Yeah. I know. I read that headline from the Puget Sound Business Journal twice too. Was I dreaming? Nope. Here’s what the Director of Planning and Development, Diane Sugimura, said at a forum about affordable housing:

Responding to the outcry among micro-housing foes, the council last fall unanimously approved new regulations. Mini-apartment projects now can be no smaller than 220 square feet, and they have to have a certain number of sinks. Projects in some parts of the city must have some parking, and the projects must go through the design-review process, which is costly for developers but allows neighbors to weigh in on the look of proposed buildings.

Sugimura said she thinks the council went “a little too far.” City officials are hearing that “we will not get units at the $600, $700, $800 [monthly rents] like those were,” she said. “They’re probably now in the four figures.”

Um, can I say, “I told you so” now?

Here’s what we said back when we were fighting Councilmember O’Brien’s legislation las year:

As you consider legislation to further regulate micro-housing and congregate residences, please consider each specific policy decision as many have a negative effect on the availability and affordability of this workforce housing type.  Together, they could effectively kill this housing type altogether.

Councilmember and candidate for re-election Tim Burgess says the Council may take up microhousing again. Where was Burgess last year? Burgess, right after he voted to end microhousing as we’d known it said not to listen to “a few [that] characterize our actions as somehow limiting options” for housing. I sent him an email challenging his rewrite of history. He wrote back.