Later this morning, the Seattle City Council will take one step closer to imposing a full fledged Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ) policy requiring fees or inclusion of price controlled housing units with all new construction. Along with the many arguments we’ve made against the proposal there is an additional one: the City Council is acting even though there has been a Determination of Significance (DS) through the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) process required of all legislation affecting land use. The read that the Council has taken on this is that the framework doesn’t make zoning changes itself only sets up a mechanism and it completed a SEPA process last year that had a Determination of Non Significance (DNS). The DS applies to zoning changes. But the question is, “What zoning changes?” None are proposed yet.

These fine grained legal arguments about whether the Council can actually vote while a DS has been issued on as of yet unwritten legislation created zoning changes under the framework in from of them won’t stop them from voting. It may be that a Judge will have to decide whether they acted too hastily on passage of the legislation or not. Neighborhood groups, especially those impacted by upzone proposals in the U District are expressing the most consternation. Builders and developers may join a legal challenge later if there is some possibility of slowing the whole MIZ process down by forcing the City to hold off until the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) required when there is a DS is completed.

Meanwhile, the biggest threat to producers and consumers of housing of all kinds is the whole MIZ proposal itself becoming the tool of various political interests. I’ve posted a video by a local group called Speculation. If the MIZ proposal withstands various legal challenges and the Council grinds ahead, the video lays out what is most likely to happen. Social justice and neighborhood groups are going to put increasing pressure on the City Council to impose more fees and more inclusion mandates. The images in the video would make a credulous person think that the upzones associated with MIZ instead of being modest and incremental increases in zoning capacity are a change to Hong Kong style height and scale. That simply isn’t the case.

While the Council is very likely to align itself with the sentiments and misunderstandings in the video, making the proposal worse that it is even now, that might be a hopeful sign. The more and more requirements piled on will make a legal challenge even easier to make — and even more urgent. It’s too bad the Council can’t just make sound housing policy in the first place.