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http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/07/how-a-seattle-plan-to-end-single-family-zoning-could-change-affordable-housing/398420/?utm_source=SFFB
How a Seattle Plan to End Single-Family Zoning Could Change Affordable Housing

Some of the proposed tools are untested, some are best practices. Together, they would set the city on the progressive edge.

Kriston Capps
Jul 13, 2015

The 28-member committee—planners, business owners, architects, advocates, and other people in housing, right down to the tenants—even fingers how race and class discrimination have guided the history of single-family zoning. This is the purpose of single-family housing: to keep poor people and people of color out of white, wealthy neighborhoods by erecting high barriers to entry. The Seattle committee recommends that the city take those barriers down by replacing “single-family zones” with “low-density residential zones” and upzoning practically everywhere else.

That is a solution that is so clear and sensible that it’s dangerous.

The formal proposal released by Mayor Murray today is lighter on theory and details, but it gives a broader account of the mayor’s plans for affordable housing. Seattle can build or preserve 50,000 new units of housing over the next decade, with almost half (20,000 units) designated affordable.

That’s a reasonable goal. But it’s clear from the mayor’s proposal that he isn’t merely looking to expand affordable housing. Mayor Murray and his City Council allies want to build fairly. Seattle could get housing that is fundamentally just, and that’s something we haven’t seen in any city anywhere.

Use property taxes to promote affordable housing
Mayor Murray proposes to double Seattle’s housing levy—to $290 million—in order to build affordable housing. He also proposes a 0.25 percent tax on real-estate transfers in the hopes of capturing some of the value from rising land prices and redirecting it toward affordable housing. The mayor also calls for an expansion of the multifamily property tax exemption.

Reform parking and preservation requirements
Historic review and design review are important tools for protecting the culture and texture of a city, but yeesh, these tools can be a NIMBY’s deadliest weapon. Seattle’s already done the hard work of eliminating parking minimums from its urban centers and urban villages, so the mayor’s goal is to remove parking requirements beyond these areas.

Three mantras for building: taller, denser, more inclusive
Mayor Murray cannot eliminate single-family housing in one fell swoop. He would be chased out of town with pitchforks and torches.

But enabling low-density housing throughout most of Seattle (rowhouses, duplexes, triplexes, courtyard housing, and so on) is a start. The proposal also calls for taller height limits and relaxed building and fire codes to encourage denser wood-frame multifamily construction. Mandatory inclusionary housing plus upzoning to make room for these requirements is part of the mayor’s package.

Build in extra safeguards to ensure fair housing
The proposal recommends a “ban-the-box” approach to housing to ensure that people with criminal histories still have access to fair, stable, affordable housing. How this works will depend on the nature of the legislation (if and when it is proposed), but this could make a huge difference for present and future Seattle residents. Several other items on Mayor Murray’s wishlist would serve to identify low-income communities that are at risk of losing their homes before they lose them.