The state House passed House Bill 1687 on February 10, and the Senate housing committee advanced the bill with a do-pass recommendation on Friday. The bill grants social housing public development authorities (PDAs) like Seattle’s additional powers and avenues for collaborations with state and local governments under the Housing Cooperation Law.

Earlier this month, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed the interlocal agreement for the disbursement of the funds from the City to the Seattle Social Housing Developer (SSHD). That gives the developer the funds it needs to begin purchasing properties and fulfilling its mission of delivering affordable housing using a new mixed-income model.

House Our Neighbors, the advocacy nonprofit behind the ballot measures, hosted a summit on February 11 to celebrate their progress. Speaking at the event, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson stressed the importance of taxing the rich to invest in social infrastructure.

“This city is filthy rich. There’s a lot of wealth here. There’s a lot of money here,” Wilson said. “We continue to have one of the most regressive tax systems in the country, in the state, and it is very gratifying to know that we’re going to be able to use a little bit of that wealth and put it to work building housing.”

The excess compensation tax levies a 5% tax rate on companies for the portion of annual compensation that exceeds $1 million per employee. Clearly, Seattle had more high earners pulling in more than a million in compensation annually than the City’s budget office had projected. Officials have cautioned that the tax will fluctuate significantly year to year, with spikes in the stock market driving up revenue, and crashes doing the opposite.

The spate of news is a welcome sign of a momentum for a fledging agency that just went through a major leadership shakeup. In January, the SSHD board’s ousted former CEO Roberto Jimenez, citing frustration with his leadership style and alleged refusal to relocate to Seattle from California. As interim CEO, the board appointed Tiffani McCoy, who left her post at co-executive director of House Our Neighbors.

McCoy lacks development experience, but she has pledged to surround herself with people who do. She is trusted among social housing advocates after leading campaign victories.

As an organizer herself, Wilson noted that grassroot organizing spearheaded by House Our Neighbors led to this victory — not leadership from establishment politicians, who largely opposed the measure at the prodding of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. Although she didn’t name names, she alluded to her predecessor and campaign opponent, Bruce Harrell, who became the face of the opposition campaign to the tax measure.

“Seeing establishment politicians line up in opposition to raising progressive revenue for mixed-income, permanently affordable, publicly owned housing, while the public overwhelmingly supported it, showed this fundamental mismatch. People saw what was needed, but a lot of people were committed to business as usual,” Wilson said. “Voters saw through it, and so here we are today.”

Wilson reminded people that the social housing funding measure is what prodded her to run for office.

“This is why I decided to run for mayor,” Wilson added. “One year ago today, I had zero thought in my mind about running for mayor. One year ago tomorrow. I saw the results of Prop 1, and I decided to go for it.”

The shift at city hall was deeper than just Wilson replacing Harrell. Voters sent Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson packing, replacing her with another staunch social housing supporter in Dionne Foster. An avowed centrist, Nelson pushed the chamber-backed alternative measure that sought to sap support from the grassroots social housing measure and her centrists colleagues put it on the ballot. Progressive Eddie Lin also replaced centrist appointee Mark Solomon, giving social housing another friendly vote.

As a result, social housing received a much warmer reception at the council when SSHD leaders went to brief the housing committee in advance of the committee vote on the interlocal agreement. It was a public debut for new staff members, including McCoy and Ginger Segel, who SSHD hired to be its chief real estate development officer. Segel was Chief Development Services Officer for Community Frameworks and Housing Director at the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) earlier in her career. Meanwhile, the hire for SSHD’s Director of Acquisitions, James Mayton, brings extensive development experience with the Seattle Housing Authority.

Social housing growth strategy

At the February 11 meeting, Segel provided the council’s Housing Committee (chaired by Foster) an update on the new agency’s plans. The initial strategy out of the gates appears likely to focus on purchasing existing apartment buildings, taking advantage of a favorable market.

“The market right now for recently constructed apartment buildings is quite good, so we can pick up some buildings at a good price point, and we think the market is going to cycle away from that in the next two or three years,” Segel said. “So we do hope to take advantage of that. You can buy pretty high quality apartment units for about $350,000 to $400,000 per unit right now, whereas to build them is like $650,000 a unit. So we want to take advantage of this kind of dip in the market…”

While SSHD’s strategy is trending toward purchasing recently-built apartment buildings initially, ultimately Segal said that new construction was likely to be key to meeting their goal of providing family-sized housing.

“There’s no getting around the fact that the private market is is building mostly small units,” Segel said. Only about 10% to 15% of the units are two bedrooms or larger in the buildings they’ve considered for purchase, she added.

“We will look for opportunities to combine small units and make them larger,” Segel said. “There might be some opportunity for that, but we are also trying to build a diverse portfolio for people in Seattle that need housing, and so that ranges from small households to big households. We think the majority of the way we’re going to serve family-sized households is through new construction. We’ll do some conversions, but we think mostly we have to fill that void that the private market is leaving of not building family-sized units.”

Segel also shared the income mix that SSHD is considering for its buildings. While SSHD’s charter says buildings should house people with incomes from zero to 120% of area median income or AMI, flexibility exists for how many units at each income band within that larger band. The staff is using a working assumption of 10/30/30/30 mix in their early financial models, as follows:

• 10% of units at 30% of AMI,
• 30% of units at 50% of AMI,
• 30% of units between 50% and 80% of AMI, and
• 30% of units between 80% and 120% of AMI.

Zoning matters

The SSHD also recently hired urbanist and Passive House architect Mike Eliason, who has contributed the articles at The Urbanist as a volunteer, as the agency’s Director of Design and Policy. Eliason briefed councilmembers on the SSHD’s thinking about healthier housing, and how the growth strategy in the Comprehensive Plan can be a hinderance on that front.

“With the Comp Plan focus on corridors, how do we site family-sized housing so that kids aren’t growing up directly on roads like Aurora or 15th Avenue NW, broad arterials, high levels of pollution. They’re loud, right?” Eliason said. “So we’re starting to think about how we can site these buildings so that they can be in quieter places, so that they are places that people will want to raise their kids and will want to stay in place.”

To scale up that approach may ultimately require zoning changes. Harrell’s plan limited corridor upzones to the immediate half-block along major transit corridors, and trimmed 50 neighborhood growth nodes proposed earlier to 30. Wilson has pledged to revisit the decision to add more housing density, pending further environmental study that the City legal team has urged.

At the same meeting, Kelli Larsen, Policy and Planning Director with the Seattle Office of Housing (OH) also presented and brought up that just a tiny fraction of land in Seattle has zoning friendly to affordable housing development.

“We’ve looked at a lot of the data and maps and zoning possible for the types of projects that we build, which are typically midrise, and we estimate that we can build midrise affordable housing in about 3% of the city,” Larsen said.

Easing zoning restrictions would create more opportunities for affordable housing projects, and drive down costs for nonprofit builders.

“Zoning really matters, and zoning matters for density and for housing of all types, ” Larsen said. “So, this is a huge part of the housing plan that the Office of Housing does not control, but our partners at OPCD and others in the city are contributing significantly to Comp Plan changes and reforms that are really necessary and significant for the housing market overall. In addition permitting reforms and speeding up the development process infrastructure, all of that contributes to delays that end up costing more and then actual hard costs that add to projects budgets and make them less feasible.”

Rising costs for constructing and operating building has been a growing problem, and increasingly OH has had to dedicate funds to stabilizing finances in existing buildings rather than new construction. Even with those challenges, OH reported 721 affordable rental homes opened in 2025, thanks in part to its funding, including 288 permanent supportive housing units geared toward serving people exiting homelessness.

Larsen sought to correct the notion that there is widespread overbuilding in the affordable housing sector, which stemmed from an August Seattle Times article that cited a point-in-time vacancy rate in the double digits. She said the vacancy rate in OH’s portfolio is around 6%.

“Across our entire portfolio, this is the truth of the vacancy: It is right around 6% right now in the OH portfolio. 7% mean, and our median is actually below 5% — I think it’s 4.7% last we looked,” Larsen said. “So this is much more in line with the citywide vacancy. You know, we’d like to see it closer to three, if we could get there. But it’s not really out of range or out of whack from the way that other units are operating in the city right now.”

Over the last decade, the Seattle metropolitan area has led the nation in affordable housing production, according to figures from RentCafe, although housing leaders acknowledge it’s still far from enough to meet the need.

Looking ahead

McCoy told The Urbanist that the SSHD’s goal is to have its first property acquisition done in the next six months. The interlocal agreement means the social housing PDA will have the money, and Wilson has pledged the support of her administration.

“In a moment when housing costs continue to rise and displacement pressure remains real, social housing is going to give us a tool that can match the scale of the problem,” Wilson said. “My administration is committed to working with the developer, not around it, providing technical support, helping to navigate systems that were not designed for social housing, and clearing barriers rather than adding new ones. Building something new inside existing systems is hard.”

Of course, many hurdles remain and getting the implementation right will be challenging. Wilson ended her speech on a hopeful note and argued Seattle could be a beacon of light guiding other cities struggling to roll out their own social housing regimes.

“We’re going to do everything we can to make the new social hospital developer successful in the years ahead,” Wilson said. “And we also know this work that we’re doing is part of a growing national movement for social housing. Other cities are watching us. They’re watching what we do here. Advocates across the country are learning from us. We have the chance to lead, and not just with ideas, but with implementation.”

Correction: The article originally misstated Ginger Segel’s work experience, saying she worked at the Seattle Housing Authority. James Mayton, Director of Acquisitions, is the hire with SHA experience. We regret the error.

The post Seattle Social Housing Staffs Up, Nets $115 Million first appeared on The Urbanist.

Last week, the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC) celebrated the grand opening of its most recent building, Clover Place, which is located on Aurora Avenue just south of Woodland Park. 

Clover Place consists of 95 studio apartments that will house single adults who have severe mental health conditions and have been chronically homeless, what DESC’s Senior Director of Housing Programs Noah Fay called “the highest needs people in our community.”

In addition to housing, Clover Place will provide wraparound services, including behavioral health treatment, substance use disorder treatment, and connection to other services. Its community space will be used to host community-building activities and events for residents and their guests. The wraparound services at Clover Place help residents maintain their housing, manage their health needs, and build a sense of community all of which make Clover Place, what providers call, “permanent supportive housing” or PSH, a key ingredient in solving the homelessness crisis.

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony and spoke to its importance, especially in light of her pledge to ramp up the supply of emergency housing for homeless people over the course of her term.

“In a moment when it often feels like we are playing defense and spending all of our time and energy and passion just trying to hold the line and not lose what we have, it’s really remarkable and heartening to be able to gather to celebrate progress, to celebrate opening new space for our neighbors and for our community,” Wilson said.

DESC executive director Daniel Malone said his organization is in a unique position to provide this kind of program, due to its expertise in both supportive housing and behavioral health. 

“Supportive housing has become an essential but under-recognized part of a quality behavioral health system,” Malone said at the grand opening event. “Everybody – all of us – need a place to live, after all, and people with serious mental illness and years of traumatic experiences often need a place that is arranged to provide them the support they need to heal and to have a successful tenancy. If supportive housing didn’t exist to do all of those things, the behavioral health system would be even more overwhelmed, with thousands of people with profound health conditions unable to get better as their lives continue in chaos.”

Clover Place will be run somewhat differently than DESC’s previous PSH buildings. When a behavioral service team member is working with a resident, they won’t limit their service offerings to only those that can be billed. This change means each resident will receive the benefit of the full range of available services.

State and local money, including from the City of Seattle’s Office of Housing, paid for much of the acquisition and construction of Clover Place. Money from Seattle’s JumpStart payroll expense tax, as well as from the state, will be used to help fund its operating costs.

Malone called out Mayor Katie Wilson’s key involvement in making the JumpStart tax a reality, leading to the availability of some of those operating costs. 

“DESC, as we know, is a national model for supporting people facing the most complex barriers: chronic homelessness, behavioral health needs, and long term instability,” Wilson said. “Their work shows what is possible when we meet people with dignity, evidence-based services, and consistency.” 

Clover Place is DESC’s 19th PSH building. Its 20th building, Birch Grove in Lake City, is slated to open this summer, at which point DESC is planning a pause before starting any new projects in light of federal funding uncertainty.

DESC’s legacy continues

Clover Place is named after the organization’s first nursing supervisor, Christina Clover. Sommer Inman remembered her former colleague as a tenacious, witty, and trusted nurse.

“Christina didn’t just live DESC’s core values, but really personified them,” Inman said. “Meeting Christina helped to restore my hope that an agency could really want to live their mission statement.”

Clover was also remembered as occasionally being irritable, which Fay spoke of as a strength.

“I think that is kind of the beauty of this approach and this work, is that it’s based in principle and doing what’s right and being practical about it, and getting it done, and serving people the way we know how, and being pretty impatient with barriers that stand in our way,” Fay said.

Clover Place was specifically designed as PSH, with several safeguards to protect residents and limit DESC’s liability. For example, each kitchen has its oven’s burners set on a timer that automatically shuts them off after 30 minutes. There is an automatic water shut-off triggered after a certain number of gallons of water are used, and each bathroom is equipped with a drain in the floor in case of overflow from the shower. Each apartment unit also has an intercom, which means residents can easily communicate with the building’s staff.

Five units are also ADA compliant and intended to serve people with disabilities. 

At the grand opening, staff members shared a video of two clients served by SAGE, DESC’s outpatient mental health program. 

“Once I was housed, everything changed, because I wasn’t living with the stress of everyday survival like that,” one participant shared in the video. “I had a place I could go and lock the door […] and just be left alone.”

DESC’s supportive housing is available to people who are dealing with substance use challenges, and DESC does not require its tenants to stay sober in order to keep their housing. DESC’s harm reduction approach attempts to mitigate the risks associated with drug use, while making substance use treatment readily available when a person feels ready to try making a change. 

Data doesn’t support the use of involuntary drug treatment, which results in an increased risk of overdose and often relapse. 

Critics, however, point out that this policy can make things difficult for those tenants who have become sober and might not want to be living near active drug use. 

Malone stressed that people need different options based on their individual needs. In addition to supportive housing like Clover Place, DESC operates scattered sites, which support people living in regular apartment buildings with access to services. DESC tries to help people find the environment that is going to work best for them. 

“An environment like this, where the residents of the apartment building all come from places of trauma and great difficulty, has real benefits and some drawbacks. And some of the drawbacks include things like people saying, you know, I’m trying to make these changes, and others aren’t. And so we’re not in the same place,” Malone said. “Some of the advantages of this kind of setup are that a lot of people express that they find a certain level of comfort and support by being around other people with similar experiences.”

Federal threats to ‘Housing First’ approaches

The future of permanent supportive housing in the region, and across the country, is threatened by the stance of the Trump administration. 

King County receives significant federal funding for permanent housing through the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) Continuum of Care grants. Last November, HUD announced major changes to the rules for these grants that would have gutted funding for permanent supportive housing in the region. After a lot of confusion and a lawsuit brought against HUD by a coalition of states, including Washington, a federal judge ordered HUD to halt the changes to the grant program.  

In January, HUD told providers they were reinstating grant applications submitted under the former rules. However, depending on how the lawsuit is resolved, funding for 2027 may still be in jeopardy.

Work on Clover Place began in 2021, well before any federal funding threats. 

Advocates for ‘Housing First’ emphasize that the approach is not only about providing housing. Rather, it’s acknowledging the reality that people often need a stable place to live before they can focus on getting better – whether that’s accessing psychiatric treatment, stopping the use of substances, or getting more involved with their communities. That’s why Clover Place offers its tenants both a place to live and the services they’ll need to stabilize. 

Malone spoke to The Urbanist about the importance of the ‘Housing First’ model and supportive housing. 

“Generally, supportive housing is far and away the [intervention] that is most effective at getting people out of homelessness and keeping them out of homelessness,” Malone said. “The real problem with all this stuff is that for every person who is out of homelessness and remains out, […] at the same time, there is actually more than one person falling into homelessness along the way.”

Malone said it’s important to pair homelessness interventions like supportive housing with strategies to stop people from becoming homeless in the first place. 

Unfortunately, between potential cuts to Continuum of Care contracts that fund interventions like supportive housing, and cuts to federal services such as Medicaid and SNAP food assistance that help people meet their basic needs and remain housed, the problem of homelessness is likely to increase in scale in the United States, and the Puget Sound area, going forward.

Cuts to Medicaid laid out in the country’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” H.R.1, will impact operation costs at Clover Place and DESC’s work in general. 

“We won’t be able to serve people as many people or as deeply as we currently do,” Malone said.

Elected officials in King County have continued to express vocal support for supportive housing in the region. 

“I want to acknowledge that as Housing First particularly is under ever more threats, and safety nets for the most vulnerable members of our community are eroding at the federal level at a rate that we’ve never seen in our community, I feel deeply privileged and honored to live and work in a community that is rooted in values about supporting the most vulnerable among us,” Fay said. “That includes community members. That includes our elected officials, who, in the face of difficult times, have doubled down on the investment on what works and have not shied away from programs that are evidence-based and supporting people in a way we know that will help people recover over the long haul.” 

In 2024, Seattle’s Office of Housing estimated the city alone will need 28,572 new supportive housing units by 2044. 

In addition to DESC’s two new buildings opening this year, King County’s Health Through Housing initiative opened Booker House, an 86-unit supportive housing building, in late January and plans to open the 100-unit Sheila Stanton Place in Kirkland later this year. 

In spite of future threats, the atmosphere at the grand opening of Clover Place was celebratory, with new tenants expected to start moving in on Monday, February 9.

The post Supportive Housing Building Opens Near Seattle’s Woodland Park first appeared on The Urbanist.

At the meeting on Wednesday, a handful of builders and housing advocates spoke in favor of the reform, including Logan Schmidt speaking on behalf of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.

“This ordinance provides a clear, predictable framework to advance housing production while still meeting Seattle’s long standing growth and environmental goals,” Schmidt said. “Streamlining SEPA is not a rollback of environmental standards. It’s an acknowledgement that those standards are already embedded throughout the city’s planning and regulatory framework.”

Ryan Makinster, Advocacy and Policy Manager for Habitat for Humanity of Seattle-King & Kittitas County, echoed that sentiment and highlighted the human cost of slowing down housing production.

“For families like the Cornejos, who waited years to close their Habitat home in Seattle, every month of delay means another month of housing instability. Redundant reviews slow housing production without improving environmental outcomes,” Makinster said. “Our pipeline includes 204 permanently affordable homes, 75% of those in Seattle. Streamlining permits means we serve more families sooner with the same limited public resources for your unit.”

The proposal drew criticism from some tree advocates and growth skeptics. While most from this contingent opposed the underlying legislation, some did speak in favor of an amendment from Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck that targeted parking garages and paid parking lots.

“The reason I’m bringing this amendment forward is to ensure our environmental goals aren’t being put aside to promote more parking without proper review,” Rinck said ahead of the committee vote. “Our city’s biggest source of emissions comes from transportation, and single occupancy vehicles are a large share of that — they’re the culprit. And I want to be clear that I support this legislation holistically, because exempting housing from SEPA just simply makes sense. That’s because we know when we build more housing — and we’re building in Seattle — the environment is better off because we’re reducing sprawl and reliance on cars, but I don’t believe we should be clearing the way for more parking, especially flexible use parking, to exempt from environmental review.”

Rinck’s amendment passed on a 4-0 vote, lowering the threshold for the SEPA exemption in all non-industrial areas of city from 40 stalls down to 20 stalls of “flexible use” parking, which is the City’s term for paid parking that is open to the public, rather than resident-only parking which wouldn’t trigger SEPA review. The amendment, however, allows the SEPA exemption to rise to 90 or fewer stalls in industrial areas, in keeping with the original version of the legislation.

Land Use and Sustainability Chair Eddie Lin shared a similar sentiment, noting that encouraging housing in Seattle was a climate-friendly action that was good for the environment, given the heavy environmental impact and carbon footprint of sprawl on the suburban fringe. He argued that cities have better tools than SEPA to improve environmental outcomes.

“I do think there are important places where we need to address these [environmental] issues, whether it’s in our zoning, as we think about our built environment and our Comprehensive Plan. Whether it’s in our storm water codes, whether it’s in our building standards, these are critical areas where we can make real improvements,” Lin said. “Thinking about our right-of-way, and whether we can increase tree canopy and public spaces… how we fund our transportation system and our buses and light rail so that people can get around in ways other than single occupancy vehicles. I think about the toxic chemicals and tires that are harming our salmon, and whether we can take action at the state level to transition to ban those harmful chemicals.”

In fact, Lin alluded to the way SEPA can encourage inertia and status quo outcomes instead of climate action.

“As we are already well on our way towards climate crisis, if we don’t do anything, we basically sit on our laurels and take zero action — just big picture — SEPA doesn’t even ever do anything, because there would be no action for us,” Lin said.

Recent history of SEPA exemptions

The legislation is set to build upon past SEPA reforms by the City and a two-year mandated holiday by the Washington State Legislature. 

In 2017 and 2019, the Seattle City Council adopted legislation to significantly adjust categorical exemptions for residential and non-residential development within urban centers and urban villages, so long as certain planned growth levels weren’t exceeded. In mid-2023, the Council approved higher SEPA categorical exemption levels for Downtown zones in an effort to spur more activity and interest in the urban core following the pandemic.

Also in 2023, the state legislature passed Senate Bill 5412 to specifically alter SEPA exemptions in Seattle. The text of the bill was broad, granting outright categorical exemptions from SEPA environmental review for “all project actions that propose to develop one or more residential housing or middle housing units” in the city during the period from July 23, 2023 through September 30, 2025. 

The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) accordingly interpreted the statutory language broadly when applying it to projects. Applicants with projects already under review at the time of the statute’s implementation were allowed to terminate environmental review under SEPA and move forward with other Master Use Permit components or construction permits. 

An SDCI departmental rule detailed that the categorical exemption applied to both residential-only developments and mixed-used developments, and that the exemption extended to such developments even when on lands covered by water — a situation which typically nullifies categorical exemptions under SEPA, though codified shoreline and environmental regulations were still applicable in such cases. The new legislation, however, restores application of SEPA for projects occurring on lands covered by water.

Demonstrating the power of the exemption is a 15-story hotel project in Uptown. Because the applicant proposed one apartment unit in the structure, the entire project was able to use the SEPA exemption as a mixed-use building, in addition to temporary design review exemptions. That allowed the project to obtain Master Use Permit and early site construction approvals in just over a year — which is significantly faster than Seattle’s norm.

How SEPA reform would work

The council’s proposed reform streamlines the SEPA categorical exemptions by eliminating complex tables for residential and non-residential development and replacing them with standard exemptions regardless of zone and other geography criteria, relying on a combination of state statutory provisions to raise infill exemptions. 

Generally speaking, residential and mixed-use development would be exempt from SEPA going forward, unless citywide residential growth exceeds 99.5% of the planned levels in the 20-year Comprehensive Plan update. In the unlikely event that this happens, only residential and mixed-use projects with more than 200 dwelling units would be subject to SEPA, while projects that don’t exceed that number of dwelling units would remain categorically exempt. 

For non-residential-only developments, the citywide categorical exemptions would be 30,000 square feet or less of retail commercial uses and 65,000 square feet or less of non-retail non-residential uses, with a similar caveat to residential and mixed-use development. If citywide non-residential employment growth exceeds 99.5% of the planned levels in the 20-year Comprehensive Plan update, only projects with 30,000 square feet or less of non-residential development would remain categorically exempt from SEPA.

Along with these changes, the legislation increases the cumulative limit on excavation and fill projects to 1,000 cubic yards, from the current limit of 500 cubic yards. This mostly serves as a benefit for modest remedial site activities on larger commercial and industrial lands, since excavation and fill activities are typically exempt from SEPA when in connection with otherwise SEPA-exempt construction activities like new townhomes or mixed-use buildings.

In building a case for the changes, SDCI provided a report explaining why additional SEPA categorical exemptions are warranted. 

“The main purpose of the City’s SEPA reviews is to identify situations where a permit should be conditioned in order to avoid significant adverse environmental impacts. However, due to the effectiveness of the City’s codes, fewer and fewer SEPA reviews are resulting in individualized SEPA-based conditions of approval in Seattle’s land use permit decisions,” the report stated. “This illustrates that the current City codes mitigate the majority of impacts of new development on elements of the environment.”

The report provided concrete data on the limited number of SEPA projects resulting in actual permit conditioning.

“It is rare that any development, even in the range of 100-500 dwelling units in size, receives SEPA mitigation measures tied to unique environmental impact findings. Available data from the 2010s shows that only 16% (about 1 in 7) of SEPA reviewed residential developments led to SEPA-based mitigation conditions, among approximately 250 development decisions,” the report stated. “For a smaller sample of non-residential developments, only about 30% of the projects had outcomes that included any SEPA-based mitigation for specific site impacts.”

In concluding discussion on the proposal, the report pointedly stated: “SEPA reviews for nearly all developments are not adding value, and should not be required going forward due to the body or regulations that will still continue to apply to new development proposals.”

Nevertheless, categorical exemptions will still be nullified in certain cases, such as projects seeking modification or demolition of existing structures that may warrant landmarking or exceeding allowed use, density, or intensity limits specified in City codes.

As a backstop to protect cultural resources, the legislation modifies grading requirements. Projects with proposed grading activities within 200 feet of navigable waterbodies or state-designated shoreline districts would need to incorporate protective measures into plans for potential archaeological and cultural resources on-site and implement them during construction. SEPA has traditionally been used as a method for addressing and conditioning protection of archeological and cultural resources as part of project permitting, but codification of protection requirements should more directly cover many more projects.

The SEPA reform had appeared poised to pass in late 2025, but councilmembers pulled it off their calendar. The delay seems to have been in response to concerns raised by local Tribes. City staff outlined new procedures that would be put into place for greater notification to and information-sharing with Tribal governments for broader types of projects, potentially easing those concerns.

Given the four votes in favor Wednesday, the legislation appears likely to pass on February 10, although District 4 Councilmember Maritza Rivera (who doesn’t sit on Land Use) did attend the meeting and share a variety of concerns.

Correction: Ryan Makinster’s name was misspelled in the original version of the article.

The post Seattle Poised to Remove SEPA Review Hurdle for Most Housing Projects first appeared on The Urbanist.

Sam Steele will be the new interim head of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI), Mayor Katie Wilson revealed in an email Tuesday to department employees. The 26-year veteran of City of Seattle government most recently served as SDCI’s director of inspections. Steele will start as interim director on February 11.

“I’m looking forward to working with Sam and the whole SDCI team as we deliver on an affordable and vibrant Seattle that works for everyone,” Wilson said in the email.

Steele worked his way up after Seattle Parks and Recreation hired him as a carpenter in 2000, Wilson noted, pointing to his long history with the City of Seattle that included several roles at SDCI and its predecessor, DPD, as well as at Seattle Center.

“I’m honored to step into the role of interim director of SDCI,” Steele said in a statement. “This department is home to some of the most innovative and dedicated employees in the city, and it’s a privilege to support the work they do every day, from permitting safe emergency shelter to upholding minimum housing standards, streamlining permitting and construction for future light rail and assisting small businesses as they activate streets across our community. I look forward to partnering with Mayor Wilson and colleagues across the city to strengthen communication, reduce barriers, and continue improving customer satisfaction and access to our services.”

In an email to staff sent later in the day Tuesday, Steele emphasized the department’s long history solving problems and innovating.

“This is a unique moment — one that gives us the chance to transform how we interact with customers and strengthen the relationships across divisions and the city,” Steele wrote. “Our department has a proud history of solving problems. We are one of the oldest in the city, beginning as Wharves and Bridges — hard to imagine now! Even 40 years ago, before computers were fully integrated, we managed the evolving codes and regulations that often created bottlenecks and confusion.”

Sounds like Belman is heading back to Sound Transit to become a Deputy CEO to Dow Constantine. She'd been with ST a long time and had previously filled in as acting CEO after Peter Rogoff's departure.

[image or embed]

— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) January 29, 2026 at 4:43 PM

SDCI Interim Director Brooke Belman announced her departure last week, but will remain on until February 10. Belman is returning to Sound Transit, where she will again serve as a Deputy CEO, this time under CEO Dow Constantine. She served as acting Sound Transit CEO in the gap between the firing of Peter Rogoff and the hiring of Julie Timm. She served as Deputy CEO before leaving to take the SDCI post.

Before Belman, SDCI had long been helmed by Nathan Torgelson, a 35-year veteran at the City of Seattle. Last March, former Mayor Bruce Harrell announced the two had mutually agreed to part ways — although Torgelson remained on though the summer.

The reasons for the leadership change were not entirely clear, but some within Harrell’s cabinet did appear to grow frustrated with perceived resistance within the department to efforts to streamline design review and the broader permitting process. Seattle has longer permit review times than many peers locally, including Tacoma: An ECONorthwest analysis found Seattle’s permit times exceeded 18 months on average for projects undergoing full design review from 2010 to 2020.

State legislation ended up forcing the department’s hand in some areas, as the SDCI effort to reform itself became bogged down in a contentious stakeholder process and ended up proposing minor tweaks rather than a wholehearted overhaul. Starting in June 2025, HB 1293 required that all design standards are “clear and objective” and sets a maximum of one public meeting per project. Previously, Seattle had often required three or more meetings, particularly in wealthy neighborhood with organized resistance to new housing.

Even then, the City had to rely on an interim ordinance to meet the state deadline, with permanent legislation still pending.

Each year, SDCI reviews and approves more than 55,000 land use and construction permits and conducts approximately 240,000 on-site and 10,000 virtual inspections, according to the Harrell administration. However, permit applications are trending downward sharply, which will be a challenge for Steele to tackle as the department’s new leader.

Averting a housing slowdown appears to be a priority for Wilson, but the task may not be easy. For his part, Steele has pledged to shift paradigms and indicated a willingness to jettison old practices that are no longer serving the city well.

“Today, I challenge each of you to break stride with past practices and help write the next chapter of the building department,” Steele wrote to employees. “Let’s leave a legacy of how we turned the corner and solved our own problems.”

Correction: The original version of this article said Mayor Wilson and Sam Steele emailed OPCD employees on Monday. Those emails were actually sent Tuesday afternoon.

The post Wilson Promotes Sam Steele to Lead Seattle Permitting Department first appeared on The Urbanist.

The post Sunday Video: Is Mass Timber Revolutionizing Midrise and Highrise Design? first appeared on The Urbanist.

On December 6th, South King County will see the opening of three new light rail stations. When visitors arrive at the stations, they’ll find relevantly barren station areas. Compared with other recently opened stations, the three station areas, covering parts of Kent, Des Moines, and Federal Way, are seeing very little transit-oriented development added or planned.

The extension suffers from a freeway alignment that is not conducive to transit-oriented development (TOD), including a station that is among the most prohibitive to TOD. South King County’s weak real estate market also lags the rest of the region. In a time of high interest rates and climbing construction costs, builders do not appear ready to make many bets in areas like South King, where prevailing rents are relatively low.

Without much private interest, the primary development activity seen around this extension was spurred by public entities and incentives. The nonprofit and public sector has not been able to spur homebuilding at anywhere close to the rate seen near Sound Transit’s busiest stations, where market interest has been more robust. Downtown Bellevue, for example, has about 14,000 homes in the development pipeline or recently added. Downtown Redmond has added 5,300 homes over the past two decades, with more on the way.

In contrast, The Urbanist’s review of development plans near the three new stations about to open with Federal Way Link found just over 3,200 homes recently delivered or in the pipeline, the lion’s share riding on one phased megadevelopment near Federal Way Downtown Station, which could take a long time to get fully completed.

Squeaking Along In Des Moines and Kent

One station with recently completed midrise development is the Kent Des Moines station. In 2018, Highline College opened Highline Place, student housing with 160 beds between 44 units. The five-story building includes 14,766 square feet of retail space and a parking garage for 38 cars. 

Highline Place’s second phase was planned to begin construction in 2019, but appears to have been a victim of the pandemic. If the project is still alive, it would be a five-story building with 207 units and 195 parking stalls. The building would not be exclusive to students. 

Other projects planned around the Kent Des Moines Station include a Sound Transit TOD project and a large private development. Directly adjacent to the station will be Mercy Housing North’s Multicultural Village. The project is a 233-unit affordable housing building that will also include childcare, childcare training facilities, and a family resource center. It’ll be built on surplus land from the extension’s construction.

The last project in the station area is the Suton/Kent Ridge View Mixed-Use Development. The project is a nine-building development on a 12.7-acre lot with 564 units with 675 parking spots — a high parking ratio so close to a light rail station. The development is planned to include a seven-story mixed-use building with 140 units and café, two five-story 140-unit buildings, and six three-story buildings with 24 units each, and one detached 5,000-square-foot club house.

In addition to obstacles presented by the I-5 chasm, development opportunities east of the station are hampered by the presence of the Midway Landfill, a contaminated 60-acre superfund site fenced off from the neighborhood. The site itself would be extremely difficult to redevelop, given the cost of removing and mitigating waste, and also not a terribly attractive neighbor for TOD in the area.

Star Lake: An Unfortunate Station Area

Star Lake Station is located between I-5, its own parking garage, and the McSorley Creek Wetlands. There are no new or active multifamily or mixed active projects in its station area. The station area has some older multifamily buildings, an elementary school, an ongoing single family subdivision project, and houses of worship. Without a robust real estate market, everything surrounding the station will be prohibitive to new dense development.

Even with a stronger real estate market, major obstacles remain. The McSorley Creek greenbelt consumes much of the land near the station, and the I-5 interchange eats up another sizable chunk. That creek is surely a McSore spot for this project, after it also contributed to a construction delay that pushed the project back by more than a year.

The opposite side of I-5 was always going to be less attractive to TOD, but in this case it’s further complicated by crossing jurisdictional boundaries. Kent’s border ends at S 272nd Street. The neighborhood around Star Lake itself is in incorporated King County as part of the “Lakeland North” Census-designate place. It’s an area dominated by single family homes — and doesn’t appear in a hurry to change that.

Suburban Retrofit One Day

Federal Way Station only has one new multifamily project. In 2020, the seven-story Traditions at Federal Way Senior Living opened with 200 units and a 194-parking stall garage. There are some early and ongoing plans to build out the station area. Last April, The Urbanist reported on a green light given to a 30-year development agreement on what was City-owned land. The agreement looks to kickstart Federal Way’s “Downtown” with hundreds and perhaps even 1,000-plus housing units. Other uses, such as retail, office space, a new city hall, and a park are all possible under the agreement. On the site, the city’s performing arts center is a relatively new addition, opening in 2017. 

Additionally, Sound Transit is offering two parcels next to the Federal Way Station for affordable housing development. The two parcels amount to 1.88 acres of land. Another two sites will be available for affordable housing development once more is done to understand and plan around the contamination on the sites. Altogether, Sound Transit will be transferring around six acres of land to affordable housing developers that could yield another 1,000 units of housing, if built out to maximum zoned capacity. 

Federal Way has created some of their own obstacles to multifamily housing development, levying very high impact fees on apartment developers, while giving single family developers more favorable treatment. The City also periodically imposed multifamily development moratoriums in the 2010s. High fees and an uncertain approval process has contributed to less interest among apartment builders.

A Slow Start of TOD in South King County 

All in all, the Federal Way Extension stations are by far the least prepared to take advantage of the influx in transit capacity. Only two housing projects have been completed in the past 10 years and progress has been minimal on building a pipeline of housing. The lack of homebuilding along the line definitely invites second guessing that the SR 99 alignment, closer to existing housing and developable sites, would have been superior to the I-5 alignment that Sound Transit ultimately selected.

Kent Des Moines Station has a pipeline prepared with more than 1,000 units in some stage of permitting.

Federal Way Downtown’s development appears to still be in the planning phase, with a single permit not in sight for its two project clusters that are moving. Early groundwork is underway, but new housing in the station area is still years away. Theoretically, more than 2,000 homes plus commercial uses and amenities could emerge from these two projects. 

Based on what’s in the pipeline right now, around 3,200 new homes could come online near the three Federal Way extension stations in the coming years. That’s on par with all the housing built and planned near Shoreline South Station alone, and public entities didn’t directly kickstart any of that homebuilding and planning. Transit-oriented development is coming to South King County, but it’s coming slowly. 

The post Federal Way Link Stations Not Seeing a Housing Boom first appeared on The Urbanist.

Non-profit housing organizations Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) and SouthEast Effective Development (SEED) are working on a slate of projects targeted toward the needs of some of the city’s most racially diverse communities.

Last month, LIHI began leasing units in Nichols Court, a six-story, 148-unit affordable apartment complex at 7544 Martin Luther King Jr. Way S a short walk from the Othello light rail station. Situated on the former site of a tiny home village owned and operated by LIHI for eight years, Nichols Court offers subsidized rentals for those earning up to 50% and 60% of area median income (AMI). 

Meanwhile, in Rainier Valley, SEED is hoping to break ground on the Sam Smith Apartments complex next year, the fifth and final building in the Rainier Court complex, which will have transformed a polluted brownfield near Rainier Avenue into housing for 178 individuals and families over the course of 20 years. 

Nichols Court

The Nichols Court complex — named for LIHI board president Melinda Nichols, who founded the organization’s tiny home program, and her husband, artist Clifford Nichols – offers a range of units sized from studios to three-bedroom. The two- and three-bedroom units are meant to address the unique needs of ethnically diverse families in the neighborhood, many of whom have multiple generations living under one roof.

“One reason we wanted to serve this community is that it’s the most diverse ZIP code in Seattle,” said LIHI executive director Sharon Lee. Her organization, talking with the community, found that two- and three-bedroom units, which are rare in affordable housing complexes, were in highest demand.

Two-bedroom units at Nichols Court run $1,767 – $2,121 and three-bedroom units cost $2,042 – $2,451, putting them well below the city’s average for a unit of that size.

LIHI has also partnered with Refugee Women’s Alliance (ReWA) to run a day care and preschool on the building’s first floor.

Nichols Court is among a proliferating number of affordable units near the Othello and Rainier Beach light rail stations that have been permitted and built in the past three years.

At an opening event in September, the building’s namesake, Melinda Nichols, a tireless advocate for solutions to the homeless crisis, said, “When Sharon and the board approached me, I said ‘why me? Why not name the building after someone who gives you a lot of money?’ But the board said: ‘Shut up, you worked for 25 years.”

Also at the opening was Seattle Office of Housing director Maiko Winkler-Chin, who highlighted the importance of the new early learning center in her remarks.

“Nichols Court is more than just housing,” Maiko Winkler-Chin said. It’s a place where families can feel supported, connected, and rooted. The ReWA early learning center will be a game-changer for parents and kids alike. We’ll have a safe, affordable, welcoming place to learn, and families will have access to programs and build community and belonging. This really reflects the heart and the spirit of Rainier Valley and how we all take care of each other.”

LIHI’s development cycle — buying a vacant lot, building a tiny home village on it, and then securing funding for and building an affordable apartment building on the property — seems to be a model that’s working well for LIHI. 

“It’s a cost-effective strategy to do in some neighborhoods,” Lee said, “especially those experiencing gentrification and displacement — to buy land for future development.”

Other LIHI projects in the works

Friendship Heights, a former LIHI tiny home lot in the North End at 125th and Aurora, will eventually become a building offering 90 units of housing for seniors, Lee says. LIHI is also transforming a surplus Sound Transit property near the Roosevelt light rail station that currently serves as Rosie’s Tiny Home Village into a 12-story affordable housing complex that will be Seattle’s tallest mass timber building when complete. Proponents contend mass timber is both greener and more livable than alternative building materials, such as concrete or steel.

This month, LIHI announced construction on two new tiny home sites: Olympic Hills Village near 133rd Street, and Lake City Way and Church By the Side of the Road Village (CBSR) in Tukwila. Both are slated to be open and running by the end of January. Lee said her organization is also looking at the same strategy somewhere east of Lake Washington.

Overcoming some initial skepticism, Lee said the City of Seattle and the King County Regional Homeless Authority are now firmly behind tiny homes. Seattle, in particular, has set aside funding for three new villages next year and three additional ones in 2027.

Lee says that another tiny home location that LIHI owns, Henderson Village in Rainier Beach, will eventually be developed into a multi-story affordable apartment complex. “That’s a great location. Fabulous. It’s a short walk to Rainier Beach light rail, and a short walk to [Rainier Beach] high school and close to [Be’er Shiva] park and the lake.”

Sam Smith Apartments in Rainier Valley

SEED is focusing on multi-generational living, with a four-story, 50-unit building named for Sam Smith, a civil rights activist, former state legislator, and Seattle’s first Black city councilmember, soon to break ground. Only five of the units will be one-bedroom, while 25 will be two-bedroom units and 20 will have three bedrooms.

“We listened to the community, and [the] community was very clear,” said Michael Seiwerath, executive director of SEED. “They wanted rents at lower income levels and they wanted family-sized units. Multi-generational housing for new Americans and longtime residents.”

Seiwerath says that the final mix of income levels isn’t finalized, but nearly all units will be affordable for those earning 50% AMI or lower, with a few at 60% AMI or lower. “We’re trying to see how affordable we can make it, including getting some units down to 30% and 40% AMI when possible.”

The build has no retail on the ground floor in order to maximize the number of family-sized units. 

Seiwerath notes that some affordable housing developers, in the rush to meet soaring demand, created smaller units, which can be built for less. This created a tension in some South End communities, he said. “They were very clear what their priority was, which is those larger homes. There’s just not that many, particularly three-bedroom apartments on the market at any price, let alone affordable.”

In particular, the Sam Smith complex is meant to create solutions for multi-generational families that may have children, parents, and grandparents or aunts and uncles living together. “We’re trying to see how we can be intentional with that,” he said.

SEED did a land swap with the city, for instance, to help them create Cheryl Chow Park – also named for a former Seattle city council member – that includes a playground, basketball courts, and picnic area with barbecues. The completely ADA-accessible park was designed specifically as a multi-generational gathering space.

Integral to SEED’s housing complexes are resident services teams, which provide each project’s ethnically diverse tenant population with advice on food security, affordable child care, rental assistance, and mental health services. “We’re very proud to have our resident services team, who are on staff, working daily to support our residents,” Seiwerath said. 

SEED also works with East African Community Services to provide multi-lingual and culturally appropriate services to immigrant families at some of its complexes.

Seiwerath said the name for the final building in Rainier Court was an obvious choice.

“It’s going to be named after the late, great legislator Sam Smith, who worked at the city and state level to help end housing segregation,” Seiwerath said. “He was a proud community member of the South End and a proud champion of affordable housing.”

The post Affordable Housing Expands in Seattle, Especially in the Rainier Valley first appeared on The Urbanist.

The City is touting creating additional bus priority now as an improvement that will help maintaining mobility in advance of major freeway construction work the long overdue Revive I-5 maintenance and preservation project will bring. On July 21, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) will reduce I-5 across the Ship Canal Bridge to two northbound lanes, reducing its capacity by half until mid-August.

Two full weekend closures of northbound I-5 from I-90 to NE 45th Street on July 18-21 and August 15-18 are set to send even more traffic onto parallel routes. Work is expected to continue through 2027.

It’s been a long road to get to the point of putting down red paint along the Route 40, a corridor slated for a full upgrade to a RapidRide line in the 2015 Move Seattle transportation levy. A financial realignment of the promises of that levy in 2018, in light of a changing federal funding environment and overly rosy cost estimates, prompted the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) to scale the project back to spot improvements targeting the route’s most congested segments.

Other promised RapidRide lines that fell victim to that 2018 cut included Route 44 between Ballard and the U District, and the 48 between the U District and Mount Baker.

But even reduced in scope, those upgrades encountered opposition from business groups wary of ceding road space. In 2021, North Seattle Industrial Association President Eugene Wasserman contacted then-SDOT Director Sam Zimbabwe to ask for a “restart” of the project, calling the 30% design that had been put forward “totally flawed” and accusing the department of a lack of consideration for freight movement. Wasserman also asserted that added bus priority along Leary Way and Westlake Avenue would spur “increasing gentrification” of the city’s industrial areas.

“It appears to the Maritime/Industrial community that SDOT is willing to sacrifice the viability of maritime/industrial businesses and their employees so that Amazon workers can get to their offices 5 minutes earlier,” Wasserman wrote to Zimbabwe.

Wasserman’s push against the 40 upgrades was joined by others, including the Fremont Chamber of Commerce and the Ballard Alliance, as the project progressed through design. The debate simmered throughout 2022 and 2023, with a last-minute push in early 2024 as SDOT was preparing to put the project out to bid. Signs featuring an ominous bus with blacked-out windows popped up along Westlake Avenue N and in storefronts in Fremont.

“The addition of a 24/7 north bound bus-only lane on Leary Avenue NW between 20th Avenue NW and NW Market Street will have substantial access impact on small businesses, as well as residential and retirement communities located all along the corridor,” read a January 2024 letter signed by Fremont Chamber President Pete Hanning, Ballard Alliance President Mike Stewart, and dozens of business owners along the corridor.

“Equally impactful, the 24/7 bus lanes in both directions of NW Market Street between Leary and 24th Avenue NW – along with new curb bulbs – will eliminate two travel lanes, as well as already scarce on-street parking spaces and load zones that are very needed for the small businesses located along this corridor,” the letter continued.

The concerns raised by business and property owners along the route weren’t ignored, with some major design changes prompted by that feedback, including a first-in-the-city pilot of a bus lane that also shares space with large freight vehicles. But the City of Seattle held strong on the core components of the project, in conjunction with support from allies like Ballard Fremont Greenways and the Transit Riders Union.

Once complete, the city expects to see a 5% to 10% drop in transit travel time along the entire Route 40 corridor, with riders between Ballard and Downtown getting to their destinations 15% more quickly. Just as importantly, trips will become more reliable, with riders experiencing fewer late trips. Faster and more reliable trips will entice more riders, as Commute Seattle’s rider surveys have underscored.

Though ridership has climbed significantly in the last few years, Metro has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels. Route 40 averaged more than 13,000 daily riders in 2019, making it part of that trend. The route’s 2025 ridership is sitting at two-thirds of the 2019 baseline, mirroring systemwide ridership.

The Route 40 upgrades aren’t the only transit upgrades planned to coincide with state Revive I-5 work, with peak-hour bus only lanes along Aurora Avenue N — home to the busiest bus in the Metro system, the E Line — recently converted to 24/7 operation. But other key corridors, including 15th Avenue W and NW, and 23rd Avenue, haven’t received much attention even though they’re also poised to see significant spillover traffic that could hose transit riders.

When the bus lanes finally roll out along the 40, riders will benefit from a hard-won upgrade that is just the type of change that should be deployed across the city.

The post Route 40 Bus Lane Installation Starts, Aiding Riders During I-5 Work first appeared on The Urbanist.

Constructing accessory dwelling units (ADUs) is an empty promise for many homeowners in Seattle due to numerous regulatory hurdles, with water hookup fees one of the most thorny.

In a May 14th presentation to the Seattle City Council, Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) revealed that 400 miles of city streets lack water mains. Without a water main, new water service to support construction is denied by SPU.

Property owners denied access to the public water system must pay for and install water main extensions as a condition for new service, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. On the other hand, property owners along the other 1,600 miles of streets with water mains are allowed to connect to an existing water main.

Up until the early 2000s, SPU allowed all property owners to connect to the nearest water main, up to one block away. SPU refers to these longer service lines as spaghetti lines. Allowing installation of long service lines results in fair outcomes for all property owners. 

To illustrate their proposal, SPU’s presentation included a tale of two property owners, Jack and Sam. Each property owner desires to build two detached ADUs. 

A water main exists in front of Jack’s Lot A, and he can obtain water service to support construction. However, Sam on Lot B is not so fortunate. They must pay for and install an eight-inch-diameter water main extension, at an estimated cost of $375,000. Sam’s requirement to achieve the same outcome is incredibly disproportional to Jack’s, and demonstrates the inequity of SPU’s current water main policies.

SPU’s cost-sharing proposal only a partial band-aid

SPU is now suggesting adding yet another fee: an increase to the System Development Charge, also known as a water service connection fee. Additional fees collected will be used to partially reimburse the cost for those who are subjected to the water main extension policy. This proposal is currently under review by City Council, with a vote expected during the upcoming Parks, Utilities and Technology Committee meeting on Wednesday, May 28 at 2pm.

Under this proposal, an applicant like Sam will still have to install the water main and pay the $375,000 up front for the installation. It is only after the installation that the proposed policy offers partial cost reimbursement. Even with a partial reimbursement, Sam’s main line extension (MLE) cost is estimated at $45,150 and is twice that of the costs incurred by Jack.

Furthermore, the SPU example does not reveal the $150,000 cost for removal and replacement of street pavement that Sam will incur, for which there is no reimbursement. The true cost for Sam is significant – nearly $200,000. There is no economy of scale for Sam to spread out the costs. Cost sharing or not, SPU’s policy means Sam does not benefit from the additional housing on his lot as he is entitled to per HB 1110. 

The policy has the effect of zoning downsizing, taking away a property owner’s ability to reap the benefits of increased housing density.

City’s cost-sharing fund too small to meet need

SPU expects to collect an added $6.6 million in water system development charges. These collected fees are to be used for partial reimbursement for private water main installations. However, these funds will fall significantly short of that needed. 

Approximately 300 permit applicants per year are issued Water Availability Certificates that include mandates for water system infrastructure improvements. Conservatively, using an average per-project reimbursement value of $150,000, the amount needed to reimburse those 300 permit applicants is $45 million. Anyone who hangs their hat on obtaining a reimbursement needs to hope they can snag some of the $6.6 million for a given year before the budgeted reimbursement funds are depleted. 

With or without cost sharing, the deck is stacked against property owners without street-side water mains. There is no relief from the costs for pavement removal and re-pavement associated with trenching for a new water main. There have been hundreds of new housing permit applicants and thousands of unbuilt houses to date that have been crushed by the SPU’s policy prohibiting installation of long service lines.

Judge rules against SPU water main policy

One property owner sued the city of Seattle in King County Superior Court over SPU’s water main extension policy. She applied for one new water meter to serve a new house and new detached ADU. She requested service via a long service line, most of which was on her private property. Instead, SPU mandated a 173-linear-foot water main extension in exchange for the water meter. The estimated cost to complete the work is $350,000.

A Summary Judgement in favor of the applicant was issued on December 6, 2024, finding that the “no spaghetti line” policy of SPU is arbitrary and capricious as applied to the applicant.  The court confirmed the policy is found nowhere in the city code, director’s rules, or engineering design manual, which means permit applicants are routinely blindsided by this unwritten SPU policy.

The summary findings of Judge Nicole Gaines Phelps include the following:

• Plaintiffs suffered a cognizable constitutional injury the moment the City imposed the unconstitutional condition on the water availability certificate.
• The City’s demand that Plaintiffs fund the design and installation of a water main extension as a condition of issuing a water availability certificate is an exaction.
• The city has failed to meet its burden of showing that the extension was “reasonably necessary as a direct result of the proposed development or plat to which the dedication of land or easement is to apply.” Thus, the condition violates RCW 82.02.020.

SPAGHETTI LINES ARE THE SOLUTION:

A proposed townhome project on Concord Street provides an example of how spaghetti lines are the solution. The project proponent is required to install 500 linear feet of water main at a cost of around $1 million. Even with the cost-sharing proposal, the property owner would still be required to pay around $400,000, including pavement removal for trenching and street repavement.  

This project further exemplifies how the cost-sharing proposal falls short of creating pathways for new housing to be built, and how these policies effectively prevent additional housing in the impacted areas. It is a detriment to the whole community, as well as to landowners looking to add an ADU or multiplex. SPU must re-establish the use of long service lines commonly allowed in other cities. 

SPU’s reason to deny long service lines is the cost for future homeowners to maintain. This could be addressed with a cost reimbursement program to assist property owners for repair. Preventing much-needed infill housing simply to prevent a future maintenance backlog hardly seems the way to address the issue. Most homeowners would much prefer to pay for spaghetti-line repairs after getting decades of use out of a property than being coerced into paying for unneeded water main upgrades on the front-end before they ever can see housing built. 

SPU has requested the council approve a $950,000 appropriation to hire six new employees to manage the water main cost-sharing program. A more streamlined and cost effective solution is for SPU to hire two new employees for customer service, to manage maintenance and repair of long service lines. Relieve homebuilders of the burden to pay for and install water main extensions, do not increase the system development charge. Instead, use the rest of the $950,000 fund to reimburse property owners for the repairs. 

Removing the restriction on long service lines will open the tap to allow the permitting pipeline to flow for hundreds of housing projects clogged in the system due to SPU’s policy.

The post Op-Ed: Seattle Water-Main Cost-Sharing Proposal Does Not Go Far Enough first appeared on The Urbanist.

Like much of the rest of the region, Redmond has chosen to dedicate much of its historically industrial land for residential and lower impact commercial uses. In the city’s last Comprehensive Plan update eight years ago, lower density mid-rise apartments were allowed in Marymoor Village. These potential mid-rises are allowed to be up to five or six stories tall. Restrictions on the amount of square feet in buildings have also led to a very broken up form for the newly completed buildings, with their forms fragmented into distinct sections. 

The first of the newest multifamily cluster, Spectra at Marymoor (17620 NE 69th Court) is a large mixed-use complex spread across three five to six-story buildings. Separated by pedestrian pathways, the three buildings contain 450 residential units, 15,285 square feet of retail space, and 515 parking stalls. The project was completed in phases across 2022 and 2023.

In 2024, The Piper opened across from Marymoor Park at 17305 NE 67th Court. The two-building five-story apartment complex contains 284 units and 258 parking stalls. In 2025, neighboring The Spoke opened at 17565 NE 67th Court. The two-building five-story mixed-use complex contains 211 units, 12,234 square feet of commercial space, and 196 parking stalls. 

Farther out in the Marymoor Village center, some older multifamily development had been completed and in progress before the establishment of the center. In 2002, Reflections by Windsor (6318 East Lake Sammamish Parkway NE) opened its seven-building three-story apartment complex with 230 units and 310 parking stalls. Between 2015 and 2019, Marymoor Ridge’s seven-building complex with 44 condominiums at 5900 185th Court NE opened. In between these two, The Bond Apartments’ two-building six-story complex with 139 units and 172 parking stalls opened in 2019 at 6180 East Lake Sammamish Parkway NE.

Beyond Marymoor Village 

The broader neighborhood of Southeast Redmond has also broadly been going through its own 30-year transformation. Farther out in the neighborhood, traditional single family and low-density multifamily sprawl has claimed vast swathes of the neighborhood. Closer into the station area, there has been some denser multifamily development. 

At the northern end of Southeast Redmond on NE Union Hill Road, the seven-story Pure Redmond Apartments opened in 2016 with 105 units, 5,050 square feet of retail space, and 161 parking stalls. On the eastern periphery of the neighborhood, a wave of large low-rise multifamily has added another 600+ units. 

Quantifying Marymoor Village and Southeast Redmond’s Growth

The latest cluster of close-in development to Marymoor Village station has added 945 units, over 27,000 square feet of commercial space, and 969 parking stalls. Including the older development in the center, the unit and parking numbers shoot up to 1,358 housing units and 1,451 parking stalls. 

The rest of Southeast Redmond has seen another 630 units, 5,050 square feet of commercial space, and over 800 parking stalls built since 2000. In all, Southeast Redmond has seen just shy of 2,000 units, over 32,000 square feet of commercial space, and over 2,200 parking stalls built since 2000.

What’s next for Marymoor Village and Southeast Redmond

Outside of a seemingly inactive master planning at 18005 NE 68th Street and talks of a cricket stadium in Marymoor, there are no active large multifamily or commercial planning happenings in Southeast Redmond. Developers may be waiting for zoning updates associated with the Redmond 2050 comprehensive plan update. Major upzones are anticipated to come to Southeast Redmond. 

Marymoor Village center’s zoned capacity is set to rocket with the allowance of 12-story buildings, up from five to six stories today, in much of the center. Restrictive building square footage maximums also seem set for removal. Southeast Redmond also appears to be set to see broad rezoning to allow mixed-use development in the commercial district northeast of Marymoor Village station. 

Much of that is in line with the future of Downtown Redmond, setting up Marymoor Village and Southeast Redmond for an urban makeover that’ll create a miniature urban corridor between Southeast Redmond and Downtown. That corridor is already taking shape. Between the two abutting neighborhoods, over 8,500 housing units and shy of half a million square feet of commercial space have been built since 1999. That’s a solid foundation for the city’s newest light rail stations.

The post Redmond Sees New Neighborhood Burgeon Around Marymoor Park as Light Rail Arrives first appeared on The Urbanist.