City of seattle lr1 zoning

Yet, if implemented correctly, they could be the answer to a major problem the city is facing. A recent statement by the City Council has revealed the recent updates to proposed zoning changes which are currently open to public input through summer This package not only increases housing density in neighborhood communities and near transit centers throughout the city but also proposes a new zoning type.

The proposed Residential Small Lot zone is designed to replace about six per-cent of currently single-family zoned properties throughout the city. The zone will permit three units per lot instead of one. This allows the gentle increase of density on these lots without drastically changing the properties and the neighborhoods that hold them.

You log in to your favorite apartment hunting site and look. After a few searches, you realize the only options are studios and one-bedroom apartments. Those looking to rent an apartment are having a difficult time finding anything which allows for more than one or two residents in current multi-family zoning. Because of this discrepancy, we might be looking at zoning changes to allow for more family-sized apartments in various Seattle-area neighborhoods. Not only will this provide more options for families, but also improve housing affordability in a city becoming known for its unaffordable housing.

Instead, it would work on loosening the regulations on ADUs and DADUs to allow for more flexibility for those who wanted to capitalize on the potential of their single-family property. The ADU rule changes as they stand today would eliminate the requirement to provide off-street parking, potentially clogging up our already congested streets. There are certainly some ugly townhouses out there.

But is that reason enough to fight the concept? What the multi-family code creates is a series of boxes in which developers are challenged to profitably fill with living spaces for people.

The same can probably be said of apartment buildings, cottages, and duplexes. Recent amendments went through to address this challenge. I may ask for a guest post from someone better acquainted with them. But I can say that from the LDT, L1, and L2 designations are time tested and old fashioned ways of putting more people on a lot or two. Lots of single family neighborhoods already have these housing types adjacent to them.

Part of the proposal, as I understand it, was to streamline the multi-family code to create more flexibility on things like set backs, parking, and height. In exchange, the proposed projects would go through design review. I was really skeptical of this because of my skepticism of design review. But I can see how putting some of the hassle at the front end of the development process of multi-family zones might make it more profitable and better designed in the longer run.

I look forward to seeing how that plays out. The problem I see is that we have a way of putting innovation to death through a thousand cuts.

What are the roofs gonna look like? What about parking? I hate bricks? The siding makes that building look fat! And on and on. When all is said and done we need more build out of L with an eye toward more creativity and less worry about staying inside the box. I looked at the L2 property at 24th and Denny on Google Maps, and that property takes up nearly the entire lot. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account.

You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Seattle's Land Use Code. Skip to content. Chapter L1 E Spruce and 18th. L2 24th and E Denny.

L3 34th and Spring. Renters pay more and must look harder for vacant apartments in close-in Seattle neighborhoods, according to both research firms. The vacancy rate is just 2 percent on First Hill, 2.

More housing means more competition between landlords and developers and lower prices for firefighters and everyone else. However, the paradoxical view that we should tax new housing a tax that will add to the cost of housing and increase its price in order to achieve fairness, equity, and affordability persists. Fear of high prices: Councilmember Burgess as firefighter.

The basis of social policy is to ensure the welfare and health of a population, specifically the population of a political unit like a country, state, or city. Housing and shelter are commonly accepted as important elements of basic welfare and health, but the issue of how to ensure that everyone is at least sheltered, if not housed, has been a source of controversy.

In Seattle, well intentioned efforts to address housing issues have lead to a strange, self-defeating spiral in which elected officials and others are arguing for policies like inclusionary zoning that actually make housing prices higher by adding costs to new housing.

Policy makers need to better define what problem they are trying to solve when they impose schemes like inclusionary zoning. If the problem is housing price , the obvious solution is to increase housing supply. Social welfare efforts have many origins, but almost every survey begins with the social reforms instituted by Prussian leader Otto Von Bismarck in the late 19th century.

At that time, the conservative government of Prussia wanted to positively affect wages to offset pressures to immigrate to the United States—it was also a political move to staunch growing social unrest. The Prussian programs also included comprehensive health insurance.

In the United Kingdom in the early part of the last century, the government passed a similar set of programs to ensure social welfare. In the s, the United States followed, passing lots of similar programs like Social Security Insurance.

Eventually, when it came to housing, the normative standard of affordability was pegged at one week of wages or 25 percent of a workers monthly income. Later, in , that figure was adjusted up to 30 percent of monthly income. What has emerged in the United States is a measure of affordability that does not correspond to the hopes of advocates. A measure of income relative to monthly cost of housing is a pretty weak basis upon which to correct social inequity.

One Seattle City Councilmember, Tim Burgess , has a view about what dealing with monthly price of housing is all about:. Where is the case that including subsidized units in market rate buildings solve the public benefit problem if there even is one? And does it solve the perceived problem of not taking enough public benefits at the expense of private businesses? Additionally, if the problem is developer greed, then why not shut down all new development everywhere?

Or perhaps we should simply try imposing rent control deemed unconstitutional up to this point on all new housing, allowing the City Council to determine what prices can be charged for monthly rents in the City. Would that be a better deal? Ask people who live in cities with rent control. Then they should consider the words of Otto Von Bismarck who endeavored to use social welfare programs to squash political dissent, but ended up building a system that, arguably, lead to many of the good ideas we have to day about broad social justice and equity.

The real grievance of the worker is the insecurity of his existence; he is not sure that he will always have work, he is not sure that he will always be healthy, and he foresees that he will one day be old and unfit to work. If he falls into poverty, even if only through a prolonged illness, he is then completely helpless, left to his own devices, and society does not currently recognize any real obligation towards him beyond the usual help for the poor, even if he has been working all the time ever so faithfully and diligently.

The usual help for the poor, however, leaves a lot to be desired, especially in large cities, where it is very much worse than in the country.

On the contrary, by penalizing the development of more housing supply by making it more expensive, policy makers would be having a deleterious affect on the very thing they seek to fix: housing price. When statewide regulations negate sprawl or limit building heights, they exacerbate agglomeration pressures at the city centers. Ultimately these dynamics are reflected in the increase in housing prices. Supporters of the GMA pounced. My former colleague Eric de Place at Sightline wrote a three part series blasting the Seattle Times article on the study, and one on the study itself heavily based on a paper refuting Eicher written by the Washington Chapter of the American Planners Association.

There are plenty of good financial reasons single-family housing developers who are building outside the Urban Growth Area have to blast the GMA, and forces aligned against more growth in cities like Seattle, would rather see growth go somewhere else, something limited by the GMA. But their attacks on growth management are usually blunted by credible arguments on the other side.

On the one side progressive, liberal supporters of the GMA and, on the other, developer advocates who opposing the limits imposed by the GMA. Increased costs associated with regulation were downplayed by greens and builders argued that if you were mad about housing price, you had regulation to blame. But even back then de Place was wise to point out the distinction between the GMA and other regulations limiting the use of land in our cities in the region. This conflation is important, because it is the source of a major hang up in the discussion of land use regulation and affordability.

The truth is that the Growth Management Act is a way of pushing future growth into cities like Seattle. But what happens when the growth gets here? Too often it runs into opposition from people who are already here. I think when you really look at it, what density has done has pushed rental housing affordability further and further out of Seattle, making Seattle urban villages almost exclusively enclaves for the rich and well off.

So on a macro-level, I may agree with your argument, if you concede that said affordability is located in Renton or Tukwila. I am working on a study of this, by looking at historical date related to cost of rental housing in urban villages.

My aim is to demonstrate with hard data that the average cost of rental housing has steadily risen within urban villages since the GMA was enacted.

These two stories hint at what turns out to be a giant opportunity hiding in plain sight. Across the Pacific Northwest, occupancy limits constrain access to the cheapest, most profitable, most abundant, and most sustainable housing option currently available: bedrooms in existing buildings. They criminalize the simplest and perhaps the oldest solution to housing affordability: roommates.

Progressive Urbanists like Dan Bertolet have landed on the supply side shores in Seattle, finally realizing that making more rules about housing—even well intentioned rules like incentive zoning—actually make housing more scarce by making it harder to build. That reduced supply means higher prices. Thoughtful environmentalists like Durning are pushing for fewer rules and more flexibility.

But social justice advocates and NIMBYs are banding together to add more rules in the name of affordability or just simply slowing growth.

The harder we make it to do that by imposing taxes, fees, and fines on people creating housing the more expensive we make it. Regardless of ideology the facts are pretty simple. When government limits housing inventory with zoning and adds cost with regulation prices for housing goes up. While these facts might create ideological whiplash for liberal Seattle, we need to get over that quick and make it easier to create more housing.

Seattle's Land Use Code Listening for the future of the city. Skip to content. A better way to pay for lower-priced housing for the poor? Posted on February 16, by. How are property taxes assessed and collected? All real estate shall constitute one class To quote from my old article on TIF and the Constitution, that means that The taxes that the city collects on.

Unusual effects of the budget based system But in Washington our system allows for individual property tax bills to go down when overall assessed value of the district goes up, even when the total tax being levied goes up. His neighbor. Important caveats and provisos Make no mistake, we still need more infill development in single-family neighborhoods ; we need all kinds of options including for people who want to have the choice to live in small-lot housing, cottages, and accessory dwelling units.

Posted in Uncategorized 2 Comments. Posted in 4. I don't understand 2 Comments. Posted on May 7, by. Posted in Uncategorized 3 Comments. Urbanism Without Effort? Let It Be! Posted on May 6, by. But what is Urbanism Without Effort? Wolfe describes it as What happens naturally when people congregate in cities—based on the innate interactions of urban dwellers that occur with one other and the surrounding urban and physical environment.

Posted in Uncategorized 1 Comment. I don't understand Leave a comment. Thank you for this, especially your point about supply. Posted in 3. A keeper 1 Comment. Is There an Apodment Moratorium in the Works?

Posted on March 6, by. I don't understand , Uncategorized 17 Comments. Here is Ferris on so called work force housing back in in an article in the Daily Journal of Commerce : Imagine you are a schoolteacher, firefighter, police officer, health-care worker, retail clerk or any other median-income worker whose job is essential to the economic vitality of our cities.

Posted on February 24, by. I don't understand , Uncategorized Leave a comment.