Seattle woman can’t build housing without paying city $77k. Now she’s suing

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-seattle-woman-cant-build-affordable-housing-on-her-property-without-first-paying-the-local-government-77-000-so-now-shes-suing-the-city-11671130706

by harambae • 4 years ago

50 65 4 years ago

marketwatch.com

legitster5• 4 years ago

So, I can kind of understand the policy. There's not a lot of land in Seattle to go around - you are lucky enough to have some of it, and you want to build something tiny palpably removes potential units from the market. No one would be happy if you tore down a block of apartments in NY to put up a cute little Craftsman with room for a private dirt bike track. Well, in the same way, leaving these types of properties to grandfather into urban areas also makes no sense.

That said, this also clearly sucks and is not fair. She is at least adding something that wasn't there before. So it makes no sense to pay more in taxes. If anything, it's kind of proving the value of a Land Value Tax.

jasmer• 4 years ago

Yes this is it. There are good reason for a lot of the 'codes' we have and it costs money to make sure things are cool. That said, I suggest as always there are 'bureaucracy' problems in our governments and processes that are severely limiting to progress. We need to figure out how to streamline and make efficiencies in a lot of these systems if we want to have a future.

carom3• 4 years ago

No one would be happy if you tore down a block of apartments in NY to put up a cute little Craftsman with room for a private dirt bike track.

If you own the land you should be able to do what you want with it. If you want a single family home, that is fine. If you want a 10-plex, also fine. Cities are making development and renting as painful as possible then being shocked when people opt out of being landlords. If it is more desirable to have a craftsman and a dirtbike track than a multi unit building then the city's incentives are horribly skewed. One of those effectively prints money so we have to ask why someone isn't opting to do it. At the same time, it is their land and they should be able to use it how they wish.

ancapsfascists8• 4 years ago

Yeah, why should we do any planning or zoning at all! Every individual is equipped with all the knowledge and expertise to make good planning decisions that impact their neighborhoods! /s

ancapsfascists8• 4 years ago

This policy is good, and this isn't even an edge case. This is a landlord who is about to spend a million dollars on more rental units and doesn't want to provide affordable units.

zoklet-enjoyer3• 4 years ago

So what? She's trying to build an addition and rent it to her kids. Even if she was going to rent to randoms, so what? Is it better she just keeps the property as a single family home?

legitster5• 4 years ago

I mean, this is an owner-occupied property. I can understand not wanting the city to force two random families to live with you.

But in this case the city assessing a luxury tax for such a setup seems pretty reasonable.

xtiansimon• 4 years ago

… and doesn’t want to work within the regulations her community has to promote affordable housing.

Doesn’t want to pay anything—submit for an exception, or pay the Hollywood price to do what she wants.

I don’t see what’s unfair. It would be unfair if she could only build the larger building, and was required to have affordable units—or do nothing.

What _sucks_ is that while her and her family were dealing with these restrictions, there has been a world pandemic, and the economy took a swing towards inflation and higher interest rates.

The family is in a worse spot than if they had paid the 77k upfront.

I’m wondering why their story is getting amplified. I guess this is a turn against cities trying to create regulations promoting affordable housing.

__derek__2• 4 years ago

King County taxes land value as part of our property taxes. If Seattle up-zoned this property, that component of the owner's taxes would increase to reflect the value of its new highest and best use.

legitster5• 4 years ago

If it includes property value it's not a true Land Value Tax.

The point of a Land Value Tax is that everyone gets taxed purely on the value of the land and none of the improvements. So adding more units would only decrease the per-unit tax you pay.

Seattle here is attempting the same thing in broad strokes by literally taxing underdevelopment - but it's clearly not as elegant of a solution

pastor_bob2• 4 years ago

The policy seems pretty straightforward:

If you want to build a bunch of units on your property:

1. A certain percentage has to be rented at an affordable rate (for 75 years).

2. If they aren't you pay a 'fee' into an affordability fund based on how much you build.

The fact they the owner claims they want to 'rent' to their kids is a red herring IMO. She wants to build 4 market rate units on her property, and not designate any of them as affordable.

xupybd• 4 years ago

This is why I prefer laws that make it cheaper for everyone to build. Not laws that make it more expensive for some to be redistributed to others. There are always edge cases, always someone that gets hurts by these sorts of good intentions.

It's better if the city simply keeps everyone honest and tries to keep compliance costs as low as possible. Increase housing density where possible, while not listening to the NIMBYs.

dicomdan5• 4 years ago

Florida and Texas each build more new housing than CA, NY, MA, and IL combined (each effectively run by a single party).

The answer is here, people just don't want it.

anonporridge• 4 years ago

Reminds me of this video essay from the NYTimes about how liberal hypocrisy fuels inequality, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNDgcjVGHIw

The sad reality is that a lot of the people who shout the loudest about the problems of wealth and systemic inequality with their words, do very little or even the opposite with their actions.

There's probably similar psychology at play as to why it's common advice to not tell people about your personal goals. The act of proclaiming what you want to do gives you that little kick of dopamine that saps your motivation for actually doing it, making it less likely that you'll actually follow through. Waiting until after your accomplishment to share your success is much more effective.

In the case of moral virtue signalling, it seems like the act of proclaiming your virtue is much more likely to give you a feeling of moral license that makes you feel ok about acting immorally to serve your self interest.

In short, be suspicious of people who virtue signal too much, and judge them by their actions and results, not by their words or intent.

bachmeier• 4 years ago

Texas is building six times as much housing as Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma combined (all of the other states in their Census Bureau region). So what's the answer?

pastor_bob2• 4 years ago

They build outward, not upward. Huge difference. (NYC is 7x as dense as Dallas)

They already need a highway expansion in Austin because of it

bryanlarsen• 4 years ago

What, that high property taxes encourage more building? That's probably true.

oneoff7866• 4 years ago

Is the answer large swaths of land that isn’t great for farming?

legitster5• 4 years ago

This answer is thoroughly irrelevant to Seattle. Just throw up more low cost suburban divisions? Where? Nearly every square foot of land between the ocean and the mountains is already built on for a 100 mile stretch up and down the coast.

It seems like a complete waste of time to try to declare a political victory here.

advisedwang• 4 years ago

This lawsuit is Institute for Justice trying to stop state funded affordable housing. They found this women to be an example plaintiff. Don't get lost in her individual situation, as the lawsuit is about so much more.

nickff• 4 years ago

Why have you imputed this motive? IFJ seems to be quite anti-licensure and anti-permitting (according to other materials), and their website says nothing about preventing state-funded affordable housing. https://ij.org/press-release/lawsuit-challenges-seattles-man...

zoklet-enjoyer3• 4 years ago

The state can give out rent vouchers and loosen restrictions on building if they want affordable housing.

BryantD• 4 years ago

Yeah, that’s what Inslee wanted to do last year — open up denser housing and remove city-level zoning laws preventing denser builds, at least within a short distance of mass transit. Couldn’t even get that done thanks to local pushback. It’s a shame IFJ didn’t show up for that fight.

mikeryan3• 4 years ago

The state can give out rent vouchers and loosen restrictions on building if they want affordable housing

This is literally what the state is doing. They're loosening restrictions if you build affordable housing. They're not loosening restrictions across the board as the default would be to just build housing without any regard to affordability.

cameldrv• 4 years ago

I don't think that the state is funding the affordable housing here. The state is forcing anyone who wants to build more dense units to fund affordable housing.

thereisnospork• 4 years ago

No better way to get public support for restricting housing development and drive property values up than by putting labels like 'inclusive' and 'affordable' on policy. Wish her luck.

matt3210• 4 years ago

This is by design. A lower cost house in the neighborhood will lower property values all around. Especially in the kind of neighborhood where a single property has room on the land for a 4-plex.

carom3• 4 years ago

A 4 plex in the neighborhood will raise property values. If you can 5x the land's income earning potential it is more valuable. This is the whole idea behind a land value tax.

Think of it this way - Single (wealthy) families are competing for the land because it is illegal for more than 1 family to live on the land. Multiple (not wealthy) families could be pooling their money and competing for the land. Which drives the property value up? I would love to have 10 median income families who pooled their money (500k/yr) bidding up my land value versus single (top 5%) households (250k/yr).

paleotrope3• 4 years ago

"In Seattle, new developments in certain areas have to include affordable housing units or the developer has to pay the city an amount of money based on the floor area of their project — to fund low-income housing preservation and production elsewhere — as a condition of receiving a building permit.

Adams has two options: Add two extra affordable units to her project and rent them at below-market rates to income-restricted tenants for 75 years, or pay a fee. "

Yeah... good intentions and all that.

ancapsfascists8• 4 years ago

Or make the units that she's renting to her kids at affordable prices stay affordable units for 75 years.

That seems eminently reasonable. "Landlord plans $1m expansion of non affordable housing to help their family only" seems more reasonable to me.

paleotrope3• 4 years ago

The subtext here is probably that her kids would not qualify.

__derek__2• 4 years ago

It took the article a long time to get to the actual issue, but here it is:

Building a new four-unit structure

Seattle had a light up-zone a few years ago to allow all SF-zoned lots to add two ADUs (one detached and one attached). Going that route would make this a non-issue. The owner could build a unit for each child without paying any MHA fees.

FWIW, I would love to see the city up-zone across the board to allow multi-family on every residential lot, but that's not happening thanks to an unholy alliance of NIMBYs and anti-business zealots.

ancapsfascists8• 4 years ago

A landlord in Seattle wants to spend $1m to build apartments, discount them for her children but not be on the hook to extend that discount to meet local building regs around affordable housing.

If you are building big enough to need to hit the affordable housing regs, then you should commit to either providing affordable housing OR pay to make sure someone else can.

This is a story about a landlord trying to avoid having to help their community.

Seattle woman can’t build housing without paying city $77k. Now she’s suing

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