16 ms·

How Seattle Killed Micro-Housing

137 points by wallflower 10y ago

PieterH 10y ago
Can someone explain the reasons why there is such resistance to micro apartments from city councils? Fear of increased population density? Neighbours complaining?
- krapht 10y ago
  Incumbent property owners vote and agitate. Transient low-income residents don't. Property developers have alternatives in that they can build luxury apartments at the $/sq. ft that a microunit might command.
- aaronbrethorst 10y ago
  NIMBY'ism[1] as our[2] neighborhood blog, Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, and citywide alt-weekly, The Stranger, describe it. Here's a representative example from CHS: http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2015/07/mayor-backs-off-affordability-recommendation-for-seattle-single-family-zones/ http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2015/07/mayor-backs-off-af... And one from the Stranger: http://www.thestranger.com/news/feature/2015/04/29/22131155/tom-rasmussen-wants-to-enshrine-nimbyism-on-his-way-out http://www.thestranger.com/news/feature/2015/04/29/22131155/... Notably, I live about six blocks from the OneOne6 building mentioned in the article. It's a great neighborhood, even though I—ahem—lived here before it was as cool as it is today, and even though rents have doubled or even tripled in the past decade. [1] Not In My Back Yard! [2] I've lived in Capitol Hill, the neighborhood described in the article for almost 11 years.
  - gabemart 10y ago
    NIMBY isn't really an explanation, unless the underlying local negatives of a building are clear. NIMBY for a wind farm might be based on noise complaints. NIMBY for a nuclear power plant might be based on fear of radiation or an accident. What is NIMBY for microhousing based on?
    - stretchwithme 10y ago
      I suspect existing property owners don't want lots of cheap housing to cut demand and prices for their more conventional properties.
      - Pyxl101 10y ago
        Increasing density also has a lot of downsides for the nearby residents. It means that congested roads become even more congested, and so on. Dirty roads get that much more dirt. Schools become packed such that students end up in temporary trailer buildings instead of classrooms. The problem is that all of these types of infrastructure tend to trail density, and often by many years or even decades. Seattle schools are physically running out of room to house students, causing programs to end and people to get shuffled around. There are benefits to density as well, as most people who live in a city will attest. But there are certainly compelling disadvantages too, and I think any honest discussion about housing should recognize that residents of an area have a legitimate and fair desire to want their circumstances to stay the same or not get worse. Increasing the density of an area usually entails a lot of quality-of-life disadvantages for the current residents, by straining services and infrastructure, whereas it entails advantages for business owners and business developers and potentially new residents. It also sometimes results in lower housing prices, but the effect of this is not entirely clear (development is virtually never genuinely motivated by the desire to provide low income housing since that's a poor business proposition), and low housing price is not always a priority for residents compared to quality-of-life. Some of the infrastructure challenges that I'm describing can be fixed over time, but it's by no means a given that it will happen at all: the lower quality of life might just become permanent. Plus shutting down major roads to widen them or increase throughput is a disruptive activity on its own, and is not always possible (where do you get property for a new school?) So major problems can trail increases in density by quite a while. Traffic congestion in particular can become considerably worse because of changes in density, and that takes a very very long time to fix on the scale of city planning. It's also worth recognizing that people have different values, and so some people might value the increased benefits from further density differently than others, and the increased disadvantages differently. If you purchased a house somewhere that's quiet, safe, and has little traffic, because you keep to yourself and want to raise a family, then you'd be upset if the area around you was transformed into a college dormitory party atmosphere. I'm not saying that I think there's a clear answer for how to handle city planning problems, but I think we could have better conversations about the problem by recognizing that development and density increases are usually bad for existing residents (those who can afford the area, are happy with the price, and value the quality of life they currently have). It is a conundrum to an extent that many of those current residents would not be there if it were not for previous decisions to increase density in that same city. However, this is only a conundrum on the surface: there is a tipping point where increasing density at first yields tremendous advantages but few disadvantages, and then slowly the disadvantages begin to mount up until they overcome the advantages. I believe many big cities in the US are at this tipping point, such as San Francisco. Cities are democratic organizations that exist to serve their residents, and so if residents believe that policies are not in their interest, they will vote them down. These zoning questions are ultimately entirely political, just like the question of whether a country should accept Syrian refugees.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Local residents concerns about density (parking, etc.) is one thing. The bigger one is that the image most of these types of units seem to be trying to convey is that of small, efficient studios with bath & minimal kitchen for yuppies that used shared spaces to augment the small private spaces. (I've stayed multiple times in a 170 sq. ft. designed hotel room in NYC and it is indeed pretty much a place to sleep and work at a small desk.) However, what a lot of residents probably see is something that isn't far removed from an SRO [1] such as you see in the Tenderloin and other dingy old downtown areas. If this is your perspective, it's not hard to see why you'd resist it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy
- sgk284 10y ago
  As a Capitol Hill resident, the resistance isn't that crazy. Over half of Seattle residents rent (it's 16% higher than the national average), and the city is on track to have 60% of all housing be high density housing. This is almost double the national average, iirc. From a city planning perspective if the majority of your new housing being built is being targeted to mid-20 year olds who just got imported by Amazon right out of college and only need space for a bed, then when those mid-20 year olds become mid-30 year olds and want a family there will be no housing to raise a family in. Cities need families or the only way they grow is by relying on their major industries to import new residents, which is exactly what is happening with Amazon right now (Amazon has enough office space to employ about 11% of the city, and currently employs ~8-9% of Seattle). This is really dangerous for the long term health of any city. Seattle is simply making sure that it's being developed in a way that will continue to support its residents as they grow. I live in Capitol Hill, love it, but it's pretty much turning into a big ass college dorm. While anecdotal, everyone I know that is starting a family is headed to Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond, etc...
  - noelwelsh 10y ago
    I was in Capitol Hill a couple of weeks ago. Nice place. How do you factor cost into your argument? It seems the only way you could afford to house a family in Capitol Hill is either by building low cost apartments or by striking it rich at a company like Amazon or Microsoft (which leads to an undesirable monoculture as found in SF). I would have thought you would favor microhousing, as increasing density would lower the cost of land, making family sized housing more affordable. Update: the more I think about this, the more it doesn't make sense to me. I don't think Amazon tech workers, earning, say, $8K a month, are the target for microhousing. I really don't see how pushing down price will do anything other than increase diversity.
  - stretchwithme 10y ago
    Can these just be designed so you can later combine small units into a larger one later on if needed? More likely result, if there ends up being a dearth of young single people, is people who commute in from the burbs will buy these units to use during the week and airbnb them on weekends. And I question that only young people will want these units. I'm in my 50s and would love to have a tiny affordable place in the city, even if I only used it on weekends and airbnb'd it the rest of the time. Do I want to buy an expensive 2 bedroom with garage in the city? Not really.
- jimmybobobbrain 10y ago
  The bulk of these buildings tend to be purpose-built rental stacks. Towers built under these conditions tend to have very low strata fees, poor maintenance, and can easily fall in to slum style living. The ownership can extract high rents for little space, and people can sublet to even more people to make for bunk housing. Why not just go Hong Kong style? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cage_home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cage_home There is a slide towards smaller and smaller apartments. Two bedroom units in major city centers are clocking in at 600 sq.ft. at times. Then put two parents and two kids in to one, maybe operate a day care or two out of them. Again, these are rental units, so the owners care about low fees and no phone calls. Renters don't want to lose their place, so the calls don't come. Fools that are owner/residents find themselves trapped. Buildings with low owner/renter ratio may have programs with mortgages: http://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Selling/What_are_the_current_acceptable_owner_occupied_rat-272904 http://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Selling/What_are_the_curre... Plus, you never know if a single organization might buy up a massive number of units in the building and throw their weight around the strata to unduly benefit them. One should also consider the source of the article. The author is a developer who would stand to make significant amounts of money on lower quality, rental focused apartments with more units per block. The hosting site has a huge focus on micro homes as a solution to everyone's needs or desires as well. Look at the list of articles under that section.
- aoloe 10y ago
  The town where I previously used to live had a similar concern. It's a small European town, with a University and a few other higher schools. The houses in some parts of town were split in smaller and smaller units to maximise the rent profit (split one 2 1/2 flat worth 1'400 p/m and rent two single room flats for 900 each...). The results is that Anna from the article would have found a shady cheaper flat and would be very happy with it (well, it's a bit expensive but it's mine!). But the spreading of micro apartments will also make her very unhappy for the rest of her life (the life before the first five years in her working career and the long years after that!). She will come back and ask why there are no flats of reasonable size, for a reasonable price! She will state that not everybody is a twenty-something, who is almost never at home and only needs a bed to rest after yesterday evening party! My stance: micro apartments are a need, but you probably don't want too many of them in town center. You need a good mix there and the twenty-something are not the ones who pay taxes nor the ones that build a solid social life.
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    "why there are no flats of reasonable size, for a reasonable price!" If there's demand, won't there be supply eventually? If people will start paying premium for reasonable size flats while leaving some smaller units unoccupied, market will surely correct itself. It's true that for some time market might be skewed toward wrong sizes, but you don't have to ban anything outright to prevent it, some soft regulations might be sufficient.
    - Swizec 10y ago
      Yes and no. Activation energy to build a new house with bigger units, or to merge existing units by tearing down walls, is exponentially higher than the activation energy needed to split a big unit into two small units. The problem you run into is that even people who have the money, can't find anything to buy or rent, and zoning laws or other types of limitations, prevent fixing the problem by increasing supply.
      - sokoloff 10y ago
dzdt 10y ago
I am coming to understand that the purpose of almost all zoning regulations is to exclude "undesirable" people from the area. Poor people are considered undesirable. So zoning codes are tweaked until the effect is that high incomes are required. You have to have a certain cynicism to understand that there is a huge disconnect between what regulations discuss (health and safety; parking requirements; setbacks; etc.) and what is the impact of the rules. The reason rules are made is they have a desired effect. The effects are often not obvious from the language of the rule, but if the effects turn out contrary to the interest of the rule-makers things will be tweaked. So the language and purported purpose of rules is obfuscation. The rule-makers are paying attention to the effect of the rules. That is their real purpose. The form of the rules is optimised to make them appear beneficial to all, while the function is optimised to benefit the rule-makers.
- beguliedfoil 10y ago
  Oh hi. I'm one of the NIMBYs in Seattle that likes height restrictions and hates micro housing. Across the street there's a halfway house and two blocks down there's an empty lot that is now being used as a sanctioned tenting site for homeless. I have no problem with either being in my neighborhood. I hope they stay. I hope they expand. >You have to have a certain cynicism You certainly have to be cynical to believe that somehow Seattle is not operating in its own self interest. As faults are found, we try to correct them. Some are very difficult to correct (hello I5, hello American street widths, hello North Seattle sprawl, hello West Seattle suburban wasteland, hello unlivable industrial area) and some are geographic constrains (hello hills and water). Making tiny shitty apartments does not correct any of these deep problems. >The form of the rules is optimised to make them appear beneficial to all, The form of the rules isn't 'optimised' at all. It's an organic living document called "the law." You apparently think the world would be a better place if developers could make whatever size dwelling they want. I think that happened in the 19th century and the result was skid row. I am not interested in trying the experiment again. I am interested in more housing for my community, but honestly that means rezoning SFHs, not getting rid of height restrictions and parking requirements when they're justifiable. And yes, my opinion is entirely qualitative. I like 3-4 story buildings because I like them. They have been a staple of the environment that dragged me out of adolescence and into responsible, productive adulthood. They are the good geometry.
ianai 10y ago
This is clearly a reaction to a desire to have lower rent. If you reject one option to address a problem then the onus should be on you to come up with an alternative.
- sokoloff 10y ago
  I'd like a cheaper 2016 911 Turbo or iPhone7. Merely by proposing to PCNA or Apple a way they could do that does not obligate them to find an alternative way to make their product cheaper if they reject my idea.
extortionist 10y ago
The article has something of an issue in that its ever-escalating apartment prices are never bound to any material costs--i.e., it doesn't directly acknowledge that some significant amount of that $900 initial and $1400 ultimate cost exist only because they're what the market will bear. More, it seems assume the premise that the only solution to increasing costs is to decrease size. But do micro-apartments not just exacerbate the actual problem--that decent, reasonably sized homes for people in good locations are too rare or too expensive? I can understand how these micro-homes might appeal to people in certain circumstances (I spent a while myself splitting a tiny studio in Seattle with a few other people--and that same apartment costs ~3x now what it did when I lived there 5 years ago), but I can't see how the problems these are trying to solve wouldn't be much better solved by building new desirable areas, increasing the supply of good housing, and driving the costs of all housing down.
- icebraining 10y ago
  But do micro-apartments not just exacerbate the actual problem--that decent, reasonably sized homes for people in good locations are too rare or too expensive? If there are both families and individuals bidding for those reasonably sized homes, giving the latter a cheaper alternative should reduce for the larger houses, no?
  - extortionist 10y ago
    It's not at all clear that only individuals would go for the cheaper alternative. We also already have cheaper alternatives in e.g. studio apartments, and we currently have families living in those. I don't see how building downwards will solve these problems in a decent way going forward--it seems that it could only continually reduce peoples' living conditions.
    - zacharycohn 10y ago
      There is a high end product. I don't need a high end product, but that's all there is. So I have to go for it. Suddenly, there's a cheaper, lower end product that meets my needs. I go for that, someone who needs or wants the higher end product can go for that.
hclivess 10y ago
Kill a local representative today. Make the world a better place.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
srj 10y ago
I lived in Capitol Hill from around 2008-2014 and from what I recall the resistance to Apodments wasn't due to disdain for the working poor. It was that these companies skirted laws by taking advantage of a dwelling being defined by having a kitchen. The parking was the biggest sticking point. It was already tough to find parking in the area: I would often drive 45+ min circling a several block radius looking for a spot and I had a friend who would just park way outside the area and take a bus to his car. A traditional apartment building with more than some number of units needed to provide parking for residents, but the Apodments skirted that having many separate residents share the same kitchen. IIRC the taxing for utilities including the sewer system also was determined based on the number of dwellings (kitchens). The laws and decisions cited in this article all reflect that the buildings would have many residents but for legal purposes were low density housing.
- akgerber 10y ago
  The broader context is that much of Seattle is tightly zoned to disallow anything other than single-family homes, which prevents in practice prevents the city from adding modestly-sized cheap units: http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2015/7/27/the-65-percent http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2015/7/27/the-65-percent The micro-housing was a workaround of these laws, which in practice disadvantage the working poor.
  - TimJRobinson 10y ago
    How does micro housing disadvantage the working poor? Supply and demand would suggest more units = cheaper cost per unit.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      I think the assumption is that "working poor" living alone tends to suggest couples or even families that this type of housing doesn't accommodate in a reasonable by US standards manner. It's oriented toward second housing unit for out of towners or twenty-somethings who just want a place to sleep.
Annatar 10y ago
I love the apartment shots, they could make it into the centerfold of the "Dwell"[1] magazine no problem. They look like any contemporary European apartment, in such a stark contrast to the stifled, fake Baroque Midwest or East Coast style. You look at these shots, and you know instantaneously they're from the 21st century, spaces one would actually like to live in. It also looks like living in Seattle is really nice, something I've always suspected. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwell_%28magazine%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwell_%28magazine%29
red_admiral 10y ago
I read this article and didn't like it, but couldn't quite put my finger on what (apart from obvious things like the preachy style). After a cup of tea, here's my conclusion: this is the housing equivalent of saying we must lower the minimum wage, otherwise employers will create fewer jobs. It might be correct in a very narrow sense. It still doesn't feel right to me.
- cushychicken 10y ago
  Interesting perspective. Some basic math on the author's numbers also reveal that the laws have compelling impacts on his bottom line for rental income - mainly in the downward direction. Plus, looking at the floorplan of the proposed apartment: what on earth are people in one of these microhousing blocks going to do if there's a fire?!
- Decade 10y ago
  Yes, it is true that higher wages lead to fewer jobs, all else being equal, especially in the presence of free trade. The difference here is that corporations are not people. I don't care if they starve, as long as the people have somewhere to live. Indeed, wages that go up increase fulfillment, all else being equal, but housing costs that go up increase civil unrest. It is not good for housing prices to increase unnecessarily. Perhaps your discomfort is cognitive dissonance? If so, bravo. There are a lot about economics that defy common notions of decency, and you have to push through it to make decisions that bring actual long-term benefits. Human cognition is defective that way, but our remarkable intellect allows us to understand the bigger picture.
imh 10y ago
I thought the reason people hated micro-apartments was because they're used by extra rich people as second houses during the work week. I've only ever heard of them before for living in another city from where you work. Builders keep building those at the expense of normal housing, and young people are stuck with fewer traditional apartments (and therefore higher priced), or one of the crappy tiny places that most of us don't really want, despite how the article paints millenials. I would have loved for the article to research why people oppose them in the first place, other than vague and scary NIMBYism.
Tempest1981 10y ago
One thing that can provoke NIMBYs -- understandably -- is zoning changes. If Mr NIMBY buys a home in a neighborhood that is zoned for, say, 20 units per acre, he expects that to remain. Often a builder requests special permission to exceed the zoning law, and build, say, 80 units per acre -- then solicits public outcry when denied. Zoning law gives owners a legal expectation.
tzs 10y ago
I've come to the conclusion reading the comments here on this and on other stories concerning housing in cities with a large number of tech workers that a lot of people in tech do not realize that many people picked the cities they live in and their neighborhoods within those cities because they specifically wanted to live in that city and in that neighborhood. It seems that a large fraction (most?) of the tech people picked their cities largely because that is where their job is. People who oppose major changes to the character of their neighborhoods and cities aren't all just worried about the resale value of their house. They often are more motivated by a desire to preserve those features of the area that attracted them in the first place. Also, I think a lot of tech people forget that there are other sectors that also provide a lot of jobs and bring a lot of money to the local economy. For instance, tourism and hospitality provide a very large number of jobs in San Francisco, and bring in a lot of outside money. Change the look and feel of San Francisco too much and you could reduce the appeal to tourists. You risk changing it from people thinking of it as going to San Francisco and while there visiting attraction X, Y, and Z to people thinking of it as going to see X, Y, and Z which happen to be in San Francisco. A city will do a lot better with tourism when the city itself is thought of as a major attraction.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Meh. Chicago beats San Francisco tourism numbers both in number of visitors and in overall tourism revenue, and while I will forever love Chicago foremost among all US cities, one place where I think we can clearly concede an advantage to SF over Chicago is tourism --- the SF sights, the ocean, the woods to the north, the nearby mountains, Silicon Valley, the Chinese culture, the history of the region. Chicago is practically the apotheosis of "going to see X, Y, and Z which happen to be in Chicago", and it does fine.

137 points by wallflower 10y ago

Can someone explain the reasons why there is such resistance to micro apartments from city councils? Fear of increased population density? Neighbours complaining?

krapht 10y ago
Incumbent property owners vote and agitate. Transient low-income residents don't. Property developers have alternatives in that they can build luxury apartments at the $/sq. ft that a microunit might command.
aaronbrethorst 10y ago
NIMBY'ism[1] as our[2] neighborhood blog, Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, and citywide alt-weekly, The Stranger, describe it. Here's a representative example from CHS: http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2015/07/mayor-backs-off-affordability-recommendation-for-seattle-single-family-zones/ http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2015/07/mayor-backs-off-af... And one from the Stranger: http://www.thestranger.com/news/feature/2015/04/29/22131155/tom-rasmussen-wants-to-enshrine-nimbyism-on-his-way-out http://www.thestranger.com/news/feature/2015/04/29/22131155/... Notably, I live about six blocks from the OneOne6 building mentioned in the article. It's a great neighborhood, even though I—ahem—lived here before it was as cool as it is today, and even though rents have doubled or even tripled in the past decade. [1] Not In My Back Yard! [2] I've lived in Capitol Hill, the neighborhood described in the article for almost 11 years.
- gabemart 10y ago
  NIMBY isn't really an explanation, unless the underlying local negatives of a building are clear. NIMBY for a wind farm might be based on noise complaints. NIMBY for a nuclear power plant might be based on fear of radiation or an accident. What is NIMBY for microhousing based on?
  - stretchwithme 10y ago
    I suspect existing property owners don't want lots of cheap housing to cut demand and prices for their more conventional properties.
    - Pyxl101 10y ago
      Increasing density also has a lot of downsides for the nearby residents. It means that congested roads become even more congested, and so on. Dirty roads get that much more dirt. Schools become packed such that students end up in temporary trailer buildings instead of classrooms. The problem is that all of these types of infrastructure tend to trail density, and often by many years or even decades. Seattle schools are physically running out of room to house students, causing programs to end and people to get shuffled around. There are benefits to density as well, as most people who live in a city will attest. But there are certainly compelling disadvantages too, and I think any honest discussion about housing should recognize that residents of an area have a legitimate and fair desire to want their circumstances to stay the same or not get worse. Increasing the density of an area usually entails a lot of quality-of-life disadvantages for the current residents, by straining services and infrastructure, whereas it entails advantages for business owners and business developers and potentially new residents. It also sometimes results in lower housing prices, but the effect of this is not entirely clear (development is virtually never genuinely motivated by the desire to provide low income housing since that's a poor business proposition), and low housing price is not always a priority for residents compared to quality-of-life. Some of the infrastructure challenges that I'm describing can be fixed over time, but it's by no means a given that it will happen at all: the lower quality of life might just become permanent. Plus shutting down major roads to widen them or increase throughput is a disruptive activity on its own, and is not always possible (where do you get property for a new school?) So major problems can trail increases in density by quite a while. Traffic congestion in particular can become considerably worse because of changes in density, and that takes a very very long time to fix on the scale of city planning. It's also worth recognizing that people have different values, and so some people might value the increased benefits from further density differently than others, and the increased disadvantages differently. If you purchased a house somewhere that's quiet, safe, and has little traffic, because you keep to yourself and want to raise a family, then you'd be upset if the area around you was transformed into a college dormitory party atmosphere. I'm not saying that I think there's a clear answer for how to handle city planning problems, but I think we could have better conversations about the problem by recognizing that development and density increases are usually bad for existing residents (those who can afford the area, are happy with the price, and value the quality of life they currently have). It is a conundrum to an extent that many of those current residents would not be there if it were not for previous decisions to increase density in that same city. However, this is only a conundrum on the surface: there is a tipping point where increasing density at first yields tremendous advantages but few disadvantages, and then slowly the disadvantages begin to mount up until they overcome the advantages. I believe many big cities in the US are at this tipping point, such as San Francisco. Cities are democratic organizations that exist to serve their residents, and so if residents believe that policies are not in their interest, they will vote them down. These zoning questions are ultimately entirely political, just like the question of whether a country should accept Syrian refugees.
ghaff 10y ago
Local residents concerns about density (parking, etc.) is one thing. The bigger one is that the image most of these types of units seem to be trying to convey is that of small, efficient studios with bath & minimal kitchen for yuppies that used shared spaces to augment the small private spaces. (I've stayed multiple times in a 170 sq. ft. designed hotel room in NYC and it is indeed pretty much a place to sleep and work at a small desk.) However, what a lot of residents probably see is something that isn't far removed from an SRO [1] such as you see in the Tenderloin and other dingy old downtown areas. If this is your perspective, it's not hard to see why you'd resist it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy
sgk284 10y ago
As a Capitol Hill resident, the resistance isn't that crazy. Over half of Seattle residents rent (it's 16% higher than the national average), and the city is on track to have 60% of all housing be high density housing. This is almost double the national average, iirc. From a city planning perspective if the majority of your new housing being built is being targeted to mid-20 year olds who just got imported by Amazon right out of college and only need space for a bed, then when those mid-20 year olds become mid-30 year olds and want a family there will be no housing to raise a family in. Cities need families or the only way they grow is by relying on their major industries to import new residents, which is exactly what is happening with Amazon right now (Amazon has enough office space to employ about 11% of the city, and currently employs ~8-9% of Seattle). This is really dangerous for the long term health of any city. Seattle is simply making sure that it's being developed in a way that will continue to support its residents as they grow. I live in Capitol Hill, love it, but it's pretty much turning into a big ass college dorm. While anecdotal, everyone I know that is starting a family is headed to Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond, etc...
- noelwelsh 10y ago
  I was in Capitol Hill a couple of weeks ago. Nice place. How do you factor cost into your argument? It seems the only way you could afford to house a family in Capitol Hill is either by building low cost apartments or by striking it rich at a company like Amazon or Microsoft (which leads to an undesirable monoculture as found in SF). I would have thought you would favor microhousing, as increasing density would lower the cost of land, making family sized housing more affordable. Update: the more I think about this, the more it doesn't make sense to me. I don't think Amazon tech workers, earning, say, $8K a month, are the target for microhousing. I really don't see how pushing down price will do anything other than increase diversity.
- stretchwithme 10y ago
  Can these just be designed so you can later combine small units into a larger one later on if needed? More likely result, if there ends up being a dearth of young single people, is people who commute in from the burbs will buy these units to use during the week and airbnb them on weekends. And I question that only young people will want these units. I'm in my 50s and would love to have a tiny affordable place in the city, even if I only used it on weekends and airbnb'd it the rest of the time. Do I want to buy an expensive 2 bedroom with garage in the city? Not really.
jimmybobobbrain 10y ago
The bulk of these buildings tend to be purpose-built rental stacks. Towers built under these conditions tend to have very low strata fees, poor maintenance, and can easily fall in to slum style living. The ownership can extract high rents for little space, and people can sublet to even more people to make for bunk housing. Why not just go Hong Kong style? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cage_home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cage_home There is a slide towards smaller and smaller apartments. Two bedroom units in major city centers are clocking in at 600 sq.ft. at times. Then put two parents and two kids in to one, maybe operate a day care or two out of them. Again, these are rental units, so the owners care about low fees and no phone calls. Renters don't want to lose their place, so the calls don't come. Fools that are owner/residents find themselves trapped. Buildings with low owner/renter ratio may have programs with mortgages: http://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Selling/What_are_the_current_acceptable_owner_occupied_rat-272904 http://www.trulia.com/voices/Home_Selling/What_are_the_curre... Plus, you never know if a single organization might buy up a massive number of units in the building and throw their weight around the strata to unduly benefit them. One should also consider the source of the article. The author is a developer who would stand to make significant amounts of money on lower quality, rental focused apartments with more units per block. The hosting site has a huge focus on micro homes as a solution to everyone's needs or desires as well. Look at the list of articles under that section.
aoloe 10y ago
The town where I previously used to live had a similar concern. It's a small European town, with a University and a few other higher schools. The houses in some parts of town were split in smaller and smaller units to maximise the rent profit (split one 2 1/2 flat worth 1'400 p/m and rent two single room flats for 900 each...). The results is that Anna from the article would have found a shady cheaper flat and would be very happy with it (well, it's a bit expensive but it's mine!). But the spreading of micro apartments will also make her very unhappy for the rest of her life (the life before the first five years in her working career and the long years after that!). She will come back and ask why there are no flats of reasonable size, for a reasonable price! She will state that not everybody is a twenty-something, who is almost never at home and only needs a bed to rest after yesterday evening party! My stance: micro apartments are a need, but you probably don't want too many of them in town center. You need a good mix there and the twenty-something are not the ones who pay taxes nor the ones that build a solid social life.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  "why there are no flats of reasonable size, for a reasonable price!" If there's demand, won't there be supply eventually? If people will start paying premium for reasonable size flats while leaving some smaller units unoccupied, market will surely correct itself. It's true that for some time market might be skewed toward wrong sizes, but you don't have to ban anything outright to prevent it, some soft regulations might be sufficient.
  - Swizec 10y ago
    Yes and no. Activation energy to build a new house with bigger units, or to merge existing units by tearing down walls, is exponentially higher than the activation energy needed to split a big unit into two small units. The problem you run into is that even people who have the money, can't find anything to buy or rent, and zoning laws or other types of limitations, prevent fixing the problem by increasing supply.
    - sokoloff 10y ago

dzdt 10y ago

I am coming to understand that the purpose of almost all zoning regulations is to exclude "undesirable" people from the area. Poor people are considered undesirable. So zoning codes are tweaked until the effect is that high incomes are required. You have to have a certain cynicism to understand that there is a huge disconnect between what regulations discuss (health and safety; parking requirements; setbacks; etc.) and what is the impact of the rules. The reason rules are made is they have a desired effect. The effects are often not obvious from the language of the rule, but if the effects turn out contrary to the interest of the rule-makers things will be tweaked. So the language and purported purpose of rules is obfuscation. The rule-makers are paying attention to the effect of the rules. That is their real purpose. The form of the rules is optimised to make them appear beneficial to all, while the function is optimised to benefit the rule-makers.

beguliedfoil 10y ago
Oh hi. I'm one of the NIMBYs in Seattle that likes height restrictions and hates micro housing. Across the street there's a halfway house and two blocks down there's an empty lot that is now being used as a sanctioned tenting site for homeless. I have no problem with either being in my neighborhood. I hope they stay. I hope they expand. >You have to have a certain cynicism You certainly have to be cynical to believe that somehow Seattle is not operating in its own self interest. As faults are found, we try to correct them. Some are very difficult to correct (hello I5, hello American street widths, hello North Seattle sprawl, hello West Seattle suburban wasteland, hello unlivable industrial area) and some are geographic constrains (hello hills and water). Making tiny shitty apartments does not correct any of these deep problems. >The form of the rules is optimised to make them appear beneficial to all, The form of the rules isn't 'optimised' at all. It's an organic living document called "the law." You apparently think the world would be a better place if developers could make whatever size dwelling they want. I think that happened in the 19th century and the result was skid row. I am not interested in trying the experiment again. I am interested in more housing for my community, but honestly that means rezoning SFHs, not getting rid of height restrictions and parking requirements when they're justifiable. And yes, my opinion is entirely qualitative. I like 3-4 story buildings because I like them. They have been a staple of the environment that dragged me out of adolescence and into responsible, productive adulthood. They are the good geometry.

ianai 10y ago

This is clearly a reaction to a desire to have lower rent. If you reject one option to address a problem then the onus should be on you to come up with an alternative.

sokoloff 10y ago
I'd like a cheaper 2016 911 Turbo or iPhone7. Merely by proposing to PCNA or Apple a way they could do that does not obligate them to find an alternative way to make their product cheaper if they reject my idea.

extortionist 10y ago

The article has something of an issue in that its ever-escalating apartment prices are never bound to any material costs--i.e., it doesn't directly acknowledge that some significant amount of that $900 initial and $1400 ultimate cost exist only because they're what the market will bear. More, it seems assume the premise that the only solution to increasing costs is to decrease size. But do micro-apartments not just exacerbate the actual problem--that decent, reasonably sized homes for people in good locations are too rare or too expensive? I can understand how these micro-homes might appeal to people in certain circumstances (I spent a while myself splitting a tiny studio in Seattle with a few other people--and that same apartment costs ~3x now what it did when I lived there 5 years ago), but I can't see how the problems these are trying to solve wouldn't be much better solved by building new desirable areas, increasing the supply of good housing, and driving the costs of all housing down.

icebraining 10y ago
But do micro-apartments not just exacerbate the actual problem--that decent, reasonably sized homes for people in good locations are too rare or too expensive? If there are both families and individuals bidding for those reasonably sized homes, giving the latter a cheaper alternative should reduce for the larger houses, no?
- extortionist 10y ago
  It's not at all clear that only individuals would go for the cheaper alternative. We also already have cheaper alternatives in e.g. studio apartments, and we currently have families living in those. I don't see how building downwards will solve these problems in a decent way going forward--it seems that it could only continually reduce peoples' living conditions.
  - zacharycohn 10y ago
    There is a high end product. I don't need a high end product, but that's all there is. So I have to go for it. Suddenly, there's a cheaper, lower end product that meets my needs. I go for that, someone who needs or wants the higher end product can go for that.

hclivess 10y ago

Kill a local representative today. Make the world a better place.

deleted 10y ago

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srj 10y ago

I lived in Capitol Hill from around 2008-2014 and from what I recall the resistance to Apodments wasn't due to disdain for the working poor. It was that these companies skirted laws by taking advantage of a dwelling being defined by having a kitchen. The parking was the biggest sticking point. It was already tough to find parking in the area: I would often drive 45+ min circling a several block radius looking for a spot and I had a friend who would just park way outside the area and take a bus to his car. A traditional apartment building with more than some number of units needed to provide parking for residents, but the Apodments skirted that having many separate residents share the same kitchen. IIRC the taxing for utilities including the sewer system also was determined based on the number of dwellings (kitchens). The laws and decisions cited in this article all reflect that the buildings would have many residents but for legal purposes were low density housing.

akgerber 10y ago
The broader context is that much of Seattle is tightly zoned to disallow anything other than single-family homes, which prevents in practice prevents the city from adding modestly-sized cheap units: http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2015/7/27/the-65-percent http://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2015/7/27/the-65-percent The micro-housing was a workaround of these laws, which in practice disadvantage the working poor.
- TimJRobinson 10y ago
  How does micro housing disadvantage the working poor? Supply and demand would suggest more units = cheaper cost per unit.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    I think the assumption is that "working poor" living alone tends to suggest couples or even families that this type of housing doesn't accommodate in a reasonable by US standards manner. It's oriented toward second housing unit for out of towners or twenty-somethings who just want a place to sleep.

Annatar 10y ago

I love the apartment shots, they could make it into the centerfold of the "Dwell"[1] magazine no problem. They look like any contemporary European apartment, in such a stark contrast to the stifled, fake Baroque Midwest or East Coast style. You look at these shots, and you know instantaneously they're from the 21st century, spaces one would actually like to live in. It also looks like living in Seattle is really nice, something I've always suspected. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwell_%28magazine%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwell_%28magazine%29

red_admiral 10y ago

I read this article and didn't like it, but couldn't quite put my finger on what (apart from obvious things like the preachy style). After a cup of tea, here's my conclusion: this is the housing equivalent of saying we must lower the minimum wage, otherwise employers will create fewer jobs. It might be correct in a very narrow sense. It still doesn't feel right to me.

cushychicken 10y ago
Interesting perspective. Some basic math on the author's numbers also reveal that the laws have compelling impacts on his bottom line for rental income - mainly in the downward direction. Plus, looking at the floorplan of the proposed apartment: what on earth are people in one of these microhousing blocks going to do if there's a fire?!
Decade 10y ago
Yes, it is true that higher wages lead to fewer jobs, all else being equal, especially in the presence of free trade. The difference here is that corporations are not people. I don't care if they starve, as long as the people have somewhere to live. Indeed, wages that go up increase fulfillment, all else being equal, but housing costs that go up increase civil unrest. It is not good for housing prices to increase unnecessarily. Perhaps your discomfort is cognitive dissonance? If so, bravo. There are a lot about economics that defy common notions of decency, and you have to push through it to make decisions that bring actual long-term benefits. Human cognition is defective that way, but our remarkable intellect allows us to understand the bigger picture.

imh 10y ago

I thought the reason people hated micro-apartments was because they're used by extra rich people as second houses during the work week. I've only ever heard of them before for living in another city from where you work. Builders keep building those at the expense of normal housing, and young people are stuck with fewer traditional apartments (and therefore higher priced), or one of the crappy tiny places that most of us don't really want, despite how the article paints millenials. I would have loved for the article to research why people oppose them in the first place, other than vague and scary NIMBYism.

Tempest1981 10y ago

One thing that can provoke NIMBYs -- understandably -- is zoning changes. If Mr NIMBY buys a home in a neighborhood that is zoned for, say, 20 units per acre, he expects that to remain. Often a builder requests special permission to exceed the zoning law, and build, say, 80 units per acre -- then solicits public outcry when denied. Zoning law gives owners a legal expectation.

tzs 10y ago

I've come to the conclusion reading the comments here on this and on other stories concerning housing in cities with a large number of tech workers that a lot of people in tech do not realize that many people picked the cities they live in and their neighborhoods within those cities because they specifically wanted to live in that city and in that neighborhood. It seems that a large fraction (most?) of the tech people picked their cities largely because that is where their job is. People who oppose major changes to the character of their neighborhoods and cities aren't all just worried about the resale value of their house. They often are more motivated by a desire to preserve those features of the area that attracted them in the first place. Also, I think a lot of tech people forget that there are other sectors that also provide a lot of jobs and bring a lot of money to the local economy. For instance, tourism and hospitality provide a very large number of jobs in San Francisco, and bring in a lot of outside money. Change the look and feel of San Francisco too much and you could reduce the appeal to tourists. You risk changing it from people thinking of it as going to San Francisco and while there visiting attraction X, Y, and Z to people thinking of it as going to see X, Y, and Z which happen to be in San Francisco. A city will do a lot better with tourism when the city itself is thought of as a major attraction.

tptacek 10y ago
Meh. Chicago beats San Francisco tourism numbers both in number of visitors and in overall tourism revenue, and while I will forever love Chicago foremost among all US cities, one place where I think we can clearly concede an advantage to SF over Chicago is tourism --- the SF sights, the ocean, the woods to the north, the nearby mountains, Silicon Valley, the Chinese culture, the history of the region. Chicago is practically the apotheosis of "going to see X, Y, and Z which happen to be in Chicago", and it does fine.