Help make Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan ambitious enough to solve the housing crisis

The housing shortage, homelessness, and affordability have gotten to crisis levels. And after a recent cooldown in rent fueled by record-shattering apartment completions, new building applications have completely fallen off a cliff (-36% in the region, -41% in Seattle) to levels not seen since the recession. Under current trends, the housing crisis is now projected to last at least two decades.

Luckily, Seattle’s state-mandated, once-a-decade zoning update (‘Comprehensive Plan’) could fix this by reducing barriers to housing construction and legalizing a more diverse set of homes throughout the city. Since the draft in the spring, we have seen the city take a step in the right direction by legalizing larger ‘missing middle’ buildings in single-family zones and giving a bonus to stacked flats, but the progress comes with a lot of caveats:

• Parking mandates will continue citywide detracting from our climate goals, increasing traffic, and driving up the cost of housing by mandating unneeded spaces
• Corner stores will be legalized but only on literal corners and will need upper levels setback from the street, keeping all the current ones illegal
• Upzones along transit will only apply to the half-block directly adjacent to the arterial, skipping other areas still walkable to bus stops
• The stacked flat bonus only applies on extra large 6,000 sqft lots and excludes parcels on slopes (of which there are many!), leaving townhomes as the default

You can read about the draft update in PubliCola and the Urbanist and attend an open house in person or send Seattle YIMBY’s letter to the mayor and city council demanding more housing.

Open Houses Remaining:

• Jefferson Park Community Center (Beacon Hill) Thursday, December 5th, 5:30-7:30 pm
• Seattle Center Exhibition Hall (Lower Queen Anne) Tuesday, December 10th, 5:30-7:30 pm
• Virtual (everywhere) Thursday, December 12th, 5:30-7:30 pm