Paul Schell: He Taught Us How to ‘Grow With Grace’
Paul Schell, the 50th Mayor of Seattle, died on Sunday morning. I was a Neighborhood Development Manager during his administration and had the opportunity to work closely with him on implementing neighborhood plans. I also got to know him and his wife Pam personally as the proprietors of the Inn at Langley their hotel and restaurant on Whidbey Island. Schell’s passing reminds us of his legacy; Schell had a vision for Seattle as a city where private entrepreneurial spirit and development open the way for public good and benefit when neighborhoods fight for good things from growth, not against what they fear from the future.
In some ways, Mayor Schell seemed all Big City. He was a lawyer and developer who, as a private citizen, carried a lot influence. He was, when I first met him 17 years ago, when he was running for Mayor, an ‘establishment’ figure, seemingly favoring downtown moneyed interests over neighborhoods.
However, he believed in neighborhood planning as much as neighbors like me. He and I went to so many meetings together when I was a neighbor that once, when he saw me coming, he said, “you again!” But he appreciated our persistence.
Later, when I was hired to make neighborhood plans real, I found that Schell was anything but a slick downtown guy. In fact, he was true to his small town roots, more interested in barn raising than high rises.
One example was when he championed replacement of a surface parking lot in the Admiral neighborhood with a layer of underground parking in the development that was eliminating the cheap off street parking. The project was controversial because it involved using some City resources to match neighborhood and developer contributions to build an additional layer of parking to meet parking demand.
Looking back, it’s a project that now I might not support; but the neighbors and I put our efforts together the with developer and City staff and the Mayor to make it pencil. The principle was that neighbors collaborating with the City and private developers should be rewarded with City resources for trying to make growth work.
Imagine that instead of complaining about lost parking a neighborhood offered to pitch in to help replace that lost parking. Buying more parking might not be the best use of resources, but the neighborhood saw a chance to contribute, and Mayor Schell met them more than halfway, committing funds and staff time. In the end, the Council ended up killing the deal; even back then, that Council struggled with new ideas.
There were times when I wish Schell had been heavier handed, more directive. After all, the neighborhoods spent years making these plans why let a bureaucrat in the Parks Department, the Strategic Planning Office, or a Councilmember stand in the way?
But Mayor Schell was a patient guide of the neighborhood planning process. I said we should put up signs next to projects that said, “This Neighborhood Planning Success Brought to You by Your Neighbors and the City of Seattle, Paul Schell, Mayor.
That might have been his successor’s style, but it wasn’t Schell’s. In fact it was a struggle amidst the other things going on around us—WTO, Mardi Gras Riots, an earthquake, and 9/11—to get attention in the 2001 elections for the many, many neighborhood success Mayor Schell helped bring about during his time in office. In the end, he couldn’t overcome the zeitgeist and he became identified with what was happening around us rather than what he accomplished.
In truth, the Schell years was a renaissance of neighborhood activism with a purpose: to capture the value created by economic and population growth to benefit neighborhoods. Parks, drainage projects, libraries, and yes, even traffic circles were popping up everywhere. And there were few angry surly neighbors wanting to punish developers and stop growth. Many of the most skeptical neighbors in West Seattle—heart of the opposition to the original Comprehensive Plan and Urban Villages—sat around the table and planned and talked about the future.
Sadly, with Schell’s departure and the firing of Jim Diers, neighborhood plan implementation was no longer as robust. And, in my view, over the next 8 years, neighborhoods grew restless and the old suspicions about growth and change flourished. Now angry neighbors fight against growth and change, opposing density and new development at every turn.
Somehow, like Nixon going to China, it had to be a developer that could make this balance of growth, neighborhood identity, and change all work together. And Schell had a light touch, giving neighborhoods resources to process themselves into a consensus about how to change instead of leaving them to coalesce into a hornet’s nest of opposition to growth.
Paul Schell’s passing on Sunday is a personal loss. Over the intervening years I looked forward to running into Paul at the Inn at Langley when I was able to make the trip. I wish I could enjoy one last great meal there with him—no political talk, just food, wine, and travel. But this City will, in the years ahead, look back at what some saw as turbulent years as the time when Paul Schell showed us how to “grow with grace.”
Proposal On Microhousing: Let People Choose
July 22, 2014
Dear Councilmember O’Brien,
Thank you very much for patiently engaging all sides on the microhousing issue. We understand that it is difficult to navigate to compromise or consensus on this challenging issue. However, as a city poised over the next 20 years to welcome 120,000 new people, we must find solutions to provide a variety of housing choices for all of our new citizens. Microhousing must continue to be part of that solution.
First, the current proposal is better than the proposed Department of Planning and Development proposal but not by much. Some neighbors want less density and that’s why they are pushing for bigger units and more rules. As a matter or principle, we think it is bad policy to bargain away units to make people living here today happy at the expense of new people residing here in the future.
Second, we are willing to have larger projects go through full design review and smaller ones through streamlined design review. It’s the size of the project—it’s volume and massing—that arguably has an impact on the neighborhood. We object to efforts to micromanage the lives, lifestyles, and choices of residents of the projects by mandating room sizes and sinks, for example. And we don’t support the idea of having a few neighbors dictate the decisions of builders about how to meet housing demand anymore than we’d support them making demands about what’s on the menu at a new restaurant.
That also means we don’t agree with the idea of “small efficiency apartments.” We appreciate the efforts to stretch this term as a way to both codify microhousing and to create flexibility. But it takes us backwards by subjecting projects to SEPA review based on units and needless standards that exceed International Building Code requirements.
We don’t object to SEPA process when it is appropriate, but the City has deliberately moved away from subjecting multifamily projects to SEPA review in areas rich in transit. As a matter of policy, we are, as a city, moving toward a review of projects based not on units but on overall size.
Subjecting microhousing to design review would result in unintended consequences. For example, a 4800 SF lot in the MR zone in an urban village could be developed with as many as 20 “conventional” apartments and not undergo design review. But a microhousing project of the same exact size (floor area, height, volume) would have to go through design review simply because the units are microhousing.
Why would we single out this product for more arduous and costly process?
What we propose is the following:
- Continue to allow both microhousing and congregate housing in all commercial and multifamily residential zones such as MR, HR, SM, C, NC, L, LR, etc.;
- Not allow microhousing or congregate housing in single family zones
- For projects that are 40,000 square feet or more, full design review; and
- For smaller projects of 15,000 sf and above, a streamlined design review process.
This allows for notice to neighbors for most projects and for participation in the design process through design review. When looking at the six projects submitted in the first half of 2014 (3 congregate and 3 micro), 2 congregates with 70% of the total rooms would go through full design review and 1 congregate with 12.4% of the rooms would go through streamlined design review. That is over 82% of the rooms and covers the larger projects that are of most concern with the neighborhoods.
The design review process, while broken, at least offers a process to achieve resolution of issues for neighbors and flexibility from design standards for developers. It also avoids the micromanagement of the inside of the buildings, which we oppose both in principle and because such interference can make projects infeasible, incentivizing larger apartments. Larger apartments will be more expensive and defeat the purpose of both density and affordability.
We would like to discuss this with you in more detail. Thank you for your consideration.
Don’t Make it Worse, Make it Better: Time for a Housing Plan
Often City Council meetings can get really crowded and not everyone gets a chance to speak. And two minutes goes by really fast. So, I am posting what I plan to say at tonight’s Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability meeting on Incentive Zoning. Whether I get to say it or not, you get to read it here first.
The reports you have commissioned to analyze the Incentive Zoning program as well as data we have presented confirm that Incentive Zoning is of very limited value and does not produce much affordable housing. In fact, incentive zoning isn’t an incentive at all; it’s a tax on a good we need more of, housing. Adding costs and risk by taxing additional Floor Area Ratio that would produce more housing and lower prices is a disincentive to build more. Why would you raise the fee?
Also, we’ve pointed out more than once, that the motivation for using this tax—the creation of so called workforce housing—is misguided since every analysis of housing need shows that housing priced so that people who earn 60 to 80 percent of Area Median Income (AMI) is not scarce at all in Seattle. Instead, housing accessible to people at lower levels of income, 30, 40, and 50 percent of AMI is what is in limited supply.
In spite of this, the Council is still mulling over an increase in the fee, and this in the complete absence of any plan to increase housing supply where it is needed most. And your consultants recommend you have a plan. It’s yet another example of how the Council is considering a change that won’t make the housing picture better for the 120,000 new residents moving to Seattle in the years ahead, but will, in fact, make things worse.
As you consider your options, please begin with developing a broad, thoughtful, and data driven plan that can guide both the private and public sector with incentives and appropriate regulation and subsidy to meeting housing demand in the years ahead. Simply raising the fees won’t do anything to affect prices broadly and it will, most assuredly, add costs and risks that will have the opposite effect.
We believe 2015 election will be a referendum on how this body addressed housing issues and prices in 2014. This is an opportunity to do the right thing, promote the creation of more housing of all kinds all over our city.
Why Small Houses Matter
I recently watched an episode of the FYI Network‘s new small-home reality show, Tiny House Nation, a show hosted by renovation experts John Weisbarth and Zack Giffin. Weisbarth and Giffin travel the country helping families design and build tiny homes. The homes can be in the city or the country, mobile or stationary, but they have to be smaller than 500 square feet. As I watched the episode, in which John and Zack help a Tennessee family of three squeeze into a 172-square foot home, I realized the tiny house movement has lessons for Seattle.
It has been written ad nauseam on this blog and elsewhere that Seattle is in the midst of a major housing crunch. Part of the solution is to allow more housing supply, as Smart Growth Seattle has repeatedly pointed out (and if you haven’t already, watch this explanatory video then go sign the petition). But an equally salient point is that we also need those new houses to take many forms and many sizes; detached single family, apartments, rowhouses, cottages, etc. This not only creates options for buyers, but also expands the range of housing prices, which allows more people to find the right home at the right price.
Unfortunately, the Seattle City Council made this a little harder when it legislated small-lot construction recently, which will discourage the construction of smaller homes. And it is in the midst of creating microhousing legislation that will likewise add barriers to the construction of this non-traditional housing option. Many people in the city oppose these non-traditional small-lot homes and microhouses, and the sentiment behind it is not complicated: these homes are different-looking
When neighbors say they are opposed to a housing project because they think it will “change neighborhood character,” what they really mean is that they don’t want the project to look different than their house and the houses already in the neighborhood. And if you live in a neighborhood full of 2,300 square foot homes (the U.S. average), then a 300 square foot tiny house is certainly different. But different doesn’t have to be bad. In fact, when it comes to smaller-than-average homes, I would contend that different is very, very good. After watching Tiny House Nation, I jotted down four reasons why small homes are superior to large homes:
1. Living small means reevaluating the things you own and deciding what’s important enough to keep and what isn’t. Did you know the U.S. has a $22 billion storage industry? That is a sign that something is wrong with the way we are living and the amount we consume and waste. Living large induces a behavior of hording and collecting. We live in big homes with lots of space, so we tend to fill that space with stuff. With a tiny house, that just isn’t an option.
2. Living small is more environmentally friendly. Less house means fewer trees chopped down, less energy to light the home, heat it and cool it. And if everyone lived in smaller homes on smaller lots, we would consume far less land than we currently do.
3. Living small promotes an active lifestyle and community engagement. The latter would require that your house be in a dense area where lots of people also live (which excludes the couple from the THN episode, who lived in the Tennessee countryside). Nevertheless, if you live in a very small home, you will likely find yourself outside the home more than in it, as there is just less to do if you live in a smaller space. As much as Americans value their privacy, it wouldn’t hurt to increase our engagement with the outside world. This public engagement is implicitly discouraged when we build big homes with lots of amenities and entertainment options indoors.
4. Increased financial independence. This one is a no-brainer. One of the major factors that determine housing cost is the size of the home. You would realize big savings by deciding to live in a home a fraction of the U.S. average. Remember, in Tiny House Nation, the one requirement is that the home be no bigger than 500 square feet. The beauty is that you could either save all of that money, or put it back into your smaller house to get better bang for your buck. The Tennessee family built a 172 square foot home (!) and as such were able to pay it off all at once, forgoing a mortgage altogether. That is certainly an extreme example, but even a willingness to return to 1950’s-level homes, which averaged under 1,000 square feet, would reap major financial dividends for homeowners.
Seattle would be wise to not only allow smaller homes, but also actively encourage it. Considering that the minimum allowable lot size is 5,000 square feet in single-family zones, this currently isn’t happening. Big homes are a product of the suburban form. As soon as we started fleeing cities, we started building bigger and bigger, and why wouldn’t we? There was certainly plenty of countryside available for us to stretch our legs. But frankly, the suburbs are exactly where big homes belong.
In an urban environment, where space is at a premium, building small is a more sensible use of land and it’s better for the environment. The goal of the four points above is to remind us that homes aren’t one-size-fits-all. Instead of castigating Seattleites who want to live small, whether in a detached house or a multifamily unit, we should be celebrating their decision and encouraging more small-home development.
Instead of dehumanizing microhousing dwellers for wanting to live in small quarters, perhaps we should look in the mirror and ask ourselves who is really in the wrong. Right now, would-be small-home dwellers have limited options. They shouldn’t. Let’s make sure the Seattle City Council knows that we value diversity, and that we take housing affordability and environmental sustainability seriously. Let’s encourage all housing types in our neighborhoods, even the very small ones.
Buildable Lands Report: The End of Single Family?
This year’s Buildable Lands Report, a “mid-term check in” for local 10 year Comprehensive Plans, shows some disturbing trends in housing supply. In King County, decision makers, including the Seattle City Council, have restricted the future of both single-family and multifamily segments of the housing market, limiting single-family construction to an extremely small amount of land and 90 percent of multifamily construction to land that must be redeveloped. What are the effects of these restrictions?
If all things were to remain equal, homebuilders will literally build the last single-family lot in King County sometime in 2030.
The Buildable Lands Report
The Buildable Lands Report (BLR) was adopted by the legislature in 1997 as an amendment to the Growth Management Act, and was. King, Snohomish, Pierce, Kitsap, Clark and Thurston Counties, and their cities, are responsible for conducting a BLR, which are then submitted to the Washington State Commerce Department (Commerce). The BLR compares the remaining zoned capacity of land, to the growth targets established by the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) and agreed to by the county and cities. PSRC sets countywide growth targets for both jobs and housing. The BLR provides information to policy makers regarding how much zoned capacity for jobs and housing is available for future growth.
The 2014 BLR breaks down housing capacity into three groups: Single-Family, Neighborhood Multifamily (properties in neighborhoods that are zoned for multifamily construction), and Multifamily in Mixed Use Zones (Urban Centers). For purposes of this analysis I combined the Neighborhood Multifamily and Multifamily in Mixed Use Zones to delineate between the two primary housing product types, those being single-family and multifamily. I began with four questions:
- “How many housing units do we currently have in all of King County, by housing type?”
- “What have been the construction trends in housing, by type, since the introduction of the Growth Management Act and Buildable Lands Report?”
- “What is the zoned capacity for growth into the future and how does that compare with what has been built since GMA and BLR were introduced?”
- “Do we have the zoned capacity needed to address demand in each housing type and avert an affordability crisis?”
Existing Housing Stock
In order to establish the context in which our local zoning codes have been drafted, it’s important to establish the baseline of existing housing stock. As of December 31, 2011 the existing housing stock throughout all of King County looked like this:
- 468,445 single-family homes –58 percent of total housing stock
- 345,916 multifamily units – 42 percent
Recent Construction
Taking the actual built numbers from January 1st, 1996 to December 31st, 2011, minus demolitions, we start to see what the housing market demanded. Of note, this timeline included the housing boom, as well as two recessions. Housing construction from 1996 through the end of 2011 looked like this:
- 57,410 Single-family homes constructed – 39 percent
- 90,989 Multifamily homes constructed – 61 percent
Not surprising, the numbers over this 16 year period reveal that slightly over 60 percent of home building occurred in the multifamily segment, while just less than 40 percent was in the single-family segment. It’s important to keep in mind that a large number of multifamily units were permitted in 2007-08, and only came online in the midst of the most recent recession (2009-10).
Zoned Capacity and Future Growth
In 2008, the Puget Sound Regional Council prepared and adopted Vision 2040, a new, long-term plan for managing growth across King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap Counties. Of importance to the building community, embedded in Vision 2040 is a goal for the counties to focus future growth in three specific ways: Inside the urban growth area, within “Metropolitan and Core cities” that already have built infrastructure, and within urban centers inside those cities. In short, Vision 2040 sets a goal that future housing and job growth should occur in high-density urban centers and should not occur outside of those centers.
Given that goal and the number of urban centers that have been approved in King County cities since Vision 2040 was adopted, the proportional breakdown of the zoned capacity numbers are not surprising. The current zoned capacity for housing in King County is as follows:
- 57,546 single-family homes – 15 percent of total capacity
- 323,574 multifamily homes – 85 percent
Regionally, decision makers should be concerned that 90 percent of the overall multifamily capacity would require redevelopment, including 92 percent in the Multifamily Mixed Use zones. Unlike vacant capacity, redevelopment requires a unique set of circumstances, including a willing seller, a capable buyer and an economic profile that favors removal of the current tenant and demolition of the existing building. Additionally, with current stormwater regulations in flux, and the associated costs of mitigation currently unknown, it is unlikely that significant commercial and mixed-use redevelopment takes place.
Of equal concern to traditional homebuilders is the single-family capacity numbers. Essentially, there is the same capacity for future single-family construction that was built during the 1996-2011 period.
- 57,410 single-family homes built from 1996 to 2011
- 57,546 single-family capacity into the future
Affordability Crisis
If our local economy continues to maintain strong job growth and further diversify the employer base, the vacant multifamily parcels will be developed and the single-family capacity numbers will continue to be depleted. It should not be a surprise that as that happens our region will continue to experience double-digit land price increases and housing affordability will continue to dominate much of the conversation among local jurisdictions. As we are seeing today in Seattle, neighborhood pushback may stymie much of the discussion around increased concentration of housing in established, single-family neighborhoods, further exacerbating the housing shortfall.
Similar to what we saw during the last season of economic growth, families in the median income bracket who desire to own a home and are employed in the Seattle/Bellevue area will be forced to drive until they can find a home affordable to them. As we have already seen in our region, although well meaning, attempts by local jurisdictions to “create” affordable housing by requiring units to be priced “affordable” will have no measureable effect on the affordability crisis.
Additional pressure will be put on the transportation system as more single-occupancy vehicles are forced onto the freeways to drive longer distances, also adding to the region’s greenhouse gas emissions, making it more difficult for King County and Washington State to meet their own emission reduction targets. By purposely limiting the supply of a key segment of the housing market, single-family housing, King County and the 39 cities will have succeeded at preventing sustainable growth in or near the job centers of Bellevue and Seattle.
2014 Housing Summit
How can we address these issues? Is it possible to accommodate future housing needs in King County without moving the Urban Growth Boundary? What are the best opportunities for increasing the concentration of housing in communities and neighborhoods that already have utilities?
The Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties is working to answer these questions and find solutions for the 2015 Legislative session. To that end, they’ve put together the first annual Housing Summit, which will feature national and regional experts in economics, law and housing data, as well as Washington state legislative leaders, to discuss these questions and start to discover those legislative solutions. You are invited and we urge you to click here to register and for more information. If you would like a copy of the 2014 King County Buildable Lands Report Public Review Draft, please click here.
David Hoffman is the North King County Manager and PAC Director of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties. He can be reached at dhoffman@mbaks.com.
