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Originally Posted by 58rhodes
So whats going on in Seattle as far as affordable housing? or is it even needed?
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Yes, affordability is worse here. Some successes and some misses:
1. City of Seattle voters continue to keep the a low-income and affordable housing levy going, providing $16,000,000 per year that mostly goes to nonprofits who build and own housing.
2. The Seattle Housing Authority and its nonprofit and for-profit partners are in the home stretch on rebuilding their old single-income zones into denser mixed-income zones. Generally they go from maybe six per acre to 11 or so. When you take light rail from the airport you pass two of these, Rainier Vista and New Holly, both very successful. The last one is Yesler Terrace next to Downtown, which will replace 590(?) garden-type units with maybe 3,000 plus some commercial use, with the first few hundred units underway or just completing.
3. We've cut way back on parking requirements. The zero-requirement zone started with Downtown but now includes more areas like much of Capitol Hill and the University District. I forget where else. This is allowing a ton of smaller units with 0.0 or 0.1 ratios that would have never penciled with even a 0.5 ratio, particularly on small sites where parking is geometrically inefficient. Developers instead try to approximate the actual demand, much like in Portland, so the average larger building might have a 0.5 or 0.6 if it's in the right neighborhood. Only condos and townhouses really do a space per unit with a few exceptions.
4. We have a large wave of micro units. The tragedy is that much of the zoning opportunities have been shut. We were getting numerous buildings with dorm-type rooms of maybe 150 square feet, which could rent for maybe $550, which filled instantly, but those are mostly done. We're still getting a lot of 300 square foot units that rent for $1,000. There used to be ways to keep costs down by bypassing design review, building extremely low parking ratios in neighborhoods that require more for typical units, etc., but those are cut off too. Basically "loopholes" were closed but those were key to really low rents. The City Council decided that nimbys and closet racists (if we're being serious here) were more important than the lower-income residents they claim to care about.
5. We're failing to keep a supply of buildable lots going. Only 15% (or 11?) of Seattle allows multifamily, and most of that is 45' or 65'. There are still tons of sites if you're walking through a neighborhood, but often those aren't for sale, so the ones that are on the market have gotten way more expensive. We aren't going to get away from single-family dominating our land use, but it would really help to add a few percent of the city, like along more arterials.
6. We don't zone very high. Much like Portland, only a tiny area allows highrises, and even the lowrise zones are often 45'. We're upzoning some small areas but not enough to keep supply cheap.
7. Accessory units are mostly not allowed. Or you can take a chance and apply through a difficult process, and if you fail then your current illegal unit can be taken away. So people do it illegally, but most just don't try. It's a cave in to the same people worried about free street parking or the poor folks moving in.
8. Some of the Council wants linkage fees. These would be a net addition to what most projects pay, either through a fee up to $22/sf (about 10% more development cost for a lot of jobs) or affordable housing onsite (more palatable in some cases). Some non-industry people claim that this will be eaten up by lower land costs, but that's pure stupidity. Nobody sells land when the price just dropped by half. They just need to wait a few years for rents to rise and then the land will be close to its original value.
More about that. Rents for any growing open market are largely driven by development costs. If rents are too low, nothing will get built, and if they're too high developers will add too many new units. That applies to existing units, not just new ones. With the new fees maybe you're adding a few hundred units per year in affordable units. But given that over half of Seattle's 340,000(?) units are rentals, you're making 170,000 units more expensive, plus anything new.
9. The best thing we can do is keep supply ahead of demand. New units can't be really cheap unless they're super-micros. But as we build new housing, the old housing is less in demand. Today's main affordable housing in what was market-rate in 1920 or 1970. Further, since we don't have rent control (per state constitution), those units go to the people that need them, not whoever tied them up 30 years ago and makes plenty of money but still likes their cheap unit. We're doing reasonably well on new supply, aside from the current tech boom getting us behind a bit particularly a year ago when rents were rising more quickly.