Forced Upzoning is Bad Policy, But Here’s How We Can Mitigate Its Impacts 

A number of bills in the legislature would attempt to “solve” the state’s housing challenges by overriding local municipal zoning ordinances and statutorily allowing developers to build up to Sacramento-mandated levels of density. The most notable of these bills is SB50, which has no provisions to make any of the housing built affordable, but espouses a “trickle-down” theory which suggests that market-rate (i.e. luxury) housing will “filter” down to create more affordable housing.

This “theory” not only has its foundations in Reaganomics, but is both opportunistic and false. Building more Porsches won’t bring down the price of Priuses. And however you try to frame it, upzoning is a wealth transfer from the public to the private sector. Mind you, on principle I oppose preemptive statutory upzoning that comes from either Sacramento or Washington. I believe that each community has its own unique DNA and, especially in major metropolitan areas, it is important for us to be able to make lifestyle choices which give us the ability create a sense of place, a sense of home and a sense of belonging, all of which are best created within individual communities.  In an increasingly cold, impersonal and faceless world, Community is more important than ever.

Statutory upzoning as proposed by Sacramento politicians, taking a number of chapters from the Trump Administration’s playbook, is the urban planning version of turning copper into platinum. Plain and simple, it’s a wealth transfer from the public to the private sector; in most cases that’s probably exactly the point. Strengthening communities made up of real, live people is not the ultimate goal of these policies, but rather the creation of corporate wealth on the backs of the larger community. Real estate interests and developers donate a lot of money to the political campaigns of Sacramento politicians and in our plutocracy, profits often outweigh people.

Nonetheless, politicians are crafty, and, at least in California, they understand that instituting policies which amount to corporate welfare don’t play well among the public.  So they need to use that most effective of political tools: spin. The “public” goal of these developer giveaways is, at least ostensibly, to create affordable housing and thereby ultimately to serve the public good.  But for all those California politicians who don’t want to wear their plutocratic tendencies on their sleeves and who want to envelope themselves in the mantle of progressivism, the true-believers in blanket upzoning should clearly support ways to limit the wealth transfer and to capture the value that their proposed upzoning creates.

One solution would be to introduce a progressive upzoning tax. Such a tax would work in a similar fashion to the way a progressive income tax is structured: the more expensive a luxury condo or apartment created through statutory upzoing is, the higher the tax rate would be.

Public services and infrastructure need to be funded (not to mention public employee pensions – but that’s another story); creating more development and adding more people to the mix clearly leads to increased needs. In fact, numerous nexus studies have shown that increases in market rate and luxury housing actually exacerbate the need for more affordable housing — a simply logical conclusion, confirmed by data.

Progressive upzoning taxes would not only help to capture the value created by Sacramento policies but would also provide local communities the resources to address the inevitable impacts.  With more people comes a need for more housing, transportation, infrastructure, schools, childcare, green space, etc.

A progressive upzoning tax could be implemented in a number of ways. It could be levied on the developer directly, but since Sacramento and the Trump Administration seem more concerned with developer profits than affordable housing (including self-styled progressives like Senator Nancy Skinner, who authored SB330 at the behest of developers), it would be more likely that such a charge should be levied on the well-heeled buyers or end-users.

The reasoning is also fairly simple: someone who can afford a $25 million luxury condominium or $50,000 in monthly rent for a luxury apartment can also afford to pay an additional 40% in upzoning taxes.  This is simply another tool to address growing income inequality, which is one of the root causes of our state’s housing affordability challenges.

The sliding scale of an upzoning tax would clearly and obviously not apply to affordable housing.

Studies and surveys repeatedly and continually show that the level of trust of citizens for their local communities and locally elected officials is much greater than their trust for Sacramento or Washington politicians. It isn’t even close.  And it’s understandable. Local communities are where we live and we can participate in our communities in a way that Sacramento and Washington don’t allow. When done right, local government is inherently more transparent and democratic than state or federal government, which is yet another argument for why subsidiarity should be a guiding principle within our democracy.

Progressive upzoning taxes would make the best out of a bad, preemptive situation in which Sacramento politicians show their disdain for local communities across the state. They would at least allow communities to capture some of the value created by Sacramento’s peremptory wealth transfer and put those funds to better use within our diverse and unique communities, to serve the residents and to alleviate the impacts of bad policies from Sacramento and Washington.

And what of the self-styled liberals who would oppose such a truly progressive way of mitigating this unprecedented wealth transfer and of capturing value for the public? They simply out themselves as what they really are: Trumpian corporate shills who are more concerned with Wall Street profits than anything else.

This piece first appeared on Fox and Hounds Daily.

John Mirisch has served on the Beverly Hills City Council since 2009. He is currently serving his third term as the city’s mayor.

https://opportunityurbanism.org/2019/11/forced-upzoning-is-bad-policy-but-heres-how-we-can-mitigate-its-impacts/

Blanket Upzoning - A Blunt Instrument - Won’t Solve the Affordable Housing Crisis

Tags: 

Michael Storper

Scott Wiener

upzoning

SB 50

Urbanism

Density

Last April, TPR interviewed UCLA and London School of Economics Professor Michael Storper on how to square urbanism, density, and economic development. Over the past year, Storper, a Professor of Economic Geography whose last published book The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles, has continued his research on inequality caused by globalization and technology; and, on the impact of housing, zoning, and migration decisions by city-regions on addressing inequality. Rejoining TPR, Storper argues that the bulk of the claims of the trickle-down “housing-as-opportunity” school of thought are fundamentally flawed and lead to simplistic and misguided pubic policy recommendations. In light of the robust conversation around CA State Sen. Scott Wiener’s proposed SB 50, Storper notes that there is no clear evidence that local housing regulation is crucial for differences in home availability or affordability across cities, for inter-regional mobility, and that many have failed to fully consider the impacts of in-migration to economically prosperous cities. 

“The idea that upzoning will cause housing affordability to trickle down within our metropolis, while also setting up Los Angeles and San Francisco as the new golden land for people in less prosperous regions, is just a lot to promise—and it’s based on a narrative of housing as opportunity that is deeply flawed. We have to be very cautious when we use a storyline like that to justify public policy." - Michael Storper

Professor, you recently released new research challenging what you term the “housing as opportunity” school of thought. What is the premise of that school of thought, and what do advocates of “blanket upzoning” to increase supply miss with respect to housing economics?

Michael Storper: The “housing as opportunity” school of thought is a consensus in mainstream housing economics that makes a very ambitious set of claims about the world. First, it claims that the housing crisis in our major prosperous metropolitan regions is principally due to restrictive zoning and regulations. It follows by arguing that that we can solve this crisis through widespread up-zoning, which it claims will increase the supply of housing in these prosperous regions, and that this overall supply increase will have a trickle-down effect by increasing affordability for lower income people and families.  A novel argument then extends to bigger national picture, because this school of thought also claims that such up-zoning in prosperous regions can also solve the problems of less prosperous regions.

The background to this latter claim is that the split between prosperous metropolitan areas and more depressed areas—what many call the “left behind” regions—is greater than it has been for nearly a century. Many parts of the country are seeing lower incomes and fewer opportunities, yet people from those regions aren’t migrating to the prosperous regions as much as they have in the past.

The “housing as opportunity” school of thought says that this decline in migration is due to a lack of housing supply in big cities, such that people can’t find or afford housing in expensive metropolitan regions. And it says that upzoning in big cities would allow more migration in.

Thus, this theory works at two scales: the intra-metropolitan scale and the inter-metropolitan (or national) scale. At both levels, the issue is said to be affordability and the common solution is said to be upzoning. 

So, what does this school of thought miss? Our paper proposes that it misses several things. For one, we don’t think that housing is the major reason that fewer people from “left behind” regions are moving into prosperous metropolitan regions. Instead, we think it’s because of jobs and skills.

The evidence for this is that some people are moving into metropolitan areas—specifically, highly skilled young people. Housing isn’t keeping them out. It’s changing how they are housed—they tend to crowd more people into a unit—but it’s not keeping them out. So, the idea that we’re going to create economic opportunity for people in Ohio, Kentucky, or North Dakota by building housing in LA is pretty unrealistic. It’s also a contradictory argument: if up-zoning were to be attract more of these domestic migrants into places like LA or San Francisco, we would largely negate any contribution to better or more affordable housing for those already here.

Our analysis shows that blanket up-zoning is likely to miss its affordability target, even without attracting in more people from left behind regions. Blanket upzoning is a blunt instrument, whereas people’s housing needs are diverse.  Even if the up-zoning is aimed at, for example, transit-served corridors, it doesn’t mean that all such areas are going to attract housing investment.  This is because, even with transit, people don’t live and work in the same neighborhoods, and there is no evidence that transit changes these patterns in any significant way.  So, when we up-zone around transit corridors, for example, only some locations are likely to attract big increases in housing construction.  These are areas with strong attractiveness.  It will favor those who can pay the price of housing in high-demand areas—marginally improving the housing prospects for highly skilled people at the upper end of the income distribution.

What it’s not going to do is solve the housing crisis for the middle classes and lower-income people.  Even with so-called affordability set-asides, the trickle down effect will be small and could even be negative in the highly-desirable areas, if the set-aside(in the range of 15-25% in current legislative proposals) is lower (or income thresh-holds higher) than the current pattern of lower-income, lower-cost housing in those areas compared to the new housing profile.    This is just one example of the many unintended consequences that proponents of blanket upzoning don’t take into account, and that is why it will fail. 

Elaborate on the research you rely upon to conclude that blanket upzoning will not solve the housing crisis for coastal California’s middle classes and lower-income people.

Our paper reviews the existing literature in urban economics and provides a variety of evidence on how migration impacts city housing prices. We looked at three dimensions of cities—land area, population migration, and changes in housing prices—and showed that there isn’t any consistent relationship among those three variables. Then, we used other data to show that the real factor driving growth in housing prices is the income distribution across cities.

Cities like LA, San Francisco, or anywhere else in coastal California have a strong economic base that attracts skilled people in occupations with high wages. They also have a large population with very low incomes. What drives housing prices up is the strength of the fundamental economic forces that causes the skilled to want to be in big metropolitan areas today.  This force is much stronger than 30 years ago.   The payoff for a skilled person to locating in a big city today (in terms of higher wages compared to locating in other places) is much bigger than in the past.  That is why the skilled continue to crowd into LA and even the Bay Area, in spite of their high housing costs.  It’s also why any increase in supply will mostly benefit them (in terms of better housing choices for them).   That’s fine, but what it is unlikely to do is have a strong trickle-down effect, and up-zoning legislation is largely being sold on the affordability or trickle-down argument.

Professor, in a previous interview with The Planning Report, you noted that “blanket overrides of local planning and zoning laws to authorize density…would give us a combination of displacement and bad urbanism.” Does your new research confirm or conflict with that conclusion? 

A recent paper by Yonah Freemark at MIT showed that upzoning in Chicago served to increase land values. We could anticipate that effect, because upzoning means that landowners can count on being able to construct more in the future. But what upzoning did not do in Chicago, and is not likely to do anywhere, is create incentives for housing construction in the areas where middle-class and lower-income people most need it for the prices at which they need it.

That’s the problem with blanket upzoning: It doesn’t actually require housing to be created for these groups. It just allows upzoning itself to be created wherever you want and allows for market speculation to dominate. The market will naturally respond best in areas with the greatest returns on upzoning—mostly places with dense, white-collar employment where high-income people will want to live to be closer to their jobs.

This is how blanket upzoning produces the consequence of displacement. Skilled people with high incomes—those who would benefit most from upzoning—are going to move into upzoned neighborhoods and crowd out the middle- and lower-income people who are living there. This displacement is exactly the opposite consequence of what the authors of upzoning bills claim they want to produce.

The consequence of bad urbanism is related to what I call the “Sao Paulo solution” or the “Mexico City solution”: allowing nonconforming high density to be built in areas with relatively low density. That’s exactly how a lot of cities in Latin America have urbanized—with towers or jumbled densities all over the place, chaotically shooting up all over the place next to single-family homes. Given the land-use patterns in Los Angeles, for example, blanket upzoning would likely give us the same kind of ugly incursions of bad urbanism, without the positive side of higher density, which is clustering, walk-ability, and lively streets.  So many of LA’s neighborhoods were disfigured in the 1960s by the zoning that led to dingbat streets. Do we really want to repeat that?

In your opinion, are proposed laws/public policies that link the upzoning of neighborhoods with intra-city urban transportation corridors an inherently positive step toward achieving more housing affordability, as opposed to displacement, in California?

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In this case, my concern is about the method, rather than the general goal. I do think that in the long run, we will see a new generation of people who are less reliant on cars, who want to live in denser communities, and who want to tap into better transit networks. And I think most people agree that that’s a desirable future. The question is: How do you go about doing it?

Transit-oriented upzoning can become a mechanism of displacement. The major area in LA where that is likely to happen is the Crenshaw corridor. Crenshaw community groups had worked out a plan for how they envisaged their communities to evolve—a plan that included greater density. Now, new development targeted to higher-income people is displacing those communities. What concern me are top-down approaches that dictate to a local community how to produce greater density and in exactly what ways. 

Given your research on housing economics, what policy questions should be central to any new legislation seeking to address inequality and housing affordability?

The core debate in California housing policy is with people who think that untargeted upzoning is a lever that will increase supply in vast metropolitan areas and produce widespread affordability while somehow avoiding the problems of displacement and bad urbanism.

But affordability and supply are not the same thing. In big, mature metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, affordability has to be produced through active housing market policy. That means directly targeting affordability and access for every group and every mix of housing.

Bills like SB 827 and SB 50 are essentially about trickle-down economics. The logic is that by creating more aggregate supply, every part of the demand curve—every different group demanding housing—will somehow benefit. I don’t think there’s any evidence in favor of that proposition.

I agree that if what we want is more housing in a lot of different places, then we should create incentives for localities to build that housing—but we have to allow them to figure out how to do so in the way that best addresses their different constituencies. We should set general goals and allow communities to meet them in different ways, rather than imposing centralized solutions.

How do your UCLA colleagues in urban planning and housing affordability assess the housing legislation pending in the California State Legislature? Do they also reject as problematic the thesis that untargeted upzoning will increase supply and affordability without displacement and/or bad urbanism? 

I think there is a wide variety of opinions. Everyone’s going to continue looking at all of the legislation that’s out there.

To me, housing is an area where the law of unintended consequences is most powerful. The idea that upzoning will cause housing affordability to trickle down within our metropolis, while also setting up Los Angeles and San Francisco as the new golden land for people in less prosperous regions, is just a lot to promise—and it’s based on a narrative of housing as opportunity that is deeply flawed. We have to be very cautious when we use a storyline like that to justify public policy.

You asserted in your last TPR interview that cities seeking to become economically competitive in the 21st century are “hamstrung by old rules.” What are the old rules or regulations that now hamstring the future prospects of cities? 

The biggest problems are the tax systems that lead municipalities to be competitive with one another—including the Prop. 13 disaster that we’re still faced with—and all the fragmentation and fiscal disarrangement that every little city and every jurisdiction is fighting. 

In closing, let’s pivot to the challenges of providing needed public housing and what policy lessons can be learned from other cities outside of the U.S. 

I don’t think we talk enough about public housing. Public housing has a long and checkered history in the United States because it’s expensive, hard to maintain, and involves all kinds of problems of public administration and bureaucracy. It has a better history in other countries, and we might ask why.

Some cities—most notably London—are experimenting with reconstructing their public housing estates and allowing some market-rate housing to be built there. They’re going in the opposite direction of building private housing and including affordable housing in it. The reason this worked is that they included the residents, and the residents said, “We’ll make a deal. If you give us new and better public housing, and you let us participate in creating high-quality design, then we’re in.”

The key thing here is that the public sector keeps control of the land forever. A city, essentially, is its land—and land is the most valuable resource in a city. When the public sector controls land, it has the ability to weigh in on the future of the city. Now, as cities are changing, that asset—which will only become more valuable and less affordable to the public sector over time—isn’t being given away to the private sector, but is instead being transformed in response to social and economic forces.

There are intelligent ways to do these things that we need to start thinking about. Affordability has to be tackled directly; it’s not going to be created through aggregate supply and trickle-down.

See Article HERE

Eichler neighborhoods Before and After if SB50 Passes

Artist depiction of upzoning of an Eichler neighborhood.  This four story building is only 50' tall but SB50 allows EIGHT story buildings given certain provisions.  All of Marinwood/Lucas Valley/Terra Linda can be affected because of their status of "jobs rich community" in the legislation.

Eichler neighborhoods like this will be destroyed.

This 81 unit Apartment Building in Portland, Oregon in the background is being built nextdoor to bungalows on a tree lined street. The apartment build has no parking spaces for it's tenants in the belief that the tenants will ride bicycles or take public transit as preferred means of transportation. 

From WSJ.com

Washington's 'Fair Housing' Assault on Local Zoning

Our experience in Westchester shows what the country can expect from a new federal discrimination rule.

By ROBERT P. ASTORINO

Do you think it is a good idea to give the Department of Housing and Urban Development unchecked power to put an apartment building in your neighborhood? HUD has proposed a new rule that could do just that.

In July, HUD published its long-awaited proposal on "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" in the Federal Register. It is a sweeping set of land-use regulations that has attracted little national attention. The agency wants the power to dismantle local zoning so communities have what it considers the right mix of economic, racial and ethnic diversity. A finding of discriminatory behavior, or allegations of discrimination, would no longer be necessary. HUD will supply "nationally uniform data" of what it thinks 1,200 communities should look like.

Local governments will have to "take meaningful actions to further the goals identified." If they fail to comply, HUD can cut federal funding. Westchester County north of New York City has firsthand experience of what the rest of the nation can expect.

HUD and Westchester are battling over local zoning that arose from a 2009 settlement (signed by my predecessor) to build 750 affordable-housing units in 31 mostly white communities. Westchester is well ahead of schedule in meeting these obligations. Almost 400 units have financing and 124 are already occupied. But HUD isn't satisfied because it wants to control local zoning and remake communities.

HUD has told Westchester that any limits on the size, type, height and density of buildings are "restrictive practices."

It demands that the county sue its localities over such common zoning regulations, which are not exclusionary by any stretch of the imagination. If HUD can define what constitutes exclusionary practices, then local zoning as it is known today disappears. Apartments, high rises or whatever else the federal government or a developer wants can be built on any block in America.

This is not hyperbole. Consider that HUD's list of "restrictive practices" includes limits on density even around reservoirs that supply drinking water to New York

City's eight million residents. Who knew ensuring clean water was discriminatory?
HUD's power grab is based on the mistaken belief that zoning and discrimination are the same. They are not. Zoning restricts what can be built, not who lives there.

In the 1970s, New York's highest court, in cases known as the Berenson decisions, established rules for what constitutes exclusionary zoning. Westchester's municipalities either voluntarily or through legal challenges have complied with these judicial rules. Any local zoning code also remains open to legal challenge. There are long-standing legal standards by which local zoning is judged and continually reviewed.

As required by HUD, Westchester County analyzed all 853 local zoning districts in February 2012. It found no evidence of exclusionary practices based on race or ethnicity. The county's conclusion was supported in a separate analysis by John R. Nolon, an affordable-housing expert at Pace University's Land Use Law Center.

HUD rejected the findings and cut off $17 million of federal funds to the county. The county prepared seven additional analyses, each one exploring more data as demanded by HUD. But as many times as HUD attempted to move the goal posts, the findings did not change. There is no evidence that zoning requirements on things like building size and height are racially exclusionary.

Last month HUD finally demanded—without presenting any facts—that the county accept its conclusion that there is exclusionary zoning in Westchester as a condition of releasing the funds. The agency's demand flies in the face of the July 31 "report card" issued by James E. Johnson, the federal monitor hired by HUD to oversee its 2009 affordable housing settlement. Mr. Johnson found no evidence of exclusionary zoning based on race or ethnicity.

Westchester is proudly the fourth most diverse county in New York in its population of African-Americans and Hispanics. Hispanics are the county's fastest-growing ethnic group, increasing in every community in the last census. The number of African-Americans continues to grow in contrast to an exodus from many areas in the Northeast. But HUD won't budge. Its vision for remaking neighborhoods depends on gaining control of local zoning.

The $17 million that HUD is withholding include Community Development Block Grants to help needy residents with neighborhood revitalization, new playgrounds and sidewalks, programs to prevent homelessness and, ironically, affordable housing. Westchester has sued the federal government to release these funds. Our claim is that HUD is unfairly holding hostage the communities and nonprofit agencies that administer those programs in its fight with the county. A federal judge dismissed Westchester's claim last month, saying HUD's ruling was written in a way that "excludes it from judicial review." The lawsuit is now before the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

HUD has no idea how much its new rule will cost, or whether it will even work. The only economic analysis HUD has provided concerns how much it will cost communities to comply with the paperwork. HUD estimates $3 million to $9 million. The agency has not published any estimate of other effects, such as on local real-estate markets or local budgets. As stated in the Federal Register, "HUD cannot quantify the benefits and costs of policies influenced by the rule."

HUD is asking for comments on its new rule by Sept. 17. If elected officials and citizens do not want to cede control of their streets, neighborhoods and open space to Washington, now is the time to say so.

Mr. Astorino is the Westchester County executive.

Editor's Note:  Marin is under a similar agreement with HUD and Marinwood-Lucas Valley is the "test market" for implementing the changes.  We have written extensively about it.  Click on the "HUD" category in the right hand column for more info.

The Next Stage of development of Marin is upzoning Single Family Home Neighborhoods like Portland and Seattle. (Important film for Marin)

Den$ity: Profit Over People in Portland, Oregon from Straw Bale Films on Vimeo.

This is an important film for the people of Marin to watch.  Portland, Oregon is thought to be the "cutting edge" of smart growth policies for densification.   Marin undoubtedly is heading this way.

Last year, Planning Commissioners openly talked about the elimination of "racist" single family home zoning.  They contend that building apartments is the only way neighborhoods can become more inclusive.

The Community Development Department has been advocating "densification" policies along the "101 Priority Development Area".  Although it is no longer "official" planning is underway to urbanize all areas within 1/2 mile of the 101 corridor.

Look Out Marin! Single Family Neighborhoods are under Attack.

A developer and housing task-force member sells the ‘upzoning’ of Seattle

That housing committee really did call to upzone all single-family zoning in Seattle. One of the architects of the plan explains and defends it.

When Mayor Ed Murray announced Monday that he was endorsing all the proposals of his housing affordability committee, he took great pains to say it wouldn’t cause much change in Seattle’s single-family-zoned neighborhoods after all.

For special emphasis, he said this twice.

“I’m going to say this again, because there’s been a little fun out there about us plowing under every single-family neighborhood,” Murray said. “Under our plan, 94 percent of existing single-family neighborhoods will see no upzones.”

That’s a strong statement, but is it true? The reliability of a talking point is usually inversely related to the number of times a politician repeats it. So I decided to just ask a member of the Housing Affordabily and Livability committee to walk me through the facts.

The first thing architect David Neiman said when I got him on the phone wasn’t exactly aligned with the mayor’s spin.


“I think the mayor was trying to do some messaging there,” Neiman said. “The rules definitely would change in all the single-family zones in Seattle.”

If approved, the new rules would cover the entire city and would, Neiman said, be an upzone to all single-family lots in Seattle.

Neiman is a developer who strongly backs the housing committee’s final report. He also lives in my neighborhood, Madrona, which like many of the lower-density parts of Seattle has houses on 5,000-square-foot lots centered on a commercial district with some apartment buildings.

He said a way to visualize the proposal for Seattle’s single-family zones is this: It effectively triples the density of development allowed today, while retaining the same housing bulk and lot coverage limitations.

“So you could take a lot where you are currently able to build one home, and you could slice it into three units,” Neiman says. “That could be three free-standing small homes, or one building divided into three flats, or three row houses, or three condos.”

You wouldn’t have to build any of these things. But the economics of the change likely would spur redevelopment across many single-family zoned parts of the city.

Neiman sketched out the upzone this way: Imagine a small $400,000 Seattle bungalow in, say, West Seattle. Under current boomtown conditions, that house is a candidate to be torn down and replaced by a new home, priced at $1 million plus.

With the changes, a developer could raze the bungalow and instead build three smaller homes or condos in a triplex building, with a goal of selling each for, say, $600,000, Neiman said. Suddenly the $1 million plus project is a $1.8 million project, with roughly similar construction costs.

“When you can put three units there instead of one, it’s got a lot more juice to it,” Neiman said.

This juicing would likely cause widespread redevelopment of lower-priced single family home stock over time. The wealthier single family areas would be more likely to remain unchanged.

“You’re probably not going to see a string of triplexes going up in Broadmoor,” he said.

People could hold onto their bungalows as long as they please, or even build new ones. But many of Seattle’s smaller and older houses would make way for higher-density development.

That’s the whole point of that part of the housing plan, Neiman said — to spur development in single-family zones. The goal is to densify without trampling the leafy neighborhood feel. But, “it’s enough of an upzone that the committee talked about trying to get something back for it,” such as a payment into an affordable-housing fund whenever a property is redeveloped at the higher zoning, Neiman said.
Messaging all this, or whatever we’re calling what the mayor did, seems to me to be a poor way to start a citywide conversation on some of the biggest zoning changes proposed in Seattle in our lifetimes.

So thanks go to Neiman for laying it all out there, unvarnished. I’m already on record that I think it’s an overreaction to upzone the entire city, especially until we get better infrastructure to handle the growth. Plus: save the bungalows!

But Neiman earned the last word. I asked him: Why is this a good idea?

“You and I couldn’t afford to live in our own neighborhood if we moved to Seattle now,” he said. “Right? So without some redeveloping, we’re simply closing the door behind us.


“This does mean we’re going to lose some of the old Seattle fabric, some of the bungalows. But we’ll create a new fabric. This city has to change or else we’re going to be a city only for the very rich and the very poor.

“I came to the conclusion that sitting there with your arms folded is not a reasonable response anymore.”

Get rid of single-family zoning? These conversations shouldn’t be secret

Danny Westneat

Get rid of single-family zoning? These conversations shouldn’t be secret

Originally published July 7, 2015 at 1:21 pm Updated July 8, 2015 at 11:29 am
Seattle’s single-family zoning code has long been a defining feature of the city’s character. (Bettina Hansen / The Seattle Times, 2013)


A draft of the work of the Seattle mayor’s housing task force includes a big surprise: They have talked of doing away with the city’s single-family zoning.

For all the construction cranes around town, the issue of growth and development has been surprisingly quiet in the Seattle elections this summer.

Seems like that might be about to change.

Tuesday, I got my hands on the draft policy ideas that Mayor Ed Murray’s advisory committee on housing is working on. And they are some of the most sweeping changes in the way Seattle lives and grows ever proposed around here.

Most dramatically, the committee is considering a recommendation to do away with single-family zoning — which for a hundred-plus years has been the defining feature of Seattle’s strong neighborhood feel.

“We can still be a city for everyone, but only if we give up our outdated ideal of every family living in their own home on a 5,000 square foot lot,” a draft letter from the committee co-chairs reads.

The draft report notes that “Seattle (single-family) zoning has roots in racial and class exclusion and remains among the largest obstacles to realizing the city’s goals for equity and affordability.”

The committee of citizen volunteers voted 19-3 to recommend replacing single-family zoning with a “lower density residential zone” that would allow duplexes, triplexes, rooming houses and more backyard cottages and mother-in-law units in areas now dominated by single houses on lots with a yards. It’s unclear how much of the city this would include.

Later, the committee co-chairs issued a statement saying the group “has no intention of recommending the elimination of all single family zones in the city.” But the draft report suggests the committee was considering exactly that.

“In fact, (the committee) recommends we abandon the term ‘single family zone,’ ” the draft reads.

An overview letter calls for higher density essentially everywhere in the city.

“More 6-story buildings where there were 4 stories before, more 7-story buildings where there were 6-stories before, and more multifamily housing of all types in areas currently zoned for less density inside (neighborhoods designated as) Urban Villages,” the letter says.

The draft says the changes are necessary because “we are currently confronted by the reality of more dollars chasing a limited supply of housing than ever before in our history.”

The draft report is a recent working copy of the mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Advisory Committee. It is certain to undergo changes as the committee tries to reach a Monday, July 13, deadline for a final report.

“My co-chair and I are very disappointed that you and The Seattle Times have chosen to undermine the efforts of the HALA, a citizen advisory group, by prematurely releasing an unapproved draft of our report,” Faith Pettis and David Wertheimer, the co-chairs, wrote in an emailed statement.

I elected to publish it anyway because I have always felt these advisory committees on crucial topics facing the city should be open to the public, not conducted in secret.

That said, it is just a draft, and it’s only an advisory committee. There’s no guarantee any of this will become law. In fact, the City Council on Monday put some restrictions on projects in low-rise multifamily zones, a vote in the opposite direction of encouraging more density that this report is advocating.

But the report provides a window into the thinking of a group that has spent 10 months grappling with one of the toughest issues for Seattle government — how to grow and prosper without wrecking the city’s neighborhood soul, or, in turn, becoming an enclave only for the rich.

“The politics of the issues appear almost intractable,” the co-chair letter said.

A proposal to undo the city’s recent restrictions on “apodment” type micro-housing developments split the committee by a 17-10 vote. Pettis said that wasn’t enough of a consensus.

Similarly, a proposal to study some ideas for rent control split the committee by a 13-11 vote — again, not enough of a consensus.

The committee split 16-9 on the idea of creating a “linkage fee” assessment on new construction, with the money raised to go to subsidized housing. A spokesman for the mayor’s office said the committee is still working on this issue.

The City Council also is likely to continue to explore this idea, whether the committee recommends it or not.

The broader thinking spelled out in the draft report is that Seattle has a higher percentage of land dedicated to detached single-family homes than other big cities. This constricts our ability to accommodate the rising population and job growth.

But the city also did a recent survey of developable land in Seattle and found there’s enough capacity under current zoning to add 224,000 housing units — 73 percent more than the current stock of 308,000.

The final scheduled meeting of the advisory committee is Wednesday. It is not open to the public.

Pettis said she knows the notion of changing single-family zoning is going to be a hot button.

“I grew up here, I love and believe in the neighborhoods,” she said. “But for this city to be affordable to a diverse variety of people, we simply need to build more.”

[Editor's Note:  I include this article about Seattle housing because it parallels the talk in the pro Development Marin County Civic Center.  So called "Smart Growth" is the new religion of planners and politicians.  They all subscribe to the same basic tenets of high density growth, public transportation and pathological ignorance of the long term infrastructure needs of the community.  Plan Bay Area is the articulation of the "Smart Growth Vision".    Every area of the county claims that more housing means economic growth and huge growth is coming to their metropolis.  It cannot be true everywhere.  The sad part of this planning FAD is that the aftermath will leave our communities less livable and with less "room to breath" .  What happened to "Small, beautiful and livable communities?"]

PLAN BAY AREA POLICY MAPS outline upzoning, new fees, and incentives for developers in Marinwood-Lucas Valley

Click on MTC Plan Bay Area Policy Maps

and please study the shocking changes planned for the Bay Area.

discussed at the MTC Board Meeting on July 13, 2012

The MTC published these policy maps to help planners visualize the "opportunities within the grand vision" of the One Bay Area Plan.  They call for massive urbanization throughout the Bay Area through a combination of upzoning, transportation funds,  urban growth boundary, development fess (or penalties) and grants.   

You'll find that you may have to pay a fine of up to $50,000 (above current development fees) to discourage residential development in outlying areas.  Non-residential development may have to pay a fee of up to $20.00 per square foot.   Other development in the "approved areas" (such as the Marinwood Priority Development Area) may receive grants for building.   The Marinwood PDA is a "transit neighborhood" and will be upzoned to 50 units per acre vs. 4 single family houses per acre on most streets now.  We will add from 1500 to 4000  housing units to the current area East of Las Gallinas.

Make no mistake, the One Bay Area Plan is nothing short of a radical scheme to reshape the bay area communities, economy, transportation, and government.  This overambitious central plan will create an effective  "city state" and strip away property rights, local democracy and economic opportunity for millions. 

Supervisor Susan Adams needs to address the community with the Truth. She has served on the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) for over 9 1/2 years including two years as Vice President.  

Supervisor Susan Adams spent 9 1/2 years on ABAG

and served as the Vice President for 2 years.

Enough, Ms. Adams! Please tell us of the full Plan Bay Area plans for Marinwood-Lucas Valley!

www.marinrecall.org

Marin Supervisor Steve Kinsey is the President of MTC

Are Monster Houses coming to a Backyard near You?

Editor's Note: In Seattle, neighborhoods are being invaded with new construction on tiny lots, changing the density and character of the community.  This is the essential county plan for Marinwood-Lucas Valley and other areas along the 101 corridor as the planners claim it is more energy efficient to build these homes close to transit.  We will be facing this in the near future if we do not rid ourselves of "smart growth" zealots, and local politicians who are pushing these schemes.

see this Seattle Channel 7 report: HERE

By David Ham

SEATTLE — 

Opponents of so-called "monster houses" in Seattle say city planners have opened up a new loophole.

Seattle City Council members voted to extend a moratorium on building houses on substandard lots.

It's to give city planners more time to come up with new regulations.

Planners recently released revisions to the proposed changes that include restricting the height on houses built on substandard lots to two stories, and they've also suggested the "100 Percent Rule."

"The department of planning and development was making some progress in closing those loopholes, but in their latest round of recommendations they've thrown in a new loophole which is called the 100 Percent Rule," said Peter Hughes, who has been part of the movement to oppose multiple houses on one lot.

Essentially the 100 Percent Rule would mean someone could build two houses on one lot if that lot is twice the size of most single lots nearby.

"Now this new proposal would free up more of these small lots for big home construction," said Hughes.

"I personally don't see why the 100 Percent Rule would be a problem, as it makes the lot consistent with other lots on the block, but open to hearing other thoughts," said Seattle City Councilman Richard Conlin.

City planners will be taking public comment on the new recommendations until Oct. 16.

The council is expected to start public hearings on the recommendations starting in November

The "evolution" our single family neighborhoods in Marinwood-Lucas Valley

Portland, Oregon pioneered the "Smart Growth" planning concepts now championed by Marin County Planners and the Association of Bay Area Governments.  They believe in restricting growth to infill housing and setting urban growth boundaries.  By subdividing single family lots and building "tall and skinny" houses, and apartment buildings,  they fit more people per acre, leaving open space untouched.  This is what planners want to do in Marinwood-Lucas Valley.

Here are two examples in Portland, Oregon:

 

 

IN PORTLAND, FIVE SLIM-LINE HOUSES NOW OCCUPY THE SPACE ONCE OCCUPIED BY THE WHITE HOUSE ABOVE

Small side yards become single family homes in this example.

The Marinwood Priority Development Area (all land east of Las Gallinas) is likely to become condominiums and apartments at a minimum 30 units per acre to a maximum 50 units per acre. (3 to 5 story apartment buildings). All other land in Marinwood-Lucas Valley is likely to become 20 units per acre or slightly more intense development than the above example.  

Is this the kind of community you want to live in?    We need you to speak up against the 2012 Housing Element and Plan Bay Area that will forever urbanize Marinwood-Lucas Valley. 

Speak up for your community!

see related story: Priority Development Area will Urbanize Marinwood-Lucas Valley

Will Apodments Ruin Our Neighborhoods?

Are Apodments Ruining Seattle Neighborhoods?

Weighing the pros and cons of microhousing, the newest trend in affordable living in Seattle.

By: Maria Dolan  |   November 2012   |  FROM THE PRINT EDITION

The street view of Emerald 10, which packs 36 units into a slim structure PHOTO CREDIT: MARIANA KAJLICH

Brent Gunning has something in common with Henry David Thoreau: Both have lived in dwellings so small they could open their front doors while sitting at their desks. Thoreau built his own 150-square-foot cabin, while Gunning, a 24-year-old Microsoft software engineer with close-cropped hair and a chill demeanor, has been living for several months in a Redmond micro-apartment, a 140-square-foot space the size of some walk-in closets.

He pays $807 a month (by bank transfer—no checks accepted) for the furnished room at the LEED Platinum–certified Tudor Manor development. That includes all utilities, a free laundry room, Wi-Fi and parking, an option Gunning chose that raised his rent by $60 monthly. His space is as tidily packed as a lunchbox, with the desk and chair, one window, one bed, wall-hung shelves holding clothing and books, and a “convenience center” with mini-refrigerator and microwave. There’s a bathroom with shower, but no closet or kitchen. (Gunning uses a small, shared kitchen, with a stove, down the hall, which he says is rarely in use.) Gunning’s Fender guitar fits in an upright stand beside the door, and so far, no one has complained about his evening strumming.

“I’m saving up to buy my own place,” he says, and this was the lowest-priced decent month-to-month rental Gunning found near his work. Nearby are transit, a gym, parks, restaurants, hair salons and city hall. “Hands down, this was the best deal by a lot,” says Josh Born, another young tenant in one of Tudor Manor’s 61 units (his is a comparatively luxurious 220 square feet for $875 a month). Born moved here from Washington, D.C., after getting a temporary contract at Microsoft. The first month he was here, he paid $1,650 to rent a Bellevue studio.

Small spaces—with matching rents—are the big appeal of micro-apartments such as this one at Emerald 10 on Seattle’s First Hill.

Gunning and Born are early adopters of a new housing trend: extra-small apartments with a shared kitchen down the hall—modern versions of the rooming houses of the past, which best suit one busy, budget-minded person who doesn’t have much stuff. Bellevue-based developer Jim Potter was part of a group that built the first modern micro-apartments in the Seattle area under the name “aPodments” on Capitol Hill in 2008. Since then, he and other developers, including Seattle-based Calhoun Properties and Bellevue-based Kauri Investments (the latter is also the developer of Tudor Manor), have built or are planning several more such buildings. Bryan Stevens, spokesperson for Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development (DPD), estimates there are currently 10 micro-housing proposals under review. (Since these are reviewed in the same way as are apartment projects, the department doesn’t officially single out these proposals.)

The trend is driven by the need for cheaper single living spaces, and it is evident in other cities as well. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg held a contest this summer for new micro-apartment building designs. San Francisco is currently considering whether to reduce minimum apartment sizes to 150 square feet to make room for micro-housing by the bay.

“People who came to capitol hill and started raising families recognized they were living in a dense environment,” says Cummings, “But They didn’t expect the city to upzone without any process.”

Developers here didn’t have to wait for a vote. “Existing codes have allowed this housing option based on the current definitions for a ‘dwelling unit’ and ‘household,’” says Stevens. “A single dwelling unit can house up to eight unrelated people utilizing a single kitchen and common space.” Rents for the smallest rooms start at around $495 a month without parking, and include utilities, Wi-Fi and, usually, furniture.

The buildings have a fan base. Redmond’s Tudor Manor project helped the city win a Governor’s Smart Communities Award as an example of “smart growth.” Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn blogged his approval of the micro-apartment concept this January as an “affordable, transit-friendly option.”

A.P. Hurd, vice president at Touchstone, a Seattle-based commercial real estate development firm, and co-author of the recently published book The Carbon Efficient City, lived in an apartment of less than 300 square feet for three years in New York City, and supports the buildings. “Finding ways we can house people in more compact environments that are a good deal for them…is a good thing,” she says. “The less space you build, the less space you have to heat and cool—that reduces the amount of energy you use.” Even better, the buildings, situated in walkable neighborhoods near transit, accommodate—and even reward, with lower rents and sometimes transit credits—the carless.

Demand is driven partly by demographics. “We’re more and more of a singles society,” says Jim Potter, chair of Kauri Investments. Potter said his typical renters are in their early 30s and earn between $2,000 and $3,000 a month. Some tenants have a single-family home outside the city, and rent to avoid a daily commute. Potter describes his customers as “busy and active,” and in need of a place to sleep and shower.

But while shrinking digs might please politicians and some budget-minded renters, some neighbors, even those who support the idea of density, aren’t thrilled with the new buildings.

One objection is that here in Seattle, unlike in San Francisco or New York, the process of creating code to allow such buildings isn’t currently up for review—it’s old code. So micro-apartments pop up, sometimes with little warning, in places where neighbors have been expecting traditional four- to six-unit buildings. With micro-apartments, “unit” is likely redefined to mean an entire floor of eight tiny apartments with locking doors and bathrooms, plus one kitchen and one common area.

Ed Cummings is a business strategy consultant who has lived on Capitol Hill with his family for nine years, on a street of primarily single-family homes. He says he and his neighbors understood that they had moved into a multifamily zone, but were surprised to learn that a nearby single-family house was being torn down to build micro-apartments. It wasn’t evident from the building plans, and only came to light because the developer inquired about piggybacking on a neighbor’s sewer line to accommodate the large number of individual bathrooms. “People who came to Capitol Hill and fixed up old houses and started raising families recognized they were living in a dense environment,” says Cummings, “but they didn’t expect the city to upzone without any process.” He would like to see the city assess where such buildings are most appropriate. “There’s no valve controlling how many of these there are,” he says. “They should have a set of indicated and non-indicated conditions, public notice and a public comment period. I own a multifamily property myself,” he says. “Apparently I could go from four to 24 units, and tough luck on my neighbors.”

Cummings thinks this project is a bad fit for several reasons, including the lack of transit on the street, and increased traffic and parking demand in a noncommercial area—most of these buildings offer little to no parking for residents, and if it exists, it costs extra. (Potter claims only about 10 percent of his tenants typically have cars. The DPD’s Stevens says a series of code changes over the last 10 years means parking is not currently required for many apartments in most city neighborhoods.) Cummings also points out that the adjacent elementary school is an amenity that won’t be used by singles in micro-apartments, but could have been used by people in single or multifamily homes. Stevens responds, “Everyone needs housing, and our policy is to focus growth in areas that have the infrastructure to support it (i.e. parks, public transit, access to goods and services).”

But that policy, too, is causing some resentment. “I’m living in a neighborhood that’s already met its density goal,” says Patrick Tompkins, a Capitol Hill resident and former building contractor. He isn’t specifically against micro-apartments; his broader concern is that such buildings are being concentrated in neighborhoods like his, a block east of Group Health, where traffic is already a “circus.” “How much density are we supposed to take?” he asks. “If density is such an important goal, then why aren’t we pursuing it citywide?” During a recent kerfuffle over another longstanding zoning loophole that is allowing developers to wedge second homes onto single-family properties in neighborhoods such as Green Lake and Queen Anne, Seattle City Council member Richard Conlin took the side of neighbors who objected, and said he’d work to close the loophole, but he’s made no such moves to change micro-apartment codes. “We’re getting the sense that we’re being treated like second-class citizens,” says Tompkins of his neighborhood.

The city has no plans to change the codes, but it is “tracking complaints,” says Stevens. “We are watching to see if there are any unintended consequences from such micro-units.” Tompkins has another suggestion. “If they’d like do an experiment and build some of these in Madrona on Richard Conlin’s street, I’d be happy with that.”

[ Editor's Note:  We can expect to see similar attempts to upzone Marinwood like this.  See related post where Planning Commissioner Ericka Erickson advocates multifamilies in single family neighborhoods HERE.  While Marinwood lost the Priority Development Area status, it is still targeted for urbanization.  We must save our beautiful neighborhood!]