Can it be that it was all so simple then
Or has time rewritten every line
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we?
Could we?

Sigh.

More than 4 years ago, in the summer of 2014, we put together an appeal of the Determination of Non-Signficance (DNS) on a raft of proposed changes to Seattle’s low-rise zones. That proposal was an effort to undo the density that was intended by previous legislation. Then, as developers and builders did just what the legislation intended, building more apartments rather than townhomes, the angry neighbors showed up demanding blood. Councilmember Sally Clark and her colleagues complied, proposing legislation that forced inclusion of lots of dead space in allow Floor Area Ratio (FAR). The result was fewer, larger, and more expensive apartments at a time when what was needed was more, smaller, less expensive units.

Well, here we are 4 years later and things have gotten worse at City Hall. People at City Hall trot out the “housing crisis” phrase on an almost daily basis. It’s like listening to a pull string doll that pulls it’s own string: “Housing crisis! Housing crisis! Housing crisis!” Yet, what the City does is the exact opposite of what is called for in an economy with housing scarcity: allow and incentivize more and more housing. If only when they pulled they actually did something to support that policy or even better just left well enough alone. But that’s asking for too much. Just recently the City dropped another DNS, a document that claims that the bureaucrats reviewed a proposal and determined that, if implemented, it would have no impact on the environment. This one is on impact fees.

Now I’ve said before, impact fees are legal and well litigated and in many ways better than the inflationary and illegal Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ) shake down the City calls Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA). The latest DNS is for a change in the Comprehensive Plan that would create an opening in the plan for imposition of fees. That legislation would require another process to determine where the money would go and how the fees would be assessed. So an appeal of the DNS on impact fees wouldn’t be on the specifics or legality of impact fees but rather on whether the City has done what it should to assess the impact.

Angry neighbors have turned the appeal into a sacrament at this point, raising money and hiring attorneys to waylay and harass proposals for modest changes to back yard cottage requirements or stalling MHA because they don’t want more people moving into their neighborhoods. Ironically, the neighborhoods are helping out thousands of people with the MHA appeal, keeping it off the books and allowing projects to get vested before it can be implemented citywide. This means hundreds of units will avoid having to absorb the cost of fees; people who need housing won’t have to subsidize MHA with higher rents.

What would an appeal of the latest impact fee gambit look like and what would it do? It would likely be based on the fact that impact fees won’t be paid by developers but by people who need housing; rents and housing costs will go up. Second, like any DNS appeal, the argument would be that the City didn’t do enough to figure out what impact fees would do to the local housing economy and how that would affect the environment. In the end, even with a favorable decision, the appeal would not necessarily stop the eventual imposition of impact fees.

An appeal of the impact fee DNS would help make the case that the proposal really did not do what it should, make the City reconsider, and, ultimately, maybe, they’d drop the idea. More fees won’t lower housing prices, period. Perhaps that notion would catch on at City Hall.

As someone we all know likes to say, “We’ll see what happens.”

For old time’s sake I thought I’d share the heart of our low-rise appeal. You’d think by now we’d be beyond all this process and be building an abundance of housing, of all kinds in every neighborhood for people of all levels of income.

DECISION BEING APPEALED

Smart Growth Seattle appeals the City’s SEPA DNS issued for Land Use Code Text Amendments for Lowrise Multi-Family Zoning Code Adjustments (the “Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments”).  A copy of the DNS is enclosed.

APPEAL INFORMATION

1.         What is your interest in this decision? (State how you are affected by it)

Roger Valdez is the Director of Smart Growth Seattle, and a resident of the City of Seattle.  Smart Growth Seattle is a non-profit membership organization that advocates for policies to increase housing supply and meet demand for housing created by new jobs.  While named “Smart Growth Seattle,” the group recognizes that the impacts of land use decisions taken by the City of Seattle extend beyond the City’s incorporated boundaries.  Therefore, Smart Growth Seattle advocates for the implementation of sound growth strategies under the State’s Growth Management Act (“GMA”), including creating more housing choices and supply in Seattle that support more growth inside the City, rather than outside the Urban Growth Boundary.  Smart Growth Seattle asserts that the current proposal to adopt the Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments and the environmental impacts of the proposal are antithetical to principles of smart growth, the GMA, and the City’s own Comprehensive Plan.

Smart Growth Seattle and Roger Valdez have participated in public meetings and provided comment on the proposed Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments, including written correspondence to the City.  Smart Growth Seattle’s members (and the entire region) will be adversely affected by the significant adverse environmental impacts of this legislation.  In short, the Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments will eliminate viable housing choices in the City, forcing future residents to either pay more for housing in the City or face longer commutes by living elsewhere.

2.         What are your objections to the decision? (List and describe what you believe to be the errors, omissions, or other problems with this decision.)

By way of background, the legislation appears to have been proposed originally not by a member of the Seattle City Council or a City Department, but by a group of neighbors who put together a petition.  In their petition they demanded that the City Council, in their words “rollback” height increases allowed in previous 2010 legislation.  The 2010 legislation authorized increased height for some buildings in the LR 3 zone, in urban villages and centers, up to 40 feet, and updated other circa 1980s development standards for the lowrise zone.  If adopted, the currently proposed Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments would substantially restrict the development capacity in the City’s lowrise zones, eliminating thousands of housing units that otherwise could be built.  Smart Growth Seattle’s position is that the current lowrise zones are working well, allowing appropriately scaled and a wide variety of multifamily housing that meets much of the housing needs in neighborhoods like Capitol Hill.  The City’s SEPA review failed to properly evaluate the significant adverse environmental impacts of the proposed Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments.

First, the City’s SEPA review and DNS failed to identify and evaluate the land use impacts of the Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments on the remainder of the City of Seattle lands that are not zoned lowrise.  For example, the Director’s Report and Recommendation on the Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments opens by noting that “[r]eceiving growth in lowrise-zoned areas allows single-family zones to remain single-family neighborhoods.”  Despite this acknowledgement, the City’s DNS discloses no potential impact on increased development demand for single-family zoned lands, and having failed to identify the impact, fails to analyze it as well, let alone impose mitigation.

Second, the City’s DNS inaccurately portrays the reduction of development capacity associated with the Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments as resulting in only reductions in impacts as to height/bulk/scale, intensity of use, and transportation impacts on neighboring lands.  The Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments will result in a loss of development capacity of up to 40% on some LR 3 zoned lands.  Elimination of development capacity of up to 40% constitutes a profound environmental impact, since the people who are coming to Seattle in future years will have fewer choices when they decide where to live.  In recent testimony before the Seattle City Council, the City’s Department of Planning and Development (DPD) staff said that 120,000 people will be moving into the City of Seattle in the next two decades, creating a demand for at least 75,000 new units of housing. The proposed legislation undermines the City’s capacity to meet that demand.  Therefore, and as noted above, this means there will be increased pressure on the intensity of use in other zones, including single-family zones, due to the reduction in housing capacity in the lowrise zones, resulting in a significant adverse environmental impact.  The legislation also will result in new significant adverse environmental impacts as to transportation, as more new regional residents are forced to find housing further from, and commute longer distances, to their jobs.  Some of this transportation and transit impact will fall inside the City of Seattle and some will fall outside the City borders, but the City failed to meet its obligation to identify and evaluate either these internal or extra-jurisdictional impacts.

Third, the City’s SEPA review failed to identify or analyze the likely impact on transportation and transit services of the revisions in the Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments that will result in less parking being built for projects in the lowrise zones.  The elimination of the FAR exemption for basements will lead to a significant increase in the number of projects built without any parking.  The SEPA transportation analysis is incorrect, as it does not identify or analyze impacts on transportation and transit use associated with the reduction or elimination of parking.

Fourth, the DNS asserts only a minor impact on housing affordability.  Again, reduction of any development potential will have an impact on affordability.  Reduction of development potential on some LR3 sites of up to 40 percent (a 20 percent reduction for counting exterior circulation as Floor Area Ratio (FAR) plus a further 25 percent reduction for removal of the basement FAR exemption), will have far more than a minor impact on housing affordability, meaning that the impact on housing affordability is a significant adverse environmental impact.

Fifth, the DNS references the 2010 legislation, asserting that the Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments somehow will bring the City back to what the City thought it adopted and analyzed in 2010.  However, there appears to have been no formal adoption or incorporation of that 2010 SEPA analysis in the now current Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments SEPA process.  Accordingly, the City may not rely on the 2010 SEPA analysis to justify the current DNS.

Sixth, the Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments include revisions to eliminate an existing FAR exemption for unenclosed exterior stairs, hallways, and breezeways.  The current FAR exemption allows the construction of low energy building types with healthy open spaces.  Elimination of this exemption will result in an effective prohibition of this building type.  The City’s SEPA review failed to identify or analyze the significant adverse environmental impact of increased energy usage in multifamily housing resulting from the Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments.

Seventh, at the same time that the City is assessing the Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments, the City also is reviewing other code provisions affecting microhousing projects, which are often located within the LR3 zones.  Nothing in the City’s SEPA review for the Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments identifies or evaluates the potential cumulative impacts on all of the issues listed above of making uncoordinated multiple code changes.

3.     What relief do you want? (Specify what you want the Examiner to do: reverse the decision, modify conditions, etc.)

The City’s SEPA analysis failed to identify and/or fully analyze, let alone propose mitigation for, the adverse significant environmental impacts listed above.  The DNS should be reversed and the City directed to prepare an environmental impact statement on these impacts.  In the alternative, the DNS should be reversed and remanded to DPD for additional analysis and imposition of mitigation conditions necessary to mitigate the adverse impacts associated with the Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments.  In addition, the Appellants request such other and further relief as may be appropriate  under law.