Every 10 years, the state’s Growth Management Act (GMA) requires the Puget Sound four-county area (King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap) to adjust projections for future growth and set targets that determine where and how growth will occur. The aim is to concentrate the region’s growth within urban areas, prevent sprawl, curb global warming and protect the state’s rural lands and natural environment.
Twenty-year employment projections are made, and then housing targets are set for each county. It is assumed that for every two jobs anticipated in a given county, roughly one new housing unit will be added. Through negotiations, cities, in turn, accept a share of the county’s targets. Then each city is responsible for adjusting its comprehensive plan and assigning a portion of its new target to each neighborhood.
In 2005’s adjustment, Seattle was obligated to provide another 47,000 housing units — about one-third of King County’s residential target — by 2024.
So is Seattle meeting its responsibilities? The most recent city data indicates that, through 2012, Seattle has added 43,309 units, including units now going through the permitting process. In just eight years, we’ve reached 92 percent of our city’s 20-year regional growth target.
We’re averaging more than 5,000 new units added per year — an unprecedented level of new construction. The only practical limit is insufficient city staff to process permits and not enough workers and firms out there to build them at this rate.
This soaring growth rate puts enormous strains on Seattle’s infrastructure, with a $1 billion to $2 billion backlog of road and bridge repairs. Yet, Seattle remains one of the few cities in the four-county region that doesn’t require developers to pay impact fees to help cover the intense infrastructure demands caused by their projects.
The GMA specifically allows and even encourages cities to impose developer fees. It also requires “concurrency,” giving cities authority to limit growth until there is the capacity and the financing needed to pay for the infrastructure necessitated by that growth. But this provision of GMA is ignored by Seattle’s leaders.
This rapid growth is occurring within the existing zoning code for Seattle and its neighborhoods. Our elected officials recently — and without public notice —decided that, instead of 33 percent of the county’s growth through 2024, Seattle will now accept a 36-percent share through 2031, requiring the addition of another 43,000 units between now and then.
But even with these increased targets, our city, under existing zoning, can easily reach that amount. Drawing from King County’s 2007 Buildable Lands Report and then subtracting record levels of growth since then, our zoning code still has capacity for another 81,000 units.
Why then are we seeing a pell-mell rush to upzone so many of Seattle's neighborhoods? Why upzone Roosevelt when, under existing zoning, it's reached 87 percent of its GMA 20-year target in eight years?
Why upzone Capitol Hill and Pike-Pine, which have reached 154 and 272 percent of their respective growth targets?
The U-District, Southeast Seattle, Beacon Hill, Broadview/Bitter Lake and a half-dozen other areas of the city have also been targeted for upzones.
The true ‘anti-environmentalists’
There now is a powerful pro-growth machine led by Seattle developers that dictates city land-use policy. For these interests, we’ll never have enough growth. We’ll never reach saturation. More is always better.
This cabal also includes a few mainstream “environmental” groups that provide “green” cover to legitimize runaway growth. (Conflict of interest emerges when, in return, those groups receive and willingly accept hefty contributions from those same development interests and from city departments backing their agenda.) Ironically, there’s absolutely no recognition by these forces of the environmental impacts right here in our own city accompanying accelerated levels of growth.
What is the pouring of millions of tons of carbon-emitting concrete for all those new steel-and-glass towers, condos and apartment buildings doing to our city’s livability and environmental values? What is all this growth doing to our urban streams, our carbon-sequestering mature tree canopy and what's left of our open space? How many more units of existing low-income housing must be sacrificed? How many more low-income and working residents must be displaced to the gods of runaway growth?
But to the pro-growth zealots, if you raise these concerns, if you call even for managed and responsible levels of growth, you are typecast. If you say no to any more upzones, even call for more modest changes to the code (as was the case in Roosevelt) or if you ask developers to pay with impact fees for infrastructure or to help cover at least some of the costs and impacts of their projects or pay for replacement low-income housing, you are labeled anti-environment and a NIMBY.
The push for more density and unrestrained growth demonstrates the power and influence of the interests that now have a virtual lock on City Hall. It has nothing to do with responsible growth planning. And it’s placing at risk the livability and affordability of our great city.
JOHN V. FOX and CAROLEE COLTER are coordinators for the Seattle Displacement Coalition (www.zipcon.net), a low-income housing organization. To comment on this column, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.