Ok, it is officially thread time!

This thread is about zoning, and specifically the need to eliminate "single-family only zoning" aka "oneplex-only zoning" aka "apartment bans" aka "white lining" here in Seattle.

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and this is going to be a LONG thread, because someone who many of you do not know but is a fairly important politically in the area (a white man!) spoke eloquently and with surgical precision to the elephant in the room that is the history of redlining and its impact here.

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Of course, because of *gestures generally around* happening currently, many smaller and longer conversations—as conversations related to planning go—are still happening, which means important discussions around both past choices and future decisions are still occurring.

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First off, thank you to @SKMOnTheRoad for bringing this meeting to my attention; the meeting in question being the Growth Management Policy Board of the Puget Sound Regional Council. This meeting happened last Thursday morning and can be viewed here:

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https://psrc2.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=161

To explain what PSRC is, the Puget Sound Regional Council directs the vision for the region on a large, multi-county level. From there, the vision report influences the county's major comprehesive plan update, which then influences the city's major CP update.

Cascade effect.
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So this meeting that happened while many of us were focused on Black Lives Matter, Resign Durkan, Jump Start, Defund SPD, and the Seattle Transit Benefit District

(breath)

a discussion was happening on the Regional Housing Strategy Update and included a panel.

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The intent of this meeting was a number of standard items, but the update and panel is what we want to focus on.

This had three parts:

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1. Dept of Commerce HB1923 Housing Grants (what's happening with that, including all the cities doing "housing action plans" *eyeroll*)

2. The Snohomish County Housing Affordability Regional Taskforce (HART) and their work for the next major update

and

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3. The King County Affordable Housing Committee update.

We want to focus on #3.

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So the funny thing is that this was brought to my attention because at 1:58:00 you have PSRC member Dr. Chen (Tacoma) ask a question as to why eliminating single-family zoning was not a part of the day's discussions. He also makes some really good points re: mall reuse.

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Now yes, that definitely makes me excited because:

1) you have an elected from a smaller city recognizing the inequities of past land use, which means

2) eliminating SFZ across the region could come faster than I thought.

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HOWEVER

That is not what I really want to bring to your attention. What I want to bring to your attention is the question (read: comment) made by CM Derek Young of Pierce County.

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So context:

Me being me, I watched the entire meeting.

You don't have to do that, his comment is right around 2:08:00, but let me just set this up for you.

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1st)

In the region, the research has already been done by PSRC that says we expect by 2050 that there will be 1.2 million jobs added to the Puget Sound region. In addition, there will be 830,000 new households created by 2050.

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2nd)

A King County report from Oct 2019 estimates that there are currently 156K rent burdened households, and that the number will increase to 244K households by 2040.

So if we divide that by 2(10 years = 122K), and tack that to the end, the county is expecting to build..

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...366K units of affordable housing.

Mind you, Microsoft's estimates put the number of housing units for 0-120% AMI in the King County area at 315,600 needed as of November 2019, and 194,300 units needed just in Seattle alone.

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So 3rd)

You can understand the frustration by PSRC members when the presentation done six months after the report had been released has the same King County estimates for housing units they will build in 2040, meaning no less than...

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...464,000 units are expected to be built in areas that are *not* King County, further exacerbating the ultra-commuting and cascade of displacement happening in the region.

Which leads us to the comment by CM Derek Young, which reads as follows:

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"I just want to echo the comments that Dr. Chen and CM Beale made, but I wanted to emphasize—and I appreciate the work that King County is going through saying that the work is being done—but the numbers you're showing here are nowhere near enough.

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"I mean, they're not even close. You're not meeting even half of what your jobs targets are. And so what that means is you're expecting the rest of the region to pick up the slack, and what that's doing to the rest of the us is really harmful.

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"To folks in Pierce County who don't have the wages to keep up so that's resulted in an explosion of homelessness in our county, and it's going to get worse. So we need you to take some radical action quickly. And I'm not trying to be mean about this, but when I see a plan...
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"...like this that's not even coming close to the targets that need to be met, it's frustrating to see that because that means that we have to pick up the slack and then put more people onto the highway, put more people on public transit, that—
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"because of the way we pay for our regional transit is only money raised locally—we don't get the same support for that public transit that you all do. So I guess I would urge that you speed things up and be more bold. Councilmember Beale pointed out the remnants of redlining.
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"If you put a Venn diagram of the red line and single family zonings in Seattle, you would see that it's almost a one for one match.

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"The remnants of that are harmful to the entire region, so there needs to be some rethinking there and I would urge that it happen quickly. Thank you."

So what does this mean:

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So Ace, WHY is this important??

Well something important to remember is that when people can't afford to live in Seattle, they move to the rest of King County, when they can't afford that; they then move further out.

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This creates a ripple effect with both rental units and units for purchase where the cost to rent or buy in the area keeps going up and up.

The big problem is that many who live outside of Seattle, namely BIPOC, do so b/c of family history.

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These are the families who were denied housing in Seattle during the period of redlining, and after that those that were displaced due to gentrification and disenfranchisement within the city and greater King County.

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When we say "we want to preserve the character of our neighborhoods," what we are saying is "fuck you who don't live here, I have what I want and I don't care about you."

Whether many believe so or not, the decisions we make locally have impacts regionally.

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And though it's extremely hard to be involved in every single conversation happening around planning in Seattle, this is the big one I ask people to fight for. There is no version of the city that should exist with single-family zoning by 2024.

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Doing so would be inequitable, deny the changes that are happening to our climate, and exacerbate so many of the problems Seattle workers who don't live in Seattle face, to not mention the pressure we would put on surrounding communities.

It's the only path towards equity.
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#Seattle #urbanism #housing #PSRC #PugetSound #KingCounty #redlining #whitelining