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Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

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Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#21

Post by jamestimmins »

jackmott42 wrote: post #7
yellow_postit wrote: post #4

Does any city have a well functioning design review process or are they all captured by incumbents to slow down development?

It is amazing how one person can have a view that developers have all the power and can never be stopped. Others have the view that NIMBY's have all the power and nothing can get developed. Yet somehow everything ends up paved over with a high rise on it eventually, like it or not.

This is patently untrue. Cities like LA and SF should have high rises everywhere, but instead they have 1 story homes from 1955 selling for $2 million.

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#22

Post by DrewADesign »

yellow_postit wrote: post #4

Does any city have a well functioning design review process or are they all captured by incumbents to slow down development?

The Boston setup works great. The folks on the Boston Redevelopment Authority make a ton of money on the DL.

Oh did you mean work well for the general public?

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#23

Post by cwkoss »

jimbob45 wrote: post #18

Affordable housing is little better than the drinking fountains for colored people from years past. You don't build affordable housing. You build housing and then prices decrease from the increase in supply. If you're feeling extra bold, you build dense housing to massively increase the supply.

I think the idea is that the margins are better on luxury houses/apts/condos (less plumbing per sq ft, etc), so developers are incentivized to build at lower-density than is optimal for alleviating housing supply issues.

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#24

Post by sokoloff »

yellow_postit wrote: post #4

Does any city have a well functioning design review process or are they all captured by incumbents to slow down development?

From my limited exposure to Cambridge, MA’s, it seems well balanced to me. As an abutter, I’ve gotten notices of a few different projects nearby and chosen to attend the meeting on each one (mostly to learn in case I wanted to go through the process for our property sometime; in each case, I went having submitted written comments in favor of whatever the neighbors were proposing to do, even in a case where I think what they chose is frankly pretty ugly).

In the course of attending those, I usually got to sit through 3-5 others each time. All of the discussions seemed quite reasonable and almost all were approved as proposed or with only minor changes. When an abutter is making obviously nonsense arguments, they get to say their piece and then the project is approved; when there are genuine concerns about the proposed variance, the design board seems to help the applicant reach a state that balances applicant’s desire to use their property and whatever the underlying reason for the rule they’re seeking relief from is.

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#25

Post by [deleted] »

myroon5 wrote: post #19
jackmott42 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is amazing how one person can have a view that developers have all the power and can never be stopped. Others have the view that NIMBY's have all the power and nothing can get developed. Yet somehow everything ends up paved over with a high rise on it eventually, like it or not.

~3/4 of Seattle land doesn't really allow new housing: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/city-repor...

[deleted]

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#26

Post by bobthepanda »

rcpt wrote: post #3

Why don't the people who care about their view simply build a taller tower?

In Seattle if you want to put your money where your mouth is, you can legally purchase a parcel’s unused “air rights” (the unused development capacity).

It’s most commonly used in single family areas, where homes buy them from other lots to preserve their views.

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#27

Post by jandrese »

jamestimmins wrote: post #21
jackmott42 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is amazing how one person can have a view that developers have all the power and can never be stopped. Others have the view that NIMBY's have all the power and nothing can get developed. Yet somehow everything ends up paved over with a high rise on it eventually, like it or not.

This is patently untrue. Cities like LA and SF should have high rises everywhere, but instead they have 1 story homes from 1955 selling for $2 million.

LA and SF seem trapped by their design. Sure they need way higher density, but that would require transit that handles density better than cars on a road. But in order to build high capacity transit they want people to prove that it would be fully utilized and that won't be true if you're servicing areas that are currently all single family homes.

So high density housing can't be build because there is no transit, and high capacity transit can't be built because there is no high density housing.

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#28

Post by conqrr »

deanCommie wrote: post #14

Irrespective of any economic or legal incentives or factors here, this comes down fundamentally to a lack of social trust in north america. It doesn't happen the same way anywhere else in the world like it does in US&Canada. People don't care about other people. "I got mine, ** yours." It's a problem without an easy solution.

This rings so true. Simplistic but can explain most things that are wrong in the US. For an immigrant I see this pattern everywhere from Corporates, Housing, Immigration, Homelessness making friends. Selfishness is in the fabric of society here.

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#29

Post by tehlike »

jimbob45 wrote: post #18

Affordable housing is little better than the drinking fountains for colored people from years past. You don't build affordable housing. You build housing and then prices decrease from the increase in supply. If you're feeling extra bold, you build dense housing to massively increase the supply.

This is kind of true, but misses an important point. Builders won't increase the supply if unit price is close to unit cost as their profit would be narrowed.

This is to say, if materials, labor etc is expensive, affordable housing may not be affordable either.

Re: Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable Housing

#30

Post by nostromo »

rcpt wrote: post #3

Why don't the people who care about their view simply build a taller tower?

You can't. Most cities have very restrictive hight limitations for all the reasons you can read about in this article -- complaints about congestion, traffic, shadows, etc.
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