Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) can help ease the housing shortage and give people a wider choice of housing types and locations. (City Beautiful)
Service changes at several transit agencies started yesterday.
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Great video Mike! thanks for posting it.
I’ve always been a fan of ADUs because they allow for the growth of generational wealth and are privately funded. This sort of growth is a proven winner is places like Italy over the last 1000 years.
Also tearing down houses that already exist is rarely (never?) results in new housing that “affordable” Bulldozing a million dollar home for 3 or 4 townhomes that cost $750K each isn’t solving “the housing shortage”
Also tearing down houses that already exist is rarely (never?) results in new housing that [is] “affordable”
Nonsense. All the science, all the anecdotal evidence (especially from places like Japan) point otherwise.
Only when the prevailing market rate is affordable. Japan has organized its zoning and regulations to allow it to be affordable even as greater Tokyo swells to 38 million people. We have a completely different situation, with restrictive zoning that makes the housing supply unable to cope with the population increase. So one house replacement in Japan generates affordable market-rate units, while one house replacement in Seattle doesn’t. That only makes sense in the context of their overall housing markets, and their policies that led to that overall market.
A bit closer than Japan– see MPDU program (since 1973).
https://montgomeryplanning.org/planning/housing/affordable-housing/
That’s a different issue; it’s how subsidized housing works. The Japan example is about market-rate housing. In Tokyo market-rate housing is affordable to the vast majority of workers, and costs much less than comparable housing here. Here even middle-class people have trouble affording an apartment, and houses/condos are out of reach or require an inordinate amount of long-term debt. So subsidized housing has to expand to meet that need. Or because it isn’t expanding much, the gap between $24K-75K income just isn’t being met, and those people are under pressure to move to the exurbs or out of Pugetopolis.
> In Tokyo market-rate housing is affordable to the vast majority of workers
What a wonderful state of affairs. Why haven’t we adopted Tokyo-style zoning yet, so we can enjoy the same?
Why haven’t we adopted Tokyo-style zoning yet, so we can enjoy the same?
Because America has become very conservative. I don’t mean that in a left-right perspective but in the traditional meaning of conservative. Last month’s cover story on The Atlantic was all about how progressives broke the America dream: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/03/american-geographic-social-mobility/681439/. A bit heavy-handed in who they blame but there is a lot of truth to it. In any event I definitely recommend reading it (for those who haven’t). It is very well written (of course) and has a lot of history I wasn’t aware of. I guess America used to move a lot. I mean a huge amount. “Americans moved far more often, over longer distances, and to greater advantage than did people in the lands from which they had come.”
Then they basically stopped. A lot of what the progressives were fighting for made sense (especially at the time). Blight was a large issue in cities. So much so that well meaning (but ultimately wrong-headed) leaders pushed for urban renewal. Thus the fight for stability in the cities was in part a push against urban renewal (and thus a good thing). But they ended up killing cities while trying to save them. They made living in cities unaffordable thus destroying the very thing that made them so attractive. Cities avoided poverty and blight but became gentrified — not by “raising all boats”, but by excluding the poor.
Now, of course, those fighting against density ignore that argument. They usually talk about the existing character of the city (as if cities never changed in the past, leading to what you find attractive). At least some of them are honest — they just like it the way it is and if you can’t afford to live there, tough sh**. Some of them, of course, believe that zoning has nothing to do with the high cost of housing — like those who don’t believe in climate change or vaccines. It is basically the selfish and the ignorant that are responsible for the lack of progress on the issue, although there are signs that America may be slowly moving in a better direction.
But again, it doesn’t follow the typical left-right spectrum. Spokane has a more liberal zoning code than Seattle. In other words, Seattle is more conservative (when it comes to land use) than Spokane. California — a state that has become very leftist — is one of the most conservative areas now when it comes to zoning.
The primary reason people moved repeatedly was for jobs. There was opportunity everywhere, and inequality was low enough that people could move to a new city and find a house or apartment they could afford. They just assumed they could find something easily. I remember in 1995 when some friends moved to San Francisco. Housing was already tight there by then-Seattle standards, so I asked them how people can be sure they’ll be able to find an apartment in the city. They said, “It may take a month, but everybody eventually does.” Now it’s much harder.
The primary reason people moved repeatedly was for jobs.
That was part of it. But people moved just because their situation changed. There was literally a “moving day” where a substantial portion of the population moved. To quote the article again:
In St. Louis, the publisher of a city directory estimated in 1906 that over a five-year span, only one in five local families had remained at the same address. “Many private families make it a point to move every year,” The Daily Republican of Wilmington, Delaware, reported in 1882.
(It really is a fascinating article. I never knew “Moving Day” was a thing.)
Anyway, the economic impact of the lack of mobility is huge and really the point of the article (even though I find the history fascinating). To quote from the article again:
Among academics, the claim that housing regulations have widened inequality is neither novel nor controversial. The economists Peter Ganong and Daniel Shoag offer an illustration: If a lawyer moved from the Deep South to New York City, he would see his net income go up by about 39 percent, after adjusting for housing costs—the same as it would have done back in 1960. If a janitor made the same move in 1960, he’d have done even better, gaining 70 percent more income. But by 2017, his gains in pay would have been outstripped by housing costs, leaving him 7 percent worse off. Working-class Americans once had the most to gain by moving. Today, the gains are largely available only to the affluent.
@ Ross:
St Louis in 1900 was a very unusual place. It boomed with immigrants. The Census says that 20% of the residents were foreign born with another 41% with foreign born parents. The City of St Louis grew by 50% between 1890 and 1910.
Finally, home ownership in the US was much lower before Roosevelt. Nationally, it hovered around 45-50% between 1890 and 1940. It was lower in cities.
I haven’t linked the sources (Census data). It doesn’t seem critical info though. Simply out, it was a very different era.
@Al — Read the freakin’ article. Seriously, I only quoted one little bit. The point was not that Saint Louis or Wilmington, Delaware were so unique — the point is they were actually fairly normal — for the USA. So before you start with the “well, it was due to the move westward” I suggest you read the article (because it addresses that).
Simply out, it was a very different era
Yes, that is the point! For well over a century we were extremely mobile. Through World Wars and major depressions. Now, for the last fifty years we aren’t.
In the 1960s, about one out of every five Americans moved in any given year—down from one in three in the 19th century, but a frenetic rate nonetheless. In 2023, however, only one in 13 Americans moved.
But before you come up with your own theory as to why that is, read the article. Chances are, they address it. I am not going to keep cutting out clips just because you haven’t read it. I am not Reader’s Digest.
Ross Bleakney,
Seattle’s housing problems were caused 100% by people moving there who were not born there over the last 35 years. Amazon, Microsoft and host of other tech companies attracted a lot of people with high wage jobs. And that sucks for the locals, but it just is.
If the tech boom wouldn’t have hit Seattle, it would be a lot more like Minneapolis.
ADUs can’t generate a lot of housing units because it’s only one or two more per lot, and only some owners will build them. But they can generate some units, and allow renters to choose from a broader range of housing types. It’s a start at restoring “missing middle” housing.
“tearing down houses that already exist is [never] results in new housing that [is] “affordable””
I’m getting tired of this argument. Nobody believes that tearing down a $1 million house will lead to 2-4 units selling at $125K each or renting at $650-1000 each without subsidies. When people say urbanists believe this, it’s a false accusation. What it does is reduce the competition on other available units. That makes it slightly harder for those owners to raise prices. It allows two households to get units, whereas without the ADU only one household could.
Yeah it’s a concept called filtering.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filtering_(housing)
New housing takes pressure off housing on the lower rungs as less people are fighting over the less expensive apartments or homes. And as a building ages, it does see a form of depreciation like a car does and becomes more like a used car in terms of valuation.
The median income in Seattle is now north of 100K. Depending on one’s savings and investments and interest rates, $750k is much more attainable than $1-2Mil. Not to mention that the ADU unit would presumably be rented out, so it is not even a path to home ownership. Although personally I would prefer European style family flats, with basically a single unit with square footage of a moderate sized house on each floor, and 4 – 6 floors of units, secure parking on the ground floor. No sharing walls, more windows and balconies.
Brandon K.
And that’s the current market…. $750K for a townhouse. For a lot of people, it’s absolutely do-able. There’s a line all the way to California of buyers at this price point. Nobody is construction is looking for work now.
The problem is not everybody can afford a $600K mortgage. Not everybody can afford to drive a BMW either. Housing is always going to be pecking order where the upper classes get all the tax breaks, generational wealth and financial stability. Renters? The shaft.
Having a place to live has never been a right in America. We’ve had periods of time when “the buy-in” to own housing as been affordable than it currently is (around 2/3rds of all American families own their own home.. or at least part of it). I’m not at all sure anything can be done about the 1/3 of this county who rent…. the big roadblock is always going to be the 2/3rds of us who won’t pay for housing for other people…..
The ADU craze would be better if people could spilt lots and sell the second home to another buyer. Lots of home owners would love to get $300-400K cash for their backyard so a builder to put another home in. Not many home owners are going to let their home be bulldozed for “middle housing”. Buying them out? Got a spare million?
Housing is such a big problem that we’ll need to find privately financed solutions to it. After all the headlines about “social housing” in Seattle, House Out Neighbors won’t be able to build 200 new units of housing in the next 3 years and maybe 100-150 units a year after that. $50 million a year isn’t much to a housing authority. More people move to Seattle in one month than Social housing will build units in 5 years.
The US housing market is around 50 trillion dollars!
The problem is not everybody can afford a $600K mortgage.
Exactly. Unfortunately there aren’t that many places for less than that because of the zoning. You can’t buy a townhouse for $400K like you can in Tokyo. Not because the land is more expensive here (in fact it is much cheaper) but because they won’t allow you to build them in most of the city. Scarcity leads to high prices.
I can buy a decent, brand-new smartphone for less than $300. But if we regulated smart phones like we do housing the cheapest smartphone would be something at least twice that. Of course then people would say “they just won’t build cheap phones” or “if they allow more phones it will only be ‘luxury’ smart phones like the $800 Samsung Galaxy A25”.
(The Samsung Galaxy A25 actually retails for $299, but if we limited phone production it would cost $800 while higher end phones would cost a couple grand. )
The median income in Seattle is now north of 100K.
Yes, because middle and low income people have been priced out of the market. The reason they have been priced out of the market is (you guessed it) zoning. There are plenty of low and middle income people who would love to live in the city but they won’t allow builders to build places for them to live.
> Also tearing down houses that already exist is rarely (never?) results in new housing that “affordable” Bulldozing a million dollar home for 3 or 4 townhomes that cost $750K each isn’t solving “the housing shortage”
Keeping on single family houses goes from million dollar homes to 2~3 million dollars. Bay area shows the future outcome of insisting on only single family homes.
WL,
Oh I agree with you. But the home owners in San Francisco are quite happy with the way things are now. Anyone who owns a house in San Francisco is pretty much a financial winner (a house w/o a mortgage). Who do you think pays $750K for a Seattle townhouse? Likely somebody who just cashed out in Cali?
I haven’t worked on any project that I’d deem “affordable” for 20 years! Changing the zoning does not change supply and demand. It doesn’t change the finance guys, the builders or the speculators… right now close to the entire “system” only works for higher income people.
A lot of the problem is just how fucking wealthy some people are…. especially on the Left Coast. All that wealth tends to suck up all the resources…. so builders build 5,000 sq ft houses instead of. four 1200 sq ft ones. This is the same reason going to a Seahawks game is so expensive, because there are enough wealthy people in Seattle to fill Lumen Field. That has little do with zoning.
It’s a hard problem to deal with because of the sheer size of the Seattle housing market, which is also tied to the regional and national markets. Looking at the billions Greater Seattle is spending on light rail…. that money wouldn’t put much of dent in housing problem.
@tacomee
At this rate I’m sure if it was the 1950s you’d be raving against those multiple single family homes for bulldozing farmhouses and their plots
WL,
Actually I’m not at all happy about where the US housing market is or where it’s headed. I believe that every family in America should have the chance to build generational wealth. Home ownership is a big, big part of that.
I’m heading because to Tacoma next weekend to see an old friend who I had a long argument about Sound Transit building a light rail line to Seattle. I said then it would never happen…. inflation would rise, the project would be years behind schedule, and the Federal government would pull funding somewhere along the line. This doesn’t mean I’m anti-mass transit.
Changing the zoning is popular amount the urbanist crowd because it doesn’t cost them anything. I support the latest zoning changes the State Legislature came up with. I’m unhappy with Mayor Bruce trying to somehow dodge them.
But zoning is really the problem. Zoning does finance housing, doesn’t build housing. The problem is a lot deeper than that.
Changing the zoning does not change supply and demand.
What an absurd statement. Zoning most certainly influences supply. It is the biggest reason — by far — that Seattle looks the way it does. It is why they build these seemingly ridiculous, cookie-cutter, Big-House/ADU/DADU, triplex-condos. The *only* reason they build that is zoning. You won’t see those in other cities because they don’t have the same zoning. All of these limitations on the supply push up the cost.
It is really not that complicated. The only reason housing is expensive in Seattle is because of the zoning. That’s it. That is just common sense economics backed up with research: https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/hier1948.pdf. I don’t know why you keep claiming the researchers are wrong without a shred of evidence to support your case.
Ross Bleakney,
Once again zoning doesn’t build housing, capital and labor do. As far as capital goes, do you really believe banks care much about housing affordability? I don’t. I think REIT investors are pretty happy with the state of the residential housing market. Planned scarcity for profit? Looks that way to me.
Then there’s the labor side. Seattle is a really expensive place to live and there are less blue collar workers there by the day. Bus drivers, baristas, concrete workers…. where are they?? . There’s unlimited construction work in Seattle currently. Let’s be really clear here. Who wants to drive a Metro bus or pour concrete and pay two grand to rent an apartment? You can do the same work in Texas and get a home mortgage.
Changing the zoning is sort of the last idea Liberals have for changing housing in Blue cities. I doubt it’s the problem however. Even if zoning was totally done away with, nobody is building a sub $2000 a month apartment in Seattle because the finance and construction industries can’t do that.
> so builders build 5,000 sq ft houses instead of. four 1200 sq ft one
Here’s a rhetorical question: why build one 5,000 sq ft home for $2M when you can sell four 1,200 sq ft ones for $750,000 each?
> Changing the zoning is sort of the last idea Liberals have for changing housing in Blue cities. I doubt it’s the problem however. Even if zoning was totally done away with, nobody is building a sub $2000 a month apartment in Seattle because the finance and construction industries can’t do that.
@tacommee
if zoning will change nothing then why are you so afraid of the change that will happen. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
Nathan Dickey,
Wow! Now you’re getting it!
“Here’s a rhetorical question: why build one 5,000 sq ft home for $2M when you can sell four 1,200 sq ft ones for $750,000 each?”
First off a new 5,000 sq ft home in Seattle would sell for over 3 million, but you are understanding the basic math about “redevelopment”. Things only get torn down with there’s a big profit to be made. Any redevelopment in Seattle isn’t going to result in affordable units. I wholly support rezoning but understand tearing down houses (where maybe 4-6 people lived) and building 4 $750K condos (with maybe the same 4-6 people AND 3 more cars!) isn’t affordable housing.
Once again zoning doesn’t build housing
No one said it did. I’m not sure why this is so hard for you to understand. Just read the study. I’ll summarize this in one sentence: Housing will match the cost of production in Seattle as long as zoning doesn’t restrict it.
It is actually a tiny bit more complicated than that. The authors point out that there are really three different areas:
1) Areas where housing prices are below the cost of production. These are places where there is an oversupply of housing (typically after a boom and bust).
2) Places where housing costs match the cost of production. This is what exists in most of America when the study was written.
3) Places where the key factor is zoning. Seattle is clearly in this category.
I realize this is not an intuitive idea. We just assume that the cost of land is a key factor. But without zoning it isn’t. Without zoning the places that have greater demand simply have more density.
Maybe the term “cost of production” is confusing to you. I could see that if you are a developer. That’s because you can’t see the forest for the trees. You live within the various regulatory environment and do the best you can. You have to deal with very expensive, time consuming regulations. You have to deal with land that is artificially expensive simply because of the zoning. But the term does not include all that. It is only the cost of labor and materials. That’s it. In other words imagine the city wants to build some low-income housing on land that it owns. They have done all the paperwork. All they need now is to hire the workers and build it. That cost, right there, is what housing would cost if not for the zoning. Everywhere.
First off a new 5,000 sq ft home in Seattle would sell for over 3 million
You completely missed the point. Here is a concrete example:
1) This is a condominium consisting of three units: https://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Dashboard.aspx?ParcelNbr=2285910000. But as you can see it was not cheap to build. It consists of three different sized houses. Two of them are connected by a hallway even though it is unlikely it will ever be used. The lot is 8,316 square feet.
2) This is a nearby townhouse: https://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Dashboard.aspx?ParcelNbr=5100403436. It sits on a lot that is 1160 square feet.
Thus they could have built seven townhouses in that first lot. The condo is worth about $3.5 million (for all three units together). The townhouses are worth about $8 million. It is worth noting that the townhouses are next to a busy street while the condos are not. Therefore the condos sit on more valuable property. This begs several questions:
Why did they build such a weird triplex condo? Why is it even a condo, and not just a house? Why not build a bunch of townhouses since they would clearly make way more money?
Zoning! It would be illegal to build townhouses there. It would also be illegal to build apartments where the townhouses are. They could have just build a regular house, but instead they build as much housing as the possibly could. That is the case everywhere!
Walk around greater Lake City sometime. You can see apartments. You can see townhouses. You can see regular houses on big lots. In every case it matches the zoning. You can literally tell what the zoning is based on what they actually build. You never see a new house going up where they allow townhouses. You never see townhouses going up where they allow apartments. Clearly the zoning is the dominant factor in development.
It explains the seemingly nonsensical development patterns. It also explains why housing is so freakin’ expensive. Building those triplex-condos (which are extremely expensive to build) does help the housing problem. But not as much as building those townhouses. Building those townhouses does help the housing problem, but not as much as building an apartment building. The zoning pushes up the cost of housing the way that bird flu pushed up the cost of eggs. It reduces supply.
The forces at work in the Bay Area still must deal with the 47 years after Proposition 13 was passed. Unlike here in Washington, California passed a law that severely limits property tax increases each year on each residential property as long as it’s not sold. So local governments “lose” money going forward because they cannot tax homes owned for a long time like they should. There are people living in identical condos or homes next to each other paying wildly different property tax bills (like one being 4 or 5 times more than what a neighbor pays). Many cities don’t want to encourage affordable homes for sale because this would hurt their local finances in the future.
Proposition 13 created a huge mess that is nowhere near being resolved. We should thank our lucky stars that we don’t have this inequity here. It has loads of unintended consequences — like discouraging cities from adding new affordable housing.
Ross Bleakney,
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/tacoma/tacoma-church-builds-low-income-housing-hilltop/281-52509a3b-b152-4a72-931f-a0b06c7ddc7e
This is a project I know very well. It’s low income housing built on land owned by a church…. the unit cost pushed above $435k towards the end, even though the builders tried like Hell to keep the costs down. This is rock bottom prices for Tacoma development. Building this is in Seattle would add maybe $100K per unit? If these units where sold to middle income buyers (and that should really be an option here to recoup the investment and build more housing) the mortgages would be around $2300-$2600 a month (30 year fixed).
When investors build a big apartment building in Seattle and rents start out at $2000 a month, there really isn’t much profit in it. Of course the investors are holding real estate that should improve in value and rent increases are certainly on the way…. but the rising costs of materials and labor just such building any housing under $375K a unit. Zoning can’t fix any of this.
Seattle has a pretty sizable population that can afford a $375K unit. The cost of a housing subsidy to correct this would by way bigger than the Sound Transit budget… we’re talking billions and billions.
This a real problem… and why I building more light rail is just folly.
“But the home owners in San Francisco are quite happy with the way things are now. Anyone who owns a house in San Francisco is pretty much a financial winner (a house w/o a mortgage). Who do you think pays $750K for a Seattle townhouse?”
We shouldn’t base public policy on what people who can pay for $3M houses or $750K townhouses want. That just allows a shrinking minority to make a killing on the backs of everyone else, and to deny them housing choices. That’s just creating an economic aristocracy with the government’s connivance, in a democracy where the government is supposed to be fair to everybody’s housing needs.
“I believe that every family in America should have the chance to build generational wealth.”
There are stocks and other investment alternatives available. Put the money into a company, hopefully one that does something productively useful (e.g., not creating another surgary breakfast cereal with extra artificial colors to look just that shade of red).
“You can do the same work in Texas and get a home mortgage. ”
But you can’t live in a walkable neighborhood with frequent transit, and you have a state government that’s hostile to your voting rights and other rights. Parts of Austin and Houston may be OK for frequency, but you won’t have as wide a range of destinations or non-car-commute employment opportunities as here.
@tacomee
400k is still cheaper than 700k and cheaper than 1 million. Even on the bellevue side i remember an eastside reddit post about someone lamenting a large house subdivided into 4~5 townhouses. until everyone else reminded them that it’s still a lot more families that can afford a house.
> Seattle has a pretty sizable population that can afford a $375K unit. The cost of a housing subsidy to correct this would by way bigger than the Sound Transit budget… we’re talking billions and billions.
That’s literally why we upzone and the private market can provide the money to build it. It’s really not that complicated tacommee. It’s literally the same way swaths of farm houses were converted into multiple single family houses.
“tearing down houses (where maybe 4-6 people lived) and building 4 $750K condos (with maybe the same 4-6 people AND 3 more cars!) isn’t affordable housing.”
You’re doing it again. You’re complaining that the $750K condo isn’t affordable. The $3M house is even less affordable! And there’s only one of them! And you’re assuming that 4-6 people live in the house, when nowadays it’s often 1-2 adults. The condos allow more households (different families or groups) to live in them. The house forces everybody to live as one group. That can be appealing for a family with 4 children or a grandmother or two, or close friends or a romantic menage, but it’s not necessarily appealing to two or three groups/individuals who may not get along or are worried about one of their roommates becoming violent.
I think we are wasting our time folks. We have tried logic. We have tried science. We have tried pointing to various examples of cities with more liberal zoning that now have cheaper housing.
tacomee hasn’t bothered to argue against the studies. Nor have their been reasonable counter arguments to what has been said. Instead there is the totally unfounded and unsubstantiated proposition that prices will be expensive here just because they are expensive here. We shouldn’t allow more housing to be built because no one wants to build more housing. And even if they did build more housing, prices wouldn’t come down. Because that is just the way it is.
When people on this forum say zoning, do they actually mean zoning, or are they referring to the whole pantheon of controls on how land is developed, most of which are related to environmental or safety (eg fire) concerns?
> When people on this forum say zoning, do they actually mean zoning, or are they referring to the whole pantheon of controls on how land is developed, most of which are related to environmental or safety (eg fire) concerns?
It’s the complete opposite. Most zoning has nothing to do with environmental or safety regulations. If anything “modern” zoning usually approves apartments near the worst air polluting areas next to freeways which is the complete opposite approach one would take one was actually concerned about safety. For the environment many American cities will not care if you are clearing a meadow for single family houses but will care if it’s an apartment replacing a parking lot.
> When people on this forum say zoning…
I assume most people are referring to the limitations on land use as defined in the zoning. For example, some folks harken back to when zoning wasn’t much more complicated than indicating where factories could be operated versus where housing could be built and such. These folks might simply want the zoning to be midrise or higher on 100% of land across the city. Meanwhile, other folks might be more focused on reducing limitations within certain zoning descriptions, like allowing single-stair point access blocks in more zones, or allowing more units on NR zones, or increasing height limits across all zones. This gets to the second part of your question, though:
>… pantheon of controls on how land is developed, most of which are related to environmental or safety (eg fire) concerns?
As WL said, most of these rules may have ostensibly been developed for environmental or safety concerns, but there’s a strong argument that most of those rules used safety concerns as a cover for simply restricting construction in order to enrich established landowners or prevent certain demographics from escaping poverty. This is apparent in land use codes that require certain aesthetics or certain fire protection features for some buildings (multi-family) but not other (McMansions) despite those structures having the same number of rooms or floors or occupants or whatever.
When people on this forum say zoning, do they actually mean zoning, or are they referring to the whole pantheon of controls on how land is developed, most of which are related to environmental or safety (eg fire) concerns?
When I say “zoning” I mean it in the sense that the study means zoning. They actually they use the phrase “zoning and other land use controls” and I sometimes use similar wording (i. e. “zoning and regulations”). In Seattle this could mean things like design review.
I don’t think anyone is referring to health and safety regulations in that context. The one exception is the two staircase requirement in U. S. construction which is well-meaning but simply outdated. But otherwise that is not what people mean (or at least it certainly isn’t what I mean) when I say “zoning”. For example I have no issue at all with the regulations involved with foundations: https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SDCI/Codes/SeattleResidentialCode/2021SRCChapter4.pdf. I just wish that the structures they built with such foundations could hold more people, be on a smaller lot, etc.
By zoning, I think here generally mean lot coverage ratios, height limits, and floor area ratios (FAR), which dictate how wide, tall, and large a building can be (respectively), which in turn dictate density, which is the nexus with transit. Arguments that these 3 limits exist to meet to environmental or safety concerns are generally specious.
Zoning also certainly covers use, which is a simple as residential vs industrial use but also cover import factors like minimums around lot size, living area, or parking, which in turn impact density, walkability, and other factors that drive transit usage.
“ When people on this forum say zoning, do they actually mean zoning, or are they referring to the whole pantheon of controls on how land is developed, most of which are related to environmental or safety (eg fire) concerns?”
Zoning codes have lots of different restrictions or allowances in them. There are basic definitions of what exterior structures can be built (height, setbacks, lot coverage, FAR). There are also rules about things like parking and fencing and signage (commercial). There are the kinds if land uses allowed by right, or conditionally or not at all. There may be overlay districts that are defined in a separate section of the zoning code. There are also procedures defined for making changes to a zoning cide map (aka rezoning).
Certainly there are subdivision (or lot platting) codes, and types of building codes (fire, safety, structure) that are not part of a zoning code. But these are more about regulating how to build things rather than excluding them outright. These codes may result in de facto restrictions (like making things financially infeasible) but they generally are not direct restrictions like a zoning code is.
Obviously, a zoning code is much more than defining land use and density.
A good example of the difference is if there isn’t enough water capacity. The zoning code would not prevent more things getting built. It’s just what’s built may not get water service. So they’d have to truck it in.
So while other codes can end up restricting things, the front line of restrictions is the zoning code.
I think some diversification is always good.
ADU and townhouses clearly serves different income level. Also, even if you are right, I don’t think we can find enough qualified urban parcels to build enough ADUs that solves the housing shortage. Also, how many people are open to invest in ADU? If I am the owner, I’d rather sell my property or not. Developing ADU and running it as a rental doesn’t sound like easy money.
HZ,
ADUs don’t solve the “housing crisis”. They do allow families to build generational wealth. They certainly have a positive effect on the amount of housing available. I think the rules around building more housing units on lots that contain existing housing certainly should be looked to make ADU type building easier to do. The best thing about ADUs is they’re generally not under corporate control.
There’s this one rule about construction that is constantly ignored on this blog.
Tearing down housing to build more housing never results in more affordable housing. I’d love to see one exception in real life if anybody has one.
If I have a crappy old 4plex or house somewhere and I’m charging lower than average rent…. the only reason that property is redeveloped is to get better units with way higher rent ( or sell them to a buyer for a huge profit). Otherwise why tear the damn thing down? Because I can collect rent on MY investment. The renters are the product here… not the housing. It’s not unlike raising sheep really. Renters are managed for MY profit, not theirs. Because land owners don’t give a shit about any perceived “housing crisis”. Nor do builders, or the REIT people or the banks.
The only solution for the working class is to own your own property. If you can’t afford to buy in city or neighborhood, you should just move somewhere else. Because there’s only like 13 cities educated Liberals all want to live in… there’s one hell of a supply and demand problem here. Seattle housing is not really about zoning… it’s a simple math problem of way too many people (many of them with money) all wanting to live in the Emerald City. More housing just brings more people and higher rents! That’s the real story here in Left Coast.
Meanwhile, Metro will never hire enough mechanics or drivers again because why would any smart blue collar worker live in Seattle?
“Tearing down housing to build more housing never results in more affordable housing.”
We just cited an example above: a $1-3M house vs 4-6 $750K condos. $750K is more affordable than $1-3M.
@Tacomee,
Corporate-run apartment can be good or bad, so is ADU run by individual landlord. I don’t think there is an absolute right or wrong of either type of rental, so I would think both should exist.
And your point regarding developing ADU should be made easier makes sense to me, except that they don’t support the your point against townhouses or apartment.
“If I have a crappy old 4plex or house somewhere and I’m charging lower than average rent…. the only reason that property is redeveloped is to get better units with way higher rent ( or sell them to a buyer for a huge profit). Otherwise why tear the damn thing down? ”
Let’s say a single family home is sold to a developer and they are redeveloping the lot to build townhouse.
Of course it is for making more money, but when those lot was replaced by townhouse, it displace one home to build 4-6 homes. How can each home still be more expensive than the original home?
If it was a 4plex then that might be a bigger lot. In that case, developer may be able to put 9-12 units there.
Since more units are added to these rebuilds, the overall value of the entire structure is higher, but it doesn’t necessarily make each individual home more expensive. If they are cheaper than what they replace and the development and there is a net increase of supply in the market, then the market definitely become more affordable. The problem is the housing price doesn’t catch up with other cost, but it would only be worse if nothing was done.
HZ,
If I was to build a build a ADU behind my house…. the site preparation isn’t likely to cost big money. It adds housing.
Tearing down a house, doing the utility work and permits in Seattle puts building preparations work per unit over that many posters on this could afford in mortgage….. we’re looking well over $250K per unit before pouring any concrete… this adds up to an over $700K price per unit. So a $800K house goes away and we end up with 4 condos worth close to the same price as the damn house. Because tearing housing and building something new is never going to make housing more affordable. The “missing middle” housing that gets talked about is absolutely not for “middle income” people. The low classes in Seattle must always rent.
Even the new big apartment buildings have to charge $2000 rent a month per unit just the pay back costs of building them. There isn’t much profit in new buildings. I wouldn’t feel sorry for the owners however… because investing in real estate is long game. Landlords have the “rent ratchet”…. rent increases to increase profits. And all the equity in the building belongs to owners.
If you’re renting from some big property management company, remember you are the product here. The building, the units do not make money on their own, they need to somebody, quite frankly a mark, to pay every month. Every time a renter gets a pay raise a work… the rent monster wants their cut.
It doesn’t take a genus chart the money you’ll make in a career over time (let’s say a 4% raise year to year) and the rent increases over time (something like 5%++ year to year). At some point most renters in Seattle (or other desirable cities like D.C. or San Francisco) start paying the money they should be saving for retirement to keep a roof over their head. Over 30 years, this is financial disaster.
No one can raise your house payments on a 30 year mortgage. Of course there is upkeep on a house or an HOA payment, but the equity in the property is yours! Make 360 payments and you’ve come full circle!!!! Because your house payment is fixed, you can fully fund your retirement. At the end of your life, you can sell your house and move into a nursing home. Beats paying a lifetime of rent and living under a blue tarp at the end. You think any of the old bastards living along the freeway ever thought that would be their retirement? I feel sorry for them, but make no mistake, Seattle will not bail you out.
Is there a commenter here who owns a single family home that you either live in rent out, and you are legally able to build an ADU on your parcel, but have chosen not to do so? I’m interested in knowing why you haven’t. Can’t afford the increased property taxes and ADU mortgage? Don’t want to be a landlord? Want to preserve the open space in your backyard?
@tacomee
In generally perfectly good homes are not getting torn down unless they can be replaced with a large number of units or they are old, cheap, and ready to go anyway. I don’t think a 1:4 replacement would cut it.
In Kirkland I watched a single home on a large lot get torn down for 10 new townhomes. That converted a single ~$3m home into 10 $1-1.5m townhomes. Basically cutting the price of a home in half or a third. You can say that’s not “affordable” but it’s certainly much cheaper than it was before, and it serves 10 families instead of one.
You see this literally all over Seattle. Scroll through Zillow and you can find dozens of examples of new multifamily construction in the $500-700k range that has replaced a single $1m home.
@Sam: Here’s my experience.
>Can’t afford the increased property taxes and ADU mortgage?
I would expect costs to be offset by renting or selling the unit, but it’s hard to guess whether it would be profitable or even cost-neutral. Seems financially risky, and I’m relatively familiar with the market and construction.
> Don’t want to be a landlord?
Hard to say if it wouldn’t be more profitable/easier just to sell the ADU and bank the earnings in some other investment. Also, being a landlord is annoying unless you get lucky with tenants.
> Want to preserve the open space in your backyard?
More that I’d like to preserve my driveway. In our case, the house is situated between a steep slope in the front and alley-accessed driveway in the back. We could do a lot-line ADU on the alley, but it’d have to be built over some sort of carport and the construction period would be a massive pain.
Other barriers are a lack of familiarity with construction loans, other financial risks, legal risks, physical risks. Do I want to deal with the headache of a tenant or splitting/selling lot? Would I need to set up some sort of legal easement/property insurance agreement?
Our mortgage loan broker, who also flips houses, actually offered to by the back ~500-1,000 square feet of the lot to redevelop as an ADU. Would be an easy ~$150k in our pockets if we really wanted it.
“The “missing middle” housing that gets talked about is absolutely not for “middle income” people. The low classes in Seattle must always rent.”
Missing middle housing is rental in a lot of cases. Those 1950s/1960s dingbat apartments and those with outdoor hallways or built around courtyards were rentals. At 19th & Union are 1920s duplexes that were probably originally owned, but in the 1990s I rented one side of one and my friends rented one side of another one two buildings down.
The issue isn’t owning vs renting, it’s that the units exist so that somebody can live in them.
“ADUs don’t solve the “housing crisis”. They do allow families to build generational wealth.”
It’s funny how you emphasize the benefit to the owner and don’t seem to notice the benefit to the people living in the ADUs.
It’s a bit like when people want transit so that other people will ride it and get out of the way of their car. There’s also the benefit to the transit passengers, and the government should take their needs into account.
@tacommee
anyways at the end of the day it’s a adu/townhouses. society will survive the horrors of a townhouse being built.
/s
Is there a commenter here who owns a single family home that you either live in rent out, and you are legally able to build an ADU on your parcel, but have chosen not to do so?
I have no interest in being a landlord. I know of some horror stories. A friend of mine rented out a basement apartment and ended up with what was essentially a squatter. I don’t remember all the details but it was terrible. But I also know someone who rented out their basement apartment and became life long friends. But my guess is the vast majority of those who don’t do the ADU thing just aren’t interested in being a landlord.
If I could just sell off the land it would be a different thing. My guess is a lot more people would do that (if they were allowed to).
In general perfectly good homes are not getting torn down unless they can be replaced with a large number of units or they are old, cheap, and ready to go anyway.
Yes, exactly. That is quite common in my neighborhood (Pinehurst) simply because a lot of the houses are tiny and sit on relatively big lots. It is very different in some place like Wallingford (although you can occasionally find a tiny house there). Tiny houses in Seattle are not long for this world. They will be torn down no matter what. It is simply a matter of what replaces them. Just one (big) house? A house/AADU/DADU? A set of townhouses or a small apartment? Right now it is highly (if not entirely) dependent on the zoning. Eventually — if we liberalize the zoning — it will be more dependent on the free market. Pinehurst (since it isn’t that special) might not warrant the construction of an apartment while Magnolia (fundamentally more attractive) would.
I think it’s worth going over the basic math.
Simple ~1,000-sq-ft townhomes (the smallest most dual-income couples are willing to buy these days) sell for ~$600-700k. From the various reports I’ve seen over the last few years, it costs about $250-500 per square foot to build & finish residential structures in Seattle. The cost depends on how many square feet you’re building, but I’ve heard it’s reasonable to assume a competent general contractor can build four 1,000-sf townhomes on an empty, flat 5,000-sf lot in Seattle for ~$1.4M total (~$350k each) in permitting, materials, and labor. Developers typically aim for 15-20% profit after taxes and fees (~5% of the sale price), so selling a new build for $650k unit limits the developer’s budget to ~$500k per unit, or ~$2M for four units. That means the base property, financing costs, and demolition must cost less than $600k to make four new townhomes economical to build. That’s why the lowest price you’ll see on the open market for a residential lot in Seattle is $600k – anything priced lower than that has already been bought by a developer or is uneconomical for some other reason.
This is where ideas like tax-support social housing development come in – if they can buy and/or build without a need for operational profit, that theoretically cuts 15-20% off the cost of new housing.
Nathan Dickey,
Thanks for going over the basic housing math…. yeah, somewhere around $650K – $750K for a new condo is the current market. There’s enough buyers out there at price point to keep much of construction work force busy…. at least those who aren’t doing crazy expensive remodels for the upper crust.
I’m not sure to do with the sizable group of the population who can’t afford to buy one of those. I think the Seattle rental market isn’t a place people can currently survive for decades now… if it ever was in the past. Honestly… the right answer for most people is just move someplace cheaper.
As long as we’re talking numbers…. Just how much housing could the new Seattle Social Housing Developer build with 50 million a year from the new tax? Will they even get a plan that’s financially sound enough for the City to even release the funds? It’s going to a crazy couple of years I think.
Any real public subsidy on housing that makes any difference in the marketplace would have to be way bigger than the Sound Transit budget.
I’ve heard it’s reasonable to assume a competent general contractor can build four 1,000-sf townhomes on an empty, flat 5,000-sf lot in Seattle for ~$1.4M total (~$350k each) in permitting, materials, and labor.
This means that if the zoning allowed it, townhomes would cost about that. That is what “the cost of construction” means. I know this is a bizarre concept to some. The study notes that. It is why they use terms like “conventional models” or “neoclassic land model”. But the study (and subsequent followup studies) basically refute those traditional models. It isn’t the land — it is the zoning.
To be clear, at a hyper-local level this doesn’t apply. A townhouse in Manhattan wouldn’t cost 400 grand because the property on it would be worth a lot more. Basically there wouldn’t be a townhouse in Manhattan unless the city prevented it from being developed or someone bought it and refused to sell. It would be a large apartment. But in other boroughs you would find houses like that just like you find them in various parts of Tokyo. The key is that the zoning actually create a market that is similar to a free market.
It is also worth noting that according to the science it isn’t that *new* townhouses would cost that much. Only that the prices drop to the point where a townhouse in a place like, say, Lake City would go for that. There would be enough new housing built (of various types) until the prices drop to that level. Again, this is just science. You can share various anecdotal stories and theories, but this is what would happen if we changed the zoning (it is also what has happened in other parts of the world).
I should also mention that as the studies often point out, this doesn’t mean that homes would be affordable for everyone. You need subsidized housing for that. Always have, always will. Again, this is what other countries have. Despite prices that seem a bargain, Japan has public housing. But with cheaper market rate housing the public housing dollars go farther.
I rode the 255 in the middle of the day yesterday for the first time in some time, so it’s time to rant about the driver change at South Kirkland Park and Ride. The way it works, when the bus reaches South Kirkland P&R for the last trip of a driver’s shift, a car pulls up next to the bus containing the new bus driver. The old bus driver exits the bus and drives away in the car. The new bus driver then drives the bus for the rest of the route.
Metro probably imagines, on paper, these driver changes being very quick, and they look efficient to the bean counters, since South Kirkland P&R is the closest bus stop along the route to East Base, where the bus drivers presumably report to to begin/end their shifts. Thus, making the driver switch there, rather than at one of the layover points results in less time paying bus drivers to drive around in cars.
The problem is, in actuality, the switch is anything but quick. Often, the bus has to wait several minutes before the car containing the new bus driver even arrives (because Metro penny pinches and times the car to arrive exactly when it’s needed, with no padding time). Then, since the bus drivers are human, the two drivers inevitably engage in a minute or two of casual conversation while the passengers are sitting there waiting. Then, there’s another couple minutes for the new bus driver to get their stuff put away and get the seat and mirrors adjusted properly to be able to drive safely. All in all, the average total passenger delay typically ranges from 5-10 minutes.
By contrast, if Metro were to just make the driver switch happen at the layover point, the additional driving time in the car is not actually that much. According to Google driving directions, for example, East Base to South Kirkland P&R is 5 minutes, while East Base to Totem Lake Transit Center is 12 minutes. The result is that, unless the bus is very, very empty, Metro’s “optimization” is costing far more person-minutes for its passengers than what it’s saving for its drivers, which essentially amounts to Metro telling its passengers that their time (which Metro doesn’t pay for) is worth much less than the time of their drivers (which Metro does have to pay for). And, it’s actually worse than that because the unpredictability in how long a mid-route driver change takes makes the punctuality of the bus unpredictable for people getting on the bus later, even during times of day with minimal traffic on the roads.
Another way to look at it is that, in terms of total travel time (including wait time), a 5-minute delay mid-route is equivalent (for the passenger) to an additional 5 minutes of waiting at the bus stop, which is the difference between a bus that runs every 15 minutes vs. a bus that runs every 20 minutes. Thus, the degradation of passenger experience is roughly equivalent to having the bus run a little bit less often, but saving Metro far less money operationally than simply running the bus route less often, with one less bus.
Absent a really compelling reason, it should be Metro policy that all driver changes happen during layover periods at the beginning and end of routes, never in the middle of a route while passengers are on board.
It is bizarre that it doesn’t happen at the layover point.
Mid-route driver changes are always a pain. Fifth and Jackson is another difficult spot. Some drivers are good about getting on and getting going, but there are always some who treat their relief driver as a long-lost cousin who’s just returned from a yearslong mission to Mars. South Kirkland P&R is just as bad. I’m always impressed at how quickly and efficiently Link switches operators at the O&M stop.
For some routes, it makes sense to change drivers mid-route. Example: Route 28-131/132. For other routes, it makes sense to change drivers at the terminal. Example: Route 550. For the route 255 (I consider myself to be a route 255 expert), it makes more sense to change drivers mid-route.
I have been on several 132s where the northbound driver change happened a little north of Stadium Station, but far enough from the station to be worth running to catch the train. I don’t recall a relief driver ever being late.
I wish the change would happen closer to the station, which also happens to be closer to the base.
The problem is what exactly does “make more sense” mean? If you define it solely from the perspective of Metro’s internal operations, then, yes, mid-route makes more sense because it means 7 fewer minutes of having to pay each bus driver to drive the car to/from the base. But, of you look at from a metric that values the time of the passengers, not just the bus driver, then mid-route driver changes are bad – to save 7 minutes for the bus driver, you add 7 minutes to the commute time of every person on the bus – not worth it.
In many ways, making riders sit through a driver changes is like make riders sit there while the bus driver sometimes has to go, but to keep service reliable, you don’t want it delaying passengers. That’s why they have driver restroom facilities at the layover points.
The 28-131/132 (the routes interline and alternate) is an example of why a blanket statement can’t be made that all driver changes should occur at route terminals. If a relieving driver is coming from a SODO bus base, it makes zero sense to send the driver all the way to the Burien or Crown Hill terminals to change drivers. It makes much more sense to just have the driver walk out of the base and change drivers mid-route on 4th Ave S.
With the route 255, it’s only 3/4 of a mile from the Bellevue base to the South Kirkland P&R, but 6 miles to the UW terminal, and 6 miles to the Totem Lake terminal. If Metro had all route 255 drivers make the change at the Totem Lake terminal, you’d solve the problem of some people being annoyed by the mid-route switch, and create a new problem of relieving drivers sometimes getting stuck in traffic congestion on their way to the route terminals, which can mean that that bus that the relieving driver is driving to, is going to leave the terminal late.
The switch happens in the middle of the day, when there usually isn’t congestion, not during rush hour. Plus, they have the express toll lanes, with an express exit right next to Totem Lake TC. They can also have the whole layover period to do the switch, so it doesn’t have to be timed so precisely.
Looks like Amtrak is pulling Amfleets from the NEC to use on the Cascades.
So far ~10 are accounted for which would be ~2 more trainsets. We will have to see which runs end up getting them and what will happen to the bus replacements after today.
https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/amtrak-continues-effort-to-cover-for-loss-of-horizon-cars/
I took the train from Vancouver, WA to Tacoma last night. All of the passengers I interacted with had no idea whether the train was coming or not. Especially given the big coach idling in the parking lot. But the train did come on time and even arrived a few minutes early in Tacoma. We achieved a blistering 77 MPH in places!
It would make sense to put the first Amfleet set on the Seattle-Vancouver BC run. (516/519).
At least they could say they run actual trains over the whole route.
The only working Talgo set already is covering Seattle-Eugene (503/508) run. (The one Oz was on)
Given how slow the train is in BC, I hope they won’t be putting it there.
However, cruise season is approaching, so they would need to give the passengers confidence that train service will be in place.
I heard a southbound go through the Vancouver WA area around 9 am this morning, but it didn’t show on the map. Guessing it was some sort of repositioning. 503 was still pretty far north at that time. Wasn’t able to get to a spot where I could see the equipment.
Shakedown trip maybe?
I am always amazed that city’s will allow a house with an ADU but not two housing units of equal size per lot. Is there some sort of societal advantage to differentiate them? It seems arbitrary to me.
It is arbitrary. Just like other aspects of zoning, it is often difficult to liberalize the ADU laws. Basically the folks who oppose density will acquiescence, and allow ADUs. But they don’t want duplexes or triplexes (let alone townhouses). So they push for various rules and regulations that limit what can be built.
In Seattle this has resulted in an absurd form of development that is now quite common. From a construction standpoint these are triplexes. There are three different structures but there are rules around them. One of them has to be significantly bigger than the other two. One of the smaller units has to be attached to that one. Thus you usually end up with a small hallway separating those two units. Folks on either side can lock the door and my guess is it is locked the whole time (you might as well seal it up). Technically it is a house, an ADU and a DADU but it is basically three houses.
They are typically sold as a three condos. Even though each structure sits on its own land (they aren’t stacked) you can’t sell them as independent units (like you would a townhouse). They look like regular houses but you don’t own the land (unless you own and manage all three) and you pay condo fees.
The special rules and regulations pushes up the cost of construction quite a bit (it would be much cheaper to just build a regular triplex). And yet the ownership rules make them less attractive. It may look like a small house on a small lot, but it isn’t. This combination (more expensive to build, less attractive to own) of course pushes up the cost of all housing. Yet it is quite common to see this being built simply because it is the only way to increase density in the vast majority of the city.
Here is an example: https://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Dashboard.aspx?ParcelNbr=2285910000. As you can see from the assessors standpoint this is a three-unit condo. Yet they look like houses. These are quite common in Seattle.
There’s a LOT of single family homes in this area that are actually condos. The reason for that generally has to do with shared property, often a private road and usually some sort of stormwater management system. The roads are private because the local jurisdiction (in my case Snohomish Co) has no interest in having more roads to maintain, and if they were to take ownership, they would require the road to be built to much higher standards than the builder wants to build to (and driving up construction costs). AFAIK all new developments are required to manage stormwater on site by, for example, having a NGPA or a detention vault. And the authorities want to make sure that someone is legally responsible for managing those features, thus a condo board. I’ve been on one board for 14 years, and literally all that we worry about is the road, the stormwater system, and the mailboxes.
On the subject of ADUs, in unincorporated Snohomish Co they started building on 3 to 4k foot lots back at the turn of the century or earlier – on those lots ADUs are not going to happen because the existing home takes up all of the lot after subtracted for tree preservation and impervious surface limits. If the builder had been able to build a bigger house, they would have back then. Even where I live, and older development with much bigger lots, only a minority will be able to accommodate ADUs. Steep slopes, lack of access around the existing home to the backyard, impervious surface limits, setbacks, and tree preservation are blocking factors. In theory I could put 2 ADUs on my lot, but all of the above factors means that the actual number is ZERO. Trust me, I would love to build one, but it ain’t happening.
NoneOfTheAbove,
My brother, a real estate guy, has years of experience looking at maps for ways to spilt lots and now, build ADUs. I’d guess my brother looks at 2-3 properties a month for friends and/or business associates and pretty much the answer is “no” for ADUs for all the reasons you just brought up.
“literally all that we worry about is the road, the stormwater system, and the mailboxes.”
Does the condo board require the front door to be a certain color, or certain window blinds, or a lawn instead of shrubs, or no signs, to preserve the “character” of the neighborhood.
The main problem is that there limitations on population density in the first place. There shouldn’t be any. Then people would increase density in a more normal, organic way. Houses would be converted to apartments and people would add second buildings. It is bizarre, really, that we say you can build a really big house, but you can’t have four families in it.
Lot sizes should be a lot smaller too. It is crazy that there is a limit to how small a lot can be inside a major city. I get why you would do that out in the country — but in Seattle? That is just bizarre.
I get some of the regulations. I can understand why someone wouldn’t want a tall building next to them. But these regulations have nothing to do with that. They were were designed to prevent people from moving into the neighborhood. The fact that we still accept them as being OK while we struggle with a housing shortage just shows how clueless or selfish people are.
Oh, and I would get rid of parking requirements, too. Those are ridiculous. I get the logic. You want to make it easy to park in the neighborhood. But society doesn’t have that responsibility. Even if we do, we shouldn’t put that burden on those who rent (or want to own). It would be like requiring all new homes to have swimming pools because you are worried it might be too crowded at the community center pool.
Setbacks are a bit more complicated. I can understand the idea behind front setbacks, but this is an arbitrary aesthetic choice and there is little evidence it actually results in a nicer place. There are some really ugly neighborhoods with front setbacks and some really ugly ones without it. Side setbacks are understandable. Folks don’t them building right up to the property line. But this should be something you should be able to negotiate with your neighbor. In other words I should be able to sell the right for my neighbor to build right up to the property line. With a new subdivision this means townhouse (right next to each other).
So many of the rules are just silly. Again, I get the idea behind height. But preventing density is just a bad idea that punishes those that aren’t wealthy.
“Houses would be converted to apartments and people would add second buildings. It is bizarre, really, that we say you can build a really big house, but you can’t have four families in it.”
I agree. I’ve felt for some time that the obsession with focusing on counting units as the primary regulatory tool is fundamentally flawed.
The first problem is defining a unit. The only real way to do that is with regulating stoves and door locks. These things can be put inside a house without any inspector. I can go to a big home improvement store and walk out with everything I need to install these things. The sound insulation may not be good but someone could rent that way.
Residential areas are also restricted in height, setbacks and FAR as well as fire and health codes and such. That’s plenty of regulation to address “neighborhood character” without counting units. In fact, it would probably keep the creation of easily created “illegal” units described above to a minimum.
It could also ease confusion about defining live-work spaces and converting commercial buildings. Underutilized small commercial spaces could be more easily converted to housing.
The last major obstacle is counting required parking spaces. Again, this could be done and maybe should be done per square foot rather than per unit. That way, neighbors wouldn’t be able to play the “adds parking demand”argument when converting an existing structure.
It’s a radical idea and would need careful study about unintended consequences. But I do think it makes more sense in the long run.
“It is bizarre, really, that we say you can build a really big house, but you can’t have four families in it.”
Yup, and it’s not just Seattle, it’s everywhere. My parents neighborhood in Texas started out with modest sized homes when I grew up. But, as the land grew more valuable, wealthier and wealthier people moved in and built bigger and bigger homes. Of course, while increasing density beyond one family per lot is forbidden, reducing density in the form of some rich person buying up two adjacent lots is both legal and common. This leads to some houses as big as my entire 21-unit townhome complex, hosting just one family. This, combined with the fact that the average family has fewer children than they used to, plus retirees staying in their home after the kids move out, means that the population of the neighborhood has actually *dropped* while the land value was rising and home prices shooting through the roof. Sounds strange, but with exclusionary zoning, that’s what you get.
What happened to affordable housing in Seattle? ($) Vacancy rates, loss of SROs, well-off newcomers, etc.
We also had a decade of cheap mortgage interest rates in light of the Great Recession. Which meant people often bought bigger homes that were inexpensive after house prices fell during the Great Recession. Which explains the rush of people moving to Sunbelt as they often had fairly cheap housing, like Vegas for instance.
In word, Amazon. Our zoning approach probably would have been OK if the local economy hadn’t boomed. But it did and suddenly we became like a few cities in California and the East Coast. The cost of housing was no longer based on the marginal, physical costs of new construction and instead zoning and other land use controls played the dominant role in making housing expensive.
(To quote this study: https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/hier1948.pdf)
Seattle lost population in the 1960s, falling from a 550K peak in the 1950s to a 412K low in the 1970s. The reasons were white flight and the Boeing Bust. That pushed the vacancy rate high, which meant there were plenty of units available at affordable prices. Those who wanted units in walkable neighborhoods with above-average transit could find them; e.g, University Way or 15th Ave E. Seattle’s population started increasing again in the late 70s, but it reached its previous peak only in the early 2000s.
I graduated college and started renting in 1989, so the repopulation increase had been underway for a decade and I was one of them, but we weren’t really aware of it and it hadn’t affected rents much because there was still a lot of slack. 2 BR apartments in the northern U-District went for $450, and you could look at something, take a week to decide, and it was probably still available.
Seattle reached its 550K peak again around 2003, and that’s when rents started rising faster than inflation, often at 5-7% while inflation was 2% or less. In the 2008 crash, a lot of newcomers went back to wherever they came from, and practically every other building in the Summit area had a “For Rent” sign. Buildings started offering sales (“first month free”, “10% off”, “free microwave”) and rents flattened or decreased.
The Amazon/tech boom became big in 2012, and that finally squeezed all the remaining slack out of the market. That’s when the lowest-priced units jumped from $650 to over $1000, and things like the Panorama happened. Housing construction was ramping up in 2011 and 2012 and reached full speed in 2013, but even at its peak in the mid 2010s it was building only 9 units for every 12 new jobs, so it continued falling behind.
What we need to do is get the vacancy rate back to 5-10% and stay there. Then keep building enough units to match population growth and newly-forming households. For owned houses, we need to get back to a time-on-market average of 6 months like it was before the 2008 crash.
Single-family lots can absorb only so much of the increase with ADUs or 4-6 plexes. But if more multifamily apartments/condos are available, some people will move into them even if they’d really like a house, so in that way a growth of multifamily can absorb some of the scarcity of single-family units. Because single-family lots inherently don’t scale: any increase in number requires exponentially more land.
“The reasons were white flight and the Boeing Bust. ”
There was another major demographic factor too: household size.
The data presented here says that Seattle’s fell from 2.70 in 1960 to 2.14 in 1980. It tapered off after that to 2.05 in 2020.
https://clerk.seattle.gov/~ordpics/115018_Doc%203%20-%20Community%20Profile%20-%20Housing%20Market%20Analysis.htm
Lots of that was due to a drop in the number of children in families. Some is also increased numbers of smaller multi-unit apartments.
In contrast, it appears that “white flight” between 1960 and 1990 was only really happening in SE Seattle as shown here:
https://depts.washington.edu/labhist/maps-seattle-segregation.shtml#:~:text=1960,several%20hundred%20other%20Asian%20Americans.
So I would say that the loss in population in that 1960 to 1990 period was primarily households having fewer new children. That was born out in national data too:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us/
White flight during that time was a big deal in national popular culture. However its effect within Seattle is much more nuanced and much less that it was in other parts of the country.
Mike Orr,
“What we need to do is get the vacancy rate back to 5-10% and stay there. Then keep building enough units to match population growth and newly-forming households. For owned houses, we need to get back to a time-on-market average of 6 months like it was before the 2008 crash.”
Who is the “we” here? Home owners and builders are quite happy to keep things the way they are. Some of this stuff isn’t even remotely in our control. Those California fires just wreaked the Seattle housing market for 5 years I’d guess. Nobody can stop people from moving where they want to and the choice places to live, like Seattle, attract a lot of money.
Who is the “we” here?
The people.
Home owners and builders are quite happy to keep things the way they are.
Builders would be happier if they could build without having to jump through so many hoops. As for home owners, even many of those would support policies that led to cheaper rents, less homelessness, etc.
So yeah, as I wrote before, there are selfish and ignorant people who like things the way they are. I’m not too concerned about that.
“Who is the “we” here?”
The government needs to set a vacancy-rate target consistent with a healthy and sustainable housing market. We don’t have that now. Then it should adjust zoning and incentives to get as close to that target as it can. The public can vote in such a government.
“As for home owners, even many of those would support policies that led to cheaper rents, less homelessness, etc.”
As an example, many homeowners include parents with adult children. They would ideally like their children to be able to stay in the same city, but not under the same roof (e.g. have the kids close enough to see occasionally, but still living independently).
Without zoning reform, the only way this can work is for the kids to either land a well paying job, or for the parents to subsidize their kids’s rent to the tune of several hundred dollars per month, which could add up enough to impact their own retirement portfolio.
Mike Orr,
The government can “set” vacancy rates all it wants I guess, but it wouldn’t matter. You can’t keep people from moving to Seattle. You can’t force builders or banks to do anything. Changing the zoning builds absolutely nothing.
There was a little lull in 2008 but for my entire life Seattle was short on labor to build housing…. and still are! . That’s a construction industry that has run full tilt for 40 years. What difference would different zoning would have made?
The construction industry can only build so many units a year. There’s no restrictions on the number of people who can move here. I’m not sure how or why you think the government could change any of this.
“Changing the zoning builds absolutely nothing.”
*looks at Austin, Houston, Minneapolis who have done zoning and housing reform*
You keep dying on that hill, but reality tells a different tale. No one is saying if we were to change zoning laws that every developer will do more dense housing immediately. The thing it does allow and this the important thing, the opportunity to build more and higher in the future.
Some Metro/ST cancellations today:
Route 11 eastbound at 9:20, 10:40,12:00,1:20,2:40; and similar trips westbound.
Route 550 eastbound at 10:54,12:52,2:53; and similar trips westboound.
This is out of five routes I subscribe to alerts on. The 11 normally runs every 20 minutes Sundays, and the 550 every 30 minutes. I don’t know the exact ratio of runs to frequency, but it looks like one 11 run was unable to find a driver, and something lesser happened to the 550.
Some cancellations occur every few days. Often it’s just one or two trips early morning or late evening. But once a month or so you get a large spate of cancellations like this on one route. It’s more unusual to get it on two routes on the same day (of the five routes I watch). But the 550 has had several cases where half its midday runs on Saturday or Sunday were canceled, bringing net frequency down to 30 minutes on Saturday or 60 minutes on Sunday. Fortunately that hasn’t been on days I ride it, since I ride it once or twice a month. Still, it’s bad for those who are riding it that day.
There have been well over 100 trip cancellations today on all routes and the same yesterday. So Metro makes the big announcement that with the service change on Saturday they were increasing service on a number of routes but it is obvious that they are unable to provide the service promised.
These cancellations correspond with the Moslem holiday, Eid al Fitr, the feast at the end of Ramadan, which ran from sundown yesterday to sundown today.
The drivers who took the day or two off have earned it, just as much as the Christian drivers who take Christmas off.
Not knowing what day the Eid will be until the moon is sighted by the proper authority makes scheduling employees hard, and drivers in particular. About the only plan I know that might make service fit available drivers is to treat the first three possible days of the Eid as holidays. However, Metro might have to do the same for the Eid al Adha.
This is something ATU 587 will need to negotiate with Metro. A growing portion of Metro drivers are Moslem, so ATU and Metro should arrange to accommodate their high holy days, just as has long been done for Christians.
And then, Metro can let passengers know that it will be running on a holiday schedule those days.
If Metro made Eid al Fitr an official Metro holiday, why would that make less drivers take the day off? Because today was already a Sunday/Holiday schedule.
If it were an official holiday, other drivers would be more aware, and be more likely to choose other days to take vacation.
It was expected to be Sunday night and Monday, FWIW. I ended up having to wait ca. 20 minutes do a C Line. It was a nice evening. I did tot mind.
In general, the Eid will fall on a weekday 5 out of 7 years. So, this is more about the future.
Route 10 this evening: canceled westbound 6:17pm, 7:27, 8:27, 9:27, 10:27, 11:27, and similar eastbound. Net frequency: 60 minutes. (The eastbound cancelation times are weird: they start at 9th & Pine instead of 4th & Pike, so I reported the westbound ones instead.)
OneBusAway has been quite confused about the 255 this weekend. Westbound trips, it’s fine, but eastbound, they continue to show the old routing around the Montlake Triangle, while simultaneously shutting off real-time arrival info for every bus, across the entire route.
The software needs to do better than this.
An update: my eastbound 255 bus yesterday picked up at new stop in the Montlake Triangle, but today, picked up at the old stop!!! I was waiting at the new stop and had to race to the old stop when I saw the bus turn left on Pacific Pl. instead of going straight. So, depending on what driver you have, the bus might pick up at either stop, so to avoid being left behind, you have to wait in between and watch very carefully.
Metro needs to do a better job communicating route changes to bus drivers, as something like this should not happen.
Thanks for the heads up. I have to catch the 255 fairly early tomorrow morning and I was wondering if that might happen. I’ll wear my running shoes.
Trains Are Awesome YouTuber posted a video of the BART Oakland Airpirt Connectir today:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o4O-G3OKoe8
It’s not descriptive on technical aspects like travel time, speed, frequency, capacity or cost. Still if you aren’t familiar with it, it’s interesting.
Its cable technology is akin to Portland’s aerial tram or a sideways elevator.
It shows the intermediate stopping to switch cables.
Its far payment gate layout is interesting — only fares at the non-Airport end.
And it has platform screen doors. It probably needs them for safety!
With the recent gondola cable discussion I thought it would interest some readers.
Great video. I then linked to his follow on video on eBART, the DMU power extension to Antioch. https://youtu.be/btYUnc_bz8E?si=HjTaHOglf4xFZVLE
What a wonderful rail vehicle that could be used to run a mini metro line from Tacoma Dome to DuPont via S Tacoma, Lakewood, and JBLM and if Intercity Transit got interested an extension to Lacey and Downtown Olympia. And even the line to Eatonville or Orting to Puyallup and Tacoma. Sort of an overnight no nonsense instant rail system.
Maximum speed is only 87 mph but it’d be a huge improvement over the 55 mph speed of Link.
They’re classified as light rail cars here, so you’d need special FRA approvals to put them in mixed traffic on the main line. I think they’re light enough to put on Link though, if you wanted to run them up to the airport.
The original plan was to take BART technology to Antioch for several decades. E-BART came about because the funds to pay to electrify BART 10 more miles wasn’t there.
The idea was initially to use existing freight tracks — but when the added costs of reaching those tracks became apparent and SR 4 widening (needing wider right of way) provided an opportunity to reserve space for the tracks, it morphed into the E-BART tracks being placed in the SR 4 median.
Keep in mind too that BART and E-BART have similar maximum speeds. Plus, BART knows that cross platform transfers are optimal for changing trains when volumes are high (something ST ignores terribly).
I’ve long pointed out that TDLE would be better with E-BART technology. The faster speed combined with the long stretches between stations would erase any transfer time penalty — particularly if the transfer is timed. The capital cost savings would be significant. Plus, the line could go further to Dupont assuming that ST could have unlimited use of the tracks that they paid for. Ideally some of the trains could reach the Capitol in Olympia.
The transfer station could be South Federal Way, which could be built from scratch for cross platform transfers.
It would be a good strategy for Snohomish too. Link could end at Mariner. The EMU could begin there and follow the current alignment or it could make Mariner an intermediate station and have a “V” alignment. It could then extend more inexpensively to Marysville. Again, the travel time savings would be significant because the station spacing north of Mariner is lengthy, allowing more use of the higher maximum speed.
It’s just too bad that we have an agency like ST so wedded to a slower speed technology yet with outrageously expensive per mile costs — so that other technology options are never put on the table.
On that abbreviated E-BART history I should also mention that the local cities were an important catalyst in choosing the technology. BART didn’t unilaterally go to them with the proposal. Instead they went to BART with it.
This happened structurally as the local cities did not sit on the BART board. The BART board is directly elected by the voters. The East Contra Costa cities instead had their own transportation planning working group called TRANSPLAN (https://transplan.us/) that coordinated things like a regional development fee to pay for road and transit improvements. I think it takes independent working groups like this to more objectively study making transit project decisions. These kinds of subarea working groups need to be created, maintained and legitimized so when opportunities like ST3 arise, they objectively know what to recommend.
Al.C: thanks for that history of eBART.
I’ve ridden these DMU is Germans Black Forest. They seem to be everywhere there. There are many examples in the US (Dallas, Austen, San Diego) but for some reason not considered much here. I guess if this was Germany we would have seen these running from Centralia to Aberdeen and maybe covering some mid day Sounder runs too.
It would be nice if a service like this could start up without the mega million spent to tear out the existing track and install brand new track. Sort of like the Lewis and Clark RDCs that ran from Portland/St Johns to Astoria in the early 2000’s.
RapidRide G report: Monday 3/31 at 4:25pm, eastbound trip from 4th to 17th. At the 4th & Spring station, the next eastbound bus was in 10 minutes (should be 6 minutes or less): When it came it was almost packed. The driver wouldn’t let people board after that, saying it was full and they should wait for the next bus. I don’t know when the next bus would come; the display just had two entries for that bus and the 2, which came at the same time. I said “almost packed” because it wasn’t completely full, but the driver didn’t want to pack people in like sardines or fill the interior of the disability area. Several people got off at Boyleston and 17th.
So there could have been bunching since the wait was unusually long. I didn’t see any other eastbound G so I couldn’t tell. I did see a westbound one around 12th.
In good news, it’s SO NICE to have a significantly faster way to get between 4th and 17th than any of the other east Seattle routes. Thanks to the bus lanes and stop diet.
When you think of ADUs, are you primarily thinking of adding one in a front/back yard while keeping the primary house intact? Or do you think of tearing down the primary house to build them both new?
I think it as adding a house to a lot while keeping the main house intact. There are new developments where both the main house and the ADU(s) were built at the same time, but I assume those will be a minority. Unless the owner wants to replace the main house anyway, and is adding the ADU just as an extra bonus.
In Seattle it is a mix. Just to back up here, there are two types of ADUs — detached and attached. An attached ADU (or AADU) is usually just a basement apartment. These often don’t require much work. A detached ADU (or DADU) is basically a new structure (similar to a townhouse) on the lot somewhere. The idea behind both of these is that you add density without replacing the house. The same could occur if we simply allowed houses to be converted to apartments (or condos). You see this all over the U-District. The area is now zoned for apartments so a lot of old houses got converted.
But in Seattle we only allow one attached ADU and one DADU. There are also rules about the size in proportion to the main house, etc. The idea was that this would discourage growth. People wouldn’t tear down a house to put up a triplex (let alone a small apartment).
But in fact they are. They are just building triplexes as a new house, a new AADU and a new DADU. There are a lot of these going up. It is quite common to see small houses on big lots being torn down and replaced by these. Similarly if the lot is big enough they will subdivide the lot and you will often see an assortment of these. I don’t have the numbers, but my guess is these vastly outnumber the stand-alone DADUs going up. In other words, if you find a DADU, chances are it was built at the same time as the main house (and the attached AADU).
I’m less confident with AADUs. It typically doesn’t take as much effort to add an AADU. Sometimes all it takes is a new door and filling out the paperwork. If the main house is being rented anyway (which is quite common) then it is usually not very difficult.
I did see one interesting type. They took a small house and turned it into a DADU. Then they built a really big house (with an AADU) and sold all three. That is the only example I’ve seen where the ADUs were not the result of a tear-down, but that is just based on walking around. By their very nature, it is more likely I’ll see new construction (not someone renting out their basement).