Seattle Forward

Short Term Rental Regulations: Details and Next Steps

Last week Mayor Murray and I announced proposed regulations for short term rentals. We have taken a balanced approach that recognizes the benefits platforms like Airbnb or VRBO create for Seattle residents, while also attempting to curb the growing commercialization of this industry. At a time where long-term housing is hard to come by, we want to encourage owners of multiple properties to make their properties available to long-term residents.

My Affordable Housing, Neighborhoods and Finance Committee will receive an introductory briefing about this proposal on Wednesday, June 15. We will dive into the details in July.

For those wondering what this means for you, here are a few highlights:

• If you operate a short term rental out of your primary residence (including a connected in-law apartment or backyard cottage), you will be able operate all year long. This allows considerably more flexibility than the regulations in many other cities, which often include a hard cap on the total number of nights.
• If you operate a short term rental in a property that is not your primary residence, you cannot operate year-round; you will be limited at 90 nights a year. This limitation will provide a financial incentive for property owners to move these units back to the long-term market, making Seattle housing available for Seattleites.
• For those who operate past 90 nights in your primary residence, you will need to go online and secure a new regulatory license.
• Overall, these are very modest regulations: we estimate about 80% of short term rental operators will see no new regulations at all under this proposal.

Apply for Affordable Housing Community Focus Groups

There are 10 days left to apply to be on the Community Focus Groups that will help guide the citywide conversation around the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA).

Applications are available here. This link also includes some FAQ, which I’ve pasted below. The application deadline is Friday, February 26 at 8 pm.

If this sort of thing isn't for you, the focus groups are not the only way to provide input on how HALA proposals best fit into neighborhoods. Throughout 2016 and 2017, the City will host neighborhood meetings, open houses, telephone town halls, and other engagement opportunities for community feedback (click here for a timeline of engagement activities).

What is the purpose of the HALA Community Focus Groups?

Maintaining the Rental Housing Market: Regulating Short Term Rentals

Left unchecked, there is concern that online rental platforms, like Airbnb and VRBO, just might provide enough financial incentives to cause homeowners to switch long-term rentals to short-term vacation rentals. The number of short-term rentals available through these platforms has been rapidly increasing and there are now spin-off businesses that make it easier for individuals to manage short-term rentals. At a time when we face a shortage of affordable rental housing, this issue deserves a closer look.

In the coming months, my City Council committee will explore a regulatory framework for short-term vacation rentals. This work aligns with the Council’s work plan issued in response to the Mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda recommendations.

On the other side of the coin, however, short-term rentals can boost incomes for those struggling with their own home payments. Airbnb, one of the major players in this arena, recently released data about their users and emphasized that the vast majority of their hosts live in the unit they rent; they either share their home or rent it while out of town themselves.

The City has a regulatory role to play here, with three potential policy goals as I see it:

1. Ensure a level playing field for individuals and companies in the short-term rental market.
2. Balance the economic opportunity created by short-term rentals with the need to maintain supply of long-term rental housing stock available at a range of prices.
3. Protect the rights and safety of owners, guests and neighbors of these units.

Final Decisions on 2016 Budget

The Full Council voted to adopt the City’s 2016 budget today, incorporating changes Councilmembers have made from the Mayor’s proposal over the last two months.

The Mayor’s proposed budget provided us with a good start, including funding for a hospital-based gun violence intervention program at Harborview Medical Center.

I’m happy to report that all of the items I pushed for were adopted into the Council’s final package. These included funding to study an educational center for immigrants and refugees with foreign professional degrees, increasing dedicated funding for arts programs, support for small manufacturers, advancing a study to incentivize shared parking facilities in private buildings, expanding funds for the reentry and job assistance program Career Bridge, and language to direct City staff to work with Seattle Public Schools on student population growth planning.

I also have been working closely with community leaders and Councilmember Harrell to provide City support for a new “Opportunity Center” in southeast Seattle. This budget will provide nearly $2 million in seed funding for this project, which is expected to include job training, affordable housing, meeting space, or other amenities a community-led process will help determine.

Round 1 Budget Proposals

Budget deliberations have kicked into high gear here at City Hall. The first deadline for proposals to secure a baseline support of three councilmembers comes this Wednesday. After a couple more rounds of discussion over the next three weeks, the proposals that receive majority support will be put together in a balanced budget package.

Earlier I wrote about what I liked in the Mayor’s budget. Here are some additional proposals I’m excited to advance for further consideration by the Council:

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.

Lowrise Multifamily Code Updates: Balancing Design and Density

Legislation a Council committee discussed earlier this week has been characterized by one side as a dramatic giveaway to developers and, by the other side, an unnecessary and dangerous downzone. Both characterizations are false.

The Council’s land use committee considered code adjustments to the city’s Lowrise residential zones. The multifamily Lowrise zoning category, which makes up about 10% of city land, is designed for a range of moderately dense housing types, from townhouses and rowhouses to apartment buildings.

Even though many Lowrise zones contain older single family houses, these zones are designed to be denser multifamily—not single family—zones.

Lowrise zones are often found in the City’s Urban Centers and Urban Villages, where we focus our efforts to concentrate density. Concentrating density is good for the environment, good for the economy, and good for our communities. When people live closer to work and have easier access to mass transit systems, it creates a better city for all of us. It also allows us to protect the character of single family zoned neighborhoods.

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.

A Strong and Sensible Step for Affordable Housing

This week the City Council took another strong and sensible step toward creating more affordable housing in Seattle. The Council passed a Resolution that should lead to a significant increase in resources for affordable housing.

Rents are increasing rapidly. Our skyline is speckled with cranes constructing new office space and market-rate housing to meet the demands of an improving economy which, in turn, spur demand for services. The lower wage workers who provide these services need a place they can afford to call home. The closer they can live to their jobs, the less air pollution and traffic congestion for everyone and the more time they can spend with their families.

We have debated affordable housing policies ever since I joined the Council in 2008. We have implemented incentive zoning policies to encourage affordable housing in South Lake Union, downtown, and elsewhere. But such policies are limited to areas being “up-zoned” to greater heights. We clearly need to do more.