There has been a lot of breathless hullabaloo about Seattle’s planning commission report pointing out that single-family zoning is a problem. The headline for their report in the Seattle Times was Seattle’s housing crunch could be eased by changes to single-family zoning, City report says.  Meanwhile, all sorts of noise has been made about some changes in Minneapolis to single-family zoning with Reason declaring, Minneapolis Strikes a Blow for Affordable Housing by Slashing Zoning Restrictions. Without going into the details of either, let’s curb our enthusiasm. Simply ending a zone doesn’t mean duplexes and triplexes will start popping up like toadstools after a heavy rain. Here’s why.

First, if tomorrow the Seattle City Council simply deleted the single-family zone and replaced it with the “you-can-build-triplexes–zone” someone would have to go and build all that new housing. Today’s existing zoning allows housing already. Density and typology aren’t necessarily the problem. When you add up all the time to get a permit, costs of utilities, and inspections, and a variety of other requirements we’ve listed before, the costs are prohibitive.

Part of this regulatory overreach includes things like unit size, bike and car parking requirements, and higher fees for using the right of way for construction and bigger set backs for overhead power lines. All of these things are constraining new housing, not typology or density. Even where density is allowed, building is taking up to five years to complete, and costing a lot more and that is before the imposition of impact fees and Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA).

Second, this is a pipe dream. While the Commission is right to call out the problem of lack of housing supply in the face of rising demand (though they won’t call it that) that happens when land is used inefficiently, there simply isn’t the political will in Seattle to take this on. At this point, I think it would be far better to negotiate a cease fire with angry neighbors with the condition being that in all areas where dense multifamily is supposed to be allowed, that it be built without any comment, interference or hassle from anyone living in a single-family zone. Abolish design review!

I was anti-single-family when it wasn’t cool remember? From the Seattle Times:

Here’s his reaction to an urbanist who wrote that Murray’s single-family-neighborhood strategy failed because it didn’t reach out in friendlier terms. “You can’t go out to Jurassic Park,” Valdez sighed, “and sweet talk the raptors back into the cage.”

And remember also that the Council outlawed single-family housing in single-family zones when they squashed small-lot housing as a solution for more for sale housing product. If one considers the hassles created by single-family protests that have beleaguered many projects that are not even in single-family zones it would be clear that this whole conversation is misdirected. Yes, politicians need to say no to single-family neighbors. But I see no signs of them actually doing that in favor of the people that actually build and operate housing.

When I put these two realities together, I have to say that I am far more worried about the harm that MHA is going to do to multifamily projects than the tiny benefit of the Planning Commission acknowledging what everyone already knows: we have way too much land set aside for grossly inefficient single-family use.

Finally, if we needed an interim solution we could also create a tax not for people trying to build apartments and townhouses which is what MHA truly is, but a tax on single-family housing which we really want less of. “Oh but that’s illegal!” Right. So is MHA. If we want to illegally redistribute wealth, why not create a tax on lot size then use that money to subsidize renters. You want your big lot with one house? Fine. You’ll have to pay for it. That makes more sense than discouraging multifamily construction with a tax today while pining over a future when the Council abolishes single-family zones.

So please, stop goofing around with single-family zoning, at least here in Seattle, and put your energy in crushing forever the MHA program and the idea behind it, that new market rate housing is an impact that needs to be discouraged and punished with fees and taxes. The specter of MHA is far more concerning in the short term than the long-term benefits of an exercise in finally putting in writing what is plainly obvious about land use in Seattle.