The massive rezoning under way in South Lake Union (SLU) — necessary to help Paul Allen make his next billion — is telling us a lot about the Seattle City Council.
The council was in such a hurry to demonstrate its fealty to well-heeled developers that the enormous upzoning was passed early last month without any of the required decisions about the actual details. Those details were to be decided by the full council the week of March 25, but after controversial comments from a former council president and a contentious hearing of the SLU Committee last week, that final vote is now set for May 6.
The council member in question, Richard Conlin, astonished onlookers at the previous SLU Committee meeting March 18 by, as The Stranger put it, “[making] the case to his colleagues for focusing subsidized housing ‘along the light-rail line in Rainier Valley,’ where it’s cheaper to build instead of the ‘very-hot neighborhood’ of South Lake Union, where potential new zoning rules will actually generate the money to build that low-income housing.”
Rarely do you get a local elected official openly advocating what many housing activists considered redlining. Sure, modern urban planning, not to mention social justice, now considers the desirability of mixing income levels in public-housing development a given — that’s the justification Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) projects like Yesler Terrace have used to minimize serving poorer populations.
Conlin’s statement was the opposite and reflected not only class bigotry but its closely related (at least in Seattle) racial cousin: “We’re building a nice neighborhood here. Let’s keep the icky people out, shall we?”
Washington’s notorious Alien Land Law — only repealed in 1966 by voter initiative, because legislators like Conlin were fine with it — was rationalized exactly the same way. Lots of public-policymakers in Seattle have thought this way over the years. It scarcely matters whether Conlin’s motivation is bigotry or simply the desire to make billionaires even richer — or both.
No offsetting here
Of course, the council could just force South Lake Union developers to build the affordable-housing units they’re already legally required to provide. A city program called Incentive Zoning (IZ) is supposed to offset loss of affordable housing by requiring that developers set aside some of their units as affordable housing for poorer people. (Set aside, for now, that the city’s notion of “affordable” is a joke, as is its notion of “poor” — a family of four earning under $64,000 annually qualifies.)
That program has been a dismal failure. Unlike most other cities where IZ has been adopted, Seattle didn’t make it mandatory. The council included a provision allowing developers to pay into a city fund rather than building the affordable units themselves, thus preserving the fancy, new buildings for the right kind of people. The city badly underpriced “in lieu of” rates, so that what developers pay comes nowhere near the cost of building new, affordable units — which, in turn, is far more expensive than if we’d kept the old, affordable housing instead.
Varying fee rates
The fee rates must be negotiated whenever there’s a rezone. Mayor Mike McGinn proposed $15.15 per square foot for South Lake Union because that’s been the going rate. But because South Lake Union is, by far, the largest rezone for the next decade — and because opposition from developers and their errand boys like Conlin is at its strongest — the council is faced with a range of options. There’s Conlin’s clear preference — don’t make those struggling developers pay anything, and would poor people please just go away? — and also proposals from Sally Clark, Tim Burgess, Mike O’Brien and Nick Licata.
Licata’s proposal is the best, increasing fees eightfold, to $120 per net square foot and requiring that half of the “affordable units” be affordable for families at 60 to 80 percent of Average Median Income (AMI) rather than the city’s current 80- to 100-percent requirement (the preposterous $64,000 figure).
O’Brien’s proposal is more cautious, upping fees for both residential and commercial units (to $22 and $29, respectively) — which sounds good but only covers inflation since then the law was written.
Clark and Burgess make that link more explicitly, retroactively tying fees to the Consumer Price Index. In Clark’s case, this would be an “interim” measure while the council spends additional years contemplating — or not — why affordable housing keeps disappearing in Seattle.
If even a watered-down version of Licata’s proposal passes, it sets an encouraging precedent. What’s really needed is to scrap “any price to keep the undesirables out” fees entirely — along with the mentality that parts of Seattle ought to be off-limits to many of its residents. But Licata’s measure would be an excellent step in the right direction.
The SLU Committee is now set to decide on this April 15.
GEOV PARRISH is cofounder of Eat the State! He also reviews news of the week on “Mind Over Matters” on KEXP 90.3 FM. To comment on this column, write to CityLivingEditor@nwlink.com.