Benard Acellam.
Located in the rapidly growing Puget Sound region, Seattle continues to have magnetic appeal to businesses and residents from within the region and across the US and beyond. Amazon, located in the city’s South Lake Union neighborhood boasts of being Seattle’s flagship company, with an ever growing footprint in the city. Official 2018 estimates place Seattle’s population at 730,400, with 341,809 households, while job growth between 2015 and 2035 is estimated at 115,000 (Seattle gov, 2019). This essay uses the theme of affordable housing to examine what Seattle has done to make itself attractive to stakeholders, particularly businesses and residents. Two key arguments arise. Firstly; consistent and sustained investment in good quality affordable housing together with favorable housing policies has been a catalyst in attracting business and residents alike to the city. Secondly Seattle’s growth has been very unequal, creating an affordable housing and homelessness crisis as incomes of a segment of the city population fail to march the rapidly rising rent and house prices.
The reality of the negative side effects of this growth has led the city to implement policies, plans, programs and projects to improve housing affordability, consequently making it remain an attractive place for residents to live and businesses to flourish. The critique draws extensively on evidence gathered during the residential field-trip and from the systematic review of policy and academic documents. The main body of the critique discusses; the crisis of homelessness and housing unaffordability due to booming yet unequal growth (the ugly), the steps being taken by the city to address its negative side effect (the good) and the potential barriers to applying Seattle’s planning and development approach to Birmingham city, UK (the bad).
The Ugly: unequal growth and the crisis of unaffordable housing and homelessness
As observed during the many walking trips in downtown Seattle, the city center is constantly under construction. Amidst the entire construction boom is a crisis of homelessness and unaffordable housing. It was not uncommon to see people sleeping on pavements on major streets or camped under flyovers in tents and temporary shelter. “Outside of two brief dips during the recession, rents have grown every year in King county since the late 90s, in all rents are up 155 percent over two decades” (Bicknell, 2019, p.64). Increases in home prices outpace increase in incomes of most people and has led to housing unaffordability and rising homelessness. However, as pointed out by Lyle Bicknell in his introductory lecture at Seattle City Council, the homelessness crisis is regional, and the causes go beyond affordable housing to include other issues like mental illness and drug abuse.
Two compelling findings from the 2011 Housing Seattle report are that; increasingly households in Seattle are burdened by their housing costs and, that there is an inadequate supply of affordable housing to households of very low incomes (Seattle Planning Commission (SPC), 2011). According to City of Seattle (2015) high housing costs also have a disproportionate impact on people of color. This shows that crisis of housing unaffordability goes beyond just economic status but also has racial undertones. The concerns of the shortage in supply of affordable housing in Seattle were also reiterated by a number of speakers such as Lyle Bicknell, Nick Welch, and Emily King.
The good: Seattle’s efforts to tackle housing unaffordability
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development deems housing to be affordable if a household spends no more than 30% of their income on housing costs (rent plus basic utilities or gross monthly owner costs) (SPC, 2011). Area Median Incomes also play a key role in the determination of what constitutes affordable housing. Seattle has a long track record in investing in affordable housing. For example the Office of Housing has invested directly in over 37 affordable housing projects in the city over the years (Fester, 2018).
Seattle’s ability to become and stay attractive to key stakeholders means Seattle has had to formulate policies, plans, projects and programs that respond to its housing market dynamics. These have played a key role in increasing housing affordability and city livability by reconciling the rapid growth in job market and incomes to affordability, all anchored by the Puget Sound region’s Vision 2040. Vision 2040 is an integrated growth management, environmental, economic and transportation used as a framework and strategy for making local decisions (Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC), 2018). As part of this strategy, the city has formulated strategies to guide growth and development including the aims to focus new employment and housing in vibrant town centers. A key policy that has since been created in relation to housing affordability in Seattle is the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA). HALA is a multi-pronged strategy for addressing housing affordability in Seattle2. It works towards the idea of reconciling growth with affordability. I believe it is such efforts that continue to make Seattle attractive to both businesses and residents. The key strategy under HALA is the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA).
According to the City of Seattle (2015), MHA aims at reconciling growth with affordability by requiring new development to include affordable homes or contribute to a City fund for affordable housing. It was implemented by changing zoning to allow larger development and more (denser) housing. MHA is now under implementation in two neighborhoods visited during the field trip; Downtown Seattle and South Lake Union, and also in Uptown and certain central districts. However, there may be another side to these zoning changes, and perhaps they are not really intended to create affordable housing. “Voting repeatedly for zoning changes and tax breaks, the City of Seattle has ‘imagined away’ low-to-moderate-income residents, instead pursuing those who can better activate the long-term vision of a ‘24/7 urbanism’ increasingly associated with contemporary forms of accumulation” (Dierwechter, 2014, p.19). Associated with the MHA program in Seattle is the concept of incentive zoning which means that developers can build more floor space if they pay into funds for affordable housing. However it remains to be seen in Seattle the effect of this fund on the development of affordable housing in the city.
Besides policies, there are also programs aimed at tackling housing unaffordability in Seattle. For example, Seattle is a member of ARCH, regional coalition for housing. As discussed on the program brochure obtained during the field trip, “ARCH assists member governments in developing housing policies, strategies, programs, and development regulations; coordinates the cities’ financial support to groups creating affordable housing for low and moderate-income households; and assists people looking for affordable rental and ownership housing” (para. 1).
Additionally, there are a number of affordable housing projects and initiatives being run by Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) with the support of other community organizations and groups. Seattle Housing Authority’s mission is to create “to enhance the Seattle community by creating and sustaining decent, safe and affordable living environments that foster stability and self-sufficiency for people with low incomes” (SHA, 2019, para. 11). Some of the projects include: a joint venture with Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority (SCIDpda), and Capitol Hill Housing (CHH) to develop 158 apartments of affordable homes for working families in a location near Yesler, Little Saigon, and the Central District (SHA, 2019). This project also addresses growing demand for housing for medium sized and large families by building apartments of 2-4 bedrooms.
Other housing strategies to achieve the ‘Housing for All’ agenda in Seattle include; Rental Housing Program, Incentive Zoning for Affordable Housing and Multifamily Tax Exemption. When it comes to the implementation of the policies and programs to actually deliver the affordable housing, Seattle still lags behind in the region. MHA and HALA are still relatively new and so the fruits are yet to be reaped. There are other affordable housing schemes in the greater King County and Puget sound that can be used to compare and contrast with the approach to providing affordable housing in Seattle. These include pro-affordable housing schemes such as the Tacoma Affordable Housing project visited during the field trip.
The bad: potential barriers to the applicability of Seattle’s approach to tackling housing unaffordability to Birmingham, UK
The choice of Birmingham (UK) because it is has a rapidly growing tech sector that is now second biggest to London (Hassan, 2018). As such it has some similarity to Seattle in terms of market forces and growth dynamics. Like Seattle, Birmingham is also in the middle of a housing crisis and homelessness is on the rise (Ottewell and Roger, 2019). The biggest barrier to the applicability of Seattle’s approach to planning and development to Birmingham lies in the inherent difference in the planning systems used in both cities.
The idea of incentive zoning as applied in the MHA zoning schemes in Seattle cannot work in Birmingham because the planning system followed in Birmingham is the discretionary system Zoning/regulatory planning system means development planning decision making is made from the onset through a set of predetermined zoning maps and ordinances (Booth, 1995). In Seattle, examples of the zones include; single family housing, commercial and mixed use zones and multi-family zones. The zoning planning system in Seattle made it possible to have urban growth boundaries and also urban centers in which zoning changes and up-zoning allow for the application of MHA. In Birmingham this would not be possible because, as in the UK generally, zoning plans and ordinances only act as a guide; decisions would have to take in other material considerations.
Another barrier has to do with difference in the definition of what constitutes affordable housing. As mentioned above, in the US, there is a standard definition of what constitute affordable housing that is households spending less than 30% of their income on housing needs. However in England, as Wilson and Barton (2018) state, there is much ambiguity surrounding what is affordable in terms of housing. They state “aside from covering housing provided with public subsidy, it is used in a general way to describe housing of any tenure that is judged to be affordable to a particular household or group by analysis of housing costs, income levels and other factors” (p.5). This lack of uniformity in definition of affordable housing in Seattle and Birmingham means approaches are hard to replicate as contextual factors don’t rhyme.
In conclusion, Seattle remains an attractive place for residents to live and businesses to flourish because there is good quality housing which is affordable to a section of the population. However this growth is quite unequal, creating a housing affordability crisis for sections of the population whose incomes cannot march the rising rents and house prices. The city’s MHA program is the key strategy to find middle ground between growth and housing affordability. However it is still in its infancy and needs time before we can judge it more critically. It also remains to be seen if the programs actually make housing affordable to the lowest income earners or it just makes richer people pay less for their housing. Considering that, as Puget Sound Regional Council (2018) point out, housing costs are dictated by demand and supply which also depend on many other factors like transportation, demographics, time/costs to build, construction sector capacity; I think that there is still more Seattle can do on housing affordability. This would enable it to remain attractive to businesses and residents.
2 http://www.seattle.gov/hala/about
Author’s Note: This essay was an academic assignment on the MSc. Global Urban Develpment and Planning, The University of Manchester
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