At the outset of the City’s effort to understand and regulate microhousing here’s what they said were going to be their guiding principles:

Guiding Principles

Below are the guiding principles we’ve used to develop these recommendations. The principles respond to citizen expressed concerns, as well as consistency with broader policies in the Mayor’s Housing Strategy, the City’s Comprehensive Plan, other City policies, and direction from the City Council:

• Preserve affordability – continue to support micro-housing and congregate residences as housing options in Seattle
• Ensure basic health and safety of all housing
• Provide consistent treatment and classification of micro-housing and congregate residences across all city departments and programs
• Improve tracking and awareness of micro-housing development
• Regulate micro-housing and congregate residences similarly to other types of new development as warranted based on empirical performance aspects such as:
  • The scale and design of the buildings
  • Intensity of uses and activities in the buildings
  • Transportation mode choice of residents

Reading the document promulgated almost a year ago, on October 1 2013, one almost feels nostalgic for the days when the discussion centered on whether and how much design review was warranted for microhousing projects. Today, it’s almost as if each and every guiding principle has been exchanged for it’s opposite.

Councilmember O’Brien’s proposal is wholly inconsistent with the Comprehensive Plan because it takes housing options in our city off the table replacing those options with nothing. His proposal will increase the price and decrease the availability of microhousing, perhaps making new projects infeasible. And instead of using design review to engage neighbors and regulate microhousing by size, he’s gone back on these ideas and now will count units to determine design review, exposing microhousing to excessive process not required by larger housing products. Finally, Councilmember O’Brien’s proposal simply ignores what the report found, that few microhousing dwellers drive and so parking isn’t needed. And he and his Council colleagues haven’t taken the time to assess actual bike parking issues, imposing requirements that will require excess bike parking that will remove square footage for housing.

On Tuesday, the Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability (PLUS) Committee will take another step toward finalizing Councilmember O’Brien’s proposal to regulate microhousing.

The current proposal has minimum size requirements, bike and car parking requirements, additional sink requirements, and a very low threshold for design review. When taken all together, Councilmember O’Brien’s proposal will likely end the feasibility of microhousing.

Please take a minute to remind Council where this all started. Here’s a sample message to send City Councilmembers (e-mails below).

Tim.Burgess@seattle.gov
Sally.Bagshaw@seattle.gov
Sally.Clark@seattle.gov
Jean.Godden@seattle.gov
Bruce.Harrell@seattle.gov
Nick.Licata@seattle.gov
Mike.Obrien@seattle.gov
Tom.Rasmussen@seattle.gov
Kshama.Sawant@seattle.gov