In 2021, architect Mike Eliason took a look at this proposal as it was being developed, and, writing for The Urbanist, asked: “Are Historic Districts a New Variation to Restrictive Covenants?” 

I can’t answer with certainty, but as I learned more about the program since then, I have concluded that the historic designation process itself and its promised effect are clearly incompatible with two values that I want my neighborhood to embrace: affordability and inclusion.

The former is one of if not the most pressing challenges the neighborhood faces. Yet the state agency that administers the program here (the Department of Architecture and Historic Preservation, or “DAHP”) promises “Increased Resale Values” as a result of such a listing.

This would exacerbate arguably the most pressing challenge facing the neighborhood — one which is already costing us long-term neighbors — here’s one such case:

We were renters in Wallingford for over 10 years and just bought our first home in Crown Hill because we couldn’t afford anything in Wallingford despite putting in over five offers on houses listed around 800 that went for 1.3 million. 

On the latter point — inclusion — the historic designation process needs to be hauled into the 21st century.

It includes provision for a yea-or-nay vote — but exclusively of property owners. Renters living in the neighborhood have no voice. This strikes me as inappropriate for Wallingford, where a majority of households (62%) are occupied by renters. But it also strikes me as preposterous that a program financed with taxpayer dollars should make property ownership a requirement for full and equal participation in 2022.

This is why I’ve joined hundreds of other current, former, and prospective neighbors as well as others across Seattle in signing an open letter asking that consideration of Wallingford’s National Historic District designation currently pending on October 14 be postponed in order to do two things: create a voluntary, inclusive process for voting and align the timeline with the Seattle Comprehensive Plan update process. 

There is nothing that would stop Historic Wallingford from choosing to do the inclusive thing and hold a voluntary, advisory vote that treats renters as first-class citizens too, and then abiding by the results. I also hope that DAHP — which operates with taxdollars paid by renters, not just homeowners — would take a proactive stance recommending that any future applicants for historic district status do the same.

Specific to Seattle and Wallingford, updating Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan is our best opportunity to bend the curve on housing affordability, and it is already underway. Integrating how we choose to commemorate the past with how we choose to shape the future makes sense. 

We can even see reasons to believe that creating a more affordable future and celebrating the past could be made to work “better together” already.

Thanks to the Visions of Wallingford project, I learned Kelli Refer’s story. Hers was yet another family renting in Wallingford that faced the prospect of moving away in order to afford home ownership. 

Fortunately, they had friends who owned a home here who offered them the chance to build a backyard cottage (technically called a “detached accessory dwelling unit,” or “DADU” — and functionally a “small house”) on their property. It’s an 800 square foot, two story home, sharing the 4,000 square foot lot with the main house. In a win-win, Kelli and her family are responsible by legal agreement for their share of the land, reducing the property tax burden on their friends (DADU’s can also be condo-ized, allowing them to be sold outright).

This is where the Comprehensive Plan update gets interesting: policy choices matter. Thanks to new city rules in 2019, a backyard cottage of up to 1,000 square feet can be built on any neighborhood residential-zoned lot that is 3,200 square feet or larger. 

A reasonable ballpark for the cost of construction is $350,000 ($350 per square foot). By comparison, this 1,384 square foot 1916 bungalow on a small lot (2,543 square feet) sold for $1,050,000 in April 2022. 

There’s nothing to stop anyone from building a backyard cottage that’s a faithful replica of a classic bungalow. Imagine if the city added a “classic bungalow” to its set of pre-approved DADU plans. Imagine if the neighborhood organized a registry to match renters with some budget — but not a full market rate — budget to buy with homeowners willing to trade some of their yard for a fair, but below market price, provided the DADU is of a classic style.

We could create radically more affordable ownership opportunities by adding new examples of traditional architecture to the neighborhood. (As one yardstick, based on income, a $500,000 mortgage would be considered affordable to a couple of Seattle Public Schools teachers with typical qualifications and about five years of experience.)

By doing things the right way at the right time, I believe this community could find stacked wins across turning a corner on affordability, demonstrating inclusiveness, and sharing knowledge of the past. But there is also a price to doing things wrong.

During the process of proposing that part of their neighborhood be listed as a historic district,  a group called “Friends of Ravenna-Cowen” distributed an FAQ. It included this statement: “The National Register has studies that indicate that homes in an Historic District sell for more than comparable homes in other neighborhoods.”

Yet rather than pause to reflect on whether making homes even less affordable might be a bad idea and trying to learn how that might be avoided, and rather than making extra efforts to consider the desires yay or nay of the people with the most skin in the game — renters who hope to own — they went ahead and completed the process.

We can do better.

Historic Wallingford claims that a “principal purpose” is to “raise awareness of the significant cultural values of Wallingford.” It envisions that “elementary, middle, and high school students will benefit from a sense of identity through the identification of a shared past.”

Let’s not create a “shared past” in which a student from a homeowning family and a student from a renting family are going to learn the former’s parents chose to juice their property value at the expense of the latter without so much as a second thought. When and how we choose to celebrate the neighborhood’s past also creates its future — let’s do it right in Wallingford.

The post Wallingford Must Not Neglect Its Present or Its Future as It Celebrates the Past first appeared on The Urbanist.

Councilmembers Tammy Morales and Alex Pedersen, who was prime sponsor of the bill, expressed disappointment at the veto, arguing the bill would have helped combat displacement of low-income residents and had addressed many of the Mayor’s criticisms.

“I am deeply disappointed our solution to collect housing data helpful for preventing displacement of economically vulnerable people was not signed into law. Similar laws to collect rental housing data are already in place throughout the nation, so the veto means Seattle is still behind the times,” Pedersen said in a statement. “The amendments made to our legislation already addressed concerns about timing, budget, and implementation. Rejecting this law seems to be a victory for landlords unwilling to share data and a loss for those seeking data to make informed decisions on preserving and expanding affordable housing in our city.”  

Morales said the City “needs solid data to help us make smart policy decisions” and lamented the loss of rent data to make those decisions: “This veto sends the message that we should make decisions in a vacuum, rather than make data-driven decisions and frankly I find that troubling.”  

Morales said that relying on private sector real estate consulting firms, as Harrell suggested in his veto letter, was not an adequate solution.

“The fact of the matter is that we have no reliable source of data on average rents, rent increases, vacancy rates, or year-over-year trends in these areas,” Morales said in a statement. “Vetoing this bill means relying on a private for-profit firm like the now-shuttered Dupre + Scott. That option, which currently doesn’t even exist, would provide us with incomplete, voluntary data that would cost money every time we seek it.”

For 38 years, Dupre + Scott Apartment Advisors was a much cited and celebrated source of rental data in the Seattle region, but the wife and husband duo retired and closed up shop in 2017. This has left a lingering void for detailed and trustworthy rent data in the region. The City of Seattle has turned to relying on high level Census data, but the bill’s backers pointed out that was an insufficient snapshot and lacked the granularity to make policy decisions. Moreover, Pedersen said relying on a private sector real estate firm to voluntarily produce this data makes the City vulnerable to firms abruptly going out of business like Dupre + Scott did.

Bringing together an unlikely coalition of leftists and conservatives on Council, the rent data ordinance seemed to mean something different to each of its supporters, who seemed to have different motivations. For example, Pedersen opposes rent control, but co-sponsors Kshama Sawant and Morales are firm backers of rent control, and a rent-tracking apparatus could be a good precursor to an effective rent stabilization regime. The coalition opposed also ranged from the progressive to the centrist wing, with Councilmembers Teresa Mosqueda, Dan Strauss, Debora Juarez, and Sara Nelson voting no.

In his newsletter, Pedersen added he intended to use the data to curb development and force developers to make greater concessions to neighbors and to relitigate a Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) “grand bargain” that he’s long criticized. Pedersen appeared geared up to use the data to oppose the next round of upzones, which are anticipated with the Comprehensive Plan update due in 2024, while Harrell countered that “it will be difficult to implement [the program] in enough time to inform the update to the City’s Comprehensive Plan.”

Pedersen’s framing may often a hint at why he and Morales were not able to pull together a veto-proof majority behind the bill. Mosqueda in particular has been consistently calling for ramping up housing production and zoning more equitably rather than looking for more excuses to not do so.

During the MHA debate, opponents raised fears that inclusionary upzones would encourage development that would destroy older housing stock with lower rents, which is often deemed “naturally occurring affordable housing” or “NOAH” for short.

The Seattle Displacement Coalition, which was led by neighborhood activist ringleader John Fox, pushed this narrative and produced a report claiming to tally more NOAH units would be destroyed by the upzones than MHA would produce via affordable requirements. By extension, Fox contended these NOAH units would not be destroyed by less dense redevelopment or priced out of NOAH status if MHA upzones didn’t go through.

The Urbanist debunked this claim, noting that Fox’s analysis was not rigorous and had included several buildings that were no longer offering affordable rents or that were unlikely to be redeveloped even with the upzone. Moreover, a significant portion of redevelopment would have happened in either case, but blocking the MHA program would have meant no affordability requirements would have applied.

Mosqueda and Juarez have been strong backers of the MHA program and additional housing density, while Pedersen had criticized it from his blog and during his 2019 campaign for office. Linking his rent data ordinance to his mission to relitigate MHA and fight additional zoning changes may have cost Pedersen support for the bill.

That said, Budget Chair Mosqueda pointed primarily to the price tag in explaining her vote. The City’s fiscal note pegged the cost between $2 million and $5 million to implement, but Pedersen disputed this figure, pointing to the plan to competitively bid the contract and the increased funding for both the Seattle Department of Constructions and Inspections (SDCI) and the Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) that had been worked into the last budget. Mosqueda thanked the sponsors for these cost control efforts, but said her budget concerns remained, as did some worries about data quality.

Like Harrell, Mosqueda leaned heavily on a comment letter from James Young, Director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research (WCRER), which was established by the state legislature and is housed at the University of Washington. Young’s letter walked a fine line affirming his organization’s neutrality on the bill and other similar landlord legislation while proceeding to unload criticisms of it which he said stemmed from WCRER’s unique role working with private landlords to produce their rental affordability report to the state.

Young stressed the program must be voluntary and disaggregated so that landlords do not need to worry about “disclosure of commercially sensitive business information that could adversely affect their businesses.”

Let’s unpack that statement for a moment. Why would the public knowing the rents that a landlord charges hurt their business? If a landlord is charging the going rate and setting its rents to the market, it seems like they would come as no big surprise or secret. But one reason this wouldn’t be the case is if landlords are squeezing their tenants for more rent than is typical in the building or neighborhood and don’t want tenants to realize and have hard evidence of this practice. Is it the government’s job to protect this kind of behavior?

Another reason could be worrying prospective investors would have too much insight into rent levels and vacancy rates leading them to struggle to sell their buildings or get financing on their next addition to their portfolio. But, again is it the government’s job to help shroud such real estate machinations in secrecy?

Young also claimed mandating landlord participation leads to inaccurate and incomplete information: “Based upon the experience of WCRER, informal discussions with city officials, and interested parties, there are several research and reliability issues likely to arise when collecting rent and vacancy data through a mandatory system.”

Expecting an industry to lie or obfuscate frequently isn’t necessarily a strong argument against a new regulatory system. It may, in fact, be an argument for a stronger regulatory system. The WCROR’s board is loaded with realtors and real estate insiders and chaired by Matthew Gardner, who is chief economist at Windermere Real Estate and has been outspoken in opposing new legislation affecting landlords or taxing corporations, frequently writing Seattle Times op-eds haranguing the progressive wing on Seattle City Council. Incidentally, one of those op-eds he co-authored with Alex Pedersen attacked the corporate payroll tax push in 2020, which ultimately succeeded as the JumpStart tax. (Spoiler: The op-ed wasn’t very good.)

The rent data ordinance may well have been inadequate and flawed, but doing nothing also appears untenable for renters. Expecting the industry to fix itself and voluntary produce its own rental data report seems a Hail Mary.

Young offered to convene a “working group” to bring together landlords, real estate professionals, and bureaucrats to hash this out. “Given the WCRER role as a neutral party whose only interest is in reliable data, we are well positioned to develop a framework with the city so that a working group on this topic can be convened and solutions can be found quickly,” he wrote.

Since Seattle mayors do tend to love taskforces, Harrell and the Council may well take Young up on his offer. And Harrell’s letter did pledge continued work on the rent data problem.

“We all share the same goal of ensuring Seattle is an affordable city where workers and community members of all backgrounds can live and succeed,” Mayor Harrell concluded in his veto letter. “Critical to that effort is using quality and accurate data to inform our policies. While I appreciate and respect the sponsor’s intent, this proposed legislation would not have collected reliable data according to experts at the University of Washington and likely could not have been implemented in time to influence our Comprehensive Plan update. I look forward to working with Council – in addition to renters and small landlords – to address the needs we have for better data and more affordable housing options.”

The post Data-Loving Mayor Vetoes Bill Requiring Landlords to Share Rent Data first appeared on The Urbanist.

The new renter protection legislation comes at a time in which rental costs for housing in Seattle continue to surge. According to the website Apartment List, which provides information on rents from large apartment buildings, rents in Seattle are up roughly 12% in comparison to last September. However, during public comment period before the votes, some landlords objected to the new rules, arguing landlords need more flexibility to raise rents in order to be able to cover their expenses.

Two bills aimed at decreasing economic evictions passed into law

The two bills related to renters’ rights were both proposed by Councilmember Kshama Sawant (District 3). The first was related to rent increase notices. The legislation proposed landlords provide at least 180 days (6 months) notice before raising rents — a major increase from the 60 days previously required by the city, which is also the amount dictated by Washington State law. In her introduction to the bill, Sawant made reference to “skyrocketing rents” leading to “economic evictions” in Seattle, citing a federal study which linked increases in rental costs to higher levels of homelessness.

Councilmember Alex Pedersen (District 4) had proposed an amendment that would have exempted landlords of four units or less, which failed earlier in committee. Councilmember Sawant contested the idea that the legislation would negatively impact small landlords, affirming the opinion that “small landlords are not seeking to gouge tenants.”

The proposed bill, which was initially requested by the City’s Renters’ Commission, passed 7-1, with Pedersen opposed.

The new rental increase notice period might be the longest for a major U.S. city: San Francisco and Los Angeles both require 90 days notice for rental increases of 10% or more, while Portland, Oregon requires 90 days notice for increases of five percent or more. In other cities, like New York and Chicago, notification periods are dependent on the tenant’s length of residence in their home instead of the amount of the rent increase; however, at 90 and 120 days both offer notice periods shorter than Seattle’s.

The second bill related to rental rights also seeks to assist tenants’ facing economic eviction. In this case, tenants faced with a rent increase of 10% and more who earn 80% or less of area median income (AMI) are eligible to receive a relocation assistance payment from their landlord equivalent to three months of their current rent, an amount intended to help pay for first and last month’s rent, as well as a security deposit, on the their new home.

Councilmember Sawant offered an amendment that would have removed requirement that tenants provide proof of income eligibility (i.e., means testing) in order to qualify for relocation assistance, commenting that such a requirement could create a barrier for some of the lowest income and most vulnerable tenants who may struggle to produce the needed documentation. Only Councilmembers Teresa Mosqueda (At Large) and Tammy Morales (District 2) voted along with Sawant in favor of her amendment, leading it to fail. Councilmember Andrew Lewis (District 7) commented that he believe the income requirement would be necessary to protect the legislation against future lawsuits, such as those faced by Portland, which also passed tenant relocation assistance in cases of rents increasing by 10% or more and has since been sued by landlords.

However, Sawant’s underlying relocation fee ordinance passed 8-0 with no opposition.

“Today’s victories demonstrate the growing momentum of our renters rights struggle,” Sawant said a press release. “They are a huge step forward in our movement’s demand for a full Renters’ Bill of Rights. Today’s victories will benefit tens of thousands of renters in Seattle, who are facing skyrocketing rent increases from profit-hungry corporate landlords and the venture capitalists and big banks who are fuelling a speculative bubble. We won because renters organized alongside my Council office, unions, socialists, communities of color, the LGBTQ community, and others to demand their rights.”

The bill is set to take effect one month after being signed into law by the Mayor.

The relocation fee and 180 days notice bill join a suite of other recent legislation aimed at protecting tenants, including an eviction defense package passed in June, which allows tenants to claim a Covid-related financial hardship to avoid eviction, bans eviction of students and school staff during the school year, and guarantees legal counsel for low-income tenants facing eviction. Facing pressure from housing advocates, Mayor Jenny Durkan also extended Seattle’s eviction moratorium though the end of 2021. The extension will allow time for the distribution of rental assistance, which has been lagging in King County. Burien and Kenmore also extended their eviction moratoriums through the end of the year; Governor Inslee has only offered a one-month extension.

A return to state law income requirements for the affordable housing built using density bonuses for religious institutions

The third major piece of legislation passed was related to density bonuses for faith based institutions building affordable housing. Last July, I reported for The Urbanist on how Black faith leaders had opposed an amendment to a religious density bonus bill that decreased the threshold for qualifying affordable housing from households earning 80% of the area median income (AMI) to 60% AMI. At the time Donald King, President and CEO of the Nehemiah Initiative Seattle, which provides technical assistance to Black churches seeking to build affordable housing, penned an open letter to City Council President M. Lorena González (At-Large) calling the switch to the 60% AMI requirement “a poison pill” that would result in the bill excluding “those it’s meant to benefit.”

Written and passed at the state level with an 80% AMI income requirement for affordable housing, many churches were unprepared financially to meet the 60% AMI requirement for all units in their planned housing developments. In her remarks leading up to the vote on the bill, Councilmember Mosqueda referred to how increasing the 80% AMI requirement would allow for religious institutions to access both public and private funding for affordable housing development, widening their range of options. “We don’t want to be in a position where we are even unintentionally reducing the ability for us to build more affordable housing units,” Mosqueda said, urging her fellow councilmembers to approve the 80% AMI requirement.

However, some councilmembers, notably Councilmember Lisa Herbold (District 1) who had sponsored the original amendment to reduce the AMI requirement to 60% were still not on board with the switch. Herbold offered up a new amendment that would have kept the 60% requirement in place except for in urban villages assessed as being at high risk of displacement, a category which includes the Central District where many historic Black churches are located. This time, however, Councilmember Herbold’s amendment failed in a tight vote with Councilmembers Herbold, Pedersen, and Sawant all supporting the measure, and Councilmembers Mosqueda, Morales, Dan Strauss (District 6), González, and Lewis all rejecting the amendment.

The same five councilmembers who rejected the amendment all supported the ordinance in a vote that landed 5-3. The legislation will come into effect July 2022.

Looking ahead

All together, the City Council session proved to be particularly exciting for supporters of stronger tenants’ rights and more financial flexibility for religious institutions seeking to build affordable housing on their property. Councilmember Morales commented during that the session that the renter protection legislation did not amount to rent control, which is forbidden in Washington State under current law; however, the legislation does appear to provide some of the strictest renter protections against cost increases in the U.S., setting up Seattle as a test case for how such protections impact renters and the housing market.

Councilmember Sawant has vowed to put rent control on the docket in an effort to push the Washington State Legislature to remove the statewide rent control ban that has been in place since 1981. “Today’s victories add momentum to our fight for a full Renters’ Bill of Rights, which includes citywide rent control with no corporate loopholes,” Sawant said in her statement.

The post New Seattle Legislation Advances Renter Protections Against Economic Eviction first appeared on The Urbanist.

Last summer when Councilmember Kshama Sawant stood on the steps of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Seattle’s Central District, she called on the City to fund 1,000 new affordable housing units over three years for “historic residents and those displaced” from the neighborhood, which for decades was home to the largest Black community in the Pacific Northwest.

At that time Councilmember Sawant and advocates from the community stopped short of explicitly calling for reparations for Black Seattleites, who statistically have largely been left out of the economic growth accompanying the city’s most recent period of population expansion. Now a year later, the demands have shifted. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, Sawant and an expansive coalition of nonprofit organizations, faith-based institutions, and affordable housing providers held a rally for “reparations, unity, and affordable housing” held near the same site. The rally included live music and impassioned speakers.

“We are asking you, we are pleading for you to give reparations back, to give back what’s been stolen and taken,” said Pastor Lawrence Willis of True Vine of Holiness Missionary Baptist Church at a press conference Wednesday promoting the rally and cause.

Reparations, which are defined in the dictionary as “the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged,” have been a sensitive topic in the U.S. ever since the American government failed to pay reparations to freed slaves after the end of the Civil War. The idea to redistribute some 400,000 acres of Confederate land among the 3.9 million newly liberated slaves was developed by a group of twenty Black leaders in Savannah, Georgia, eleven of whom had been born free in slave states and thus would not have benefited from the action — though they faced racism and prejudice throughout their lives. Their petitioning resulted in Special Order #15, which was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. Sadly, the act was overturned after Lincoln’s death by Andrew Johnson, setting into motion a pattern of ignoring or breaking promises made to Black Americans and advancing discriminatory policies favoring wealthy, mostly White landowners, some of which like exclusionary zoning and the mortgage interest tax deduction persist to this day.

After decades of stagnation in the Federal government, could cities lead the way for reparations for Black Americans?

As gentrification continues to tighten its grip on Seattle, it is unsurprising that Black residents and allies are stepping up calls for reparations for harms that have been done, but the evolution in rhetoric can also be linked to changes in national discourse around reparations. This spring the U.S. House of Representatives voted out of committee for the first time ever HB 40, a bill requiring the Federal government to study how it could undertake reparations for descendants of enslaved Americans.

At around the same time, Evanston, Illinois attracted national headlines when it passed its Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program granting qualifying households up to $25,000 for housing down payments or home repairs. According to the City of Evanston, in order to be eligible for the program, individuals must have lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969 or be a direct descendant of someone harmed by discriminatory housing policies or practices during this time period. People who have lived in Evanston after 1969 and can demonstrate discriminatory housing practices by the City may also be eligible.

Seattle also has a history of discriminatory housing policies harming residents who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). The recently rally for “reparations, unity, and affordable housing” was spurred by an op-ed published in the Seattle Times by Reverend Robert Jeffrey Sr. of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church.

The op-ed makes the accusation that in 1969 the City of Seattle “forcibly took ownership” of two church properties “under the threat eminent domain and condemnation” to create Spruce Mini Park. Other Black property owners sold their land to create the park as well. Rev. Jeffrey is now calling for the City to return the land to the church or pay reparations for what was taken. In addition, he is demanding that City commit to $10.7 million of funding for the New Hope Family Housing Project, an 87 unit affordable housing development planned on land held by the church that is intended to provide housing to former residents of the Central District who has been displaced. Should the city opt not to return the land itself to the church, Jeffrey is currently pursuing an appraisal of the park’s land value for compensation.

“Why shouldn’t we quantify the pain?” Rev. Jeffrey asked. “We are tired of people estimating our pain and then throwing chump change at us.”

Councilmember Sawant has promised to put legislation in front of the City Council naming both of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church’s demands for reparations and additionally committing the City to paying compensation to “others who suffered under the racist urban renewal programs of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s.”

Like many American cities, Seattle engaged in urban renewal efforts with the financial backing of the Federal government between 1950 and 1966. According to research completed by the University of Richmond’s Renewing Inequality website, approximately $12.4 million was spent by the Federal government on three urban renewal projects in Seattle. These projects resulted in the displacement of 491 families, 73% of whom were people of color. The Yesler-Atlantic urban renewal project was by far the largest, spanning 340 acres in the present day Judkins Park, Mount Baker, and Central District neighborhoods. 416 families were displaced from the Yesler-Atlantic area alone, 84% of whom were people of color. Because of the disproportionate burden it placed on Black Americans, critics of the era referred to the practice of urban renewal as “negro removal,” a moniker that endures today.

Hammering out the details for reparations is not an easy task, yet the moral argument remains strong

Evanston became a pioneer when it created its reparations policy; yet, the city has faced criticism from some residents, with the lone vote against the initiative coming a Black city councilmember who felt that eligible recipients should receive the $25,000 as a cash grant to be used as they see fit instead of for costs related to home ownership. Such thorny debates around eligibility and compensation have always accompanied reparations efforts, but they have not lessened the moral case for making reparations when harm has been done.

Rev. Jeffrey has called for the City to begin by the returning the church’s land. However, it seems unlikely that such an action could be completed in isolation, and even if it were to be, it would incite questions of fairness over why an individual institution should receive reparations while many more BIPOC residents of Seattle have faced discrimination from the City.

It is also important to point out there are some potential weaknesses in their specific claim for reparations. According to Rev. Jeffrey, the case for reparations for the church stems from the fact that by selling the land to the City, the church lost out on the opportunity to acquire wealth as land values rose in the Central District in the decades that followed the sale.

However, records from Seattle’s Municipal Archives show that when the church was compensated $34,000 for the land used to create Spruce Mini Park, it also acquired land on the same block for $11,500 to create the parking lot it desired. In recent years, the church developed townhouses on some of that land which were sold for market value. Additional land held by the church on two parcels on opposite sides the same street (21st Street) are slated for the development of affordable housing according to Seattle in Progress, a website that tracks development activity.

To provide a bit more context, the acquisition of Spruce Mini-Park was financed by the Forward Thrust series of bond initiatives that were approved by voters. According to author, historian, and political activist Shaun Scott’s series of essays on Forward Thrust for The Urbanist, “in the 1968 election, Forward Thrust outperformed among Black Seattleites relative to Seattleites as a whole on every individual measure, and by an overall mean of 8.4%.”

But Forward Thrust’s popularity among Black Seattleites does not mean that their concerns were front and center to what the initiatives entailed. In one of his essays, Scott quotes Dick Page of Forward Thrust’s campaign staff who confessed to Seattle Magazine “our organization never once [asked] ‘what are we going to do for the Negro?’ For every person suggesting we give special preference to the Central District, we had two others claiming that the major problem area was the Green River Valley.” 

It is impossible to create a time capsule to go back and examine all of the circumstances that influenced New Hope Missionary Baptist Church to sell its land to the City in 1969, or to create an alternate timeline in which the church held on to the land and did not purchase the other parcel. However, the claim that this particular institution was shut out from the economic growth of the surrounding neighborhood invites questions.

Yet, when you look at the factors that led to the displacement of BIPOC communities in Seattle, it is undeniable that disturbing patterns appear. From the initial seizure of the land on which Seattle sits from the Duwamish, who are still federally unrecognized as a tribe despite having signed the treaty of Point Elliott in 1855, to the forced removal and internment of Japanese Seattleites during World War II, to the construction of both I-5 and the Kingdome in the International District which displaced homes and businesses, to redlining and racist covenants which restricted Jewish and BIPOC Seattleites from living in much of the city for decades, to the aforementioned urban renewal of the 1950’s and 60’s, and finally to Weed and Seed, the destructive anti-crime initiative of 1990’s that resulted in the asset forfeiture of people’s homes, notably Black Seattleites in the Central District, many examples exist. This list is long, but it is also incomplete.

Some injustices are writ-large, like the case of the Yesler-Atlantic urban renewal project which displaced hundreds of families. Yet, sometimes it is the small examples that bring most vividly to life the hardships people have faced. Take for example, the case of Spruce Mini Park. About half of the park’s land is below street level, serving to help drain rainwater runoff away from the surrounding area, which includes a childcare center that has been in operation since 1963 and is separated from the park by a cement retaining wall. However, although never an ideal spot for buildings, before the land became a park, it was the site of people’s homes. One of the letters of acquisition from the City provides insight into past inhabitants, an “actively engaged” foster family, Richard and Nellie Jackson.

When approached by the City to sell the land, could the Jacksons have felt relieved to receive compensation for land in a low lying area? Or did they feel coerced to give up their home and cheated by the payment they received? Were they able to find another home to continue fostering youth in?

Understanding and quantifying these damages is a tall order. But if Seattle and countless other American cities want to write a new, more socially just chapter of their history, it is work that needs to be done. During a speech, Rev. Jeffrey put it well when he explained why the City needs to invest in paying reparations to Seattle residents that have faced discrimination. “You cannot build a stable future on a crooked foundation,” he said. “Just as we are here today asking to correct the wrongs that happened in 1969, there will be others here, standing in this place, standing in other places, to correct the injustices that are not corrected today.”

The post Sawant, Black Faith Leaders Call for Reparations to Rectify Seattle’s Racist Housing Practices first appeared on The Urbanist.

The ordinance establishes a “Just Cause” eviction protection that requires landlords to state a reason in order to end a tenancy — acceptable reasons include nonpayment of rent, criminal activity, the landlord moving into the rental, or the tenant violating lease terms. Municipalities like Seattle, Federal Way, and Auburn previously passed Just Cause laws, and the State Legislature also passed a statewide Just Cause law earlier this year, though its weaker than most municipal versions. (Municipal ordinance takes precedence over County ordinances on landlord-tenant issues.)

Moreover, the bill caps move-in fees and deposits to one month’s rent and late fees to 1.5% or less. The bill requires that landlords give a 120-day notice if they plan to increase rent by more than 3%. When landlords plan to evict or not renew a tenants’ lease, they must provide at least a 30-day notice under the new ordinance.

Unincorporated King County — which includes communities like Skyway (where Zahilay resides) and White Center — accounts for 20% of the “no cause” evictions in the county despite representing just a tiny fraction of the renters in the county. Those unincorporated communities are also some of the most racially diverse in the county, which helps explain why the majority of evictions hit Black and brown households despite their relatively small share of the county’s population. The higher incidence of evictions in communities of color is in turn linked to the disproportionately high share of Black, Indigenous, and people of color in the county’s homeless population.

“We are not in normal times.”

“We are not in normal times,” Councilmember Zahilay said. “There’s a pandemic, our planet is on fire, and our housing crisis continues to leave people on the streets. Keeping people indoors is more important now than ever. Strong tenant protections are critical and I’m proud we were able to advance them today.”

The pandemic has led to massive upheaval in the rental market, with Americans accruing more than a trillion dollars in housing debt as millions of jobs disappeared and millions suffered through severe cases of Covid-19 that disrupted their ability to work. Governor Jay Inslee enacted an eviction moratorium and froze rents in April 2020 to protect tenants who lost income during the pandemic from falling into homelessness. He’s renewed it every few months since and just issued a “bridge” extension last week that winds down the protections by September 30th. The bridge is intended to link up with rental assistance so that tenants can clear their housing debts, but disbursing that rental assistance has hardly been a seamless process and many tenants have fallen between the cracks.

Tenant advocates have warned of a tsunami of evictions as the eviction moratorium is lifted and landlords go after tenants behind on rent. That’s what has spurred the tenant rights push we’ve seen in the region and across the nation.

Stay Housed Stay Healthy Coalition celebrates victory

A number of pro-tenant local organizations formed the Stay Housed Stay Healthy coalition and rallied behind the county package and fought back against striker amendments. The Urbanist was one of the groups to join this coalition, and I offered public comment in favor of the legislation on behalf of our organization.

Coalition members hailed the bill’s passage as a major win. Among them was the Housing Justice Project of the King County Bar Association, which is one of the primary legal aid providers to tenants in the region. “This is a HUGE victory and would not have happened without the support of the community who participated in HOURS of public comment,” the House Justice Project tweeted.

Likewise, the RHA-led landlord lobby whipped up their members to provide public comment, and often resorted to misinformation to make their case, as we reported earlier this month. In a head-scratching move, some landlords even argued evictions were not related to homelessness despite the preponderance of evidence showing evictions are one of the major pathways into homelessness.

Small landlord exemption rejected

Stay Housed Stay Healthy members showed up in droves to counteract the many wayward landlord narratives and succeeded in beating back a Dunn amendment that would have established a small landlord exemption set for individuals who own four or fewer rentals. Advocates argued this loophole would end up being quite broad and complicate enforcement since landlords often establish separate legal entities like LLCs to hold each property separately, which can obscure ownership. The amendment was defeated in a 6-3 vote that mirrored the final vote on the bill.

In her Crosscut column, Katie Wilson, General Secretary of Transit Riders Union and one of the leaders of the Stay Housed Stay Healthy Coalition said that small “mom and pop” landlords have often been used by a political shield by corporate landlords, who statistically are the most prolific evictors, at about two to three times the rates of small landlords, according to a recent study. While less frequent in occurrence, small landlords still wield evictions in a very damaging way, whether intentionally or through cognitive bias, which makes a small landlord exemption a bad idea, she argued.

“There’s a strong racial dimension to smalltime landlordism, too. Thanks to our region’s history of racial segregation and discrimination in housing, combined with all the other factors preventing Black and other families of color from accumulating generational wealth, mom and pop landlords as a class are overwhelmingly white,” Wilson wrote. “In a 2018 survey of over 4,000 Seattle landlords, 82% of respondents who answered the question about race reported being white. Meantime, in 2017, only 65% of Seattle renters were white, and over half of individuals with evictions filed against them were people of color; 31% were Black. These stark disparities create potential for racial discrimination in the tenant screening process as well as in evictions.”

Fine-tuning the bill

In the four-hour long meeting, Councilmembers worked through a number of issues that had been identified with the bill. One sticking point was an attempt to ban requiring Social Security numbers (SSN) in rental applications, which Zahilay and Kohl-Welles explained was intended to prevent discrimination against immigrants who don’t have an SSN. Landlords claimed this would prevent credit checks and background checks, but Councilmembers confirmed that credit agencies can run credit checks without an SSN, since most non-naturalized immigrants have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) that also suffices.

While most County Councilmembers appeared to agree with the legislative intent to prevent discrimination against immigrants, County Councilmember Rod Dembowski advocated for and got a change clarifying that landlords can still deny applications if their attempts to use other means to ascertain credit history and background turn up no results. Tenant advocates worried this seemingly small loophole could be exploited to effectively screen out people without SSNs.

Looking ahead

While it wasn’t the smoothest path to passage, the tenant rights package shepherded by Zahilay and Kohl-Welles came in the nick of time to help tenants still reeling from the pandemic. Having a long-time renter in Girmay Zahilay on the council long dominated by landowners, landlords, and corporate real estate attorneys is making a world of difference. Both his first and last name rhyme with ‘my guy’ for all the landlords that were struggling with the pronunciation in public comment. You might want to learn the name because I expect you’ll be hearing a lot more from him.

Correction: An earlier version incorrectly stated Renton has a municipal Just Cause law. It does not, but Auburn does.

The post ‘Huge Victory’ for Tenants as King County Council Broadens Protections first appeared on The Urbanist.

Earlier in the pandemic, I was searching around Zillow. Looking at houses was a fair alternative to doomscrolling Reddit. One evening, I came across a building for sale. Interesting place in our neighborhood with a couple apartment units and my car parked out front. Our landlord put our house on the market. 

Thankfully, I don’t need to be worried about immediate housing. Our landlord is a gem and our lease goes for a while, so we’re secure regardless of ownership. The building really is just a few units, built as a small apartment building in the 1970’s. It’s not where I expected to spend forever, but the opportunity made me wonder if we could afford to buy the place.

The long and the short is no. The price was high for what we could afford, even with renters contributing to the monthly mortgage. But the process of getting to that firm no was an interesting one and it shows some of the rarely discussed hurdles to expanding and maintaining the city’s multifamily housing stock. We all know that Seattle’s zoning is segregationist, the permitting process is frozen molasses, and construction prices are sky high. Even before that point of building new, it can be hard to keep the existing multifamily units we have because there’s not a lot of options for financing them.

Conventional and Jumbo and Vocabulary

Like most people looking to buy a house, my first call was to my bank. We’re in pretty good standing with a couple of credit unions. I was surprised to find out that none of them actually write mortgages for three- and four-unit buildings. Our credit unions top out at duplexes. 

So, on to the commercial banks. The commercial banks were willing to write a mortgage for up to four-unit buildings, however they had very strict limits on the loan amounts. We would have to come up with a half-million dollars to get under the limit. At about a third the price of the building, it was slightly more than the downpayment we were expecting. This was more difficult to hear because the same banks would finance a single-family home of equal size and higher price at a much lower downpayment.

Which landed us on the phone with Jon Wagher, Senior Loan Consultant for Caliber Home Loans and very patient explainer of residential mortgage financing. Jon took the time to go into why many banks will not write a “jumbo mortgage” for houses other than single-family homes. 

Jumbo mortgages are simply loans that are above the limit where the law restricts purchases by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is the point where we are going to have to get into all of those mortgage terms.

About a third of mortgages in this country are government backed loans. These are mortgages that are guaranteed by the federal government through the Veteran’s Administration, the Federal Housing Administration, or the United States Department of Agriculture. There’s specific rules in each program including veteran status, low income, or if the land is going to be farmed. Banks set up these mortgages so it can get confusing, but the important part is that the federal government is guaranteeing that they’ll be paid off.

Loans not directly insured by the federal government are called conventional loans. These mortgages are between you and a bank. You come to the table with collateral, income, and the house you want to buy. The bank comes with cash to buy the house and a stack of paperwork for you to encumber your life for the next 15 to 30 years.

But the feds are still involved, particularly in one flavor of conventional mortgages called “conforming” loans. These loans conform to the limits set up by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). If a bank writes a conforming mortgage, they can then turn around and sell that loan to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the federal mortgage loan companies. The bank can then use the money they receive to write more loans. Conventional loans keep cash moving in the economy.

How much is the limit for a conventional conforming loan? FHFA divides the country up into low- and high- cost areas. Seattle falls in the second category, unsurprisingly. For 2021, the FHFA limits are:

Such a national system “is great,” says Wagher. “It creates a predictable standard for guidelines and ‘smooths out’ the regionality of interest rates.” FHA loan rates are so predictable that they talk about changes on the evening news. According to Nerdwallet’s daily average rate tracker, a 30-year fixed conforming conventional mortgage right now is 2.8%.

Jumbo mortgages are simply loans over FHFA limits. They cannot be sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, so the loan is an investment of the bank and stays on the bank’s portfolio. To qualify, the mortgagee needs great credit, a solid down payment, and certain income levels compared to the size of the loan. According to Wagher, this is the private sector stepping in where Fannie and Freddie are limited.

Companies like Caliber Home Loans who have their own portfolio can also write jumbo loans with creative terms, such as using other assets as collateral. But that comes at a risk, and in financing, increased risk will increase the mortgage’s interest rate. There lies the problem.

As Wagher puts it, “everyone wants ultra-low rates, but doesn’t see what must be sacrificed to get them.” That 2.8% rate has given the country an unreasonable image of what it costs to own a home. Everyone is so used to the cheap interest rates that are partially paid by the federal government. More expensive rates come as a stunner, even if the higher price means higher quality or better service. In the case of jumbo mortgages or mortgages that calculate rent as part of the income, the service is long-term risk staying on the lender’s books for the life of the loan. The ubiquitous talk of low rates turns other forms of financing into niche items. “Because consumers don’t want to pay the high rates,” says Wagher, “lenders aren’t willing to invest the resources to create the products.”

Interest rates are directly tied to risk. While Fannie and Freddie don’t guarantee a loan like the VA, they subsidize the low interest rate by spreading the risk across many other parties. It’s a mechanism that many consumers simply don’t see. Wagher is sympathetic to the position many buyers are in. “Consumers are constantly marketed to. ‘Low rates, act now before it’s too late!’ But, often the context is lost in the fine print.”

What’s so great about triplex and quads?

Triplexes and quadruplexes — three-unit and four-unit buildings respectively — are the cornerstones of “missing middle” development. While they may not be a panacea, they make for eclectic neighborhoods of comfortable density. 

Admittedly, I have a soft spot for the form. I lived in Montréal for a number of years, and the basic house of The Plateau is a townhouse triplex. First floor door at the street went to one apartment, usually the owner-landlord. Curling outdoor stairs to a second floor balcony and two doors. One went straight into an apartment and the second to another set of stairs upward. Local legend said the unique stair design was because the Catholic Church frowned on shared indoor spaces. 

The building looks like a nice brownstone, one of the benefits of triplex and quads. They don’t take up more space than a single-family home but they make room for triple the number of households. Such homes put enough people in the neighborhood to warrant groceries and really good bagel places. They’re also builders of generational wealth for immigrant families. One family’s investment can make space for distant relatives, newcomers, setting up independent children, and then eventually be available for college kids trying to finish their urban planning graduate degree before their visa runs out.

Such a generational wealth story echoed in my own family in a slightly different form. My maternal grandparents owned a home in suburban Maryland that evolved over the years into a defacto triplex. Starting with a Cape Cod style house bought on a VA loan, my grandparents added a mother-in-law suite and a second floor apartment. At some point in all their adult lives, every aunt and uncle (Catholic family, there’s lots) lived in one of these accessory homes. More than outright cash, the home’s flexibility was crucial. It’s the kind of financial stability that doesn’t often appear in our current housing market.

First Problem: The Cost Gap

The median home price in Seattle for May 2021 was $818,750. Of the 1,368 homes sold in Seattle during that one month, 684 of them went for more than $818,000, and 684 sold for less. That figure is $42,000 or 5% more than the absolute limit for conventional conforming single-family loans. Our housing market is bonkers.

It may be surprising that FHFA does include multi-unit dwellings in its rules. In King County, a triplex can be purchased for $1.2 million and a quadruplex for $1.4 million and get all of those low interest rate incentives available to conventional conforming mortgages.

If we look at the actual buildings available, it’s more difficult. Of the 16 Seattle triplexes that were for sale in a recent Redfin search, only six were available for less than the loan limit for three-unit buildings. The remaining ten were above the FHFA threshold. (One was actually two neighboring triplexes for sale for $2.8 million. Which would put each of the buildings above the FHFA limit.)

But let’s look at this another way. Seattle’s lots can fit three to five townhouse units on them. Each of those houses sold for the $776,000 county max for single-family homes, replacing a triplex with three townhomes would gross the developer $2.3 million. So if we’re talking about working within the FHFA loan limits why would someone tear down a single home and build a $1.2 million triplex when they could flip it for three townhomes that can be sold for a million dollars more? The high limits for single-family homes compete directly with financing multi-unit developments.

The Second Problem: Lack of Clarity

At the time of the 2008 mortgage bubble, sub-prime loans were marketed as a mechanism to get more people into homes of their own. The requirements for the loans were lowered in ways that changed the risk, but expanded the number of people that qualified. In retrospect, the dangerous mechanisms that went into changing that risk — balloon payments, rigging applications, and predatory targeting of customers — were overshadowed by the goal of getting people into houses.

So if we want to work out this current housing crisis without it becoming another mortgage crisis, understanding the way lenders put a price tag on risk is vital. It allows us to discuss expanding the types of mortgages and who they are available to, while avoiding another three-card-Monty game like the one that led to the 2008 collapse. 

Instead of cloaking a mortgage in terms of art like “conventional conforming” or “jumbo”, we can start talking in plain language. That would open up the discussion to regular people and knock 500 words out of articles like this. If a loan is structured to get traded by Fannie and Freddie, just put their name out front and make it obvious. And like with health and politics headlines, the nightly news can do a much better job on depth and avoid talking about interest rates like hockey scores.

The flip side, consumers must get a grip on our expectations. That VA mortgage my grandparents got for their Maryland home was 18% on $10,000. By focusing on low rates, we miss asking why conventional mortgage rates are so low. When most people can’t qualify for a loan that banks then make extra money shuffling around, is the system working? We can’t even talk about whether this is the economy we want because too few folks make it past the introduction. 

The Third Problem: Few Products

Once we’re ready to plainly talk about how federally subsidized risk produces market flooding low interest rate products, we can start doing something about it. As Jon Wagher points out, the easy money of conforming conventional mortgages occupies such a huge place in the market that alternatives are boutique products. Jumbo loans are mechanisms for private banks and funds to step in the place of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

One possibility is to lower the thresholds for conforming one- and two-unit mortgages. Counterintuitive, but it would take the federal government out of competition with multifamily dwellings. Alternately, the three- and four-unit limits could be raised to reflect the constrained, expensive land that allows multifamily developments. And, of course, local governments can drop the segregationist apartment bans.

Private mortgage writers do create alternative mortgages, but often they are bespoke one-offs. It’s far too difficult to find they exist, much less the rules and expectations. Just like I had to go through layers to get started is a ridiculous hurdle. And even then, it took referral from a friend — Sinead Keogh at Remax, if you need to buy or sell a house — just to get there. 

No matter what, there needs to be more public mechanisms to spread risk. That may include public banks. It could also include public agencies that are sitting on huge sums of cash — and here I am looking directly at the University of Washington’s Endowment. Let’s be honest, public university endowments are simply public banks that are limited to spending their money on campus. A small expansion of “campus” would allow these massive pools of money to benefit the community that built the school. Public university endowments should develop a transparent, regular application to back mortgages for nearby residents building and maintaining neighboring multifamily buildings.

The Market has Mono

More than a specific act to correct the housing finance market, it is vital to recognize how many of these issues stem from the ubiquity of a conventional conforming mortgage. It’s a single use being tied to a single type of money being financed a single way. Just like fields of the same potato species can be wiped out in a blight and lead to famine, a housing market built around a single-family home paid for with fed-supported banks is leaving many people out of housing. Conventional conforming mortgages are a monoculture.

The way you return a monoculture to being a healthy system is through introducing alternatives. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations, as the saying goes. We can’t expect improvement by making everything identical. Trying to shoehorn six-unit apartments into the framework of conventional conforming mortgages would likely do more harm than good.

But we need to start somewhere. Families look different. Homes should look different. Why shouldn’t home financing keep up? Until it does, it will be a barrier to building an affordable city for many of those different households. 

The post Conventional Conforming: The Quiet Hurdle to Increasing Density first appeared on The Urbanist.

“Landlord associations like @RHAofWA have been spreading so much misinformation about our just cause eviction ordinance that public comment today is full of people arguing against things that don’t exist. This is beyond shameful,” Councilmember Zahilay tweeted, amplifying comments he made in the meeting (video here).

County Councilmember Joe McDermott noted he is a landlord, an RHA member, and read from the RHA email distributed to members last Friday, noting several falsehoods, such as the mistaken idea that background checks would be banned. He expressed disappointment that the RHA was cheapening the dialogue and resorting to underhanded tactics. Some proponents also noted that most of the landlords seem to own property in Seattle and other incorporated cities rather than conducting their business in unincorporated King County where the County Council legislation would actually apply.

County Councilmember Kathy Lambert (a Republican representing the 3rd District) complained that the bill was moving too fast and fretted over a legal brief and the prospect of appeals. Zahilay countered that it had been proposed since March and that tenants are running out of time with the statewide eviction moratorium set to expire June 30th. March is also when the Stay Housed Stay Healthy Coalition (of which The Urbanist is a member) launched a campaign to push the legislation. Yet here we sit in mid-June.

Less than two weeks from the expiration, Governor Jay Inslee continued to waffle and said this week he hasn’t decided on an extension, despite pleas from tenants and service providers. Kenmore became the first city to issue an eviction moratorium through the end of September, followed by Kirkland, and then Seattle via an executive order today from Mayor Jenny Durkan. Bellevue and Burien are considering extensions next week. The King County Council would be wise to add an eviction moratorium to their legislation since the Governor has been so indecisive.

Lambert has a number of striker amendments and dubious proposals, such as one providing landlords with public defenders too “for equity” sake. Lambert’s machinations have been a big reason why the bill has been slowed and coming up against the June 30th deadline for tenants.

Still Councilmembers are optimistic they can pass the bill before the end of the month. They plan to work through amendments at a Committee of the Whole meeting at 1pm on Wednesday, June 23rd and then attempt to pass the legislation at a special meeting on Tuesday, June 29th.

“State law doesn’t currently include just cause provisions for most tenancies, and while a bill is moving through the state legislature to add requirements to the books, that proposal falls well short of the King County proposal,” a King County Council press release from March noted.

Other protections include:

• A cap on move-in, security, and other fees and deposits, and allow incremental payment;
• A requirement for landlords to give up to four months’ notice for significant rent increases;
• A prohibition on rent hikes in unsafe or unlivable housing;
• An allowance for tenants to adjust rent due date if they live on a fixed income;
• Added protections against eviction over late rent; and
• A prohibition on landlords from requesting Social Security Numbers for pre-rental screening.

The Social Security Number provision was intended to prevent discrimination against tenants who lack such identification, such as undocumented immigrants. Councilmember McDermott and others noted that they had met with landlords to answer questions and explain their legislative intent on provisions like that one. Credit and background checks can still be run through other means, but those efforts don’t appear to have stopped the rumor mill or overpowered RHA’s deceptive messaging to the contrary. Housing Justice Project extensively debunked RHA’s claims both in public comments at the meeting and in a social media thread after the fact.

Meanwhile, Councilmember Reagan Dunn (another Republican from the Southeast) went on a tangent about whether landlords would be somehow barred from reporting the theoretical sex crimes of their tenants. Staff and colleagues assured him that landlords could still report crimes if they so choose and violating lease terms or criminal activity would still be grounds for an eviction.

“If landlords treat their tenants fairly and communicate why they are evicting, they should be fine,” Councilmember Kohl-Welles said during the meeting, hoping to placate the worked up landlords.

With Zahilay, Kohl-Welles, and Upthegrove signed onto the bill and McDermott and Dembowski sounding supportive during the meeting, the prospects of the bill still seem fairy good. Nevertheless, it would definitely be wise to reach out to your King County Councilmembers by emailing them in support of the legislation and in opposition to Lambert’s amendments since the landlord lobby have been making so much noise and the bill could still be watered down considerably.

The Stay Housed Stay Healthy Coalition is hosting a virtual rally at 6:30pm on Tuesday, June 22nd in support of the legislation.

The post Landlord Lobby Spreads Lies in Attempt to Torpedo King County Tenant Rights Bill first appeared on The Urbanist.

This isn’t a new idea.

Athens, Greece used to be a city of lowrise, single-story residences in their urban core until the 1920s when they realized their city population was not going to stop growing. People were land rich and house poor. So, what did they do? They partnered homeowners with developers and created one of the most interesting housing swap concepts ever seen. A developer would replace their house with a stacked flat, and give them a home in the new building in addition to some apartments to rent as a tradeoff. The term is Polykatoikia and it is fantastic.

Seattle is in a similar situation in the 2020s, where housing prices have exploded so much people have nowhere to go and only the wealthy are able to buy in. Like Athens, we need to recognize our population is still going to grow and unless we leverage the vast majority of land that mandates one housing type, we will only make it more impossible for anyone to live here.

What should Seattle do to replicate this concept?

1. Legalize it

For starters, the city must upzone every neighborhood so rowhouses or a sixplex are legal to build by-right everywhere. This will allow the city to adequately handle as much as three million people for population growth, instead of grappling with a housing crisis when we barely have more people than El Paso.

What holds us back is single-family zoning dominating 30 square miles of our 40 square miles of land we can build housing on. This means 75% of the land is restricted against housing growth. This must change first.

Allowing a sixplex would not change the maximum height allowed in neighborhoods, which is currently capped at 35 feet (or, three stories). The other change should be growing lot coverage going from 35% to 50%. This allows a 2,500 square foot footprint on a standard sized lot, allowing both units split down the middle to be comfortably sized. There are other changes we need to make such as front setbacks limited to three feet maximum, and side setbacks reduced to two feet minimum so we have the widths to create nice sized units and the requirement to push buildings to the street so back yard gardens can be shared by residents.

2. Incentivize it

In addition to sixplexes by-right citywide, we should incentivize the housing swap concept further. Any developer building a residence for the existing homeowner should automatically get a fourth level bonus. That way we can build the six homes below, and keep that family on their property in their neighborhood as well. This way a developer can look at only the cost of construction to add another unit, and not worry about dividing other costly endeavors, like utilities and land acquisition, with the seventh family. If neither side wishes for this agreement, that’s okay too; let them still build a three-story sixplex on-site and move on. The owner can cash out on the land sale, or decide they want to stay and swap the land for a single-level unit on whichever level they prefer.

3. Streamline it

The city should work with architects and designers to establish a series of pre-designed plans with flexible changes that are already approved by the building department. This will speed up the time to begin construction and recreate the catalog of kit housing that built all these Craftsman bungalows around the city. (I swear to god, if we have to listen to a group of architects bicker about brick style and color on these modest projects, I will scream.) Let’s skip design review all together and just push these projects to the building department to obtain construction permits. We don’t need long-winded meetings twice a month to talk about a multiplex on a small lot. Save that for towers and public projects. Increase the threshold for design review to be buildings greater than 10 stories so we can stop letting neighbors fight and bottleneck these types of modest housing projects typical of liberal Seattle hypocrites.

4. End parking minimums

This one is easy. We don’t have parking minimums in Seattle’s urban centers and much of urban villages, which take up 18% of our city’s land (including our densest neighborhoods of Downtown, South Lake Union, First Hill, and Capitol Hill). If it’s good enough for them, it is good enough citywide. Let a developer decide if it’s worth building. Chances are it won’t be since below-grade parking is expensive and ruins space.

5. Allow commercial spaces on corners

Some lots are special. Portland is famous for having shorter blocks to create more corners, since corners are valuable to urban economies. We should allow corner lots to feature retail spaces and limit them to the first floor. This means shops no larger than 2,500 square feet will be able to fit in the space, which is good for small business and rent. Who wouldn’t want to live in the same building as a coffee shop, bakery, bookstore, or general store? The Great Seattle Housing Swap will finally create blocks that feature four floors and cornerstores.

The developer is not a supervillain

When John Wallingford showed up in Seattle, he build a ton of housing for a neighborhood that thanked him by naming the neighborhood after him and electing him twice to Seattle City Council. Ironically, residents there today despise developers and love what developer John Wallingford built them 100 years ago. Perhaps with partnerships like these, we can not only build four floors and cornerstores, but we can also stop scapegoating developers and bashing them for doing what they’ve always done here and elsewhere: build housing.

A lot of people bought Seattle’s homes when they were plentiful and affordable. This is who this is for. Rather than being locked in to their house with nowhere to go, seeing prices soaring around the city and entire region, here is a chance for individuals to add housing on-site without going anywhere. Who knows, maybe when enough people sign up for this program, we will have proud generations converting spaces to live in commune with their grandkids the way the Greeks did 100 years ago.

This article is a cross-post from Ryan DiRaimo’s personal blog.

The post The Great Seattle Housing Swap first appeared on The Urbanist.

A neighborhood inventory published in 1976 by Folke Nyberg and Victor Steinbrueck noted that “Wallingford reached its physical development peak in the 1910s” even while lamenting the population decline that started in the 1950s as “families increasingly moved to the suburbs leaving behind a growing proportion of elderly and transient young people.” 

In the midst of this population decline, leaders in the Wallingford Community Council proudly orchestrated a downzoning of residential zones in the 1970s to exclude duplexes and prevent University of Washington students from over-running the neighborhood.  

That decline reversed in the mid-1980s. In the last 40 years — nearly the same amount of time between the construction of my house and the founding of our city — Seattle’s population has grown by nearly 60% from 493,000 to 776,000. Because our single-family homes in Wallingford have obstinately done the land-use equivalent of manspreading for more than a century — taking up an inequitable amount of space despite the population boom — since 1982, the assessed value of this house and land has increased about 1,300%.  

While my single-family house — and a Craftsman to boot! — isn’t unique, it’s also not the only type of home here. This formerly redlined and declining area of Wallingford — and in fact many areas of the neighborhood — is generously sprinkled with housing that became outlawed by the 1970s Wallingford Community Council. 

I bought my first house in Wallingford in 1998, also in this redlined district, with generational wealth. Two homes down the street is a duplex built in the 1940s into which one of the current mayoral candidates moved a couple years later. Across the street is a phalanx of three duplexes. My present block has a duplex built in 1900, a triplex built in 1911, a duplex built in 1950, and another built (somehow) in 1982. That last duplex, assessed for $153,000 in 1982 recently sold for around $1.4 million, an 800% increase in 40 years, a sum that even generational wealth gasps to attain.  

These multifamily homes scattered among the formerly “hazardous” and “blighted” blocks near me aren’t unusual. When we look across the neighborhood, there are about 350 multifamily or commercial buildings in zones where building such homes is banned today. This non-conforming housing includes a couple of condominiums, many duplexes, a healthy number of triplexes and quadplexes, two “rooming houses”, units above corner stores, and even a couple dozen apartments.  

In the 1998 — the year I moved to Wallingford — a group of residents recommended that Seattle reduce density in the new Wallingford urban village area bounded by Aurora Avenue to the west, 40th and 50th Streets, and where Ezell’s Famous Chicken now resides.

There is somewhat of a pattern to this development. In the 130 years since Wallingford streets and parcels were first platted, most of the neighborhood was built as single-family homes. Nevertheless, hundreds of multifamily homes were built before they were banned completely in 1970s. But these homes tended to be built outside of the district that became the Urban Village. 

The Wallingford Urban Village was created in 1994 with the intention to “deliver services more equitably, pursue a development pattern that is environmentally and economically sound, and provide a better means of managing growth and change through collaboration with the community in planning for the future of these areas.” As a “residential urban village,” Wallingford was intended to provide a “focus of goods and services for residents and surrounding communities but may not provide a concentration of employment.”  

Despite these goals of equitable services and environmentally sound and managed growth, about half of the Urban Village banned housing other than single-family houses until 2019 (see the light yellow areas in the map above). Only the Stone Way and N/NE 45 St corridors and the blocks along Aurora Ave allowed apartments.  

And here is where the echoes of history become visible like the reverberations of a dinosaur in a Jurassic Park cup. The redlining in Wallingford didn’t serve to segregate Black people as it did in many other Seattle neighborhoods; Wallingford had sundown laws to keep out anyone but White people. (See also this excellent history by Shaun Scott for more on racism and zoning.) 

A 1939 UW thesis by Gordon Beebe drew the connection between housing and environmental conditions, stating, “The gas plant on the north shore of Lake Union has exerted such an effect by depressing the value of residential property which is a considerable distance from it.” We can see this echoed in the non-conforming multifamily housing today. 

There tends to be more multifamily housing in south Wallingford closer to the old gas plant, which closed in 1956. In addition, along the shoreline were an asphalt company, a garbage incinerator, an ammonia plant, and lumber mills. The east side, in a few blocks just up the hill from a legacy industrial zone, saw duplex development in the 1950s and 1960s simultaneous with planning and construction for I-5. The west side is predominantly zoned multifamily between the historically industrial Stone Way and the Aurora Avenue freeway. The few western blocks that remained single-family zoning until this century thus similarly saw a concentration of multifamily development. As we go further north to the heart of the Wallingford commercial district and the Urban Village, there’s fewer multifamily homes.

The Department of Commerce inventoried the housing south of N/NE 40th St in 1934, finding that 10% of the area was multifamily housing, compared to 9% citywide. Beebe did a further inventory, finding both that only Whites lived in the area and that 21% of the district was substandard housing, compared to 17% citywide. However, Beebe made the claim that the housing quality below N/NE 40th St was starkly lower than north of N/NE 40th St, where the modern Urban Village is located. 

In the map below of Wallingford, I’ve indicated multifamily housing on parcels that were zoned single-family prior to 2019. You can see from the map below that the concentration of multifamily housing is rather light within the Urban Village (the area within the black boundary). I’ve indicated the redlined area with red and the “blighted area” with a purple line. 

The historical legacy has echoes in political power as well. In the wake of the construction of the North Transfer Station in the formerly redlined district, the Wallingford Community Council formed, stating “Our community is the victim of the automobile. The residential character of our neighborhood is in jeopardy, and we believe it to be essential that major improvements be made. Otherwise our neighborhood, as we know it, will cease to exist.” 

This apocalyptic concern for the “residential character” — though not for the destruction wrought by the automobile — persists in the heart of the neighborhood, including a 2017 Wallingford Community Council-led stunt funeral for the “neighborhood voice”. The opposition to the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) upzones of the Urban Village came largely from residents north of N/NE 40th St, the area with a lower density of non-conforming housing sprinkled throughout the single-family houses. The south end of neighborhood, having less economic power due to environmental degradation, saw more multifamily development. The north end, having experienced less of it, came to see single-family houses as their birthright character, and thus strongly opposed the change. 

This power has been employed to concentrate multifamily housing in “less desirable” locations. In the first half of last century, this meant locations such as near a gas plant. Today, this means along arterials that we know are harmful to residents health and safety. During the MHA battle of 2015-19, Seattle Fair Growth was formed by a group of long-time Seattle homeowners including a former Wallingford Community Council board member and a current Seattle Council member’s legislative aide. Their foundational argument was that current zoning — zoning that concentrates new housing along arterials — was more than sufficient for our needs. Seattle Fair Growth used their power to weaponize environmental review to delay implementation of a minor rezone. (Only 6% of single-family zoned land was upzoned for MHA, while all multifamily land was.)  

But sometimes the echoes of history are lost. Neighborhood conversations opposing new construction tend to forget that our historical development patterns gave us corner stores within walking distance of most homes. They’ve lost the concerns prior residents had about the negative impact the automobile had on the neighborhood and our local businesses. Most every new multifamily building is greeted with outrage on Nextdoor or the Wallingford Facebook page that there won’t be an off-street parking spot for each new home, despite many of us in single-family homes not having, or not using, our own off-street parking.  

This new construction is also condemned for the quality of construction versus that of all these old houses, complaints that, as Beebe reminded us, are certainly not new and that many of our century-old homes were subjected to decades ago. 

Another persistent complaint is that new construction simply enriches developers, despite our neighborhood being named for the developer John Wallingford. What this ignores is the vast wealth that accrues to homeowners, wealth gained not by creating housing, but by simply holding it. Across the street from Hamilton Middle School, a multifamily development within the urban village is garnering organized opposition. The single-family house was sold to the developer in 2020 for $1.19 million, a 22% profit over the purchase price in 2018. All told over the last 30 years, this parcel increased in value by $1.05 million, or 845%. 

Research done by Microsoft in 2019 found that Seattle lacks nearly 200,000 affordable homes. Today — after 100 years of reducing where apartments, condominiums, duplexes and quadplexes can be built, and despite the 2019 MHA upzones — approximately 70% of the land where housing can be built is restricted to only single-family homes. The result is we’re seeing older and smaller apartments in multifamily zoning torn down and replaced by larger buildings. We’re seeing older single-family homes demolished not to house more people, but just to create more house. In Wallingford over the last decade, we’ve seen about 100 single-family homes demolished and replaced by newer, larger single-family houses. There’s currently two dozen in the permitting process. The map below tells that story, the yellow dots new single-family houses, the yellow squares pending construction.

And here’s another echo from history. The redlining in Wallingford created economic separation. This same economic separation is raging around us today. About 47% of Seattle renters are rent burdened, which both drives homelessness and flight from the city. This economic and housing policy choice has hollowed out the Central District, where the percentage of Black residents has plummeted from 75% to 15%. Seattle’s Black population is at its lowest percentage since the 1960s. Median income for Black households is less than half that of White ones. And 73% of Black households rent. Meanwhile, the Black population in King County has risen dramatically. This points to an undeniable reality: our housing policy has created a new redlining, not one drawn on maps, but one implicit in our Zillow valuations.  

And for my fellow Wallingford homeowners: don’t think we’re immune. With the median house value topping $800,000, our generational wealth is increasingly insufficient for our children to live in the city in which they were raised. Instead of fighting against neighborhood change and housing, we can instead embrace it and shape it so that we can welcome back those who’ve been displaced, and so Generation Z will have equitable opportunity to build a more welcoming Wallingford and a better Seattle.  

Since 2010 we’ve averaged just 6,600 new homes per year, only a meager percentage of those affordable. We need a vision for massive and sustainable public investment in housing that commits to eliminating the deficit of affordable housing in five years. We need a robust discussion about whether design review, a hurdle homeowners created in 1994, achieves better buildings or if it simply results in expensive delays and environmentally destructive and costly modulations. We need vigorous innovation in financing, and land use, and building standards if we’re going to create 15-minute cities this century let alone this decade.  

Coming soon is a major revision to the Growth Management Act. Our housing policy with concomitant transportation, environmental, and economic plans must be improved. Washington State legislators this season punted on many housing bills, even ones that would have offered the most gentle density in keeping with “neighborhood character”. And worse, we still aren’t earmarking enough money to fund public investment in the hundreds of thousands of homes we need. 

This year is a mayoral election, and housing opportunities must be central to the conversation. It’s time to stop debating whether we should end the duplex ban across all of our residential land. The Seattle Planning Commission resoundingly concluded in 2018 that we must expand the forms of housing permitted across all of our residential land.  

Two years later with a housing crisis that has only worsened, the question before us is now whether the historical development model of single story duplexes and two story apartments is adequate to the massive deficit in housing we face today, or if we need more. 

I say, let’s go bold: open the city to at minimum four floors and corner stores across every residential parcel. That’s what a 15-minute city requires. It’s what our teachers, and nurses, and paralegals, and artists, and line cooks need. It’s what our kids will need to find a home in the city in which they were raised.

I for one would be near first in line to volunteer my home for redevelopment according to housing patterns proven around the world.  

Want to take action? If you’d like to ensure that Wallingford becomes more welcoming to new neighbors, you can join the campaign to ask the Seattle City Council to review historic preservation and its role in undermining equitable housing across Seattle.

Want to learn more? Here’s a few resources: 

• Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly, et al., “Mapping Inequality”.  
• Thomas Veith, “A Preliminary Sketch of Wallingford’s History 1855-1985”.  
• University of Washington Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project 
• Mike Eliason, “Narrowing of a Neighborhood“, Sightline. 
• Shaun Scott, “Housing is the question and the answer”, Crosscut.
• Zillow, Homelessness Rises Faster Where Rent Exceeds a Third of Income.
• Futurewise, Washington Can’t Wait Campaign: Updating the GMA for Today’s Challenges.
• Seattle Planning Commission, Neighborhoods for All. 
• Seattle Planning Commission 
• Seattle Housing Growth Report 
• Microsoft Puget Sound Housing Study (2019) 
• Karen Kreis, The Urban Centres and Urban Villages Strategy of Seattle 
• Seattle 2035 Urban Village Report (2015) 
• Seattle 2035 Urban Village Indicators Monitoring Report (2018)  
• Seattle Comprehensive Plan, Urban Village Element  

Correction: Data around the number of single-family home demolitions replaced by larger single-family homes was corrected.

The post The Historic Preservation We Need: Four Floors and Corner Stores first appeared on The Urbanist.

Council President M. Lorena González introduced the emergency ordinance extending the eviction moratorium, which Governor Jay Inslee enacted and Mayor Jenny Durkan affirmed, a further six months past its June 4th expiration date. As an emergency ordinance, it needed seven votes, and it passed unanimously with nine.

Councilmember Alex Pedersen attempted to add a series of amendments, most notably a small landlord exemption, but was decisively repelled by his colleagues in a 8-1 vote. Pedersen introduced a similar amendment that likewise exempted landlords with four or fewer rental units back in February when the Seattle City Council passed a landmark three-month-long winter eviction moratorium in effect annually from December through February starting this year. Pedersen’s carve-out prevailed in February, but not this time.

Councilmember Andrew Lewis articulated the case why he supported the small landlord exemption then but not now, saying a temporary emergency ordinance tailored to the present public health emergency and economic crisis was a different animal. In such a precarious environment, he weighed protecting tenants from eviction and homelessness as more essential than protecting landlord cashflows. Councilmember Dan Strauss, who made a similar flip, echoed the sentiment.

Councilmember Kshama Sawant disputed the difference, saying they shouldn’t have included the exemption in either bill as it places too great of a burden on tenants to gather information on their landlord and then defend their legal rights. Councilmember Lisa Herbold noted she got it wrong in February claiming the City could easily determine which landlords have more than four units. The City doesn’t keep such data on landlords, and LLCs may conceal ownership.

Since the winter eviction moratorium goes into effect in December, tenants will not face eviction for not paying rent until March 2021–although the winter ban’s small landlord exemption may rob some of that protection a few months earlier. Since Seattle’s emergency eviction moratorium went into effect in mid-March, this means tenants will be protected nearly a full calendar year.

Mayor Durkan has yet to issue a statement on the city council’s moratorium extension vote, although she did highlight the fact she has supported Governor Inslee’s statewide eviction moratorium through June 4th. Since it’s an emergency ordinance, it will need her signature to go into effect despite being passed unanimously by the city council. Mayor Durkan lobbied against the winter eviction ban, but ultimately didn’t bother vetoing the unanimous legislation.

While the eviction moratorium represents significant relief for tenants, it will also be temporary relief without some form of rent forgiveness or subsidy. Rent will still ultimately be due on the other side of the moratorium. Given the economic recession, tenants who’ve lost their jobs or seen hours slashed may find themselves in significant housing debt and end up with an eviction on their record marring their future housing prospects. That’s why it will be imperative the federal government pass a housing relief package–perhaps augmented by a state relief package. Renters could also sorely use stronger enforcement of tenant protections and greater access to legal aid, which the government leaves almost entirely up to nonprofit sector–and private attorneys for those who can afford them.

The moratorium bought tenants and policymakers some time, but more work is still needed to avert a future housing meltdown. Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minneapolis) introduced in the U.S. House a bill canceling rent and mortgage payments (for primary residences) from federal coffers, as I noted in coverage of Governor Inslee’s rent freeze. But it will require Republican support to pass–or a major shift in political power this November.

It’s a brave new world. Perhaps our existing eviction system is something we resign to the past. With evictions mostly paused for a year, it’s something to think about.

The post Seattle Council Extends Eviction Moratorium Through December first appeared on The Urbanist.