2015: Year of the City Builder
Posted by Roger Valdez on Monday, January 5, 2015 · Leave a Comment
This post is really an e-mail we sent to the broader development and builder community and it highlights some of what we did last year and what we’re looking to do this year. Last year, I said 2015 would be the year of supply. This year will be the Year of the City Builder, the construction workers, bankers, investors, lawyers, developers, builders, architects, designers, and everyone who works and takes risks building housing and workspace in our city. Whether building a townhouse project, an affordable apartment building, whether using a spreadsheet or a hammer, building our city is a noble profession creating jobs and housing for people today and in the future. That will be our guiding theme in 2015. Happy New Year!
Sixty-five percent of Seattle is zoned for single-family homes. But in advocating for mircohousing and small-lot development, Roger Valdez has challenged this sacrosanct notion. With Smart Growth Seattle, his lobbying group for developers–Seattle’s traditional bogeymen–he’s emerged as a leader in the conversation about city growth. And he isn’t afraid to call the discussion what it is–a battle. To Valdez, the obvious opponent is the Seattle City Council, whom he believes is “about to make a 100-year mistake.” The council’s emphasis on taxing and limiting new development, he says, will create a crisis as more and more people move here. He successfully lobbied to postpone legislation that would have reduced housing capacity in Capitol Hill and Ballard. And while he lost his fight for microhousing, including aPodments, his noisy testimony nearly convinced the mayor to veto the council’s restrictive bill. Just as important, but far more personal, Valdez aspires to change the antideveloper narrative. In five years he hopes “we can look back and say we finally got to a place where developers are not the target of abuse, ridicule and derision, but are seen as the builders of the future that they are.
The story really isn’t about me, but it is about our broader efforts as a community to stand up and together for more housing supply for all levels of income in Seattle. We know that if we build more housing we will create more housing choice and opportunity for all people that want to live and work in Seattle. I said we’d make 2014 the year of supply in Seattle, shifting the conversation to asking, “how do we get more housing.” Together, I think we succeeded in doing that.
We will keep up the fight–and yes it is a fight–in 2015. In 2015 Smart Growth Seattle will continue our advocacy efforts on behalf of developers and builders, the people you employ, your investors and lenders, and most importantly the people who live in the homes you build, and work in the office space you create.
As you know, this isn’t an easy or simple effort, and it isn’t about saying “no” all the time. We have to be supportive of housing efforts broadly, including our colleagues in the non-profit sector and those working to house the poorest and most challenged families in our city.
That’s why we’ve been working with the Housing Development Consortium to identify areas in the code and permitting process that
add costs to all housing, both subsidized and market rate and to gather support for the
State’s Housing Trust Fund and other local funding alternatives. We have also started working with the Department of Corrections, the Rental Housing Association, and the Committee to End Homelessness to push for continued support of the
DOC’s Housing Voucher Program. And we’ve encouraged the Office of Housing to implement a Statement of Legislative Intent offered by Councilmember Bagshaw to better track subsidized housing in the city to avoid inconveniencing tenants and vilifying builders
when those buildings get sold.
We are also engaged in a
deep analysis of available housing data for our city. In order to influence the outcome of the Mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, we need to be able to authoritatively represent where the greatest housing challenges are in our city, what’s already being done to address them, and what interventions are most appropriate to create more housing options for people who live here and who will move here in the future. We believe the data validate that we should adjust
the great tools we already have like the Multifamily Tax Exemption and the Housing Levy that already produce lots of housing.
Finally, we’ll work to convince King County to change the way it imposes Sewer Capacity Charges. We think the current scheme of assessing multifamily housing projects for sewer infrastructure use is unfair, imposes a disproportionate cost burden on renters who use the infrastructure less, and tends to disincentivize sustainable practices. This work will be in the context of our ongoing work with CIty Departments to
reduce the impact of fees, permits, and process on the cost of producing housing, costs that simply increase housing prices.
But we need your help to continue this important work. There are three ways you support our effort.
- We need your financial support. Contributing to Smart Growth Seattle helps keep our modestly staffed effort (1 paid staff and volunteers) going. We think this is a high yield investment not just in successfully opposing the linkage tax, but also being vigilant on an array of other regulatory and political issues that will impact your business and customers in the year ahead, like design review (Checks can be made to Smart Growth Seattle, attention Roger Valdez, and sent to the address below).
- Second, we need to hear from you. Hearing from you makes a big difference. Messages of support or just letting us know when we’ve had a positive impact on the conversation makes going back to the front lines just a little bit easier. And we are here for you. Learning about issues you experience day to day helps us propose systemic changes to the process that can lower housing costs.
- Third, tell Councilmembers and City officials how you feel! We can arm you with facts for your communicatios, but the people writing the rules and managing the process that affects your customers and your business, need to know you aren’t happy with them. Kshama Sawant doesn’t cut a swath through the politics of our city by being polite; she does it by being clear about what she thinks the problem is and demanding a solution (like rent control). We must do the same thing or we run the risk of being dismissed.
Thank you for the work you have done this year to build the future of our city. We are facing many challenges in the year ahead, but, in the end, I am confident we will win! But the better future of our city depends on us being strong when things seem to be at their worst.
