Alan Durning, a member of the HALA Committee, has an OPED in today’s Seattle Times. Some quotes:
“First, the purpose of changing single-family zoning is to welcome families who aren’t rich. It’s to enable the Travanas and Meaghans to live in these neighborhoods, too, renting and perhaps buying someday, and contributing their talents to our city along the way. The point of affordable housing is not the housing; it’s the people who will live in it.
Second, HALA had no choice but to recommend changes to single-family zoning. Affordability
I see several faults in this reasoning. First, it is very classist since presumably it affects only middle class families. Anyone who see this happening in Broadmoor is out of their minds. Second, there is a better alternative. Rather than turning existing communities into student ghettoes ..like the area north of the UW, we could create zoning that would allow LOCAL and focused development of multifamily housing. Small towers built near Laurelhurst, Lake Washington, or Broadmoor including retail space and space for amenities like child care and gums, would be welcome additions to those communities.
demands the reforms. Almost two-thirds of Seattle’s zoned land is currently reserved for detached houses. Seattle cannot accommodate the tens of thousands of people who are moving to our community without many of them landing in the single-family zones. Already, growth has made these neighborhoods exclusive to the point of exclusion — intensifying scarcity means only people with money or people from families with money can buy there now. Even small houses in popular neighborhoods start above a half-million dollars. Seattle is well down the path to Silicon Valley’s $1 million entry price for homeownership.
Third, HALA’s recommendations for bigger buildings in single-family areas are limited and fiddle around the edges, literally. HALA recommends an upzone to just 6 percent of the single-family zones. This 6 percent sits inside or adjacent to the city’s designated growth hubs, urban villages, or alongside arterial strips already lined with big buildings.
Fourth, HALA recommends more flexibility, but not bigger buildings, on the other 94 percent of the city’s single-family zones. These areas would stay under existing rules for building sizes: same height limits, same restrictions on total square footage, same setbacks. What would change is that city codes would allow more options in dividing up the allowable square footage. We recommend more in-law apartments, backyard cottages, cottage clusters, miniature duplexes and triplexes, courtyard housing, row houses, town houses, and stacked flats. We also recommended allowing separate ownership of these dwellings so that more people can afford to buy homes.”
HALA means ….Neighborhoods would feel the same — the same tree cover and lawns, porches and rain gardens, chicken coops and tiny lending libraries — but with more people. More people like my own children, now in their 20s, who I hope could live in their hometown someday and possibly own homes. And more people like 28-year-old me.