Avenue (since the 1990s). But the rest of Capitol Hill is the same or lower. The one place highrises are allowed is First Hill, which has had a cluster of them for decades.
Recent urbanism trends favor a 7-ish story standard, rather than taller or shorter. The Netherlands is building all new neighborhoods that way, with mixed housing/retail/offices in them. The exact height may be lower; it may be more like 5 stories, and Paris and Boston have successful urban neighborhoods at 2 stories. But it’s in that ballpark.
Even a modest height can fit a lot of people if it’s over a large 2-dimensional area, and if there’s not excessive open space/parking lots/wide streets sucking up the space. Our problem is excessive single-family restrictions, and excessive setbacks, parking minimums, big-box stores, strip malls, freestanding one-story fast-food joints, etc. That’s what’s preventing us from having neighborhoods like Paris or Chicago or London.
Urbanists have also learned that taller is not always better. Two 7-story buildings can fit the same as one 14-story building, and the footprint is only twice as large. If you take a small 8-unit apartment and compare it to 8 detached houses, the footprint isn’t twice as much, it’s several times higher. Low density doesn’t scale. But medium density strikes a reasonable balance between individual space and the overall footprint. And it keeps the neighorhood walkable, which has several benefits in itself.
Taller buildings, whether 14 stories, 20, 40, or 80, cost exponentially more per story, because they require ever more-expensive materials and design and deeper underground foundations to avoid collapsing. And taller buildings require exponentially more elevator/stairway space, which cuts into the number of units they can fit. So a 40-story building can fit fewer units than two 20-story buildings, and an 80-story building even less than four 20-story buildings. And 40-story buildings are probably enough for all the country’s office space, while still keeping the total footprint small enough to be reasonable ecologically. And the same concept applies to housing, which doesn’t have to go beyond 7 stories, if you have enough buildings and arrange it in 2-dimensional areas.
A city gets zero credit for any zoning changes in the SFH zone because the county assumes that housing no matter how dense won’t be affordable for the 0% to 60% AMI demographic and they would need a car.
OK, but if an area is upzoned then it is no longer a SFH zone. Are you saying that they look at the history of an area and if the area at any point was zoned single family then it doesn’t count? Citation please!
If Seattle changes the zoning (and other regulations) sufficiently then there will be a lot of new housing built — much of it for people making well below 50% AMI (studio apartments are pretty cheap). Some of that will be in areas currently zoned for apartments while some of it will be in areas currently zoned for houses. At that point it really doesn’t matter what the places used to be. But you are saying that the county only cares about the places that used to be zoned for apartments which frankly doesn’t make any sense. More to the point, what the county cares about can change (and would change) even if that was the case. I can’t imagine the county saying “Sorry Seattle. Yes, you have added a lot of new housing for those under 60% AMI, but they are in the wrong place. You need to move them all to the places that used to be zoned for apartments because we are quite certain those are the only places where one could live without a car”.
Sorry, I don’t buy it.
@ Fact Check:
“One of the realities is there are few Black urban planners and I don’t think the county and regional planners understand Black communities very well because so many are single white males who live alone or with one other person.”
It’s not just black racism. It’s suburban white supremacy.
Many immigrant groups come from countries that encourage and design cities for extended family households. From Mexico to India to many other places, there are what we count as three or four nuclear households living under one roof. Grandparents might live three with the entire families of their three kids! I’ve worked with foreign-born professionals who grew up with aunts, uncles and cousins in the same very large housing unit. When they arrive in the US, they are culturally often expected to share an apartment with a first or second cousin. And middle housing is quite appealing investment to these cultures because of their adaptability to cohabitate several families.
But we have the white-bred professional-class Americans de facto forcing all the new units to be tiny isolated spaces to make them “affordable” while only allowed in certain areas. Never mind that these tiny units can only be financed and built by big developers (with a lengthy permit and construction process and lots of extra costs like elevators in the building driving up rents). And the ADU rules limit them to only 1000 sf maximum.
There are plenty of places in North America and à Europe who have housing traditions without this bias. The prevalent row homes in NYC and other East Coast cities before the 1930’s were large but dividable, and could have up to five or six levels. Of course, Seattle wasn’t a city back then so it’s not in our local housing stock.
I would blame it just on staff though. It’s an entire culture of appointed mostly affluent white planning commissioners often representing corporate interests telling staff “good job” when housing choices are only to have wealthy single family homes or tiny apartment districts that only corporations can finance and build. If the elected officials snd planning board members pushed for smoothing out the density citywide like Montreal, I think our city’s housing costs would likely lower for everyone.
“One of the realities is there are few Black urban planners and I don’t think the county and regional planners understand Black communities very well because so many are single white males who live alone or with one other person.”
It’s really strange to hear white commentators insist that blacks in south Seattle are mostly single-family homeowners who want to keep their houses (by limiting density/gentrification/property taxes) like low-density suburbanites, when in fact many live in multifamily housing or would be willing to.
Missed one. Looks like O-Line is off to a good start.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/05/23/orange-line-is-an-early-hit/
We linked to the Orange Line’s ridership numbers in OT49: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/05/16/midweek-roundup-open-thread-49/
Mike Orr wrote about his early experience, here: https://seattletransitblog.com/2024/04/02/the-world-is-orange/
Yes, I know all that. I merely hoped to provide a link to a fresh “local news” post with new info. There is Gold Line information in the Urbanist article in addition to updated Orange Line ridership. Every day is a new day, after all.
The information about the O-Line’s initial numbers are not new. But the other information (e. g. the quotes from public officials) is new, and quite likely unique to the Urbanist. It is worth a read even if your familiar with the Orange Line’s “good start”.
@another engineer,
Thanks for posting, that is a good article.
I find the success of the Swift Orange after just one month of service to be a bit surprising. One of the key attributes of Swift Orange is the tie-in to Link at LTC, and that won’t even be active until Aug 30th. That is when Swift Orange ridership will really take off.
The extension of Swift Blue to Link at 185th St Station will also be a huge improvement, and one that CT can accomplish at minimal cost and effort. I expect good things for Swift Blue too come September.
Lots of changes coming for CT. I find it a little hard to keep track of it all, but it appears like everything is moving in the right direction.
Lots of changes coming for CT. I find it a little hard to keep track of it all
This page has pretty much everything: https://www.communitytransit.org/transitchanges. It lists “Which routes are changing when” (there are three phases). There is also a nice map of what it will look like when it is all done. The Phase 3 changes are relatively minor compared to the changes with Lynnwood Link (Phase 2) so the map gives you a pretty good idea of what it will look like when the train gets up to Lynnwood.
That bus stop at Ash Way P&R is quite unusual. I like that it is on the street. That roundabout u-turn is quite snazzy!
I have some skepticism that passengers won’t get on the bus going the wrong way as I often see happen at Georgetown’s saloon district bus stop. I’d rather have separate stops for the eastbound and westbound line up consecutively. That would keep buses from having to wait for each other to move.
The Ash Way transit center is at the wrong end of a large surface parking sewer for the local routes, but at the right end for expresses buses using the HOV freeway entrance/exit.
The southbound bus stop at Alderwood is situated quite well for access to both Alderwood Village and Alderwood Mall. But it doesn’t look like a realistic place to put a new station. Too much neighborhood and too many long-time businesses are in the way of the station construction box. It would be nice to have the light rail station there, if the construction box could be kept small, but I suspect East Alderwood Station would turn out to be much cheaper, and easier to connect to Ash Way Station.
Here’s the Seattle Times article on Third Avenue transportation plans around Pioneer Square, alluded to by Downtown Resident in the waterfront article.
It’s not an editorial (not an official Times recommendation), but instead a “special” (a contribution by an outside expert, reflecting their opinion). It’s by two art gallery owners and one parking corporation owner.
“These changes include altering the Third Avenue South and South Main Street bus stop by removing a street lane, deepening the existing bus stop footprint from 12 feet to 21 feet and redirecting traffic from two-way to one-way southbound only with no additional lanes.”
The authors claim this will turn “our neighborhood from an extraordinary cultural hub to a traffic-choked bus terminal”, and “will hurt small businesses and impede emergency vehicles”.
They use words like “bus terminal” and “bus depot”, which connote things like the Port Authority bus terminal in New York, which is a station with over fifty gates where bus routes terminate. That’s a hundred times larger than anything being proposed on Third Avenue. I’ll chock the wording to being unfamiliar with transit terminology, but if it’s intentional it’s misleading.
This plan sounds similar to some area concepts introduced at the South Downtown Workshop a few months ago, looking at potential station-area street changes around the CID/N and CID/S station locations. Those were around the triangle at Jackson-2nd Ext-4th, Dearborn Street, and another railroad-crossing ped bridge around Dearborn. I don’t recall one exactly at 3rd S & Main, but it sounds like it may be part of the same family of changes to improve walkability and the non-car experience.
The article alludes to the Downtown Seattle Association’s 3rd Avenue proposal, which would generally reduce the lanes, move some bus routes to another street, and widen the sidewalks. That’s somewhat the opposite of this plan. But their two different areas. The DSA’s proposal is for the “transit mall” part of 3rd. This is for a small street south of Yesler.
The steep section of 3rd Ave s. Is already quite open choked with buses ast the stop sign at s. Washingtonwaiting for the light at s.Main with multiple coaches backed up at the stop itself. After bouncing down the hill waiting for the stop to clear is not pleasant. It’s hard to tell if thes pian would really address this but as it currently operates is not a great rider experience. I’d rather see transit signal priority at s. Main than just making the stop larger but getting rid of 2-way travel for part or all of that section might help too. . It already has a bit of a feel of a bus terminal to it. A ton of routes rumble through there. The fact also is that bus travel up and
down 3rd is very laborious and a real slog even with the changes already made to improve transit in the corridor. The cars may be gone but buses spend a ton of time waiting for other buses between Jackson and Stewart. The plan to extend the bus only limitation furthermorth into belltown seems unlikely to make a real impact but it’s good PR for the county.
I’ve noticed that more Metro buses on regular routes (not rapidride) have had rear door ORCA readers installed. However people are rarely using them. It seems to be a combination of several factors.
1 – Not all buses on a route have rear door readers, so riders don’t know whether an arriving bus will have them or not, so it’s not worth waiting by the back door.
2 – Some drivers on buses with a rear door ORCA reader don’t actually open the rear door to let passengers on
3 – Force of habit for riders to get on at the front and off at the rear.
4 – Social pressure to not “jump” the queue by “sneaking” on the back (I’ve gotten some glares from people when I was the only person tapping on at the back)
Metro could save time and money by encouraging rear door boarding at stops with a lot of people getting on and not many getting off. Hopefully they start educating riders about it soon.
Yes, I noticed those too. I’m pretty plugged in to transit news and I wasn’t sure if I was “supposed” to tap on there if it wasn’t a RapidRide route, so I didn’t
I’ve sometimes been behind a bus and ran up to the rear door because I was afraid I couldn’t get to the front door before it left, and I walk in feeling bad about not paying, but then sometimes there’s an ORCA reader I can tap.
I used to get in and then go up to the front to tap, but that new swinging covid panel makes that impossible, because the panel’s already closed, and it would disrupt the driver too much to open it so I could tap, and they don’t want to open it anyway, they often say “You’re good.”
Yeah, I’ve gotten on a bus through the front door and had the same experience. Usually I have my ORCA card ready, but if it get to the bus stop at the same time as the bus I don’t have a chance. It used to be you could sit close to the front, get out your fare and then pay, but now the drivers generally give you the “You’re good” treatment.
Yes, even when I go in the front, some drivers discourage me from tapping in order to get moving faster, or they don’t think fares are important.
Ideally, all the buses serving downtown could have all-door entry and all-door payment. That certainly beats installing more sidewalk furniture for fare payment.
The bus-to-route assignments are probably hard to make consistent when there is a huge horizontal stack of buses at the base. You can tell when you see the bus’s printed schedules are all for other routes.
I just don’t see how rear-door readers can be consistent until they are universal.
What does everyone think about this? I think so many people are now used to not paying the fare, that this isn’t going to go over well.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/infrastructure/fare-inspections-link-stations-begin-june-sound-transit/281-50754f8a-2599-4dff-8990-9bb4cf86d3e0?ref=exit-recirc
I think the vast majority of those who are supposed to pay are paying. There are some who don’t pay who are supposed to tap, but I don’t think this effects them at all. A fairly small number will be disappointed that they won’t ride for free anymore, but things have been trending that way for a while.
“A fairly small number will be disappointed that they won’t ride for free anymore …” Huh? That’s not true. Are you aware of the fare inspection policy changes?
Guess what, Fare Ambassadors! You now have a new duty of waking up people in the station who are sleeping, under the auspices of checking their fare payment.
That said, I have not seen anyone on the ground sleeping in a station, ever.
I have seen many sleeping on the train, but mostly now just taking up two seats, since ridership has returned.
I have also seen fares inspected in the station, off the train, in past years, mostly at Stadium, after an event. So this is really more a shift in tactics, not policy. And perhaps giving up on the silly argument that following a set pattern eliminates racial bias.
The fare ambassadors at least in the past have been very passive, and there is very little penalty if caught, not even being asked to disembark the train.
The goals of fare ambassadors I think are:
1. To help ST meet its 40% farebox recovery goal, which today is running around 20% and is a ticking time bomb. Line 1 is aging, and too often transit agencies fill these budget holes by putting off maintenance and replacement until the deficit is unmanageable. It doesn’t help that ST not long ago acknowledged it estimated future maintenance costs $1.2 billion low.
2. To increase security. There have been some high profile incidences on Link including a shooting and stabbing. Video shows woman hit in random attack with Gatorade bottle (fox13seattle.com). Link has unsecured stations which make security much more difficult.
3. To assuage the concerns on the eastside. Bellevue has gone so far as to form a subunit in its police force to ride and monitor link BEFORE it even goes across the lake. Fare enforcement was suppose to be the mechanism to prevent unsavory types migrating east across the lake on Link.
4. To revitalize downtown Seattle. Harrell’s main goal is to return office workers and shoppers to the downtown core to help deal with the massive budget deficits in the general fund and prop up downtown property values, some of which like The Smith Tower and Dexter Horton building have declined in sale price per sf well over 50%. Obviously he wants most of them to arrive by transit due to the high cost of parking downtown when most other areas have free parking. Link takes you to the heart of downtown, but its stations are some of the most dangerous downtown.
5. To boost Link ridership. When factoring in ST’s ridership estimates and the opening of U. Dist. to Northgate Link ridership is about 1/3 lower than estimated. Some is work from home and some are safety concerns. I can’t imagine ridership in the suburban areas like East King Co. or Lynnwood or Federal Way will be close to pre-pandemic estimates.
6. To shore up lagging enthusiasm for the increasing cost of Link in areas like Pierce Co. And Snohomish Co. that are beginning to wonder if all those billions could be spent better (a la Troy’s article) and a lot sooner.
In my humble non-expert opinion the flaw was building deep underground Link stations in the urban core without gates or ways to screen out non-customers. This was exacerbated by the loss of the work commuters who were the eyes on the train and a drug pandemic. It is a common problem for transit systems across the U.S.
I agree with Brent I don’t see the “new” fare ambassadors as much of a change, and more of a publicity stunt. If Seattle wasn’t down around 400 police officers my advice to Harrell would form a subunit of real cops and have them ride Link and hang out at the downtown stations, but in Seattle I am sure there would be claims of racism or classism and so much retail has already left, so I guess the option is to drive to places that have free parking which is exactly what shoppers are doing.
I am sure some urbanists would disagree with me but ST’s very public announcement that the same fare ambassadors will actually enforce fares suggests at least ST sees the problems.
Kind of optimistic, chicago might try a second time to build median brt on western avenue. For a bit of context it was attempted a decade ago, but was stopped due to public outcry about taking away car lanes/parking. Surprisingly there’s a large amount of alderman support this time ” leadership of Ald. Vasquez and Ald. Martin in calling for Bus Rapid Transit on Western Avenue. The fact 17 of the 18 alders that serve Western Avenue signed on shows support for BRT ”
https://chi.streetsblog.org/2024/05/23/western-avenue-alders-revive-chicagos-brt-dream-how-can-we-stop-nimbys-from-killing-it-again
Almost the entire 2 Line has been down all day.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/eastside-light-rail-line-out-of-service-due-to-power-outage/
The 2 Line is running back and forth between one stop, RTS and OVS. Sound Transit’s last alert on the line being down was at 9:57 a.m.
“King County Metro routes B, 249, 241 and 226 are potential alternate routes for riders.”
Is there a bus replacement along the Link route? Just telling people to use Metro routes really doesn’t cut it. It works in Seattle where you can educate people to use the 106, 66, 49, and 70, but the Eastside routes aren’t like that. Spring District and BelRed have no adjacent bus route. None of these routes are a direct Link shadow for more than a couple stations. The 249, 241, and 226 run half-hourly at most, and hourly on some evenings/weekends. What are you supposed to do if you’re 2 minutes late for the 249 or 226? Wait 28 minutes? Standing at a bus stop that doesn’t have a bench or roof?
An hour ago the 2 Line resumed service. ST provided a bus bridge from Overlake Village to South Bellevue, and I believe serving all the station in between. During the catenary wire power outage, trains were waiting at various stations.
Was the bus bridge at similar frequency to the 2 Line, like in Seattle when we have our near-daily 1 Line disruptions? I would hope it is, given that Sound Transit and Metro have hundreds of incidents to draw from for experience at this point.
It will be interesting to see whether TSB maglev can prove that they can build better transit faster and at a reduced cost. As elevated transit is getting priority in most cities, they may be onto something. It’s interesting to see a concrete manufacturer take their experience in transit project to start thinking about how to build it more efficiently. Their experience with the Transrapid should help.
MEMORIAL DAY HOLIDAY SERVICE
Monday, May 27.
METRO: Sunday schedule for buses, streetcars, flex, West Seattle water taxi and shuttles.
SOUND TRANSIT: Sunday schedule for the 1 Line, ST Express, T Line. The 2 Line is not listed, so I don’t know; I assume Sunday too. No service for Sounder.
COMMUNITY TRANSIT: Sunday schedule.
PIERCE TRANSIT: Sunday schedule.