Yesterday, the Seattle City Council went ahead and did exactly what we asked them not to do: pass numerous restrictions on microhousing that will make them fewer and more expensive. Here’s a great summary of what the Council passed by Publicola’s Erica Barnett.

Council members—headed up by Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability Committee chair Mike O’Brien—proposed restrictions that went far beyond requiring each living space to count as an individual unit. The legislation will also require multiple sinks, set a minimum apartment size (220 square feet, as opposed to the previously proposed 220-square-foot average), a mandate for minimum parking standards, and an increase in the size of common areas, among other regulations. Microhousing proponents argued that the proposed new rules would make it more difficult, and more expensive, to build the relatively affordable units.

We had offered a compromise of putting most projects through design review, and we shared lots of information, including the most comprehensive analysis on rents caused by legislation I’ve ever seen. But nothing moved Councilmembers who seem impervious to facts these days. Here’s what I said to Publicola:

This vote gives the council the best of both worlds; they can claim to have simply regulated microhousing publicly, but know that neighbors are cheering because they’ve, in truth, outlawed the product. The council again today has demonstrated a ‘fingers in their ears’ approach to housing. Hear the facts about how their actions will actually boost rents, but take the action anyway. One more step down the road to becoming San Francisco.

But even worse than that, the Department of Planning and Development has turned the screws on microhousing projects that are vested and in the pipeline for permitting, subjecting those projects built to the existing interpretation of the code to new rules based on a court decision a month ago.

We’re reviewing our options, including a path through the courts seeking damages for builders who are now having to redesign their projects to avoid a costly trip through design review and SEPA or a year long wait for an appeal to the court decision. I’ll post the language we used in our letter asking the Mayor to reconsider this decision.

What we’re seeing the City Council do is continue to bargain away housing capacity to make angry neighbors happy. While Tom Rasmussen thinks he’ll never have to talk about microhousing again, he’s wrong: we’re going to make it an issue in next year’s election. The Council has to be accountable to the people looking for housing as they rule and fee us into higher and higher prices.