First Microhousing Meeting: Three Questions

Today at 4:30 the first meeting of the microhousing working group will convene at the Seattle Municipal Tower. Smart Growth Seattle members will be represented on the committee. I’ll be watching from the sidelines, and in fact, I have to leave early. But below are my answers to three questions that will be the topic of conversation in the committee this afternoon. Microhousing will be in good hands being represented by our builders, and they will be open minded about ideas that will make microhousing in our city better.

My own view is pretty guarded. As I’ve pointed out before, most of the opposition to microhousing is based entirely on red herrings, objections that are simply made up stuff to make a really good product go away. What’s the motivation for the loaded rhetoric and code language from opponents? I have no idea, but if the legislation proposed by the Department of Planning and Development was implemented a very important product that is the envy of other cities across the country would be lost.

During my recent visit to the Twin Cities I spoke with leading non-profit agencies trying to figure out to use microhousing as a solution to the growing demand for housing there. They want what we already have and what some neighborhood people are fighting, often because they don’t like the “transient” nature of the people who would live in microhousing. The ugly rhetoric coming largely these days from Eastlake is an embarrassment for our city that prides itself on its progressivism.

But I’ll hold my fire and let the leadership of Councilmember Mike O’Brien do its work. I truly hope some solutions emerge out of the workgroup that will result in broader acceptance of microhousing and limit legislative interference in what’s already working well.

Meanwhile here is how I’d answer the questions that will be discussed this afternoon.

  • What role do you think microhousing is currently playing in our housing market? What role do you think it should play?

Currently meeting the demand from people who want to live in some of Seattle’s best neighborhoods (places with lots of transit, amenities, jobs, and people) but who don’t need or want lots of space or parking. These customers are consciously exchanging paying for extra space in their apartment for the benefit of living in a neighborhood that suits them. Not everyone wants to own or pay for an Escalade; some people are happy with a Smart Car.

Microhousing should continue to meet this demand.

  • What form(s) do you think Micro-housing units should take in Seattle? And why?

Sleeping rooms with some kitchen amenities clustered around a full common kitchen.

This is the most buildable option and it’s the one that customers want. If customers wanted full kitchens or other amenities developers would build them that way because customers would be willing to pay for those extras. These units serve the customers we have and they aren’t demanding anything else. It’s kind of like a Costco nightmare where a person goes into a grocery store to buy a single can of Diet Coke, but is forced to pay for and consume an entire case. If the time ever comes when people who actually live in microhousing demand two sinks and a stove in their units, they’ll find another place to live and the price of microhousing will drop even lower.

Very small, self-contained studio units (with complete bathrooms and kitchens).

These can already be built but they are more expensive to build. If the intention is abolish microhousing then the council can certainly do that. The legislation concocted by DPD would have accomplished this by incenvitizing the building of studio apartments.  Abolishing microhousing and forcing the building of larger apartments isn’t going to phase developers or hurt their feelings; they’ll build what the code allows. But it’s the people looking for housing that will suffer when they have to buy bigger apartments than they need or want, and they might just choose to live in another city.

Congregate residences or dorms – sleeping rooms with some kitchen amenities and access to one or more full common kitchen spaces.

Someone at DPD must have decided that only college students should live in microhousing. This is one of the more strange outcomes of a DPD staff that seems to be just making things up as they go. It’s confusing why the authors of the legislation felt that microhousing units should only be lived in by college students. Certainly some people living in microhousing are students, but not all and certainly that shouldn’t be a requirement. It’s another example of the paucity of leadership at DPD (Diane Sugimura hasn’t attended a single meeting of the PLUS Committee since the beginning of this year, hasn’t attended other meetings with community members, and hasn’t even returned phone calls). Let’s hope this idea is thrown out by the work group.

  • Based on this discussion, should the city require all congregate residence projects to either be associated with an institutional use or provide supportive housing? Why or why not?

Some forms of microhousing had their origins in congregate living arrangements intended to be supportive for people in recovery or recently released from prison. This is a great use for microhousing, and many agencies already use this kind of housing option to create privacy but the also the support that comes from living together with other people in transition or recovery.

One group of people that faces the steepest housing challenge in our community is felons; they may have overcome their demons, secured a good job, and sustained recovery but can’t find a place to live at any price because of their record. I love the idea of transitional housing for people exiting the prison system that uses the microhousing model to make living more affordable especially for felons who are working their way back into a regular life. Something tells me that wouldn’t be embraced by most neighborhoods around here.

I think all sides are hopeful for what the work group might accomplish, and we’ll keep a close eye on their work and report on it here.

Comprehensive Plan:Planning to Plan to Plan with Equity

Today at the Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) trotted out their plan for planning the engagement on the Comprehensive Plan. Seriously. I’m not being snarky. We’ve already seen the DPD’s four options a while ago that suggest that we either grow in urban centers, urban villages, around rail, or around other transit. Easy. All of the above.

But that great local shibboleth, equity, was uttered again today in the context of the Comprehensive Plan. How would we achieve equity through our plan? When the word is mentioned now I instinctively mutter to myself “between what and what, or what people, places or things?” How will we measure the equity? Won’t it be evident when all things are, well, equal; the high places made low and the low places made high?

Probably not; but Councilmembers can’t resist talking about equity everywhere all the time (even when raising the City Light CEO’s salary to $364,000 per year). We are a progressive city after all. And it came up yesterday too when DPD staff earnestly presented their plan to plan for planning yet again. Somewhere in the Power Point was an American Planning Association goal for achieving something they call “Interwoven Equity” through a comprehensive plan.

What, exactly, is Interwoven Equity asked Councilmember Tim Burgess.

Interwoven Equity – ensure fairness and equity in providing for the housing, services, health, safety, and livelihood needs of all citizens and groups.

And did I tell you the story about that shaggy dog I saw the other day?

But to be fair (or equitable), I should point out that there are practices in the APA document that roll up to this vague definition larded with more terms without definition; these practices are not exactly measures, but things that could be looked at to determine whether the plan (not actual policy) lives up the ideal of Interwoven Equity.

Best Practices– the plan actions or elements, such as goals, objectives, policies, priorities, implementation or action steps or tasks, and maps that demonstrate a community’s commitment to pursue sustainability; these are the planning tools employed by the community to guide its planning, development, and decision-making.

What are the practices? Here’s where it gets interesting.

Range of housing types
Jobs/housing balance
Disadvantaged neighborhood improvement
At-risk population health & safety
Services & health care for minority, low income
Infrastructure upgrade in older neighborhoods
Workforce development policy
Protect vulnerable neighborhood s from natural hazards
Promote environmental Justice

All these are public goods, things that would be important for any city planning for the future. But some of these are obvious like range of housing type; that’s actually a founding principle of Smart Growth Seattle and of all housing supply advocates. We say it all the time: let’s builds more housing, of all types in all neighborhoods.

And I will be perfectly clear: when it comes to housing, we want every person to have access to shelter if they need it and housing that works for them. Accomplishing this means expanding housing choice and opportunity for all levels of income, and for people who can’t pay monthly rent that supports the debt to cover land and constructions costs, it means some level of subsidy.

The problem is when it comes to terms like “disadvantaged neighborhood improvement.” What does that actually mean? It could mean gentrification. Or it could mean investing in social services. More importantly how does one measure or define a “disadvantaged neighborhood?”

Many are skeptical of the Comprehensive Plan and the planning process since it has become mostly an aspirational document, not full of “thou shalt” language but “thou shalt try really hard.” And the hortatory language is riven with inconsistencies, calling for “protections” for single-family neighborhoods, but also infill development there, too.

Adding more overlays from the APA will simply muddle things further, especially if we try to plan to plan to plan for equity. We’ll never get closer to building more housing–or equity, however we define and measure it. Instead of chasing high ideals in our plan, shouldn’t we be pushing for high numbers of new housing units? All these great things in the APA document can happen if we welcome and plan for growth; but we need new people and jobs and houses and workplaces for them.

So the Comprehensive Planning process continues to be the Flying Dutchman of Seattle Process, unable really ever to settle in any port but sailing over 7 seas full of plannerese with it’s sails “strive,” “endeavor,” and “ensure” full of the hot winds born of many, many public meetings to talk about the plans, to plan, to plan. Can we make it more straightforward and inclusive without so much planner talk? Maybe we should propose an amendment to the process itself.

Minneapolis: Not Run-of-the-Mill

I’m in Minneapolis today and, at the risk of turning this space into a travelogue, I have to share what I’ve experienced. The city is truly full of all the things we’re dreaming of in Seattle: sustainable use of resources, adaptive reuse, great design, density, transit choices, and affordability. All this from a city that is the Capitol of a region sometimes best known for it’s peculiar regional dialect and hard frozen winters.

Now I know from having read glowing reviews (ironically written by someone from here) that things can look really fabulous from the outside when the truth is much different. Seattle gets praise all the time for being innovative when those of us on the ground have other thoughts.

I’ll focus on the Mill District and I’ll cheat a bit by quoting Wikipedia.

In 1998, the City of Minneapolis enacted a Historic Mills District Master Plan, revised in 2000, to encourage development along the long-neglected stretch of riverfront. As a result, historic buildings were converted for adaptive reuse, bringing a residential population and offices to a neighborhood that beforehand had few residents.

The Mill District is unlike anything in Seattle. Think South Lake Union, Georgetown, the Ballard Locks, and Downtown combined. The Mill District hugs the Mississippi River and the falls, which are managed, like the Ballard Locks, by the Army Corp of Engineers.

The cross crossing bridges across the river and falls link together old mills that were the heart of a long gone industry. But…

Today, the Mill District has re-emerged as the historical and cultural center of Minneapolis. Many of the original flour mills have been saved and renovated into elegant loft homes and office spaces. The fortified ruins of the Washburn “A” Mill, once the largest mill in the world, has been transformed into the cornerstone of the Mill City Museum. Opened in 2003 this National Historic Landmark and museum features exhibits, artifacts, an observation deck, and boutique cafe. The renovated Milwaukee Road Depot is “a place for people again” with a popular ice rink in the old train shed. In 2006, the internationally acclaimed Guthrie Theater moved from its previous location near Loring Park. The MacPhail Center for Music moved its new campus to the neighborhood in 2007. The Mill City Farmers Market, an organic farmers market, was begun in 2006.

I got all around the whole area from downtown on a shared bike. I’d grab a bike for $6 a day, ride around, park at one of the many stations, stop, eat, look around, then grab another bike and go.

But here’s the takeaway: all of this was made possible by taking advantage of demand for housing and growth. Just like the mighty Mississippi turned the turbines for the mills, growth generated the financial investment to preserve the mills, create the public space, and support more housing in what was once an industrial area. People love the river and the falls. There is something about water that makes us want to linger, and people want to be around other people.

The lesson of the Mill District for us in Seattle is that we ought to use the gifts nature has given us, the appeal of our home, and the innovation of our people and our entrepreneurs to power us to new ways to have everything we want. We can do it! It’s the spirit of the wide open west and prairie: work hard, plan for the future, and welcome change.

Are We Losing the Progress in our Progressivism?

These comments were the closing remarks at the 2014 DSA Annual Meeting by Jack McCullough, Chair of the Downtown Seattle Association on June 4, 2014. I am posting them in full here because I think McCullough points out some uncomfortable but important realities about where we’re going as a city when it comes to growth. Pay special attention to what he says about protectionism, a fear based economic strategy to keep the status quo. When we build our regulatory walls to high to protect people already here, we’re going to drive up housing prices for everyone and make our city a more difficult place to live. 

We pride ourselves as a progressive city, but 14 years into this new century – in a period of unrelenting change for this city and nation – we risk losing the progress in our progressivism.

The world has discovered Seattle. Capital and businesses from around the globe are landing here to build our city, to create our jobs and housing. Every month, hundreds of new software engineers, medical professionals, artists — and those with no job but only a dream – land in Seattle, their new home.

This change has engulfed us, and it will magnify. It will not wait for us to preserve the progress in our politics. We need to do that now.

Captive Politics

Our urban issues are challenging enough to solve – we don’t need to overcomplicate the solutions. But we’ve let our streets Downtown become captive to politics. It is a game without winners.

Here in the center city, we have street issues all around us. We reach out to deal with them. But our politics dictates that we cannot address the symptoms we see, until we first cure the diseases.

The symptoms vary — they may be antisocial street behavior, personal or group encampments in city parks and alleys, drug use on city streets, defecation in alley ways. The catch, of course, is that we will spend decades working to cure these diseases, while we struggle to survive the symptoms.

The ideal cure requires universal treatment before dealing with street behavior, new housing for all before removing encampments, a network of public restrooms . . . well, you get the idea. We will never address the symptoms and we will never cure the disease.

After years of captive politics, the tolerance of our citizens decays, first into resignation, then into apathy. Our downtown streets and parks become a petri dish of all our unsolved social ills, and in that culture the really toxic things grow: the violent crime we see, the drug trade, the exploitation of children and the most vulnerable. This system makes us enablers of the problems around us.

There is important work being done by many in the center city, including the Center City Initiative and the MID Outreach team that we saw in the video

But if you’ve been to 2nd and Pike, or Occidental Park, or if you’ve walked Third Avenue on a Friday evening, you know our system is broken. We have lost control of these streets.

We have to stop being enablers. We can treat the symptoms and the disease at the same time. We support the delivery of services for all in need; but we cannot await that utopian dawn, before we begin dealing with our streets.

We are a compassionate city. We need also to be a safe one. We need to address the symptoms on our streets. We need to do it now.

Truth

Part of our Seattle DNA is what we call “Seattle nice.” This trait has been adopted by our progressivism. We avoid conflict in public in general, and we especially learn to avoid contradicting the prevailing progressive view. We learn to honor a certain political dogma, and this dogma rules our conversations and our policy, until the truth overtakes it. There are examples all around us:

  • For years, the political canon was that there was no serious crime or street disorder problem downtown, until the events of the last 3 years – still continuing today – gave lie to that theory.
  • The truism in trade was that if only the Ports of Tacoma and Seattle could cooperate, the future would be theirs; until the now-impending reality of global competition and consolidation has unraveled that story.
  • SODO is revered as our best industrial enclave – until the reality of a drive on 1st and 4th Avenues South, through the thicket of fast-food restaurants, offices, spas, breweries and home improvement stores tells you otherwise.
  • And only months ago we were assured that de-policing was not an issue downtown or in the City at large – open the paper today and the department’s own study proves otherwise.

We can see the truth with our own eyes. And despite the dogma, this truth will overtake us, if we try to ignore it.

This is a city of innovation and it should be a marketplace of ideas. But a marketplace only survives if it has buyers as well as sellers. I don’t worry in this city for the supply of new ideas; but I am concerned about whether we have buyers for them.

Housing

We look south to San Francisco with concern: it is the “ghost of Seattle future” – a city with too few children and too-expensive housing.

Housing affordability is ultimately a function of supply and demand. The good news is that our demand is increasing in the center city and in Seattle. Twenty-five years of Growth Management and billions of dollars in transit infrastructure investment are paying off.

But how do we address the imbalance? There’s an old saying: if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem is a nail. Since we can’t restrict the demand of housing, we regulate its supply. We use a hammer to impose costs and restrictions on the production of new market-rate housing, in the hope of generating a handful of publicly-regulated affordable units.

San Francisco made the same mistake and is now paying the price. It’s not possible to regulate our way out of this imbalance. We need more supply. But here’s the real problem: most of our land in Seattle is off limits. We carve out our single-family neighborhoods, our industrial lands, our parks and institutions, and we’re left with maybe 15% of our land supply. We’re trying to solve 100% of our housing problem for the fastest-growing major city in the United States – on 15% of our land. You don’t need to be a mathematician to know this equation won’t work. We need more tools than a hammer to solve this problem.

Newcomers

It is that time in the economic up-cycle when other hammers appear – in this case, the rebirth of the undead: the inevitable zombie taxes — head taxes, employee taxes, space taxes, impact fees, development fees. These are pages taken from an old playbook that reappear here every decade: new residents and new jobs appear in town, we blame the newcomers for our problems, single them out and then tax them as punishment. The superficial message here always plays to some applause, but here is the real message: many of these newcomers are from our own families, they are our own children.

As expensive as housing is, as difficult as jobs can be to find, why would we find political upside in taxing them?

And there is a worse message here: blaming newcomers, now mostly renters in this City, for the problems we have been unable to solve ourselves, just validates an unhealthy and growing prejudice against them. There is nothing progressive about this.

Protectionism

We are living in a crucible of change. Change creates opportunity: new people, new jobs, different kinds of housing. It should force us to look at the truth, to find new tools, to remake our city. But change also presents risk to established interests. And these established interests can ironically become conservatives, hiding in our progressivism, resisting change and new ideas.

A real test of our progressivism – of whether it can deliver progress in this time of change – is how it deals with these established interests
threatened by change. If we fail the test, our progressive hopes will devolve to protectionism – the opposite of progress. We should embrace this change, use new tools and help find a place for these established interests in the emerging city.

Closing

Our greatest achievements as a city in the last decades, the ones we look back on with enduring pride, were borne of a close partnership between those who are governing the City, and those who are building it and bringing it jobs. We look back at Metro, at Forward Thrust and the World’s Fair – more recently at our new plans for the Downtown and South Lake Union. It’s all the same model. It’s how we as a city put progress in our progressivism.

We at the DSA stand ready for that partnership, every day, every opportunity.

And we will bring to that partnership, as before, some simple rules, our rules of progress:

  • If there’s a problem, own it.
  • When you perform, raise the bar.
  • If it’s broken, try to fix it.
  • If they need help, reach out your hand.
  • When you have a great idea, sell it.
  • If you see a great idea, embrace it.
  • If you touch it, make it better.
  • When you see it, tell the truth.
  • And last, as we build this new Seattle for our children, this city of progress and opportunity, don’t bring a hammer unless you have some other tools on your belt.

My friends, I have only the deepest appreciation for all your support and indulgence these last two years.

And I know you are in good hands with Mark and Kate and their team in the years ahead.

We’ll do this annual meeting again: June 10, 2015, here at the 5th Avenue.

It is the great thing about the DSA: our work endures.

So I will see you again.

But for now, the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Downtown Seattle Association is hereby adjourned.

Beyond Zoning: An Economy of Trust

This afternoon I attended a celebration of the life of Jim Potter. Lots of the development community showed up, and there were beautiful statements about his impact on people’s lives. Jim’s life was about family. And I suppose that his ability to master the world of development the way did is related to his confidence that he could always count on coming home to a deep and abiding love from and with his wife and children. But he was also a man who epitomized Epictetus‘ advice that “for every challenge, remember the resources you have within you to cope with it.” He was strong, and his strength led to confidence, and I think he was a risk taker because he knew, because of the love of his family and his certainty in himself, he’d win in the end. The crowd of people who were at his celebration is testament to that; Jim leaves a progeny of highly motivated people determined to make a difference in the world.

What stands in the way of that legacy is the profound mistrust that we have for each other in Seattle, a mistrust that leads to rules and regulations intended to stop bad things rather than encouraging good things. Zoning is a concept that was born of a well intentioned effort to protect people from bad things. The Euclid decision enshrined the idea that the state’s police power was needed to prevent the mixing up different uses, especially industrial uses, from harming people.

The constantly increasing density of our urban populations, the multiplying forms of industry, and the growing complexity of our civilization make it necessary for the State, either directly or through some public agency by its sanction, to limit individual activities to a greater extent than formerly. With the growth and development of the State, the police power necessarily develops, within reasonable bounds, to meet the changing conditions.

The world in 1926 was one in which factories belching smoke and sulphur were built right next to cramped tenements of the workers in those factories. While such conditions certainly still exist in some form or another, they aren’t the norm. Instead what pushing apart uses–living, working, playing–has lead to is a situation in which we favor long commutes, driving from place to place, and spending our limited resources on trying to get from where we live to where we play to where we eat to where we work. This has been disastrous to our environment, creating pollution of our air and our water. It also distends our transportation resources, disaggregating demand instead of putting people and places closer together.

I’ve heard two things in the past week: “don’t say zoning is bad”, and “I’m not sure I can build housing in Seattle anymore.” These are two troubling comments. The first is worry about letting go of something we know because to let go of the idea of zoning would lead to a Houstonian chaos with drive through liquor stores and endless one-story sprawl. The second comment shows a profound sense of doubt about the ability of the biggest most progressive city in the region to welcome growth. One is a clinging to a bad we know instead of inventing something better, and the second is the exhaustion with playing cat and mouse with regulators killing good things while on the hunt for bad things. Both show the cracks in our basic trust of each other.

Zoning, the limiting of use and where that use happens, has distorted our economy and our lifestyles, encouraging an obsession with rules to limit people from doing things that might harm other people. It’s best summed up by a professor of mine who said, after a bunch of kids tore up a local golf course hot rodding on it with their cars, “it isn’t amazing that it happened, but that it doesn’t happen more often.” That is, when we think about violations of norms, it’s usually when they are so exceptional that they fall out of the norm. But why would we regulate our world based on such outliers? Why would we find the worst offenses, the ugliest buildings, the most unsafe forms and typologies of housing, and regulate as if everyone intended to build to that standard?

Building new things people need and want, including housing, is a risky business. The essence of investment and entrepreneurism is taking risks, and taking risks requires not avarice, but trusting other people. Jim Potter trusted other people to do the right thing, and that’s what made him able to take the risks he took in his business life. Someone pointed out that when Jim went to a restaurant, he’d hand the menu to the wait person and say, “you decide.” Can we, in Seattle, do the same thing with land use? Can we get beyond zoning and rules set to stop bad actors and put ourselves in the hands of each other and say, “you decide.” The future of our city, our region, and our state depends on it.