Yobi Apartments: What Microhousing Could Have Been
It’s been almost a year since the Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability (PLUS) Committee under the leadership of Councilmember Mike O’Brien outlawed microhousing in Seattle. I can still remember Councilmember Burgess chiding the audience that the legislation passed would have no effect on the production of microhousing, even as a letter was arriving from the Mayor threatening a veto because the legislation would, in fact, do just what Burgess willfully said it wouldn’t.
But there is one last example of microhousing under the old code coming online, the Yobi Apartments. Designed by architect and HALA Committee Member (HALA stands for Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda) David Neiman, the project is a stark reminder of how microhousing was improving in design and function all over the city. Neiman held an open house to highlight exactly what the City Council and bureaucrats were missing. Did any Councilmembers or candidates show up? Nope. I guess they were washing their hair.
But lots of other housing enthusiasts did. Here’s what City Builder Rob Harrison and Charlie Cunniff said along fellow City Builder Laura Bernstein’s comprehensive photos. Maybe we still have a chance of bringing more housing like this online.
Open house at an excellent example of micro-housing by Neiman Taber Architects, at 12th and Marion. There definitely have been times in my life I would have loved to live in a building like this. Unfortunately this form of housing has effectively been legislated out of existence by the Mike O’Brien-led PLUS Committee backed by the rest of City Council. All of Council, and all Council candidates, were invited to the tour, but no one showed. I think if they could see this *good* example of micro-housing they would be more open to it.
Rob Harrison on Facebook
I think that David Nieman and his team did a great job for his clients and the neighborhood. There is obviously a demand, as Seattle U has taken out a Master Lease for the entire building in order to house students that want to move on from the dorms. It is a shame that this form will not be able to built now that the City Council has essentially legislated against it. I do not think these are for every neighborhood, and maybe that was part of the problem. There was fear from many in the neighborhoods that this form would come in and overwhelm the “single family character.” But, instead of thoughtfully legislating where these could be built, they have been essentially outlawed. There is a lot of demand for housing like this and more should be allowed to be built.
I have no naive belief that these are for everyone. No form of housing satisfies the entire market. But, these will work well for some, perhaps many, particularly in and adjacent to urban villages, etc. Are they “affordable?” At about $1100, including cable, wifi, utilities, etc and in a dense, walkable neighborhood where you do not need a car, I think that they are.
Also, it was interesting to meet the Ethiopian family developers who have cobbled together the funding to build this and many other projects around our town. They have the immigrant vision that more housing is needed for the people that are already here, are being born here and are moving here. They also have the drive to create housing, which is not for the timid as it can be a difficult process.Charlie Cunniff on Facebook
Photos by Laura Bernstein on Facebook
Seattle Doesn’t Need Impact Fees
As if things weren’t bad enough, the Seattle City Council is considering impact fees, the charges applied to new development allowed by State law to off set the impacts of new growth. Largely limited to the suburbs, impact fees add costs to new housing and therefore increase the price of that housing. In a way, impact fees make more sense than Councilmember Mike O’Brien’s linkage tax, and illegal tax on all new housing built in the city because there is actually some related infrastructure built that benefits the residents of new housing with impact fees. We should be wary when people start saying things like, “growth should pay for growth,” when they argue for impact fees. The truth is that in Seattle, it already does. Impact fees here would simply make housing less affordable.
I have already pointed out that new development already pays lots and lots of fees, taxes, and charges that contribute adjacent infrastructure (e.g. sidewalks and drainage) and infrastructure all over the city. Take a look at the Cumulative Reserve Subfund (CRS), funded by Real Estate Excise Taxes (REET). Here’s a breakdown from last year’s City budget proposal on what the CRS pays for citywide:
► CRS REET I Support to Transportation $3,500,000
► CRS REET II Support to Transportation $26,534,000
► CRS Street Vacation Support to Transportation $2,056,000
► CRS Support for Operating & Maintenance Expenditures – $1,000,000
► CRS Support for Operating & Maintenance Expenditures – $1,000,000
The CRS also funds about $400,000 in tenant relocation assistance. And that vacation support to transportation? That comes out of the fees builders and developers pay when they get an alley or right of way vacated by the City; it’s something that they pay fair market value to the City.
So tell the Seattle Times, the City Council, and others that want growth to pay for growth that, in Seattle, it already does. Oh, and guess what? Almost all of these costs are also paid by non-profit housing developers buying land and building housing with subsidies and borrowed money. In the case of private for-profit developers these costs are absorbed by the renters. In the case of non-profit housing, that gets paid for by, ironically, the taxpayer since the subsidy gets consumed by these costs rather than by actual housing construction. That’s part of the reason affordable housing is so expensive to build.
Instead of trying to address these costs in ways that would reduce housing costs, the City Council is making it worse, spending precious time trying to figure out how to add even more costs to housing and thus to its price for the consumer with impact fees. It’s like I said over the weekend, sometimes I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Reinventing Microhousing – Come Tour the Yobi Apartments
Event InformationTUE, AUG 25, 2015 AT 5:30 PM
Yobi Apartments, Seattle, WA
Event Description
The Yobi Apartments are a significant step forward in the design of Urban Microhousing. The Yobi was designed from the ground up with the conviction that congregate housing can be a desirable housing option where the architecture can support chance interaction and help to build community among the residents. For microhousing proponents and critics alike, we welcome you our open house to tour this project to learn more about what microhousing is and what it can be.
WHEN
Tuesday, August 25, 2015 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM (PDT)
WHERE
Yobi Apartments – 1219 E Marion St Seattle, WA 98122 – View Map
HALA Needs Neighborhood Development Managers to Survive
Here’s a Facebook exchange over at City Builders about my last post about neighborhood process and the recommendations of the Mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Committee in which I pointed out that the HALA Committee WAS the public process for future upzones that will create affordable housing:
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Michael Taylor-Judd NO, the process was NOT the HALA Committee, Roger Valdez. The HALA Committee did what it was tasked to do — make recommendations. The next step in the process is for those recommendations to be communicated to the public and refined.
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Roger Valdez Any “refinements” means possibly busting up the “Grand Bargain,” the major compromise in the HALA process. There’s not much to discuss. The upzones are clearly outlined in the agreement. -
Michael Taylor-Judd If the members thought they were going to make 65 recommendations, and see all of them implemented with little discussion… then they weren’t very well prepped for their work.
This is a crucial phase for the HALA package of recommendations but especially for the so called “Grand Bargain.” If 30 different neighborhoods are allowed to second guess the recommendations and substantially change or attenuate them, the whole deal would likely fall apart. But can Seattle resist the urge to fuss and fret and wring its hands over the recommendations? Can Seattle’s civic leadership say the deal won’t be renegotiated neighbor by neighbor over the next two years? Is there precedent for imposing a solution?
There is. When the Growth Management Act (GMA) passed through the legislature in the late 80s it called for very specific planning for growth in cities in Washington, particularly in the State’s largest city. The solution was the comprehensive plan promulgated by Seattle’s Mayor Norm Rice. It didn’t try to renegotiate the basic principles of the GMA, that growth would happen mainly in the city not outside of it, but it offered a way to plan for that growth, the Comprehensive Plan with an Urban Village component.
This is why I’ve called for a restoration of the Neighborhood Development Manager, the crew of six people hired at the end of the last big planning process in the 1990s. The NDMs (and I worked as an NDM from the beginning of the program) had a unique role, brokering and leveraging new development for neighborhood benefit. We need this function restored at the City as soon as possible! In the 90s neighborhoods had the expectation that growth was coming, even if they didn’t want it. The question was explicitly, “what’s in it for us?” The answer was a list of neighborhood improvements facilitated aggressively by City staff committed to keeping the promises made during the planning process.
I think the NDM job was still just about the best job I ever had. I was a neighborhood planner in two different neighborhoods, and when I took on the job I was determined to get as many things done as possible. People put thousands of hours into planning and the last thing we needed was to betray that trust by putting their work on the shelf, shrugging, and doing whatever was already going to happen. The majority of neighbors will accept the upzones even if they are imposed just they way they were mapped out in the HAPA process; I know they will. But only if the statement is made clearly at the outset, “these are not up for negotiation, but we will work with you every step of the way to make these changes mean a better life for you and your family where you live.” Anything less than this will open up the recommendations and wipe out the delicate balance.
MFTE Reauthorization Deliberations Begin
Today at 9:30AM the Seattle City Council’s Committee on Housing Affordability, Human Services and Economic Resiliency will begin the process to renew the City’s Multifamily Tax Exemption (MFTE) Program. The program has created over 4,000 affordable housing units all over the city, and very efficiently. Here’s a quick rundown from a previous post:
Multifamily Tax Exemption Program (MFTE)
The MFTE program grants a property tax exemption to housing projects that set aside at least 20 percent of its units for housing for people who earn between roughly 60 and 80 percent of AMI.
There are currently 4,369 units in the MFTE program. The total annual cost of the program in deferred property tax is $3.6 million. That means that, on average, an MFTE unit costs the city under $900 per year. [1]
Costs to Produce 1400 Units Using MFTE
- $860 X 1400 = $1,204,000
- Cost: $10 for a median valued single-family home per year[2]
The program works. But Council consistently frets over it being a giveaway, which, of course it is: to renters! The exemption certainly benefits the pro forma of a builder, but it also creates rent contolled units and certainty for thouands of tenants who pay less money for rent in regular, market rate buildings all over town.
That fretting ends up, sometimes, in changes like moving the Area Median Income (AMI) threshold down rather than up. That means the subsidy granted to the renter exceeds, usually, the benefit to the builder. In fact, as we took lots of pains to point out, lowering that threshold ends up meaning the projects lose money, and thus opt out of participating in the program. That means fewer affordable units.
We explained the math in a letter to the Council:
We’ll see what the fact impervious Council comes up with when it renews MFTE. We’ll ask tomorrow that they work on improving it — not ruining it with requirements and AMI levels that insure nobody will use it resulting in fewer affordable units.
