All posts by Roger Valdez

It’s been quite entertaining and satisfying to read all the comments here at STB and elsewhere about my satirical take on Monday night’s meeting in Roosevelt. One of my favorites was Wally who asked me whether I was a hypocrite, preaching the density gospel while living in single-family home. No, Wally, I’m not a hypocrite and I really don’t want you to know where I live. But that has been the tone of much of the “density debate” in Roosevelt. Who’d want to live in a cubby hole? And rent? God forbid? Density is so bad in Wally’s estimation, that living in it is like being celibate, taking a vow of chastity and avoiding the joy of single family conjugal bliss.

But out of all that noise comes Janice, a renter and parent who articulates the points some of us have made but more succinctly and beautifully. I hope commenters will refrain from calling her, as some did speakers in favor of the DPD plan, a “fake neighbor.” Here’s Janice:

Janice says:
September 21, 2011 at 11:55 am

As a resident of Roosevelt I was embarrassed to see people booing and yelling at people who were there to give earnest testimony. Sad day for Roosevelt and I was also perplexed that no one in charge of the meeting put a stop to it until a man at the very end had to stop and ask for quiet while he tried to finish. I think many people like me where there to listen because I got an email through our PTA list essentially saying that the City was trying to ruin the neighborhood. Obviously I felt compelled to go and hear what this was all about.

After the presentation by both groups (City DPD v. SLRP) it seemed there was not a whole lot that was different. After listening to the testimony I went home and looked at both proposals. It seems to me that both proposals are pretty darn similar other than WHERE the new housing density and taller buildings will occur. Seems like one proposal puts a small amount east of the station and near the school but most to the west of the station (city). The other proposal by SLRP puts all the density to the west of the station only.

One woman made the point that higher density housing should go close to the school and park because it makes the higher density housing more desirable and livable. That makes a lot sense to me. I live in an apartment with my daughter west of 12th. I would love to be able to live in an apartment closer to the school and park so my daughter could run around on the field or just go a few blocks south and be at Cowen Park. She’ll be in high school before I know it so it would be great to stay in this neighborhood so she could walk to school and I could get to my job at the UW on the train.

It’s just nicer for those of us with kids, living in apartments that don’t have yards to be close to that open space instead of closer to the freeway. I am going to support the city plan for that reason. But what can I do to support that?

What was publicly billed as a hearing of the Seattle City Council in at Roosevelt High School last night quickly devolved into a bullfight of sorts, with Roosevelt Neighborhood Association land use committee chair Jim O’Halloran as the matador and the proposal for more density in the neighborhood as the bull. We all know what happens to the bull. After a presentation of the proposal by City staff most of the meeting was spent hammering the nine members of the City Council over and over again with the reasons why near by neighbors think increases in height near the high school would be a terrible thing.

The neighborhood’s reasons stated over and over, came down to three stated and one unstated one. First, neighbors feel that any changes from their plan would be an abrogation of the sovereignty of those who live “near by.” That is, there is privilege that comes simply from living down the street from a proposed project that should afford those people the right to veto changes to zoning in their neighborhood. And let’s not forget the “many hours in meetings” neighborhood planners invested. Rejecting that would be a slap in the face by the Council to hard working citizen planners.

Second, the views in and out of the high school would be blocked. On the few days a year when cloud cover breaks, local neighbors want high schoolers busy at work on reading Moby Dick perhaps, to be able to look up and see the tip of Mount Rainier. And they want to be sure as they walk their dogs on 65^th they can gaze up at the iconic high school after scooping. I’m not sure why it is so important to keep an eye on the school so intently. Is someone trying to steal it? I thought David Copperfield was retired, had he threatened to make it disappear? More after the jump.

Continue reading “Ole! Upzone proposal gets skewered in Roosevelt”

A recent and rich study, by Needham Hurst “How Does Light Rail Transit Affect Urban Land Use?” takes a close look at how land use changed around light rail stations in Minneapolis over the last decade. The study confirms the obvious: light rail transforms land use patterns, promoting the development of vacant and underutilized land. Light rail stations also boost demand for housing and commercial space and contribute to an overall transformation of the built environment.

Tonight the Seattle City Council will consider land use changes in the Roosevelt neighborhood, where a new Link Light Rail station is planned. What’s at stake in Roosevelt is the future of light rail in Seattle. Until now, the course of land use decisions in station areas has trended toward conservative and incremental change when there has been change at all.

Hurst’s work confirms many of the suspicions of “density freaks” that see the opportunity to channel growth into a tight circle around transit stations, especially areas with vacant land like Roosevelt:

Vacant land experienced the highest magnitude and radius of LRT’s effect. Vacant land was the first type of property to be converted to denser uses—indicating the Hiawatha Line increased the marginal accessibility of properties enough to generate higher housing demand, high prices, and which in turn incentivized development on vacant properties.

In Roosevelt there is a panhandle of vacant and derelict land that extends from the station area entrance for a few blocks east, paralleling the high school and 65^th. Neighbors justifiably upset with the owner of the panhandle are bitterly opposed to his realizing a profit from turning those properties into mixed-use development. More after the jump.

Continue reading “Roosevelt rezones up for discussion tonight”

Last week I wrote about how limiting housing supply in the urban core forces demand for transit into the suburbs, increasing the costs of supplying that demand. Sunday’s New York times has an important article that more or less bulids on the points I made last week: density also makes economic sense.

But elected leaders in cities like Seattle continue to play rhetorical and political games with land use, caving to the single-family lobby out to keep the status quo. Think I’m ranting? Here’s what Ryan Avent, the author of the article in the Times says about the single-family status quo crowd:

[They] fight development, aiming to protect old buildings and precious views, limit crime and traffic, and maintain high-quality schools. But what makes a city a city and a not-city a not-city is the fact that a city is dense and a not-city isn’t. The idea of it may chill a homeowner’s heart, but the wealth supported by urban density is what gives urban homes their great value in the first place.

What many single-family advocates forget is  their home is more valuable because of the great stuff just a few blocks away, in dense commercial and residential urban villages. How about density it’s effect on housing supply? When housing gets cheap in sprawling areas because supply gets attenuated in the urban core, many people follow the lower prices.

Factors like taste and taxes account for some of the migration, but the biggest reason for the shift is housing costs. The average Phoenix home is worth about 30 percent of the price of a house in San Jose. The difference in prices is mostly due to differences in building. In every year from 1992 to 2009, Phoenix granted permits for two to three times as many new homes as did the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas combined. Around the San Francisco Bay, neighborhoods dead set against change successfully squeezed the housing supply, just as OPEC limits the supply of oil when it wishes to raise its price.

Exactly. When the Seattle City Council dithers on big land use decisions, or tries to split the baby by supporting 65 feet when developers ask for 85, they do for housing supply what OPEC does for oil supply: reduce it. Less housing with increasing demand ensures higher prices. Higher prices for owner or renter occupied multifamily housing in the city just feeds the single-family lobby more ammunition and fulfills their prophecy of gentrification. What’s the obstacle to making density happen in Seattle and what’s at stake?

Rapid urban growth would mean denser neighborhoods, which makes many Americans uncomfortable. Preventing this density, however, denies workers access to the best opportunities, constraining the mechanism that helps support a strong middle class.

The standard, single-family home in Seattle is presented by the single-family lobby as apple pie. But Avent points out that the idea that density is a bad, socialist potion just isn’t true. To make our country, region, and city work we have to see land use as fiscal policy–loosen regulations and expand what housing suppliers can do and we can create not just more jobs but better jobs and more and better housing. The more we support density the better life, work, and play can become.

The public hearing on density in Roosevelt is right around the corner, September 19th. Now that the New York Times has weighed in, perhaps members of the Seattle City Council will give more credence to the arguments that squashing housing supply to appease single family home owners is bad for our local economy and way of life, not to mention transit, air and water quality, and climate.

There was some good discussion generated from the summing up of my reading of the land use code at Crosscut. One thing I learned from reading the code is that we should take the simple rules of supply and demand seriously and apply them when land use decisions get made. When it comes to land use and transit that lesson tells me that along with pushing for $20 car tab fees and $60 Vehicle Licensing Fees, advocates of bus service and light rail also need to push for better land use decisions that reflect basic and sound economic principles.
When our land use policies diffuse housing supply the demand for that housing will usually follow that supply, especially when it is kept cheap by externalizing the cost for transportation infrastructure (roads and buses). But that diffusion of housing supply to the ‘burbs, also means disaggregated demand for transit which drives up its costs, forcing it to rely on flaky King County Council politics and fickle voters at the ballot box.

The greatest offender when it comes to making bad land use decisions that negatively affect transit has been the Seattle City Council, a city that should be leading the way on showing the region how to grow. The Council’s worry about developers making a windfall from up zones has made them do something that doesn’t make any sense: make it harder to develop housing in the city. The more they worry about developer profit the more rules they impose (take incentive zoning, for example), which limits supply. Again, the simple rule is that if you limit supply and demand stays constant or goes up, you’ll increase prices, making housing by the usual standard “unaffordable.”

As people look for housing in our region they run up against limited supply in the places we most want people to live, the city. If it’s easier to build new single-family housing or sell that housing out in the ‘burbs, the supply out there will be greater. Seattle’s hesitant attitude toward up zones to create Transit Oriented Development not only keeps housing prices high, but also means that costs for maintaining transit service to far flung reaches of King County will go up too.

Among the many great things density does (lower emissions, more efficient energy use, less impact on water), it also aggregates demand for transit. Lots of demand for transit in one place makes it less expensive to supply. It’s as simple as visualizing a bus stop on Third Avenue versus a stop somewhere in Maple Valley, there’s going to be a lot more people, more fares, and fewer operating costs. Density is good for transit’s bottom line in King County. More people in a smaller space can mean more efficiency.

The more that Seattle resists density, the more expensive it is going to be to operate transit. We talk a good talk about sustainability but our land use policy is in direct conflict with it. So when Seattle constrains housing supply, it’s actively pushing up the operating costs for Metro and stretching subsidies to the breaking point. Meanwhile County politics dictates more and more of that subsidy go to keep bus service cheap where it is most expensive, a pathological cycle of codependence and inefficiency. Seattle’s land use policies drive up the price of transit, forcing local governments to pay for the City Council’s mistakes with extraordinary revenue from more fees and taxes.

This is why transit advocates have to be just as enthusiastic in their support of up zones as they are for subsidies through tax and fee increases. And those subsidies should be seen as a bridge to keep transit viable until we get our land use right. Then, maybe, the subsidies can largely go away. I know that the idea of a transit system paying for itself is kind of like Eldorado. But if demand is aggregated with good land use policy the idea that transit could be self-sustaining is not as farfetched as it is today.

Tunnel opponents (and I am one) have failed to make their case to the voters who cast their ballots in the election on Referendum 1, for all practical purposes an up or down vote on the deep bore tunnel. The question some of us find more interesting than parsing whether this means Seattle is becoming decisive all of a sudden, or if this was a referendum on the Mayor, is what do we talk about now. The answer, I think, is shifting our attention to the far more critical issue of appropriate land use decisions around light rail stations and the expansion of Transit Oriented Development beyond light rail station areas.

The Mayor has conceded that “he public said move ahead with the tunnel, and that’s what we’re going to do.” That doesn’t mean the tunnel is a good idea. And it doesn’t mean the tunnel is going to happen. The project has lots of problems.

But we do have a chance to shift our focus from the tunnel project to a broader range of more relevant and, in the long run, important issues. How will we get the density we need around light rail stations? What will we do to create sustainable financing for regional and local transit? What can we do to encourage regional governance? Is there a way to give Sound Transit the power to be a more powerful TOD agency? Can we get all these things done?

This is what the Mayor and all sides of the tunnel debate should start talking about. Putting the tunnel aside doesn’t mean acquiescence but pragmatism. The tunnel is truly a wasteful use of resources at a time when we’re seeing a decline in Vehicle Miles Traveled and when we have a policy agenda focused on transit and alternatives to driving. Nevertheless, the opportunities from shifting our discussions away from tunnel or no tunnel and toward these opportunities far out weighs the cost of the tunnel even with overruns and cut budgets.

This summer has been good for land use and transit in Seattle largely because of the discussion—some would say argument—over appropriate density around the Roosevelt station area. Wednesday this week is a big day for Roosevelt, the Seattle City Council’s Committee on the Built Environment (COBE) is having a hearing on the subject and later that day Leadership for Great Neighborhoods is having a brown bag lunch discussion. The discussion in both places ought to include something about amending Seattle’s toothless station area overlay designation in its land use code.

Seattle hasn’t encouraged or even allowed true Transit Oriented Development. Any visitor to Beacon Hill will attest to the bizarre sight of a light rail station sticking out of the ground like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Other station areas have yet to deliver on the promise of dense, walkable, housing and retail built around light rail stops. Why does Seattle lag so far behind places like British Columbia and Vancouver where there is lots of new housing around light rail?

Part of the problem is our single-family focused culture and economy. It’s easy to forget that one big private property interest in Seattle is single-family homeowners who benefit from attenuating the supply of housing. That’s not a slur, but a simple economic point. If housing is in short supply, then those who already own it benefit by keeping that supply limited. Diminished supply and increasing demand means existing homeowners can watch their property values increase.

Another reason is our land use code. Each and every stop along light rail will force a fight between vested single-family interests clinging to the status quo, and “outsiders” who are advocating for appropriate land use to fit the massive investment the region has made in light rail. Amending the code to give more TOD teeth to chapter 23.61 of the code, the chapter that covers land use around light rail stations—would be a great start in having that argument once and for all station areas in Seattle.

But I don’t think that simply mandating big heights and FAR at all station areas is what we should do. One size does not fit all when it comes to well planned and executed TOD. The answer is to let the housing market and design set the standard rather than arbitrary height limits. Amending 23.61 of the Seattle Municipal Code to encourage what I have called Zero Based Zoning and others have called Form Based Code, is the best place to start. Loosing code restrictions to allow proposals for what works rather than slavish adherence to code language that tries to prevent bad things could produce good results for everyone.

Development around light rail stations in Seattle should match the economic potential of the years ahead and the land use code should reflect not just the economic interests today’s vocal private property interests. Instead the City ought to consider the people who will be living here in the future. Loosening restrictions around light rail stations could make Seattle a regional leader in making light rail work through an open minded, future focused approach to TOD rather than one based on the fears of the moment. Seattle should have that discussion now when it amends chapter 23.61 of the land use code.

Neighborhood and Station Area Planning Brown Bag Forum
Wednesday, August 10 at Noon
GGLO, Harbor Steps (1301 First Avenue, Suite 301)

Seattle City Council Committee on the Built Environment
Council Chambers City Hall
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 9:30 a.m.