Seattle Forward

More on Housing Recommendations

The City Council has begun consideration of the 65 recommendations from the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda Advisory Committee (HALA). We will spend 18 to 24 months learning about, discussing, and considering these recommendations. They involve a wide range of topics with varying degrees of legal and policy complexity.

I’m certain that as we listen to people across the city we will learn new things that may better inform our positions before we have to make final decisions. There will be many opportunities for public engagement and comment throughout this process, including public hearings in the new City Council districts.

Real Need

As the HALA committee clearly established in their report, the need for an increased supply of affordable housing has never been greater. In support of this statement, the HALA committee observed:

• More than 2,800 people are homeless on a typical night in Seattle.
• More than 45,000 households in our city—one in six households—are spending more than 50% of their incomes on housing. (Spending more than 30% is considered burdensome.)
• Middle income families are struggling to keep pace with the increasing costs of housing.
• Uncounted others have already left the city in search of affordability, a trek that usually results in much longer commute times and increased environmental harm.

Single Family Areas

While the list of recommendations from HALA is long, one specific policy has received the most attention and criticism from neighborhoods across Seattle. It’s the recommendation that single-family zoning be relaxed in all areas of the city to allow for new duplexes, triplexes and stacked flats, a policy some believe will lead to speculators buying up homes, tearing them down, and replacing them with more expensive multi-family structures. We should take a step back from any policy that leads to that kind of speculation, disruption, and the widespread loss of existing, more affordable housing.

However, in certain areas of the city—Urban Villages, near major transit stations, along major transportation corridors with frequent transit service—we should allow more multi-family housing. This change would affect about 6% of our current single family zoned areas.

Biggest Impact on Affordable Housing

Lost in the initial reaction to the HALA recommendations is the reality that a few key proposals will produce the biggest benefit. These include what’s called Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, a requirement that every new multi-family project set aside a certain percentage of units as affordable, and the Commercial Linkage Fee, which would require new commercial development to help fund production and preservation of affordable housing.

The recommendation to relax some of the restrictions on backyard cottages and accessory dwelling units to provide more affordable options in our neighborhoods is estimated to create some 2,500 units over 10 years. These units can be affordable and provide alternative housing choices for family members, friends, and new neighbors.

Modifying and strengthening the Multi-Family Tax Exemption to include existing structures that are remodeled and providing new capital investment to build more affordable housing are also promising ideas.

Move the Needle

These key policy recommendations represent a striking and positive shift in affordable housing policy for the city. If implemented correctly, these new policies will create thousands of affordable housing units at a variety of income levels.

Our focus should be on these policies that will provide the most significant number of affordable units. We should not get distracted by other recommendations that will create massive opposition and threaten to derail this entire worthy effort.

Affordable Housing and Single Family Zones

This afternoon the Council’s Select Committee on Housing Affordability will be briefed on Mayor Murray’s proposal to increase affordable housing options in the city.

Housing costs eat up more than half of the income of about 45,000 households in Seattle (spending more than 30% of income on housing is considered burdensome). Seattle’s population is estimated to grow by 120,000 over the next 20 years. The Mayor’s plan is designed to create 50,000 new homes in the next 10 years, 20,000 of which would be affordable to households with low and moderate incomes.

This year, the Council will consider the proposed downtown and South Lake Union “Commercial Linkage Fee,” a fee paid by developers designed to provide money for new affordable housing construction. (Here is the Council meeting schedule.)

The other proposals from the Mayor and his advisory committee will come to the Council later because of necessary environmental reviews that must first take place. It will be a long process with multiple opportunities for public comment over the next 18 to 24 months, including public hearings at neighborhood locations across Seattle. You can read about the linkage fee and other proposals in the Mayor’s roadmap document or the full 65 recommendations of the committee.

Single Family Neighborhood Zoning

Much of the initial reaction over the past two weeks has focused on what might happen to single family zoned areas.  I want to summarize the proposed changes and give perspective on the process before the Council.

Seattle's Advanced Industries

Source: The Brookings Institution

The Brookings Institution has produced an interesting report about “the Advanced Industries Sector,” the 50 industries that spend higher amounts in research and development and focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) jobs. It categorizes these into three broader categories: manufacturing, services, and energy. On a global level, the report concludes the United States is falling behind in these areas.

The Seattle metropolitan area — with our combination of aerospace, maritime, manufacturing, tech, and research clusters — has the second largest concentration of advanced industry jobs in the country. Moreover, Seattle is one of only 14 major metro areas that are strong in the manufacturing and service categories — 16% of the region’s workers are employed in the advanced industries, well above the 9% national average. Aerospace and software publishing jobs account for half of this local figure.

The Power of Books

The following article was sent out in my City View Newsletter, which you can sign up to receive here.

Wednesday I traveled to Emerson Elementary in the Rainier Beach neighborhood because they have partnered with Page Ahead to provide free book fairs to kindergartners, 1st and 2nd graders. Excited students got to browse a collection of picture and chapter books and choose their 12 favorites to take home at the end of the school year. It was a lot of fun.

Students participate in this program for three consecutive years, ensuring three full summers of reading.

It is a great program because it is so simple: summer reading prevents summer learning loss. Kids will read when they have easy access to books they’re interested in. But too many low-income households don’t have this access. A recent report from Stanford found that, by age 2, children from low-income families are six months behind kids in higher-income families when it comes to vocabulary knowledge.

Our Tax System: The Worst in the Country

The special session of the Washington State legislature will end today with no resolution to our state’s budget dilemma. Yet another special 30-day session will begin immediately.

What a mess.

The facts about the need for a complete top-to-bottom overhaul of our tax structure are very clear and persuasive.  Yet our Republican and Democratic legislators live in opposing realities about the current state budget; no conclusion to this impasse is in sight. Further, the solutions being offered dance around the core issue: an unjust and increasingly inadequate tax system, from top to bottom.

Local economist Dick Conway appeared before my City Council committee last week and presented a report with sobering findings: Washington’s tax system is the worst in the country. He grades the state an F in the categories of fairness (ranked 51^st out of 51 states and DC), adequacy (50^th), stability (47^th), and transparency (50^th).

Academics Unite Behind Investments in Early Childhood Education

Last month, leading academics in the field of early childhood education released a statement summarizing the benefits of increased investment in this arena. Hundreds of professors and researchers from across the country have joined the sixty-one founding signatories to show a strong consensus in the academic community on the positive effects of quality early learning. The letter opens as follows:

As policymakers debate investing in quality early childhood education programs, they should note the widespread agreement among researchers about the value of such programs. An extensive body of research in education, developmental psychology, neuroscience, medicine and economics shows that quality early childhood education programs produce better education, health, economic and social outcomes for children, families, and the nation. As researchers, we urge policymakers to make decisions based on the full body of scientific knowledge about early education and child development.

You can read the full statement and see a list of all the signers here: https://sites.google.com/site/ececonsensusletter/.

Reflections on Ferguson and Seattle

The following article was posted today on Crosscut.

It has been just over a week since the grand jury made its decision in the Ferguson case, my hope is that we can soon get beyond the conflicting evidence presented to the jurors and focus on the undeniable and powerful subtext that permeates this story. Understanding this subtext holds the key to the change I believe we all want to see. We must also identify specific actions that will contribute to this change or risk losing an opportunity to move forward.

Among African Americans, tension and conflict with the police is deeply rooted in decades of mistrust and weariness over police misconduct, corruption and persistent crime in many neighborhoods. It is a relationship that is profoundly troubled and, as we have seen, all too often leads to tragic consequences.

Tragic for black men and boys who are arrested and imprisoned or killed by police at a disproportionate rate. Tragic for black families who often live in neighborhoods with high rates of crime and who urgently desire effective police services. Tragic for entire cities that must carry the moral and monetary costs of this reality.

How did we get here? And, looking forward, what can we do to change it?

Community Meetings on Housing Affordability

The 28-member Housing Affordability and Livability Advisory Committee established by the City Council and Mayor Murray is now up and running. In the next few weeks there will be three community meetings where you can provide input into their deliberations. At each meeting the doors open at 6 p.m. and the program begins at 6:30 p.m.

South Seattle - Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Ethiopian Community Center
8323 Rainier Ave S
6 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Central District - Thursday, November 20, 2014
Garfield Community Center
2323 E Cherry St
6 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Northgate - Thursday, December 04, 2014
Olympic View Elementary School
504 NE 95th St
6 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

More details about the committee's process are available here. More information about recent Council action on affordable housing can be found here.

Thank You Voters for Choosing the Seattle Preschool Program

The following article was sent out in my City View Newsletter, which you can sign up to receive here.

Seattle voters had a clear choice on how to benefit the future generations of Seattle. I am very happy they selected the Seattle Preschool Program (Proposition 1B) crafted by Mayor Ed Murray, the City Council, early learning experts, and a wide variety of local stakeholders.

Yesterday’s vote means we will take a strong first step toward universal, voluntary, high-quality and affordable preschool for Seattle’s children. It is one of the best investments we can make.

The Seattle Preschool Program is based on extensive research on how to best prepare children for kindergarten and a life of learning. We reviewed the evidence of what works, we visited preschools throughout Seattle, we talked with teachers and parents, and we visited other cities to see how they provide universal preschool. At every step in development of the program, we were keenly committed to a critical principle: Quality.

Only quality benefits children for a lifetime. Only quality delivers an impressive return on investment for taxpayers. Only quality will enable our city to leverage dollars from the State and federal governments to provide even more preschool options for Seattle families.

Microhousing Regulations Move Forward

On Tuesday the Council’s land use committee passed a new set of regulations for microhousing, providing an avenue for small living units to be designed and built in a safe, healthy, predictable and affordable way.

In crafting these regulations, the committee ensured a safe and healthy space for the residents, maintained affordability, and delivered predictability to neighborhoods about where microhousing can be constructed and what type of input neighbors can have through a design review process.

Microhousing units, sometimes known by the trade name of aPodments, have proliferated around the city in two forms: the pod form of 8 individually-rented sleeping rooms around a common kitchen, and in “congregate residences,” a land use definition originally intended for institutional uses like college dorms or assisted living facilities. More recently, developers have been building these congregate residences for individual private renters.

Earlier this year, the Council received legislation from the Department of Planning and Development that built a new land use definition around the existing loophole of the 8-pod unit. The proposal seemed to please no one – the development community or the neighborhoods.

Councilmember Mike O’Brien then led a thoughtful stakeholder process and introduced a new bill that regulates these units for what they are: small efficiency studio apartments. His legislation also restricts non-institutional congregate housing to denser zones (not lowrise zones) in our designated urban centers and urban villages.

This bill is much stronger. It takes a proactive approach to regulations rather than one that reacts to how some developers have used existing loopholes in the land use code.