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Collection: Making Sustainability Legal

Event: Build Small, Live Large

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A tiny house with a picket fence.

Curious about small and sustainable housing?

The Build Small Live Large Summit in Portland next month will explore the leading edge of the space-efficient housing movement where design, cost, and care for the environment intersect with the needs of today’s communities. The goal of this one-day summit is to increase the demand for space-efficient housing in the region by informing, inspiring, and connecting those interested in building small. Leaders in this movement will share what’s working and what’s next, including Sightline Institute executive director Alan Durning, who will keynote the event.

  • What: Build Small Live Large Summit.
  • When: November 6, 2015, 8:00 am — 7:00 pm.
  • Where: Portland State University Smith Center (map).
  • Tickets: Early Bird rates end Tuesday, 10/6! Register here. (Registration includes all sessions, exhibit hall, and lunch.)
  • Meet the speakers.

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Dear Mr. Mayor

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On Wednesday, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray announced he would not pursue the recommendation of his housing affordability committee (HALA), on which I served, to allow greater flexibility of housing types in single-family neighborhoods, such as cottage clusters, mini-duplexes, rowhouses, and stacked flats within existing rules on setbacks and building height and size. I sent the mayor a letter yesterday, expressing my disappointment in this decision, which I fear will begin to unravel the grand bargain of more housing/more affordability that HALA hammered out over ten months—and which I hope will form a bold new model for all of Cascadia’s cities.

In the letter, I acknowledged the intense and politically damaging outcry from some residents of single-family neighborhoods and agreed that he needed to respond.

Here are parts of the letter:

Dear Mr. Mayor:

…Here’s what I wish you had said yesterday in your statement.

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HALA and the Neighborhoods: What’s the Story?

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The Seattle Times published my op-ed on housing in Seattle’s single-family zones this morning. Here’s the slightly longer version I submitted:

[prettyquote align=right]”The point of affordable housing is not the housing, it’s the people who will live in it.”[/prettyquote]

In 1993, when I was 28 and my second child had just been born, I rented a two-bedroom house in the Central District near where I grew up. I paid $800 a month. That’s how my Seattle housing story begins, and it’s typical of my generation. In that house, I started the venture I still run, which now employs 14 people. In time, I was able to buy, and now I live in a house in Ballard that’s somehow appreciated to a shocking $700,000.

The housing stories of young people nowadays are radically different. My friend Tania who grew up in the CD a generation after me, cuts hair downtown and commutes by bus from a row house in Everett. That’s the closest family-sized place she, her husband, and their baby girl can afford. She hopes to start a business as a clothing designer soon, if she can get ahead of her bills. My friend Meaghan, a new mom, may move to Renton to find an affordable two-bedroom place. Her husband is starting a new career, and Seattle’s rents are crushing their finances. Tania and Meaghan are among the lucky ones: they have jobs and supportive families. Thousands of members of our community sleep under bridges or in cars each night, pushed there in part by our city’s white-hot real estate market.

Housing affordability has become the defining challenge of Seattle’s growth. For the past ten months, I’ve served on the Housing Affordability and Livability Advisory (HALA) Committee. Mayor Ed Murray asked us for a plan to turn Seattle back into an affordable city.

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HALA and the $100,000 Question

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In the last ten months, Zillow says my house in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood has appreciated by more than $100,000. Seattle has about 135,000 houses like mine. The owners of every one of them have been getting richer daily from the city’s housing affordability crisis. One person’s affordability “housing emergency,” in other words, is another person’s cha-ching.

That’s the harsh economic and political reality that made the Seattle Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) committee, on which I’ve served with 27 other Seattleites during these last ten months of surging home values, such a challenging undertaking: demand for housing in Seattle is white hot, property owners are making money hand over fist, and low-income families are getting squeezed out. But do the privileged in Seattle actually want housing to be more affordable? Is there any political coalition with enough power to overcome the desire among 135,000 homeowners for the next $100,000?

As of this hour, HALA is done, its report released, and the ban its members agreed to on public comment is over. So I can finally say some things publicly about HALA. For months, I wondered if I’d be publishing a detailed critique of the process and outcomes at this point: it’s been an extended hair-pull. But to my delight, HALA did better—much better—at rising to this fundamental challenge than I expected. I’m not saying I love every one of HALA’s 65 recommendations. I don’t. That’s the nature of a 28-person compromise.

The heart of the plan, however, stands a better chance of working, economically and politically, than anything I expected to emerge from our deliberations; it could prove a breakthrough in the quest for equitable, climate-friendly cities. It stands a chance of countering the self-interest of property owners.

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“I Love the Change I’ve Seen in My Neighborhood in the Last Ten Years”

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Given the hubbub over the draft report leaked earlier this week from Seattle’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) committee—on which, full disclosure, I sit—and the coming release on Monday of the official report, Sightline thought we’d share a perspective that hasn’t received much attention in the debate.

On Monday, Sara Maxana, a homeowner in Seattle’s fast-growing Ballard neighborhood, testified before Seattle City Council. She expressed her enthusiasm and strong support for exactly the kind of growth and density that some would have us believe are the bogeyman threat to “neighborhood character.” As The Urbanist blog rightly pointed out, “The only way that makes sense is through the vacuous suggestion that Seattle’s character is dependent on suburban homes rather than diverse people, uses, and business.” Hear, hear.

Ms. Maxana’s testimony, notably coming from a self-identified “dripping in privilege” homeowner, acknowledges the benefits she derives from living in a compact, growing neighborhood—from easily walkable parks, restaurants, and shops to the increased property value of her home and the potential of her children’s own future there:

I attribute much of what I love in my neighborhood to all of its recent growth. And what I love most about that growth is that every new unit I see constructed in Ballard makes more likely that my children will be able to afford to live in their community when they grow up.

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Seattle to See Bigger Presence from Little Cars

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This morning, car2go—the free-floating car-sharing system featuring perky, pay-by-the-minute Smart cars across 60 cities worldwide—announced it would grow its Seattle fleet by a full 50%, increasing from 500 to 750, and that it would expand to cover the entirety of the city limits.

The expansion takes advantage of legislation passed by City Council in January to allow up to 3,000 car permits total: up to 750 for each of four companies, and 750 only if the company’s service area includes all neighborhoods within city limits. Further, any company operating for at least two years in the city must cover the entire city, regardless of the operator’s size at that time—an important provision to ensure equal access to car-sharing for all Seattle communities.

At present, Seattle is car2go’s largest US market, with nearly two million trips since its 2013 launch and reportedly more than 59,000 members as of December. (By the numbers, that’s one car2go member for every 11 Seattle residents!)  For those concerned about how 3,000 shared vehicles might impact already headache-inducing traffic and parking, it’s important to note a few things:

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Cascadia’s Car-Sharing Super Bowl

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You’ve probably heard that Seattle’s about to launch into a heated contest—one that pits city against city vying for honor, bragging rights, and civic pride.

We refer, of course, to the Car-Sharing Super Bowl!

OK, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. Still, on just about every playing field there’s a hint of healthy competition among the Pacific Northwest’s three biggest cities—Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland. Car-sharing should be no exception: cities ought to be vying to see which one offers the best car-sharing services. And with these services expanding rapidly throughout the Pacific Northwest (and beyond), we thought it would make sense to see how the Cascadia’s Big 3 stack up.

As it turns out, the contest wasn’t as close as we thought it would be: Vancouver, BC wins the Northwest Car-Sharing Super Bowl hands down. Let’s go to the highlights:

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Why 20 Is Plenty on Neighborhood Streets

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Next time you’re in a car driving through a residential neighborhood, try this experiment. Glance at the speedometer when you’re in the middle of a block. You’ll probably find it’s pretty easy to reach or top 25 mph, the standard residential speed limit for cities in Oregon and Washington.

I did this yesterday on my way to pick up my daughter from elementary school. And you know what I got from other parents walking on the sidewalk, often with a toddler or two in tow? Super dirty looks.

To someone on foot navigating narrow streets with parked cars and unprotected intersections, it feels like you’re driving too fast. And they’re probably not wrong. As I was cruising up to 25 mph (on streets outside the school zone), I tried to imagine that a ball rolled right in front of me with a kid chasing it. Or that someone with an armful of groceries opened a car door without looking, or that a pedestrian in dark clothes stepped into a poorly lit intersection. Would I be able to stop in time? Maybe, maybe not. It would depend on how soon I saw whatever I was about to hit.

Then drop your speed to 20 mph. With that small change, it becomes much easier to halt the momentum of 3000 pounds of metal. When I drove through the neighborhood at 20 mph, what reaction did I get from the moms and dads? Smiles. Polite waves as I stopped easily to let them cross in front of me. Like I was a safe, respectful driver (probably a parent!) who wasn’t trying to kill their children.

It turns out that the mom scowl is grounded in science. That’s why cities that are getting serious about pedestrian safety and creating family-friendly cities are lowering speed limits in residential neighborhoods to 20 mph. And thanks to recent changes in Washington and Oregon state law that made it easier for cities to do so, a handful of Northwest cities are beginning to explore or implement the change.

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Seattle Goes Backward on Micro-housing

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Yesterday, to my dismay, the Seattle city council tightened rules on micro-apartments, the neo-rooming houses I lauded last year in Unlocking Home. The council, facing its first ever round of district-by-district elections next year, appears spooked by the complaints of some noisy (but not necessarily numerous) neighbors who have exclusionary attitudes. It imposed new restrictions including a requirement for two sinks in each unit (because… um… why?), design review for some micro-apartment buildings (just like the city requires for single-family houses of a similar size—oh, it doesn’t? Ok, well, because… reasons), and nearly doubled minimum floor area in some micros (because obviously the old minimum, which was about the size of a dorm room at Harvard or Stanford and was substantially more indoor space than most people now or ever before in the world have had to themselves, was a grave threat to health and livability -snark-). The new rules are perfect illustrations of the kind of banal-sounding land-use standards that have over decades pinched off much of the historic bottom end of the private housing market in the Northwest.

The rules will likely prevent construction of hundreds of inexpensive living spaces in Seattle’s most walkable neighborhoods over the next decade. It could even halt hundreds a year. I don’t have a full tally of all the subsidized affordable housing units built annually in the city, but I suspect it’s on the same order of magnitude. (Readers: can someone tell us?) The new rules are unlikely to completely squelch neo-rooming houses, but any reduction is too big a reduction. Cascadia’s largest city ought to be building housing of all types to accommodate the waves of newcomers who are already moving Northwest-ward (and possibly to prepare for the expected onslaught of climate migrants).

The entire exercise in clamping down on micro-housing was a discouraging display of pandering to the NIMBY forces that so often dominate local planning. It gets frustrating. As I wrote a year ago in the Seattle Times,

SEATTLE should stop lying to itself about affordable housing. For all our high-minded rhetoric about creating an affordable city, and for all our housing levies, the grim reality of city rules suggests that we actually want to stamp out affordable housing, not build it.

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Will Seattle Be the City to Kill ‘Ridesharing’ Companies?

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After months of hearings, a Seattle city council committee has released a draft blueprint for regulating on-demand, app-based “ridesharing” companies like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar that would dramatically curtail their growth in the city, if not kill their current business model.

Until now they’ve been picking up customers illegally and with virtually no oversight from the city. This has been unfair to taxi and for-hire vehicle drivers, the bulk of whom are immigrants and who have to follow a thicket of regulations dictating everything from the insurance they must buy to what they wear to the form of payments they can accept.

Clearly, the city had to level the playing field somehow. But instead of loosening restrictions on taxi drivers and allowing them to compete more freely in the marketplace, the city’s solution appears to revolve around imposing more byzantine regulation on yet a new category of competition.

The city’s draft regulations would put Uber, Sidecar, Lyft and similar companies into a new category of “Transportation Network Companies (TNC)” and create a two-year pilot program. If the rules remain as written, they would limit those companies—whose smartphone-based dispatched systems and savvy marketing have been steadily wooing over customers—to a fleet of 100 vehicles. That’s a huge problem for companies that have sought to build a pool of many part-time drivers who typically use their own vehicles to give people rides.

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