There’s been a rush of topics the past three weeks, including in Wednesday’s roundup which has now reached 172 comments. So here’s something light to start the weekend with. And what can be lighter than Sesame Street and the Muppets?
This is an open thread.
The latest on land use from Tacoma….
First, here’s the latest zoning changes…
https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/09/21/home-in-tacoma-rezone-advances-comment-period-nears-end/
And here’s why changing the zoning really doesn’t change much.
https://news.yahoo.com/news/bankrupt-tacoma-developer-apartment-property-120000298.html
With higher interest rates and a number of properties in bankruptcy, there’s little chance of more housing getting built in Tacoma in the near future, zoning be damned. If Tacoma had better zoning and planning tilting towards home ownership, maybe the city could add some quality hosing during a time of higher interest rates.
There’s a number of “underwater” properties around town that need maintenance work that’s likely being deferred. Tacoma has this long history of boom and bust building cycles that produce rundown apartments and strip malls with out-of-town ownership whose only concern is the bottom line.
One of pillars to strong, resilient communities is a high percentage go home ownership. Rezoning that lowers the percentage of homeowners in a community is almost guaranteed to lower the quality of life that community sooner or later.
@Tacomee
We’ve been over this many times already. If the plot of land wasn’t zoned for an apartment the developer couldn’t even attempt to build it in the first place.
> If Tacoma had better zoning and planning tilting towards home ownership, maybe the city could add some quality hosing during a time of higher interest rates.
No idea what exactly what you mean by “better” zoning. Most of the land in Tacoma is already for single family zoning, it isn’t that different from other American cities.
> One of pillars to strong, resilient communities is a high percentage go home ownership. Rezoning that lowers the percentage of homeowners in a community is almost guaranteed to lower the quality of life that community sooner or later.
Ahhh see that’s what I expect’d you to say. The “evil” apartments that will destroy society. Didn’t you last time say that apartments are only for rich people?
Wesley Lin,
Nah, we’ve never been over the real issues here. It’s not “density” or “walkable neighborhoods”. Those are nice things to have, but they don’t build real community or neighborhoods or bring on any sort of long term sustainability. Two thirds of US families have a home mortgage….. and much of the other one third has the desire to do so. Building more apartments might be the answer for maybe 10% of the American population. The other 90% are not buying it. Renting is for suckers. Let’s be 100% clear about that. Apartments have very little appeal to vast majority of the Country.
Where is blog completely loses it is by never listening to the other 90% of America who realizes that paying rent for the rest of your life is dead end.
What we have here is piss poor urban planning. Can you think of a way that Tacoma could help its existing business districts, promote walkable neighborhoods AND raise homeowner rates back over the 50% line? Because many of the new apartment buildings that have gone up over the last decade are currently insolvent or headed that way. Building more shitty apartments with REIT money or worse, Asian investors, who have never even been to Tacoma, isn’t the way forward.
Urban planning and community building are not zoning. Zoning is not some magic wand that solves a community’s problems, or even housing problems. It’s just not that simple or easy.
The crowd that thinks zoning in more apartments and corporate control of local real estate is the same crowd who look at you with a straight face and tell you a subway to West Seattle is worth more than 6 billion.
@tacomee
At the end of the day the idea that we cannot build more housing because itll “destroy the fabric of society” in American metros is ludicrous.
We also can’t tell half the population that they’re not wanted or can’t live in a city like Tacoma because they have shifty “renter values” or a renter’s income.
Tacomee seems to be conflating urban designs with ownership structures. I would love to see more owner-occupied, multi-family housing. I lived in a condo in many years, and when we started growing our family, moved out of Capitol Hill to a single-family house in North Seattle, because it was basically the only option. If quiet neighborhoods in Seattle afforded more family-sized apartment options with a condominium ownership structure, we would have jumped all over that.
@Steve,
“If quiet neighborhoods in Seattle afforded more family-sized apartment options with a condominium ownership structure….”
I agree with you 100%. But it is not a “Seattle” problem, it is a state problem.
After the big condo meltdown related to the LP siding issue, the state changes the condo liability laws related to construction defects. Now contractors who wish to build condos are taking on a lot (and I do mean “a LOT”) of liability risk. The result being that very few contractors are willing to build condos anymore.
The crunch is particularly severe for entry level condos. The type of condos that a single person or new family might be interested in. The high end condo market still exists to some extent, because the upside for a contractor building $2million condos often out weighs the liability risk.
I’ve often thought that the solution to Seattle’s housing problem lies more with fixing the condo laws and encouraging the construction of more 2 and 3 bedroom family units than it does with townhomes, ADU’s and DADU’s.
I agree with you 100%. But it is not a “Seattle” problem, it is a state problem.
Maybe, but it is more of a Seattle problem then anywhere else, and it isn’t even close. Spokane has already liberalized their housing code and things are way cheaper than in Seattle. I agree with your other point, Steve. In places like Seattle they actually discourage home ownership. They set the lot size way too big. They make it difficult to build a standard mulitplex (with units the same size). They now allow triplexes, but the rules are so arcane it pushes up the costs and discourages a typical coop.
Remember, this is in Seattle. This is the big city. It is one thing for a suburb somewhere to want to remain low density, but in the city it should be the opposite. We should have the most liberal density code in the state and we aren’t even close.
Steve,
I never posted one thing about single family homes in this thread. All I posted about is home ownership. Tacoma (and Seattle even more so) have never even looked for a way to keep home owner rates high while adding density. The more rental apartments Tacoma builds, the worse off the city is going to be. Reading Morgan Murray would be a good place to start to understand why. The City is a boom or bust town. In the good times, developers build rental units…. during the bust times this units often become rundown dumps controlled by out-of-town slum lords. This is not the right way to develop a community. It hasn’t worked in a hundred years.
The trouble with this blog sometimes are posters who want Seattle (and Tacoma) to be like New York, or Europe or Japan even. There’s very little understanding of the local history of this place. My God! Seattle doesn’t even a million people. The population of the suburbs of Seattle are several times the population of the actual city.
Tacoma is rust bucket of a town with unused land and abandoned buildings all over it. Density? Why? Tacoma doesn’t even have a working transit system. Both Tacoma and Seattle have failing school systems and parks overrun with homeless people. Zoning fixes none of that. But talking about zoning is popular because people want a quick fix and one that costs them nothing.
Unless you have a wildly myopic view of Seattle, spending 10 billion (I’m betting more) on a goofy subway from Ballard to West Seattle is just crazy. I mean 10 billion dollars builds a cut and cover subway and plats something like 150,000 thousand homes in a brand new city on State or Federal land somewhere else in the State. Build a new city! One with a fucking public education system that works. Any outsider looking at Seattle’s finances would point out the billions pissed away by Sound Transit while Seattle public schools are a dumpster fire. There’s no way to retrofit Seattle into something it isn’t, no matter how much you want to.
I’m far from an expert in this area, but I see the condo liability law as basically telling developers that they can’t put a crappy product that falls apart on the market and then disappear and escape all liability due to limited-liability laws. In other words, the law solves a real problem. And then developers lost their minds, saying, “but we want to build substandard products, and trick non-savvy customers into buying them, and escape all liability!” I basically don’t take any of their protests as real. Can you convince me otherwise?
“If Tacoma had better zoning and planning tilting towards home ownership, maybe the city could add some quality hosing during a time of higher interest rates.”
What does better zoning mean? Repealing some upzones to keep those pesky apartments away? How can the city of Tacoma tilt the city toward home ownership? Where is there vacant land in Tacoma where new houses could be built without tearing down existing houses?
A high level of homeownership still made some sense in the 1990s when houses were in the $200Ks, but it makes less sense when they’re in the $500Ks to a million. That’s a whole lot of money to put into a house, or to force a long-term mortgage. And it doesn’t help that houses have gotten much larger than they used to be, so if you want a small house you can’t find any. And then you (or at least other single-family/high-ownership advocates) expect them to buy a car and auto insurance and gas too, so that’s another five-digit expenditure on top of the house.
Mike Orr,
Home ownership IS America. Real Americans will settle for nothing less. Please find me one single State or National politician who hasn’t been 100% for home ownership. Owning a home is like apple pie and flag. It’s the American dream for a huge majority, even in Seattle.
The problem density advocates have is they’re, by and large, not pushing for home ownership. That’s why density can’t ever get a real foothold in America. Maybe half the density advocates even go further….. into the truly goofy ideas of rent control and social housing. The majority of housing in Washington State is being financed by the personal credit of the occupants in the form a home mortgage. The pent up demand for home ownership in greater Seattle is billions of dollars…. so far home mortgages are the only vehicle to build a thriving community in the United States (outside of NYC).
At some point maybe urban planners look that what’s actually worked in America and mix in some density, but I’m not holding my breath.
The problem density advocates have is they’re, by and large, not pushing for home ownership. That’s why density can’t ever get a real foothold in America.
Ridiculous. Using that logic, condominiums would be legal (in more areas) but apartments would not. It would be a lot easier to shrink lot sizes. None of that is happening. Meanwhile, anyone trying to increase home ownership is looking to liberalize the regulations (for the same reason people who are concerned about rental prices are doing it). Just look at what they did in Spokane.
The reason it isn’t happening as fast as it should are multiple:
1) Ignorance. The logic is obvious. The research is clear. But many people somehow think that allowing people to build more homes won’t make life any better for the people buying or renting them.
2) Classism. A lot of people don’t want condo owners or renters in their neighborhood.
3) Aesthetics. People often complain about the looks of apartments, especially tall ones.
4) Parking and traffic.
At this point all we’re doing is arguing with a person who is unwilling to listen with reason and wants to continue with the crabs in a bucket mentality.
The belief that community is built upon homeownership is one that ignores what community is about by definition.
“a group of people living in the same place and share common bonds”
Realistically, land or housing doesn’t foster community, people do. But some people misguideningly believe it does. When I was living in Italy, it wasn’t the housing and homeowners that fostered community there. It was the neighbors I saw everyday and greeted on my way to where I was going for the day. The ones I’d see on Friday and Saturday out in the streets chatting with neighbors at the local bars and resturants. And people who set up local events for people to enjoy like our Christmas market and festivals.
The belief that renters aren’t part of their local community is just a lot of very loaded classism and is a misguided belief that being a landowner inherently puts you above you everyone else in the community when it really doesn’t. America is egalitarian and trying to ignore that in terms of how our democracy and civics works is truly un-American. If you believe your voice matters more because you own land then I’m sorry to say land doesn’t vote, people do.
@tacomee
We’ve been over this over and over again. Look at SF bay area if you want to see the future of only prioritizing single family housing. Only the richest can live, let alone own a house anywhere near the popular areas.
> The problem density advocates have is they’re, by and large, not pushing for home ownership.
Let’s be honest with yourself, even if these were condos would you suddenly change your tune? I sincerely doubt so.
Zach B
“Realistically, land or housing doesn’t foster community, people do. But some people misguideningly believe it does. When I was living in Italy, it wasn’t the housing and homeowners that fostered community there. It was the neighbors I saw everyday and greeted on my way to where I was going for the day. The ones I’d see on Friday and Saturday out in the streets chatting with neighbors at the local bars and resturants. And people who set up local events for people to enjoy like our Christmas market and festivals.”
Move to Italy??? Because this is not Seattle…. or Tacoma…. or any big city in America. If this sort of community is important to you, I suggest moving to a small town in Iowa. There are pluses and minuses to living anywhere and community is something small town America really excels at. Seattle is a highly segregated place by both class and race. There’s no real community there.
I mentioned Murray Morgan earlier in the thread… his books are really a great starting point to understanding the history of the NW and why things are the way they are. There’s no fighting centuries of history. Since the first White dude set foot in America, there has been 2 classes of people. There’s a higher class of land owners and there’s the lower class who rents. That’s the way it is and will always be. Because two thirds of us own a home, there’s no way to politically change that. You think people would actually give up a house they own for renting pack-and-stack shitty TOD apartments next to the freeway?
Home ownership and generational wealth are the only paths to social justice in America. Never settle for anything less. In Tacoma I lived in a neighborhood that with a minority of White families. Any of this stupid talk of changing zoning and tearing down family houses for shitty corporate controlled apartments just pisses people off.
Zach, you can still buy a house in Tacoma for under 400K. Just do it and be happy. And if that’s not your jam, I totally understand… but maybe move far, far away and do something totally different? Until I was married, I had a couple of roommates at the house on Bell St. We had a lot of fun in that little house….. and if I would have stayed renting, my life would suck right now. This is not internet shit… this is real life.
Buying a house is “adulting”. Make the commitment and in 30 years, you’ll be glad you did.
@tacommee
> Home ownership and generational wealth are the only paths to social justice in America
Again I ask you if the apartments were built as condos would you actually change your tune? And again I doubt so.
In any case why does your idea of single family homes then translate to enforcing it through all of the seattle metro area?
WL,
Oh no, I’m 100% for ownership in any form. Some kind of multifamily building co-op that only allowed habitation by owners, (no renters) who be ideal. If the Tacoma government would have focused on that instead of inviting outside investors to build ugly units now in receivership…. the City would be in a much stronger position.
But honestly…. when did you ever hear of a TOD project build around home ownership? And here’s the crazy part. Most TOD projects never get built because investors look at the numbers and pass. Even though there a a sea of personal credit and willing co-op owners in Seattle and Tacoma. The City could have helped build hundreds of owner occupied housing around the Tacoma Dome, right by the transit center.
I’m going to guess that rent control rolls in big time across the Left Coast and development of multifamily housing falls off (high interest rates help this happen as well). Rent control is another tool of Left Wing NIMBYs after all.
Tacoma has liberalized zoning, but passed a stupid rent control measure at the same time. I guess that might kick start some owner occupied home building…. but it is Tacoma… a City that manages to squander every opportunity.
“Move to Italy???”
That was a study abroad I did for a year. I don’t intend to move back for a variety of reasons, plus expating is expensive, breauacratic, and onerous to do.
“Because this is not Seattle…. or Tacoma…. or any big city in America. If this sort of community is important to you,”
I have a fairly large social circle in the Seattle metro that feels like community to me. So I don’t know why this is relevant tbh.
“I suggest moving to a small town in Iowa. There are pluses and minuses to living anywhere and community is something small town America really excels at.”
Except I’m not going to, no matter how you keep insisting. I’m not you, you need to accept that instead of insisting this is some sage wisdom you need to keep shoving down my throat because you’re too stubborn to admit your circumstances are different from mine.
Also I know the pitfalls of small town living from my cousin who lived in a small town before. She hated it, the small town niceness is actually not so nice if they turn on you and stuck to live with them.
“Seattle is a highly segregated place by both class and race. There’s no real community there.”
To you, and yet I can find community there from the people I know in my big social circle. Seattle has a large queer community and am very happy to be part of it. So let’s be honest here, you’re just full of it in this regard.
@tacomee
so you’d be okay with upzoning if it was for condos only?
> Most TOD projects never get built because investors look at the numbers and pass.
tacomee you keep bringing this up but then say we must keep enforcing single family zoning. If that was actually true that they never ever get built then you wouldn’t be “scared” about the zoning changing.
WL,
I’ve never said zoning shouldn’t or couldn’t change. Looking at the political makeup of the current Seattle City government, it’s not likely to in Seattle. The State legislature changed zoning for the whole State… but I wouldn’t put it past them to change it back in an election cycle or two. Zoning laws aren’t carved in stone after all. The people who bought homes like the neighborhood to stay the same…. and home owners vote more often than renters.
Tacoma has changed its zoning, but will it even matter? Read my links at the top of this thread. A whole bunch of new Tacoma apartment projects are in bankruptcy. People on this blog like to think that it’s zoning that shapes a city… that’s not true. It’s money. With interest rates where they’re at, housing starts will go way down, zoning be damned.
My take on the Seattle housing market is lots and lots of high priced units have been built over the last 20 years…and there’s still plenty of places zoned for apartments that aren’t built. The idea of knocking down million dollar homes for affordable apartments is pretty rich.
Housing advocates like a harp about the “missing middle” but honestly all those units were built for cheap on empty land when the city was new. Knocking down a million dollar home for a 4 plex? That’s $300,000+ dollars a unit before construction even starts. Can you afford that? This is why changing the zoning isn’t likely to change Seattle very much at all. Seattle is playground for the rich.
I’ve said this before but for the cost of your stupid subway from Ballard to West Seattle (10 billion plus?) you could build a cut and cover subway and put in utilities for 100,000 new homes (on State for Federal land). There’s no way to rerofit Seattle into a mini NYC without changing NYC prices for everything. Density is not affordable.
My gut feeling is Trump, or even Harris, is going to start releasing Federal public lands for development. Both Utah and Nevada are all in on this. We’ll build a massive suburbia of new houses and California jobs will fallow to these new cities and the USA is continue to grow. Because believe it or not…. Americans want their own damn house. Sure, this will cause more environmental damage and West will have water issues and traffic is really going to suck…. but people will get their houses! Seattle is going to get shit under Trump. He’ll take that Sound Transit money away and give it Texas to build more roads.
The reason progressives and transit geeks are bound to fail is they’re haters. Hate cars, single family homes, anyone in America who won’t live by their self imposed standards. In a perfect world, the governor of Washington would ask the Feds for the land and platt out “Cascadia.” A new city with walkable neighborhoods, transit, low water use and, most importantly, ownership opportunities for the working class. But oh, no! Let’s build billion dollar subways in Seattle! At the same time public schools in the city are failing.
@tacomee
Again Seattle will not die from having apartments or condos built.
> Because believe it or not…. Americans want their own damn house.
Do you not realize, that the high prices for the townhouses and even condos is because Americans want those as well?
“I mentioned Murray Morgan earlier in the thread… his books are really a great starting point to understanding the history of the NW and why things are the way they are. There’s no fighting centuries of history. Since the first White dude set foot in America, there has been 2 classes of people. There’s a higher class of land owners and there’s the lower class who rents.”
You’re using a strawman here to justify your landowner vs renter view even though it really isn’t what his books are about from what I’ve read of his books.
“That’s the way it is and will always be.”
According to you, but a lot of renters are doing perfectly fine for themselves and there’s many homeowners who are underwater and stressed from buying a home and upkeep. So saying this dynamic is set in stone is just wrong and just makes you an unreliable narrator tbh.
“Because two thirds of us own a home, there’s no way to politically change that. ”
Yet many renters are doing fine for themselves, and you don’t want to entertain that because it would make your argument a house of cards that would crumble.
“You think people would actually give up a house they own for renting pack-and-stack shitty TOD apartments next to the freeway?”
People live where they live because of that is where the chips may land but people want options other than just a detached home. Your sneering towards apartments, townhouses, and condos just speaks to someone who can’t accept differences and change. Something you seem to have difficulty grasping with. You can keep calling them shoeboxes all you want till you’re blue in the face, but many people like their condo, apartment, or townhome living and enjoy where they live.
You on the other hand can’t fully accept that reality and would rather deflect by calling them suckers, stupid, losers, and morons. Like some high school bully who never truly left high school.
You can keep calling them that, but they are your neighbors and I wouldn’t like to live next door to someone who views renters as losers and is downright childish and demeaning towards people renting. You don’t know their financial situation and yet proclaim to know so.
“Home ownership and generational wealth are the only paths to social justice in America.”
Not really, you keep beating that drum but all I hear is a lot of hot air. Many people are living the American Dream without homeownership and doing fine for themselves, you just can’t wrap your head around such a concept.
“Never settle for anything less.”
I’m doing fine for myself atm.
“In Tacoma I lived in a neighborhood that with a minority of White families. Any of this stupid talk of changing zoning and tearing down family houses for shitty corporate controlled apartments just pisses people off.”
I mean, someone could say you’re white knighting here for trying to say how you perceive your neighbors should feel about changes to their neighborhood. It just makes you look honestly worse in that you’re speaking for your neighbors, when they have their own thoughts and feelings that are different from yours. Some will agree with your views, some won’t at all. I don’t think it’s really your place to speak for an entire neighborhood in this context.
“Zach, you can still buy a house in Tacoma for under 400K. Just do it and be happy. And if that’s not your jam, I totally understand… but maybe move far, far away and do something totally different?”
I mean you aren’t when you clearly can’t accept people who are open to both renting and homeownership like myself. You have a tendency to view this as some binary black or white choice when it’s more gray and you can’t accept it. I’m fine where I’m at living with my family till I can save up for a condo in Seattle because I’m not interested in suburban or small town living and wanna be where my friends are as a young professional. Not all of us need a large house to be happy in life.
“Until I was married, I had a couple of roommates at the house on Bell St. We had a lot of fun in that little house….. and if I would have stayed renting, my life would suck right now. This is not internet shit… this is real life.”
You’re using survivorship bias to justify you own anecdotal evidence which some would argue is a fallacy in the end. I know plenty of people who are renting, including into old age and doing fine. Your view that I absolutely need to own to own a home now and in retirement speaks to someone uncomfortable with the changes happening to society. People are living longer, people are wanting a better work life balance, people are realizing homeownership isn’t as always what it’s cracked up to be that you keep professing as gospel, people are moving back to cities after decades long divestment and white flight and realizing they are actually as nice as a quiet suburban home.
You’re still viewing homeownership through a very idealistic lens as if it’s the only solution to how to be successful. I know plenty of successful people who are doing fine renting and doing well in terms of retirement planning.
A friend of mine showed me a book recently that he owns called Generations by Neil Howe which speaks to how different generations view and operate within broader society.
“Civic Cohort: An example is the GI generation (born 1902-1924) that was raised in the depression where massive government programs were put in place to help them. As young adults, they fought and won WWII. After the war many of them went to school on the GI bill. They have a strong belief that government works.
Adaptive Cohort: Following the Civics is the adaptive cohort which are referred to as the “Silents” (Born 1925 to 1945). They generally shared the GI’s values. The “silents” work within the system. They are generally trustful of the leadership of previous generations.
Idealist Cohort: This is my group, the “baby boomer” generation (born 1946 to 1960). In our youth there were unlimited economic opportunity, so we turned to spiritual matters, questioning and rebelling against the values of the GI and Silent generation.
Reactive Cohort: This is “Gen X” (Born 1961 to 1981). They are viewed as expressing a cynical, world-weary attitude as young adults. Their life experience with government is exactly the opposite of the GI generation; at every stage of the Gen Xers life, government’s resources have been directed to benefit someone else”
“Buying a house is “adulting”. Make the commitment and in 30 years, you’ll be glad you did.”
To you, but again I’m doing fine where I’m at in my life.
This seems backwards. Surely smaller units are cheaper than larger units (of the same age/quality, at least), so allowing more units per lot means cheaper housing (albeit perhaps not cheaper than existing old housing). There’s no zoning requirement for rentals; those multi-family dwellings could be condos, allowing for ownership for people who can’t afford an entire house. If there’s reasons why housing is being structured as rentals despite there being demand for ownership, that’s a distinct issue from the shape of that housing. After all, single family homes can be rentals, too.
Smaller units are cheaper. The problem is small units have reached the price that large units were in 2010 or 2005. So people who could afford small units then while large units were out of their reach and seemingly luxuries, are now finding the small ones are just as unaffordable. And people who can afford a large one then can now only afford a small one. And because theres enough well-to-do people, developers can target large units and luxury add-ons and still get enough renters/buyers, so the bottom 50% is being ignored, and is finding that the bottom 50% of units are already full and have the highest demand (because both lower-income and higher-income people can choose them).
Prices vaguely follow price-per-square-foot, but only vaguely. If you replace a house with a 4-plex or 12 apartments, each one will probably cost less than the original house, and definitely less than a replacement house would. At the same time, if you buy a house you may get a bit more space and yard than you would with a condo/apartment. But orthogonical to this is location, location, location. Closer-in and more walkable areas command a higher price per square foot than more isolated areas — as if people really want to live near transit/destinations/centers even if they say they don’t. The exception is waterfront views and the most exclusive low-density areas (like Medina).
https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2024/10/30/georgetown-to-downtown-safety-project-breaks-ground/
The georgetown to downtown bike lanes project started, adding bike lanes on lander street and airport way (in different sections). This’ll extend the bike lane network south from it’s current terminus at sodo station to georgetown.
On a transit related note, they’ll build a raised bus stop at Airport Way S & S Edmunds St solely used by route 124 (west side of airport way)
On the Sesame Street Subway song, as a kid I wondered why all the characters were grimacing while riding not just a train, but a whole networked system with stations! It turned out the New York City Subway is just about as fun as Sesame Street was depicting it.
I saw a mouse in the U-District station a few weeks ago. We’re on our way to the big time!