This afternoon, the city council’s land-use committee will vote on rules to allow backyard cottages throughout the city—a controversial subject for some homeowners. The council should ignore the NIMBY concerns. If anything, the rules need to be more expansive—and fix a flaw in the proposal that currently bans cottages where they are needed most: in the central city.

Even though cottages increase urban density and keep growing and aging families together, the specter of more density in single-family neighborhoods has spurred an outcry among some homeowners. The council committee is considering neighborhood privacy considerations today. City Council Member Tim Burgess says he may need to oppose certain amendments that he finds too restrictive.

Northwest District Council Co-chair Irene Wall recently said that, as the legislation is written, “It creates a lack of privacy, busting single-family zoning.”

And at a public hearing on September 15, Capitol Hill resident Eleanor Baxendale expressed fear of eyes over her fence. She asked the council for rules that require “no windows looking out onto your yard that destroy privacy [and] no balconies or decks on the structure.” She also opposed two-story cottages. In other words, cottages are fine with Baxendale—as long at they are eight feet high and have no windows.

But a council memo on the subject warns that requiring specific designs to protect privacy could create impractical, cookie-cutter designs.

But there’s a bigger problem that the council isn’t addressing.

The current proposal only allows cottages on lots over 4,000 square feet. But many of the lots in the Central District and Capitol Hill, and dense areas near downtown, are less than 4,000 square feet.

“People in outlying areas are trying to preserve suburban feel,” Bill Bradburd, a Central District resident, said at the hearing. But folks in the central city want more density. (The cottages were tested in a pilot project in Southeast Seattle started in 2006.)

“In Central District, we have lots that are 3,000 square feet,” said Bradburd. Rules to allow them in his neighborhood, where people generally support a dense, vibrant city, “would be great,” he said.

On the blocks near my rental house in the Central District, most houses are on lots 3,600 to 3,800 square feet—so no cottages would be allowed. But in outlying neighborhoods, like swaths of Ballard, in Northwest Seattle (where Irene Wall lives and neighborhood group have been hostile to cottages), most lots range from 5,000 to 7,000 square feet.

In other words, under this ordinance, more cottages will be constructed in the areas where people don’t want them—not the areas where people do want them.

The land-use committee is expected to vote today, thereby sending the issue to the full city council. If they don’t, the committee won’t revisit the issue until December, which means that the legislation probably won’t go before the full council until next year—i.e., when it’s a different make-up of council members and the proposal could get bogged down. Here’s to hoping the committee votes this out today and that the full council changes the rules, allowing backyard cottages to be built in the neighborhoods where we most need density and where neighbors actually want that density.