DADUs and Rent Control at City Hall Today
Two big housing events today at City Hall should generate some interest and attention. First at noon is a Lunch and Learn session in Council Chambers on Detatched Accessory Dwelling Units. We helped recruit the panel from Oregon where lots of backyard cottages are getting built.
Later, at 6, downstairs at the Bertha Knight Landes Room Councilmember Sawant is hosting a community meeting on rent control, a disastrous intervention that fortunately is prohibited by State law. 
A full afternoon and evening of housing discussion today at City Hall.
Seattle City Council Starts Slow Slide Toward Rent Control
Yesterday the Planning Land Use and Sustainability (PLUS) Committee discussed renter protection legislation that was offered to try and stop supposed abuses of the City’s Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance (TRAO) requirements. The claim, only anecdotal, is that land lords are trying to get rid of tenants by boosting their rents dramatically — it’s called economic eviction. But there isn’t anything other than a few anecdotes in a few news stories. It’s hard to tell if these kinds of “evictions” are even happening in large numbers, or in numbers worthy of new legislation.
The proposed renter protection would actually allow the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) decide whether a rent increase is “reasonable” when a tenant complained. You can see where this is going. Every rent increase in town, and rents do change, would be subject to review by someone at DPD.
The City Council is once again playing with the edge of the law in an effort to appease some angry people in the community. If the City starts to decide whether rents are “reasonable” they would likely be in plain violation of State law; it’s called rent control and it isn’t legal.
Even more important: it doesn’t work.
The Council needs to stop playing games with the law (linkage taxes would be illegal too), and start making policies that will increase supply, the best way to lower prices.
Here’s a letter the Washington Rental Housing Association sent to the Council.
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April 21, 2015
Councilmember Mike O’Brien
RE: Draft changes to rental agreements and the Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance
Dear Councilmember O’Brien,
We appreciate the attention City Council is giving to the issues of housing affordability in Seattle, and are eager to continue engaging with the City to find policy solutions where problems exist and city intervention is appropriate.
The proposed legislation your committee will be hearing offers two legislative solutions, one of which is much more pertinent to affordability than the other.
What RHA can agree on is that it is irresponsible and negligent for any rental housing owner to bypass any legal obligation of providing tenant relocation assistance by using a rent increase as a form of “economic eviction.”
RHA agrees that such practices require attention to ensure that the most vulnerable population of renters are afforded the time and ability to find and pay for new housing when required to vacate as allowed by the City’s Just Cause Eviction Ordinance.
Without hitting on specific nuances of proposed new Section 22.210.136 of the Seattle Municipal Code, we are generally supportive of this idea, but believe there are details which require more refinement.
However, as the legislation pertains to rental agreements and the Just Cause Eviction ordinance (SMC 7.24.030, Section C), this is not a demonstration of appropriate policy measure, and RHA strongly opposes any consideration of adoption.
Mandating that rental owners offer term lease renewals for any fixed‐term lease which is expiring, or allow an expiring fixed‐term lease to become month‐to‐month, will only further reduce housing supply, opportunities, and housing predictability for tenants in Seattle.
In many circumstances, a rental owner only wants to rent their property for a finite period of time in anticipation of planned maintenance or development. Under this proposal, those properties which may have been available for a 9 or 12 month period – often at a lower rate to attract a tenant knowing the tenancy is not eligible for long‐term occupancy – would now sit vacant to avoid any risk of having a tenant in perpetuity, or which requires additional expenses to allow for said planning to occur.
If fixed‐term leases offer no benefits to a rental owner they will simply choose to no longer offer them.
This is a detriment to tenants who look forward to signing term leases for the security and predictability of knowing that rules and rents can’t change for a longer period of time, something which Council should be especially sensitive to as it discusses how to increase housing affordability in Seattle.
What are not detrimental to tenants are the protections against discrimination, retaliation, and source of income, to name a few, which are already granted under Seattle law. There is no need for additional layers which provide no added benefit to the landlord – tenant relationship.
We would also point out that many other unintended consequences would come of this legislation, two of which are that long‐term vacation rentals, and subleases could no longer function at risk of those fixed term arrangements being forced to become ongoing tenancies.
Lastly, RHA believes the rental agreement regulation proposal to be in direct conflict with RCW 59.18.220,and therefore preempted by the State Residential Landlord Tenant Act. Any local legislation which prohibits landlords and tenants from mutually agreeing to a fixed term tenancy will be challenged in court and, we believe, invalidated.
Thank you for your consideration, and we look forward to continuing to work with the city in finding creative and appropriate solutions to the housing affordability and supply issues currently faced by
Seattle.
Sincerely,
Bill Hinkle
Executive Director,
Washington Rental Housing Association
Surprise! Build Less, Get Rich, Price Out the Poor
The Registry, a blog about the San Francisco real estate market, ran a great post on housing supply and demand, transportation, and wealth by John McNellis called Let them Commute. Along with the headline’s reference to Marie Antoinette’s famous and misunderstood quote “let them eat cake,” he also quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby: the rich are different than you and me.
Rich cities are different, too, but—like rich people—they have their own seemingly insoluble problems. It’s just that their problems are different. At first blush, less fortunate municipalities would beg for their issues. While every other city from Bangor to Burbank is scrabbling to improve its sputtering job growth, a handful of charmed towns should be embarrassed by their employment riches.
From 2012 to 2014, the San Francisco Bay Area created 382,500 jobs while providing only 68,200 new dwellings (homes and apartments). The forecast for 2015 is roughly another 4 new jobs for each new dwelling. Even if you consider economists’ predictions on a par with those of shamans, you know the dismal science is dead-on about supply and demand. The 2014 median house price in America was $206,800. In San Francisco, it was $1,006,600, five times more. Median apartment rents nationwide are $1,231 while San Francisco’s weigh in at $3,396.
Nothing shocking here. Except McNellis’ article challenges the notion that what’s behind all the hand wringing about housing is really about the costs suffered by the poor renter. If cities that were facing affordability issues really cared about the poor, they’d open their doors widely to growth. But they don’t.
The proof is in the numbers. Create 382,500 jobs but only 68,200 housing units because of more rules and taxes and only the poor suffer. Most social justice advocates in the housing arena advocate for policies that would add costs to housing and reduce production and make it riskier. So do single-family advocates. Their common cause are things like quality of life, neighborhood character, and affordability, but the effect of what they push for is what McNellis describes as the moated city with the drawbridge permanently up.
In the housing debate sometimes we have to say the same thing over, and over, and over again. McNellis’ latest post says it again but says it well.
Roosevelt Reservoir: Broad Consensus on City Owned Land for Housing.
The debate over how to address housing issues in Seattle is a contentious one, right? It’s even hard sometimes to agree on what the problem is and of course that means differences on what to do. But there doesn’t seem to be anyone, developers, non-profit affordable housing advocates, Councilmemeber Sawant, and neighborhoods who disagree about building housing on land owned by the City. But why isn’t the City responding to this consensus item now? And how do I know there is consensus? Check out what the groups I mentioned are saying.
The Community Housing Caucus, a group of non-profit affordable housing advocates, tenant advocates, and social justice advocates have this to say about public land for housing:
Public land availability: Initiate immediately a thorough and comprehensive strategy to acquire and develop unused, underdeveloped, and available public land for a dramatic expansion of the city’s low income housing stock.
- Inventory the City’s available public land
- Inventory land owned by other public entities including King County, Sound Transit,WSDOT, Port, and other state and county agencies
- Prioritize sites that are readily available
How about the Coalition for Housing Solutions, a group we’re a member of, composed of members of the business community and developers? Here’s what they say about building housing on City owned land:
Utilization of publicly-owned land: The City of Seattle and other public agencies own significant parcels of vacant or underutilized land capable of supporting infill housing. There are a variety of models and partnership arrangements that the City could utilize to develop affordable housing on publicly-owned land.
And how about neighborhood groups. Along with the effort to build housing and a park in Roosevelt, that neighborhood is also banding together to put housing on a soon to be decommissioned City reservoir. There plan includes a lot more, but here’s what they suggest about housing on the site:
New residential mid-rise construction. This could be a mix of apartments, condominiums and active senior housing.
Availability of City Land
Each year the City’s Department of Finance and Administrative Services produces a list of City-owned properties and provides it to City Council. The 2014 list is used for this analysis. That list includes a total of 1,194 properties. Not all are suitable for housing, so as requested during follow-up meetings with Councilmember Sawant and her staff, we screened the properties by the following criteria:
- Within City limits (1,040 remaining)
- Not fully utilized for an existing municipal purpose (210 remaining)
- Not utility-owned (177 remaining)
- Greater than 15,000 square feet (33 remaining).
Save the Date: DADU Lunch and Learn at Seattle City Council
A week from today, Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability (PLUS) Committee Chair, Mike O’Brien will host a lunch and learn in the City Council Chambers at noon on Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), especially Detached Accessory Dwelling Units (DADUs) or Backyard Cottages. While they go by different names, ADUs are essentially a way of adding another unit to a single-family home. Often these units, attached or detached from the house, are rented out and generate income for the homeowner. In spite of legislation passed years ago, not very many Detached Accessory Dwelling Units (DADUs) have been built. In contrast, Oregon has seen a renaissance of backyard cottages. Oregon even has a model code for building DADUs which has helped encourage more of them (we were happy to recruit the panel being hosted by Councilmember O’Brien).
The discussion is the beginning of what we hope will be a sustained conversation about how to duplicate Oregon’s successes in creating more housing here in Seattle. The details are below. Please make plans to attend.
