Stop F*king Calling it Single Family!
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
The very idea that a “single family” will only live on the plot of land is no guarantee, thus making the zoning name sound inaccurate and utterly idiotic. College students for years have been renting out rooms in houses zoned in “single family” neighborhoods near one of the top universities in the United States. Elsewhere around Seattle there are two other private universities where this is also common. Search Craigslist and you’ll see many rooms for rent with strangers, sometimes three or four “families” deep. There are homes all over the city with five, six, seven households under one roof, some of which are young teachers who are guiding our children in Seattle Public Schools and can only afford to stay here by dividing up rent six ways. In fact, when I moved here 10 years ago I too lived in a multi-family household in the exclusively named “single family” zone. There is no governance to limit how many families live on a lot, so why do we name it inaccurately?
Single Family has actually been Multi Family for 20 years!
In 1994 accessory dwelling units (known as ADUs for shorthand) were legalized. This meant a single plot, zoned single family, could now house more than one family in a separate residence. Rather than roommates, you could have separate entries and multiple families living on the single family lot despite never seeing or speaking to one another. Sounds a lot like an apartment huh? The city expanded this program in 2016 to allow TWO ADDITIONAL DWELLINGS on any single family lot citywide! Now, you could have two ADUs each with 2 or 3 bedrooms, in addition to a primary home that could be sized upwards of 4 or 5 bedrooms. If each room is rented, that means your SINGLE family lot could house ELEVEN or more families! PLURAL.
What’s in a name?
Wealth. Racism. Exclusivity. They all go hand in hand. Single family zoning was not invented until the mid 1920s, fifty years after Seattle got going. That means many of the craftsman bungalows you see all over Queen Anne, Wallingford, Capitol Hill, Greenwood, etc, were already built when we created the zoning typology. So why make the zone? Racism. Seattle was full of racial covenants before we ever had single family zoning. After they were outlawed, single family zoning became a way to racially exclude people along with banking practices. Land has never been cheap, which is why many risked their lives in search of more of it. You see, only someone wealthy would be able to buy a 5,000 square foot lot and have only 1 home on it. That type of exclusivity was primarily steered to keep black families away. By 1960, Wallingford only had 27 black residents compared to 21,833 white residents. This despite covenants being banned for 30 years. You think that wasn’t intentional?
So the name is false, it’s racist, and it sounds stupid, can we change it?
In 2018, Seattle’s Planning Commission told the city to do so. No other changes would be made to the zone, just a new name. Simply put, they would just rename the f*king thing to “Neighborhood Residential”, which sounds more accurate anyway. These are neighborhoods and these are residences. The name change is literally the easiest thing to do. But Mayor Jenny Durkan felt it was too tall a task to change the name, and instead guided the planning department to wait until the Comprehensive Plan Update for 2024, when the new name could also unveil new housing types.
Liberal cities are phonies
When you cruise the city’s NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTIAL streets, you’ll see Bernie signs, Black Lives Matter signs, those signs that have a really long paragraph about how “this home we believe… blah blah blah” (something about equality), and many more progressive slogans. But try to legalize triplexes and those Bernie Bros turn into Tucker Carlson defiantly demanding the world never change from the status quo. At first I wanted to assume Jenny Durkan was trying to keep a low profile running for re-election and being damaged enough already by tear gassing our own citizens during a hostile summer, but this suggestion to keep the name continued after she resigned, uhhhh, I mean, decided not to run again.
So what gives? Are we really so tied to the status quo that we can’t even RENAME something?? Seattle raised the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour before anyone else did. This summer challenged many white residents to openly talk about fixing systematic racism. Well, here’s one example, and it’s the easiest one to fix, it’s just changing a name.
We call ourselves a progressive city ready to embrace change, and we really can’t just rename something?
