Council votes to keep ignoring Seattle’s housing crisis

Well, we knew this was probably going to happen back in November 2023 when Seattle elected a slate of more conservative candidates for City Council. Even though as candidates most said (video 1 and 2) they supported the comprehensive plan options that would have allowed a lot of new housing, they showed their true colors this week by removing even more areas from the mayor’s already scaled-back growth plan. The result is that the mayor and council have decided to continue enforcing the exact same causes of our current housing crisis. Most growth will still be centered in large apartment buildings with lots of expensive car parking along our busiest roadways and in areas with high risks of displacement to communities of color all so that wealthier and often whiter areas can be spared the horror of having some more neighbors.

Only Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck stood up for allowing more homes in more places and for making it more affordable to build them. She was the lone vote to add eight neighborhood centers to plan, most of which the mayor cut before sending his proposal to Council. She was also the lone vote for removing parking minimums from new housing, which would have dramatically reduced the cost of new housing and supported the city’s stated goals of promoting more walking, biking and transit over car use. And she was on the losing side of a depressing number of votes that reduced housing. Her effort to make it legal again to open corner stores and other businesses in residential areas allow bars and expanded hours for residential businesses also failed (UPDATE: I initially said a measure to allow corner stores failed, but it passed at part of the consent agenda. The amendment that failed would have expanded the allowed types and hours of those businesses).

Councilmembers Bob Kettle, Maritza Rivera and Rob Saka formed a consistent voting block against pretty much all measures that would allow more housing and in favor of measures that would remove areas from the growth plan or add costs and red tape to discourage the building of new housing (if you don’t want to watch the videos yourself, Erica C. Barnett and the Urbanist did their best to cover the votes in real time on Bluesky). Councilmembers Dan Strauss, Debora Juarez and Joy Hollingsworth tried to play it wishy-washy, but by not uniting they gave the consistent block of three NIMBYs the default win on a lot of votes. Sorry, folks, this was the moment to stand up and fight to solve our city’s housing crisis, so you get no points for abstaining or remaining on the fence.

Speaking of abstaining, Council President Sara Nelson made the baffling decision to abstain from a huge number of votes, and she even signed off at one point so that she would miss a particularly controversial vote to add more red tape and restrictions to housing projects under the guise of protecting trees (nobody noticed until they called the roll call vote and she didn’t respond). It passed by one vote. She said she was abstaining so much because she did not feel “well informed” on the issues. Some might argue that learning about these issues is literally her job, but the voters can decide in November to relieve her of this heavy burden since she is incapable of carrying it. Her departure did lead to this wonderful post:

Perhaps this was part of the carefully calculated political strategy Nelson’s team of brilliant consultants cooked up for her. Voters can’t blame her for the housing crisis if she leaves the room during the votes!

But at least Nelson was in attendance for some of the meeting. Appointed District 2 Councilmember Mark Solomon, Vice-Chair of the Select Committee on the Comprehensive Plan, was absent and missed all the votes and discussions. Given how many of these measures were decided by a single vote, this was easily the most important day in Councilmember Solomon’s appointed time. I asked his office about why he was absent, and his Chief of Staff Sarah Mayes replied that he was in Vancouver, Washington, for a previously scheduled Crime Prevention and Community Engagement Conference and that the rest of the Council was aware of this conflict. “CM Solomon was attending in his capacity as President of the Washington State Crime Prevention Association (which organizes and leads the conference),” Mayes wrote in an email:

“In early August, we alerted Chair Joy Hollingsworth to the scheduling conflict as soon as we were aware of it. In addition to being excusing him from the meeting, Chair Hollingsworth worked closely with Solomon and his staff to make sure that the “Chair’s Package” of amendments reflected District 2 priorities. We’re grateful for the Chair’s cooperation, and for the hard work of Council colleagues throughout the week. Councilmember Solomon is back in the office today, and he’ll be joining his colleagues for the final committee votes on the Comp Plan.”

There is still more comprehensive plan voting to go, but Thursday was the big test for whether our City Council was going to make an effort to get our housing crisis under control. They instead mostly chose to do what they could to make it even worse. The only silver lining is that they will be forced by state law to allow more types of housing in all residential areas because it is clear they would also have rejected those changes if they could. UPDATE: Aidan T on Bluesky pushed back on this, saying that the Council went beyond what was mandated by the state on missing middle housing.

I thought that perhaps the resounding vote results from the social housing initiative or the primary election would have shaken some of the sitting councilmembers awake. The public has made it clear consistently that housing affordability is a top concern and that we expect action from city leaders, yet most councilmembers chose to defy them. I don’t see how anyone other than Councilmember Rinck will be able to shake this week’s acts of Council cowardice. Everyone else is complicit and on the record now against making housing more affordable and plentiful in our city. Councilmember Nelson seems likely to lose in November (support Dionne Foster for City Council!) and Councilmember Solomon is not running to keep the District 2 seat he was appointed to. Debora Juarez was also appointed, but her District 5 seat is not up for a vote until next year. Everyone else is up for a vote in 2027. I don’t know how they make this up to the city, but they better have some good ideas. Otherwise the ongoing housing crisis, a top issue among Seattle voters, will fall squarely on them. Maybe they’ve all decided they don’t want to run again?

In the meantime, we will not stop fighting for a Seattle that is welcoming and has a place for everyone.

#SEAbikes #Seattle

Instead of telling ICE to stop hiding their identity, Seattle city council is working on fining graffiti artists.

#Seattle #SeattlePol #RobSaka #BobKettle #CityCouncil #ICE

CM Saka budget proposal would create plan to end service on SLU Streetcar

The future has become even bleaker for the low-ridership South Lake Union (“SLU”) Streetcar line as Transportation Committee Chair Rob Saka has proposed funding a plan for how to wind down and end service on the line. The budget changes would no actually end service, but they set the stage to do so as early as next year’s budget. The action could set up the city to finally make a decision about the streetcar once and for all.

As Seattle Bike Blog argued in August, Seattle decided in 2015 to make the SLU streetcar a dead end when SDOT chose RapidRide bus service on the Fairview/Eastlake/Roosevelt corridor rather than a streetcar extension. The streetcar line’s operating budget sits at $4.4 million per year to serve about 500 weekday trips on average. Ridership peaked in 2017 before SDOT added transit-only lanes to Westlake Ave to coincide with expanded King County Metro bus service along much of the streetcar’s route. In my previous post, several SLU transit riders said they just hop on whatever comes first, a bus or the streetcar. The under-construction RapidRide J line will further improve bus transit service in the SLU neighborhood when it begins operations as early as 2027. So even those 500 daily riders would likely not be stranded without the streetcar. Metro just deleted the Route 20 bus with little fanfare, for example, and that deletion (as well as other bus route changes and deletions) had a bigger negative impact on access to transit than closing the SLU Streetcar would.

Additionally, construction for the South Lake Union light rail station is expected to shut down SLU Streetcar service for eight years, so it makes sense for Seattle to decide sooner than later whether the city sees a future for the streetcar beyond that construction. If the city wants to preserve service they could build 2,000 feet of additional track to bypass the Link station closure, but that would only make sense if we are committing to this thing long-term. If not, then we may as well get the tracks out of the roadway and focus on creating efficient bus pathways. Removing or covering the tracks would also eliminate major hazards for people riding bicycles around the neighborhood, preventing injuries and improving bike circulation within the neighborhood. Removing the tracks may even lead to more new bike trips per day than the streetcar would carry if it kept operating in its current state.

The only possible future for the SLU streetcar line would be to connect to the planned Center City Connector streetcar (AKA “Culture Connector”) through downtown along 1st Avenue and Stewart Street. However, construction on that line remains stalled, and it has a huge funding gap. Seattle Bike Blog has also voiced serious concerns about bike safety along the planned route. As Councilmember Saka noted in an interview with the Seattle Times, “The only viable path I see for ever doing that one would be to create a public-private partnership at some point.” Councilmember Bob Kettle has proposed removing the Center City Connector from SDOT’s capital improvements list, an amendment Saka supports.

The Downtown Seattle Association (“DSA”) pushed back against the proposal to kill the SLU Streetcar line, arguing to the Urbanist, “We’re seeing more residents, workers and visitors in downtown and now is not the time to take existing mobility options off the table. […] With looming major transportation projects like Revive I-5 impacting our network’s capacity, we need to ensure the transit modes we already have downtown are functioning optimally, safely and a providing great experience.”

Seattle Subway has also created an online petition to save the streetcar, arguing:

While the SLU Streetcar suffers from low ridership, it is widely attributed to the lack of connectivity rather than anything inherent to streetcars. We cannot fix the design mistakes of the past, but we can certainly make improvements. SDOT ridership figures for 2022 put SLU streetcar at 500 daily riders and First Hill streetcar at 2,500 daily riders, with ridership trending upwards since the pandemic. By SDOT’s own estimate, the proposed Culture Connector extension would attract 28,000 daily riders, making it more popular than the busiest bus line in the city. This city council also called out the Culture Connector as a key improvement in their own Seattle Transportation Plan which they passed in April. Rob Saka himself said at the time, “It’s time we commit to our transportation goals and give them [SDOT] the resources they need to succeed. That’s what this plan is all about.” They are now prepared to go back on that commitment.

The SLU Streetcar was initially funded by a LID in the area as a way to encourage development of the area into the business and tech hub it is today. So from that perspective, it was a huge success. But as a transit service, not so much. I worry about transit supporters taking the L off someone else’s forehead and putting on their own. Providing effective transit service was not the primary force behind this particular streetcar, so transit folks should not feel like this is something they need to own. The SLU Streetcar is a simulacra of a good transit system, but Metro’s bus system is an actual good transit system. The most important transit priority is to make sure the city builds more bus priority improvements in the area, preserving and improving on the bus-only lanes created when the RapidRide C extended into the area. Perhaps Metro buses could even reuse of some of the streetcar infrastructure like the transit-only pathway along Valley Street. The worst case scenario would be for the streetcar to be removed without any effort to improve bus service.

While the SLU Streetcar’s future certainly hinges on the Center City Streetcar, is the inverse also true? The city’s 20-year plan for transit calls for a 1st Ave Streetcar that connects Seattle Center/Lower Queen Anne to Pioneer Square and the First Hill Streetcar on Jackson Street as well as a 1st Ave extension into SoDo. Would some or all of this line be viable without the SLU connection? Perhaps rather than removing the Center City Streetcar from the capital projects list, Council could add questions to its request for a SLU Streetcar wind down plan about what impact such an action would have on a possible Center City line. This would give the city one more year to give the Center City Streetcar the proper public debate it deserves. Let’s lay out all the facts and options, and then make a damn decision.

If businesses and developers want to foot the bill for both the Center City and South Lake Union streetcar lines, then I’m sure city leaders will shift to support them. Otherwise, well, you may want to make an effort to go out of your way to ride the thing at least once before it is shut down so you can say you did it and buy that clever t-shirt on sale at Pike Place Market.

#SEAbikes #Seattle