by Josh Feit
There’s actually some good news for density advocates in Harrell’s slow-growth comp plan proposal: It’s being widely panned.
I take this backlash as a sign of progress. Consider: Nine years ago, when then-mayor Ed Murray floated the unthinkable in his own housing initiative—universal neighborhood upzones to promote growth, density, and housing—the NIMBY backlash against him, led by the Seattle Times, was swift and furious. Murray was immediately forced to backpedal, and eventually the city only allowed more housing along the margins of the 75 percent of Seattle that’s otherwise off-limits to apartments.
While it’s certainly disappointing that Mayor Harrell is still committed to an old-fashioned planning model that relegates density to busy arterial streets, it’s noteworthy that this time around, the backlash is an outcry for more density, not less. Critics are calling Harrell out for failing to go beyond the minimum statewide requirements established in last year’s House Bill 1110, which requires cities to allow at least four units on every residential lot, and for promoting a status quo that led to the current affordability crisis.
It’s not 2015 anymore. With a keener sense of the racism encoded in Seattle zoning rules, a pressing housing affordability and homelessness crisis, and an urgency about environmental catastrophe all informing the debate, a whole new generation of pro-housing advocates has dislodged the anti-growth, Seattle-politics-as-usual attitudes that Harrell’s comp plan proposal regurgitates.
It’s not just the usual suspects—armchair planners and YIMBYs on social media—either. Mainstream Seattle state legislators have formally joined the fray. Not only did they champion and help pass HB 1110, but they’re pushing back on Harrell for doing the bare minimum to comply with its density mandate. In a letter to Harrell’s office on March 5, the day the mayor released the plan, Seattle state Rep. Julia Reed (D-36) expressed “serious concerns about the Mayor’s comprehensive plan,” calling it “disappointingly modest, particularly as it relates to the [density] floor, middle housing zoning, and breadth of exemptions.” (PubliCola obtained Reed’s letter through a records request).
The two most recent takedowns of Harrell’s non-comprehensive comp plan—a 19-page letter from the Seattle Planning Commission and an in-depth analysis from the progressive Sightline think tank—both lay out the basic problem with Harrell’s proposal: It doesn’t call for density in enough of the city, providing for just 100,000 new units over the next 20 years. That’s 20,000 less than the bare minimum the city will need, as the Planning Commission put it, to “help us climb out of the existing housing deficit.”
Additionally, in the areas where Harrell’s plan actually does call for more housing, it doesn’t allow enough housing types, excluding apartments in favor of tall, skinny townhomes. Critiquing Seattle’s longstanding “strategy of confinement” for density, Sightline goes all in on advocating for apartments, writing: “Seattle’s plan could rise to the moment by allowing highrise towers in all regional centers and near all light rail stations, eight-story buildings in all urban centers, and six-story buildings near frequent transit stops and other community amenities like parks. It could also designate more and larger neighborhood centers with apartment zoning.”
And as everyone—even the Seattle Times—has pointed out, while Harrell says his plan follows the new state mandate to allow fourplexes wherever detached single-family homes are allowed, his reluctant proposal renders such development merely theoretical with restrictive caps on floor area ratio (a key measure of density) that prevent construction from actually penciling out.
Of course, Harrell may simply dismiss the negative reviews as grousing from a gaggle of liberal elites. And certainly, on cue, Erica and I both registered our disappointment in his proposal here on PubliCola wondering if it was written by AI, with a prompt from the minutes of mid-90s neighborhood council meeting.
However, Harrell (who deleted density and equity goals proposed by his own Office of Planning and Development (OPCD) shouldn’t take comfort in his single-family comfort zone. Seattle is now skewed heavily toward renters—a change that’s reflected by this city’s new slate of leaders. Indeed, the people who were most outraged by Harrell’s timid plan were not think tanks and bloggers, but the squad of progressive populists who now officially represent Seattle in Olympia, including Reed—pro-density voices that helped pass the statewide fourplex rule last year. Demonstrating this changing of the guard, they passed that rule in part by first ousting longtime slow-growth Seattle Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-46) from his powerful position as chair of local government committee.
“Frankly, we were expecting to see the City take meaningful advantage of the additional flexibilities provided in HB 1110 and other tools that the state has made available,” Rep. Reed wrote in her letter criticizing Harrell’s plan, adding that she was “not the only member from the Seattle delegation with these major concerns.”
This spring, OPCD met with members of the Seattle delegation, including Sen. Noel Frame, (D-36) to respond to “the questions [and] concerns we’re hearing from our constituents,” Reed told PubliCola. Reed said OPCD staffers were informative and answered their questions, and that she and her fellow Seattle reps “want to work with the city so that the final plan reflects a shared vision of abundance, affordability, and unified belonging for the entire city.”
According to a spokesperson for Frame, the senator is also “a critic” of Harrell’s proposal “and says it ‘falls far short of what we should be doing’ as the biggest city in the state, who should be leading on the housing crisis.” Frame and other legislators plan to send a letter to Harrell’s office in the next few days, the spokesperson said.
PubliCola has been covering the density debate for 15 years. It’s only been in the past few years that pro-housing voices, now represented by a contingent of Seattle lawmakers with a new state law in hand, are part of the fight. And—as opposed to the days when anti-density homeowners ruled the public process—legislators like Reed are working in concert with an organized YIMBY movement that’s amplified by a sympathetic urbanist media infrastructure which regularly fact checks and pushes back against the Seattle Times’ NIMBY narrative.
Thank you, Mayor Harrell, for formally and finally revealing where you stand in the housing debate; Erica’s earlier reporting on Harrell’s drastic re-write of OPCD’s initial pro-housing draft proposal wasn’t surprising, but it was clarifying. The current backlash against Harrell’s plan is clarifying as well.
Josh@PubliCola.com
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