Last night a Seattle Design Review board, which is a meaningless cumbersome process which gives architects the chance to filibuster other architect’s work, kicked off in the NIMBYest of neighborhoods in Seattle. Magnolia is zoned 90% for single family homes and the average home costs north of $1.2 million dollars. Only 22,000 people live in this large swath of an island just 2 miles from downtown Seattle, so you can imagine what it must have been like to propose a 133 home mixed use apartment building there.

Imagine if you could partner with a developer to build a multiplex or rowhouse on your property, and in exchange for the land you were gifted a home in the new development? This is the concept for the Great Seattle Housing Swap, an idea that will leverage our residential land to create housing growth in our neighborhoods, allow existing residents to age in place, and lower the financial burdens of displacement and new housing costs.

This isn’t a new idea.

Athens Greece used to be a city of low rise, single story residences in their urban core until the 1920s…

Seattle is in a housing debt. In 2010 we had 5% more houses per people than we do today. You may see cranes all over the skyline, new apartments opening up, and new Land Use Action signs in your neighborhood, but the truth is we aren’t building enough homes.

By undoing land use restrictions, and setting goals to add 70,000 homes in the next five years we will add $1 billion in affordable housing revenue, enough to build 3,500 rent controlled homes to house over 7,000 people struggling with housing insecurity.

This will also create $35 billion in real estate value, which will maintain thousands of construction jobs and make your realtor salivate at the opportunity of selling more homes. The new homes will generate $350 million in annual property tax revenue, which will help us grow and expand services like King…

If you live in North Seattle, chances are you have shopped at the Fred Meyer super store in Greenwood. It sells you everything from baked goods to garden hoses. This store is a combination of a supermarket and a Target. It consumes two levels, over 200,000 square feet of space, and acts as the “catch all” store for all your neighborhood needs.

Sounds great on paper, but it’s a complete neighborhood killer.

I don’t mean to pick on this specific store, it’s just an example of a failed land use policy that has turned Seattle into a sprawled out suburb…

Seattle is in a housing crisis, not a land crisis. With 84 square miles in it’s boundary, Seattle is twice the land mass as Paris France, but a third of their population. Paris fits 2 million people in 40 square miles because it’s designed as a real city. Seattle is not. Seattle is a downtown of towers where most people go to work, and then sprawls out into a sea of suburbanized planning disguised as “neighborhood charm”. From time to time you’ll find lovely historic dense apartments, but those predate the zoning dominance that started 100 years ago. …

If the profanity censored title hasn’t scared you off, chances are you are wondering why this makes me so upset. Single Family Zoning has made the news recently as city after city has removed the name and allowed denser dwellings citywide. Aside from the notion that the zoning is full of racism and low density NIMBYism, it’s the name alone that has gotten me so irritated lately.

NOTHING governs one family on a lot

I have posted my attitudes about the insufferable design review process, which acts as a bottleneck for development creating high costs & long schedules to build housing. The review meeting that inspired that rant finally had it’s rescheduled follow up last night. If you recall, one of the board members who delayed 300 homes said “there’s red brick and there’s red brick”, and alluded to the fact that the developer needed to study about 347 different brick options, which they did. Someone named Ted Geisel wrote this hilarious Dr Seuss themed poem and read it as public comment

One Brick…

Last night I read a fantastic thread that perfectly encapsulates Seattle’s Design Review Program. A modest mixed-use residential project, with a grocery store at the ground level, was sent back to the drawing board for the 4th time. This project began it’s public review process back in the Obama administration and, in it’s next meeting, will be under it’s 3rd US President when it is *hopefully* approved. The reason for this delay? The board members were ‘concerned’ that it didn’t have enough store fronts (IT’S A GROCERY STORE), one member wanted to remove a fire exit stair and an accessibility…