by Eric Scigliano79 Comments
![]()
Homes on Queen Anne (2002) Credit: Carl Alexander/Flickr
UPDATE, 6/20/15, 12:32 p.m.: Following publication of this article, the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project posted a response to the HALA report’s citation of the project, noting that “essentializing all single family zoning as inherently racist is unhelpful for understanding the role of racism in housing markets, past or present.” More on this statement following the article.
Sometimes a few words take on a life of their own, at once transcending and summing up the document that contains them, at least in the public’s mind. The Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) presented last week by a city select committee, and promptly endorsed by Mayor Ed Murray, contains one such zinger: “Seattle’s zoning has roots in racial and class exclusion and remains among the largest obstacles to realizing the City’s goals for equity and affordability.”
That claim quickly flew around the local media and blogosphere. Seattle Globalist quoted it as authoritative. Seattle Times columnist Jon Talton cited it and a few more lines as “a useful jumping-off point” for discussion, and the Times’ Danny Westneat repeated it without comment. It got further play in a Times news story, SeattlePI.com, the Seattle Bubble real estate blog, the national Next City blog, development lobbyist Roger Valdez’s blog, and Publicola, which then rephrased it more baldly and pointedly inanother piece: “The city’s traditional SFZs [single-family zones] had a racist and exclusionary past.”
This was the sort of carry-though a publicist would kill for. None of these outlets questioned the premise or conclusion. Crosscut’s David Kroman did note thecombustible nature of the language, and Knute Berger (also of Crosscut) told SeattleMagazine.com readers the statement was “incomplete and inflammatory” — until the HALA editors fixed it by removing the words “single family” before “zoning” in an earlier draft. The point, he explained, was that “while racial and class inequality have been major factors in shaping the city, it is not a problem in single-family neighborhoods alone.”
That’s not the point. There are a few other problems with that resonant HALA statement, even post-edit. First, it’s still inflammatory, and may still serve as a preemptive silencer for anyone who questions any of the HALA report’s premises or conclusions: Do you want to be called “racist” as well as “NIMBY” and “entitled”? Second, it’s unsupported by the only evidence it cites. And third, judging by the historical evidence and the explanations I’ve received from the report’s authors, it’s not true — just truthy in a Colbert Report kinda way.
The HALA report conflates two trends that were concurrent but distinct in Seattle: public zoning – laws dictating what could be built where – and racially restrictive covenants. These were private conditions, typically written by developers or real estate agents and attached to property deeds, that dictated who could and couldn’t live where. Starting around 1924 and peaking around 1928, no fewer than 414 neighborhoods in and around Seattle instituted covenants excluding what were then called the “Ethiopian and Malay races,” and occasionally “Hebrew persons.” A subdivision in what’s now Clyde Hill allowed only “persons of the Aryan race.” These private covenants extended not just where you’d expect – Broadmoor and Windermere and tracts across the North End, West Seattle, and suburbs – but parts of Capitol Hill and Beacon Hill, Hillman City in the Rainier Valley, and Squire Park on the west side of the Central District.
A footnote to HALA’s “racial and class exclusion” phrase directs readers to a “discussion of racial restrictive covenants in Seattle.” This is a page on theSegregated Seattle site of the University of Washington’s Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, edited by UW historian James Gregory, a respected authority in the field. Gregory didn’t respond to email or phone messages, and reportedly has declined to discuss the HALA report on the record. But I did speak with Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, a professor in UW’s College of the Built Environment and scholar of Seattle’s urban-design history, and he affirmed my reading: “The footnote refers to something that does not say what the report says. You will not find on that website any place that says Seattle’s zoning is racially based.”
The Segregated Seattle report, written by a student, mentions zoning just once, in this somewhat garbled and tendentious passage: “The use of racial restrictive covenants removed the need for zoning ordinances. In that way, they served to segregate cities without any blame being placed on municipal leaders.”
Perhaps the HALA writers read that quickly and were misled. It actually references an account of residential segregation in St. Louis and its suburbs, Colin Gordon’s Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Decline of the American City.That book tells a story very different from Seattle’s.
St. Louis had tried to institute de jure residential racial segregation, as did many Southern cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But in 1916 the U.S. Supreme Court declared such laws contrary to the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. That spurred an explosion of private covenants in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, until the court finally found them unconstitutional as well.
Covenants didn’t make zoning obsolete. The Progressive Movement promoted zoning as a way to make cities safer, cleaner and healthier, and, yes, more democratic. Cities embraced it as a way to boost growth, property values and taxes. The U.S. Commerce Department put out model zoning ordinances.
Seattle didn’t enact racial zoning pre-1916. That didn’t necessarily reflect enlightened principles; its black population before the interwar Great Migration was too small to draw such attention. The city adopted its first, nonracial zoning code in 1923. The private covenants came afterward.
So where are the “roots in racial and class exclusion”? I called attorney Faith Li Pettis, the HALA committee’s co-chair. “That passage has been getting a lot of attention,” she said. “I want to be very clear about this – we are not calling single-family homeowners racists.” (My African American and East African neighbors, homeowners all, will no doubt be relieved to hear this.) “We’re saying that the zoning grew out of neighborhoods that the racial covenants defined.”
How could that be when the zoning preceded the covenants? I asked. She backtracked a bit: “We are not saying that zoning grew of racial covenants. Zoning followed the patterns that were established.” Then she redirected me: “I am not the zoning expert. Alan Durning [executive director of the Sightline Institute and a member of the HALA committee] is the person to talk to about this.”
When Durning called me back, he seemed surprised at being designated the zoning expert. “I have no idea who wrote the words, but I strongly support that language,” he explained. He said he was “shocked that you would think it wasn’t about race and class, that separating single-family from multifamily [housing] wasn’t about confining lower-income to certain areas. That’s such a widely held belief – idea in urban planning.”
If so, then as Ochsner and UW historian John Findlay (who does think there’s “some truth” to the race connection) both told me, “the situation’s more complicated” in Seattle. The Central District, where African Americans were consigned by covenants and subsequent redlining, was zoned largely single-family. Just like Wallingford, Hillman City, and Upper Queen Anne (which actually tends to have smaller lots).
The class factor plays a more obvious role in zoning. When Seattle set out to eliminate its old duplex zone in the 1970s, Queen Anne’s resident lawyers, architects, and activists squawked, and duplex lots became single-family lots. Ballard, much more blue-collar then, got rolled; its duplex zones became low-rise multifamily. The results are obvious today.
But again, it’s complicated. The same multifamily zoning governed elegant, exclusive First Hill apartments and humbler flats around the city, including those scattered among older single-family neighborhoods.
Nevertheless, Durning insisted, “the whole process of dividing the city was strongly colored by the existing racial divisions, covenants, redlining, zoning – that was all intermingled together.” When I again pressed the question of what came from what, he said, more broadly, that “it was soil that the plant grew out of – our zoning grew out of a climate of race and class exclusion.”
Well, yeah, but you might say that about just about anything in the early and mid-20th century. You could certainly say it about mass transit, which started as private streetcar lines that enabled commuters to escape the crowding, noise, and those people back in the city for Phinney Ridge, Laurelhurst and other new single-family developments.
But does all this matter? Durning didn’t seem to think so: “We’ve spent considerably more time discussing this sentence than it took to write it.”
“Some people will say it’s a distinction that doesn’t make a difference,” says Ochsner. “I think it does. It’s a very different argument [invoking “racial and class exclusion”] than if you say public-sector zoning had no explicit racial zoning.”
A few words can have an outsized impact. Think, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…” Or “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Or “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
As Durning describes it, the wording emerged from a turbulent, messy process. “The HALA report should be read as a loose aggregation of intentions and mostly shared beliefs by 28 people who spent months disagreeing about a great many things.”
Cindi Barker, Delridge’s representative on the citywide Neighborhood Council, calls herself “the token neighborhood person” on the HALA committee. She says that the misleading footnote was “a placeholder” in earlier drafts. Then she noticed it was still in the final and followed the link. “I said, ‘Guys, go read the linked document. That’s not what it says.’” But it was too late to get it changed.
Now the meme is out there. I’d like to think it reflects kneejerk reaction and sloppy haste rather than a deliberate attempt to play the race card. But it can still work to chill debate and shade the city’s response to the very real and complex challenge of housing affordability. All the more reason to examine it now – and to consider the assumptions behind HALA’s “loose aggregation of intentions.”
UW professors join single-family zoning, segregation debate sparked by mayor’s task force
Originally published July 20, 2015 at 9:03 pm Updated July 29, 2015 at 3:34 pm
The founders of the University of Washington’s Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project chimed in Monday about a Mayor Ed Murray task force saying single-family zoning has roots in racism.
SECTION SPONSOR
By Daniel Beekman
Seattle Times staff reporter
When Mayor Ed Murray last week unveiled a plan to make housing in Seattle more affordable, he connected the history of the city’s single-family zones with ongoing racial segregation.
“We’re dealing with a pretty horrific history of zoning based on race and economics,” the mayor said, echoing similar statements from a report by his housing-affordability task force, which cited a research paperpublished by the University of Washington’s Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project.
The project’s founders chimed in Monday, saying the link between single-family zones and segregation is complex.
“Essentializing all single-family zoning as inherently racist is unhelpful for understanding the role of racism in housing markets, past or present,” professors James Gregory and Trevor Griffey said in a statement.
A Murray spokesman agreed that the city’s housing history is complicated.
But the spokesman, Viet Shelton, maintained that one consequence of Seattle’s zoning, “intentional or not,” has been an affordability problem “too often preventing low-income workers, immigrants, refugees and people of color from being able to live in the city where they work.”
Murray’s plan includes 65 strategies recommended by his Housing Livability and Affordability Advisory (HALA) Committee, including one that would allow denser housing in single-family zones, which cover much of the city’s buildable land.
The 28-member task force, in its report to the mayor, cited the Project’s research on racially restrictive neighborhood covenants when it said, “Seattle’s zoning has roots in racial and class exclusion and remains among the largest obstacles to realizing the city’s goals for equity and affordability.”
Murray hit a similar note, telling reporters at a news conference last week, “There’s a huge reason part of this city is zoned single-family. One reason is really good. We love our single-family neighborhoods. But if you get into the history of zoning in this city, the other reason isn’t particularly good. It’s who people wanted to live in those neighborhoods based on race and income.”
Gregory and Griffey, responding Monday to what they described as a resulting “public debate in Seattle about whether single-family zoning is inherently racist,” said restrictive covenants and racist practices by real estate agents and lenders that excluded racial minorities from many of the city’s neighborhoods “were not specific to single-family zoned spaces — they covered nearly all residential housing in the region.”
The professors said fair-housing advocates in past decades fought discrimination in both the selling and renting of property and they noted that the Central District had some of the highest black homeownership rates in the country before the 1980s.
“Racism continues to be an issue in housing markets, but it is not restricted to neighborhoods zoned for single family homes,” Gregory and Griffey said.
“Some defenses of single-family zoning and opposition to rental-property construction and public transit are racist in addition to classist,” the professors added. “At the same time … some developers of high-end rental properties praised as ‘transit-oriented development’ have been systematically engaging in racist practices in their rental application processes.”
Shelton, the mayor’s spokesman, acknowledged Monday that many factors have contributed to segregation in Seattle.
But Shelton stressed, “There is significant academic work that has made the case that zoning laws (in addition to covenants, redlining and discriminatory landlord practices) historically were used to support racial and class segregation throughout the country.”
Mayor Murray withdraws proposal to allow more density in single-family zones
Originally published July 29, 2015 at 2:57 pm Updated July 30, 2015 at 9:03 am
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray pauses during his State of the City address in February. Murray said Wednesday he’ll no longer seek to allow more types of housing in the city’s single-family zones. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray made a U-turn Wednesday on a controversial aspect of his new housing-affordability plan.
SECTION SPONSOR
By Daniel Beekman
Seattle Times staff reporter
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said Wednesday he’ll no longer seek to allow more types of housing in the city’s single-family zones, after all.
Permitting duplexes, triplexes, stacked flats and other multifamily structures in those zones was perhaps the most controversial of 65 strategies recommended earlier this month by Murray’s Housing Affordability and Livability Advisory (HALA) Committee.
Murray defended the proposal at a July 13 news conference where he unveiled the recommendations that together make up his new housing-affordability plan.
City Council President Tim Burgess and Councilmember Mike O’Brien, the council’s land-use committee chair, stood with the mayor at that event. But both have since come out against the proposal to change all of Seattle’s single-family zones. Zoning modifications must be approved by the council.
Most Read Stories
Kirkland hunter defends acquaintance who killed treasured lion Cecil
Alaska Airlines has 72-hour sale on fall travel to Hawaii
Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor considering training-camp holdout, source says
Seattle baby names: We’re trying harder to stand out
Wing part that may be from missing Malaysian plane to be sent to France
Related: Council candidates band together to back alternate housing plan
Now Murray himself has made a U-turn, calling for “renewed public dialogue on how best to increase affordable housing in denser neighborhoods.”
“The Council and I created the HALA process because our city is facing a housing affordability crisis. In the weeks since the HALA recommendations were released, sensationalized reporting by a few media outlets has created a significant distraction and derailed the conversation that we need to have on affordability and equity,” he said in a statement Wednesday.
Some, though not all, of the controversy around the mayor’s proposal for single-family zones focused on him and his 28-member volunteer task force framing the changes in terms of race.
In its report to Murray, the HALA Committee wrote: “Seattle’s zoning has roots in racial and class exclusion and remains among the largest obstacles to realizing the city’s goals for equity and affordability.”
That language and similar remarks by the mayor stirred debate over the relationship between the city’s single-family zones and ongoing racial segregation.
“We also must not be afraid to talk about the painful fact that parts of our city are still impacted by the intersection of income, race and housing,” Murray said in his statement Wednesday.
“Look at a map and take a walk through our neighborhoods. We can move beyond the legacy of the old boundaries of exclusion that have remained largely unchanged since nearly a century ago when neighborhood covenants were used to keep people of color south of Madison Street.”
Murray, the HALA Committee and other proponents of more density argued that allowing more housing types in single-family zones would increase the overall housing supply, a key to making the rapidly growing city more affordable.
They noted height restrictions in those zones would remain the same.
“Fundamentally, this is a conversation about building a Seattle that welcomes people from all walks of life — where working people, low-income families, seniors, young people and the kids of current residents all can live in our city,” the mayor said Wednesday.
But some homeowners raised concerns about the changes encouraging developers to tear down bungalows and thereby alter the character of neighborhoods.
They wondered whether the new homes would actually be affordable.
Toby Thaler, a Fremont Neighborhood Council board member, called Murray’s about-face a good step.
“But the real problem is a failure to have an inclusive process that empowers all stakeholders,” Thaler said.
Alan Durning, executive director of the Sightline Institute and a HALA Committee member, said the mayor is “trying to quell the furor” in some neighborhoods.
“I’m disappointed the mayor has folded so quickly, but I’m not terribly surprised because the political blowback has been so intense,” Durning said.
“Politically, I think what the mayor is trying to do is stop the argument about one of the 65 recommendations so he and the council can get to work on the other 64.”
Faith Pettis, a Seattle lawyer whose work includes housing-financing and who co-chaired the HALA Committee, said she’s disappointed by Murray’s move.
“I believe we’ve lost an opportunity to do something that would really help this city in the long term and that people would ultimately be comfortable with,” she said, pointing out that Portland has much, much less land that is zoned single-family.
“I hope we find the political courage to deal with this in the future.”
Pettis said too much attention was paid to the panel’s recommendations for single-family zones and not enough on proposals the mayor hasn’t abandoned, such as requiring developers in multifamily zones to pay a fee or build affordable housing.
Robert Cruickshank, onetime aide to former Mayor Mike McGinn and senior campaign manager at Democracy for America, said Murray and his allies didn’t line up enough grass-roots support ahead of time.
“The way this was announced I think set it up to fail,” he said, noting the HALA Committee’s work over many months was carried out in private other than a draft report leaked to Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat.
“The claims about the history of single-family zones made a lot of people feel attacked as racist by having different feelings. People felt blindsided, and that’s not a very effective way to build public support for contentious changes.”
Cruickshank described Wednesday’s announcement as “a wake-up call.”
He said: “We have to do a lot more work. You can’t just come out with policy recommendations that you believe to be correct. You have to go out and organize to persuade people that your recommendations are right for them and our future.”
The HALA Committee recommended that officials relax restrictions on mother-in-law units and backyard cottages, which already are allowed in single-family zones.
The mayor also will no longer pursue that goal, according to a spokesman. But O’Brien still supports the idea.
“I remain committed to exploring ways we can encourage more use of mother-in-law apartments and backyard cottages,” O’Brien said, suggesting the council could take up the issue in early 2016.
“That is a reasonable way to provide more housing opportunities in some of our single-family zones.”
Murray said he intends to refocus the discussion on density and added affordability housing in Seattle’s designated Urban Centers and Urban Villages and along transit corridors.
His plan also calls for upzoning 6 percent of the city’s land that’s currently zoned single-family.
