Heightened Discussion
Real Change, SAGE (Seattle Alliance for Good Jobs and Housing for Everyone), Seattle Human Services Coalition, Transportation Choices Coalition, and Meals Partnership Coalition are hosting a discussion about Mayor Nickels’s downtown development plan tomorrow from 6-8 pm at the
Gethsemane Lutheran Church, Fellowship Hall (911 Stewart St.)
Speakers will talk about what they think is needed to make the plan more equitable:
•A $20 affordable housing bonus for new residential buildings;
•A developer disclosure requirement, so the public has access to information about the quality of jobs that are created due to new development;
•A way to measure the impact on basic human need and a funding mechanism to meet the increased need for human services that will arise when more people live and work downtown;
•Reliable and frequent transportation choices for downtown workers;
•Livability for people of all incomes, including: open space/parks, green building standards, preservation of historic buildings, and neighborhood amenities for families.
Real Change Executive Director Tim Harris lays out his position in an editorial I’ve attached below.
Get Out and Play
Boring land-use decisions to determine the future of downtown housing
By TIMOTHY HARRIS
Real Change Executive Director
If you think Seattle has changed a lot over the last 20 years, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Demographers project that about 100,000 people will move here over the next decade and that at least 40,000 of them will want to live downtown. This has created a developer's gold rush, and the fight is on over who will reap the benefits of demand.
It's been said that government protects itself by being boring. Discussions of zoning are Exhibit A. Since Mayor Nickels was first elected, a quiet conversation has taken place behind the scenes. These mind-numbingly technical meetings aren't widely publicized and are mostly attended by developers, bankers, and government bureaucrats who speak a special language that only they understand.
The news reached most of us last summer when the Mayor released his downtown development plan reflecting the "consensus” they had reached. The City Council and affordable housing advocates (other than those non-profit developers that the Mayor chose to include) were caught off-balance and unprepared.
The Mayor wanted his plan fast-tracked for approval by last Christmas. Huge amounts of capital, after all, are impatiently waiting to be unleashed. To their great credit, Councilmembers Peter Steinbrueck and Tom Rassmussen took the time to ask the all-important question: qui bono. "Who benefits?”
While the City Council has succeeded in slowing down the process for public examination, the debate at Fourth and James has remained more or less one-sided. Developers and their lobbyists are conducting a full-court press on City Hall. The rest of us, with far fewer resources, are playing catch-up. Here is what's at stake:
Affordable Housing: Seattle is fast becoming a city of the economic elite. Even now, prices for downtown housing range from unaffordable $500-per-square-foot condos in Belltown to lavish $2,100-per-square-foot luxury penthouses nearer the Market. Greater density will accelerate these trends, driving out working people and even middle-class professionals.
Open Space and Environmental Standards: What is built over the next decade will define the city well into the next century. Developers must be held to high environmental standards, and trees and open space must receive the priority we deserve.
Human services: Increased density has a hidden cost, and will create more demand for childcare, health clinics, food banks, and other services upon which people depend. We need to ensure these services can continue to operate downtown.
Good Jobs: The strength of our community depends upon jobs that pay a living family wage and offer access to quality healthcare. We can encourage companies to be good corporate citizens and not pass their expenses on to the taxpayers of Seattle.
Much of downtown's greater density will come with raised height restrictions for both commercial and residential development. The vision for housing is to build tall, slender high-rises, mostly in the Denny Triangle, that exploit projected demand for downtown living. While discussion has centered on whether these towers will cater to childless professionals or be more family-friendly, everyone agrees they will be enclaves of the affluent.
While there is some minimal provision for "workforce housing,” this means people earning 80 to 120 percent of Seattle median income. In other words, the lowest income eligibility rung is set at people making close to $40,000 a year. Benefits of increased density should, like the Seattle Housing Levy, target the majority of support to those at 30 percent of median and below.
The most intense debate is over how much developers will contribute to an affordable housing fund in exchange for building up to maximum allowable heights. Two different economic studies have supported Councilmember Steinbrueck's assertion that a reasonable rate is $20 per square foot. The "consensus” of downtown insiders is that the rate should be no more than $10.
Developers say that if we ask for too much, they will challenge the whole thing in court and the fund for affordable housing will get nothing. If socially responsible development is too expensive, they say, they'll just take their precious capital elsewhere. We're talking an increase of 1 or 2 percent in development costs for projects that deliver higher than 50 percent rates of return.
Neither of these threats consider what developers themselves will lose if they walk away.
What we know for sure is that if we act like we have no power, huge profits will be made by a very small group of people at the expense of a great many. The Mayor's development plan for the downtown will define our city for decades to come. It's high-stakes poker, and we need to be at the table, playing to win. The City's heard from the developers. Now it's your turn. n
[Be There]
Zoned Out: Who Wins and Who Loses in the New Downtown: A Community Forum on Seattle's Future.
Panelists include neighborhood activist Jim Diers, representatives of labor, low-income housing activists, and others.
Thursday, Feb. 23, 6-8 p. m.
Gethsemane Lutheran Church, 911 Stewart St., Seattle. Free. Childcare available on request.
Contact 441-3247, x253, or organizer@ realchangenews.org