Every year we lose about 2,000 to 4,000 low-income units to demolition, speculative sale, abandonment, conversion and increased rents. For every one unit we build with limited public funds, we lose three to four times that amount to the forces of redevelopment and gentrification.
As we write this column, the City Council's Land Use Committee is entertaining changes to the Downtown land-use plan and zoning changes elsewhere around town proposed by Mayor Greg Nickels that will translate directly into the loss of even more low-income housing in our city.
Tearing down existing apartment buildings and replacing them with larger new ones always results in increased rents in the new units. The inflation in building and land costs over time, and the desire of developers to maximize their profit, work against replacing older units with newer ones for the same price. That's why the mayor's rezones aimed at adding increased density in our neighborhoods will only exacerbate our city's shortage of low-income housing - unless the City Council intervenes and takes steps that either prevent demolition or guarantee 100 percent replacement of units that are destroyed.
A history of preservation
Seattle has a long-standing commitment to preserve existing affordable housing in neighborhoods where those opportunities now exist. Such a policy in one form or another has been part of the city's comprehensive plan for over two decades. However, without adopting specific mechanisms to either prevent this loss or ensure replacement of units at comparable price this commitment remains a hollow promise.
From the late '70s to the mid '80s, housing preservation was an integral and well publicized component of all housing assistance plans adopted annually during that period. The key mechanisms for preserving low-cost units were 1) an anti-abandonment law requiring developers to keep habitable units open and occupied; 2) a demolition-control law that required developers to replace low-income units they destroyed; and 3) a mandatory code-inspection program ensuring regular inspection of all lower-priced rental housing tenant housing in the city.
The anti-abandonment law remains on the books, but is not enforced in the wake of a federal court decision from over a decade ago. However, there are additional provisions of Seattle's law that could still be enforced but are simply ignored by Department of Planning and Development (DPD) - provisions allowing the city to order repairs and even condemn and obtain residential properties when they are not maintained.
Two court decisions struck down our old demolition control law except for a provision barring developers from tearing down low-income housing for parking or empty lots. Even that vestige of the original law is not enforced by or is circumvented by DPD, as we saw in the case of Paul Allen's Vulcan Company's demolition of the Lillian Apartments in the Cascade community.
In the wake of the second court decision in 1987 striking down the demolition control law, city leaders passed an 18-month moratorium on housing demolition downtown and on the removal of low-income mobile home parks citywide. They also committed themselves to replacing that law with a legally defensible alternative but there was no follow-up when the moratorium expired.
Spotty enforcement
The city did continue enforcing a section of that law requiring developers tearing down housing to provide relocation assistance to displaced low-income tenants, although the mayor and City Council unilaterally withdrew enforcement of it while a court case was pending over protests from activists. However, courts eventually upheld the right of cities to require relocation assistance, and in the mid-'90s, thanks to Councilmember Nick Licata, the city passed a new law requiring developers to provide up to $2,000 in relocation money to low-income tenants who are displaced due to demolition.
The mandatory code inspection program per se was not struck down, only the method of raising revenue to pay for the program by charging fees to owners. In a court settlement with property owners, however, the city gave away its right to adopt a new mandatory program with differing methods of financing until 2004. That year has come and gone with no action by city officials.
What's left of the city preservation laws are some minimal provisions obligating Harborview and the University of Washington to replace housing they demolish for expansion. We also have a toothless condominium conversion law adopted in the late '70s that requires early notice and limited relocation assistance to displaced tenants but does not prevent actual conversion of low rent apartments to condos .
To fulfill Seattle's promise of preserving affordable housing, we believe the upcoming Council decisions on rezones must be accompanied by passage of a resolution committing the city to a six-month process culminating in the identification and adoption of new housing preservation tools. These mechanisms would either help prevent removal of units in neighborhoods where they now exist, or ensure one-for-one replacement at a comparable price.
The resolution should also commit the city to adopt such measures as a prerequisite to approval of new neighborhood plans and any future land use and zoning changes that add residential or commercial density in our neighborhoods.
As part of this resolution, we envision the creation of a citizen task force to be appointed by the chair of the City Council's Housing Committee and consisting of housing and tenant advocates, non-profit housing developers, and representatives of the development industry, with support staff time allocated from the Office of Housing.
The task force would be charged with assessing the loss of low-income units, quantifying the problem, studying practices in other cities, and then reporting back to the City Council with a set of recommendations for adoption.
If the council simply approves the rezones proposed by the mayor, it will be business as usual. Our leaders will continue to bewail the rising costs of housing. We will be urged to upzone more and more areas of the city as if that would make housing more affordable. Or we could make a public commitment to stem the loss of the valuable resource right under our noses - our existing low-cost unsubsidized housing units.
John Fox and Carolee Colter are members of the Seattle Displacement Coalition. They can be reached at editor@capitolhilltimes.com.
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