Seattle City Council Sustainability & Transportation Committee Special Meeting 5/29/19

Good afternoon, everybody.

Welcome to the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

It's Wednesday, May 29th, 2019. It's 2.03 p.m.

My name's Mike O'Brien.

I am chair of the committee.

I'm joined by my colleague, Councilmember Swann.

Thank you for being here.

And staffed today by Kelly Reifert.

Thank you, Kelly, for staffing me.

Today's agenda is one item.

It's a briefing on accessory dwelling units legislation, and we will get to that after we do public comment.

And so we will go into public comment.

It looks like there are probably about a dozen folks signed up, so we'll do two minutes each.

Kelly, if you don't mind bringing me over the list.

We will set the timer.

I think most of you know how that works, but you can watch the timer.

You can speak up to two minutes.

And then when you're done with that, we will be talking about the draft legislation.

I have, let's see, 12 folks signed up.

Rudy Reisler is going to be first, followed by Emily Johnson and then Alice Lockhart.

Rudy, take it away.

I'm Rudy Reisler.

I live in the University Park neighborhood just north of the University of Washington.

We have a problem with the EU legislation as far as the ownership, owner occupancy rule is concerned.

In our neighborhood, we do not have this problem that houses get destroyed and replaced by McMansions.

However, we do have the problem that investors buy our property, sometimes pushing out families that might want to live in our neighborhood.

And then what they do, they chop the house apart.

They turn it into a rooming house.

The rooming house, of course, not regulated in the city of Seattle.

They maximize their profit by putting as many students as they can into this house.

Now, this is not happening if this home is owner-occupied.

They might still rent, but they don't chop it up into a rooming house.

It's also to be said that frequently these conversions are happening without the permit.

and that the neighbors have to complain and they get the stop work order and the whole exercise.

We have multiple examples like this.

This is not a scenario that's considered in the EIS, among all these many things that you have in your model, but it's clearly something that the investors like to see, and so that's what's happening in our neighborhood.

We fail to see how turning our city over to investors is going to help us with these many real social problems that we have.

And so, we would really urge you not to drop the owner occupancy rule.

Thanks, Rudy.

Emily, I don't mention we've been joined by Council Member Pacheco.

Thank you for being here.

Hi, thanks very much for doing this.

So, as you know, I'm with 350 Seattle, and we approach the housing crisis not just as a moral crisis, which it is, but also as part of the climate crisis, because we know that every time we push folks out of the city, that their carbon footprint is somewhere between double and quadruple, and we just can't keep doing that and meet any of our climate goals.

So the other thing is for 13 years now since I've owned my house, I have wanted to build an accessory dwelling unit or a larger house that I can have in multiple units or something.

My house is 790 square feet and I work at home so I can't really have a roommate without, I spend too much time there basically and I need too much space.

But it is absolutely ridiculous that, like, a mile from downtown, a single person is living on a 4,500 square foot lot.

And, you know, I had family who were willing to loan me the money, but I couldn't do it because of the parking restrictions.

It's just crazy that we are facing the kind of housing crisis that we're facing and we are putting increasing numbers of, well, not increasing anymore, thank God, but all these restrictions on something as a simple solution like accessory dwelling units.

And as long as tearing any housing down is legal, we should be encouraging people to build as much as they can on the space where they've torn something down.

As it is now, we know that a lot of modest priced rentals are being torn down for McMansions, and that's absolutely crazy.

By definition, when we have more housing, it is going to release more of the pressure.

Even if a developer came in, tore down a house, and instead of building a McMansion, they built a single family home with two accessory dwelling units inside, that's still two extra families or individuals who will not be competing for other housing.

And so we just, yeah, we should not be in the business of restricting housing.

And it's also really important that the builders be able to build them all at once, because we know that if somebody has to wait a year in order to do it, it's not going to be as rational, it's going to be more expensive, and they're much less likely to do it.

So again, as long as we're allowing anybody to tear down housing, we should be encouraging them to replace that housing with as much housing as they possibly can.

Thank you.

Thanks, Emily.

Alice is next, and Alice, you'll be followed by Doug Bambrick and then Marguerite Richard.

Good afternoon, Council, or at least the three of you.

Emily said it all with respect to climate, so this time I'm just going to tell my personal ADU story.

Like so many others, I've also been waiting for this legislation to be able to upgrade my property and be able to provide a bit of affordable housing, relatively.

My partner and I, we moved to North Seattle in 1994, moved into a wonderful house with a wonderful yard with two big pine trees and a few little trees.

We raised two great kids and because we never cut down a tree that came up on our property, we now have, you know, maybe 30 plus trees.

And we've also, in addition, raised countless broods of chickadees and jays and crows and robins and other birds whom we love.

Our own nest, it's now empty and we're ready to make a change.

This legislation has three things for us that we really appreciate.

The small increase in height limit will enable our attic to become an actual living space for another homeowner.

The possibility of building two ADUs makes the math work for our family, that we can do this.

The parking restriction, again, the birds, the trees.

No more parking.

We can put two cars in the driveway as it is.

And this is gonna enable us to preserve this lovely old house on the existing footprint, preserve the neighborhood look and feel that so many are fond of in this city and do the right thing for affordable housing and as you know, I'm always talking about for the climate.

Thank you so much for the care you put into the details of this legislation that matter so much and for this opportunity.

Is this the right one?

That's it.

Hi, I'm Doug Bambrick and I'm just speaking on my behalf very briefly.

I came here mostly to learn.

I just heard about this in the Seattle Times this morning.

And my first concern, and I echo some of the comments just before me, I would not want to see a net reduction in new construction.

The concern I have is that there's currently a lack of supply in four-bedroom, two-bathroom, four-bedroom, two-bathroom housing in the city for families, extended families.

Maybe the kids want to stay at home.

The term McMansion is, I believe, for a large house with a small yard.

Not necessarily a bad thing considering that it's multi-millions to buy a house with a big yard and a big house.

So the larger house with a smaller yard just is what it is.

It's a result of our current zoning.

If you limit that to 2,500 square feet, I'm just thinking we're going to limit the amount of new construction four-bedroom, two-bathroom new construction.

If you take away that supply, the result will be an artificial inflation of existing.

So I don't like that.

I think that might be a problem.

If it's, and that's kind of tough on families that are trying to find housing in the city, and they're happy with the McMansions or whatever, big houses, townhouses with no yards.

If you take that away, it should be for a real public good, If we need more smaller units, I would make the argument with the Holla Up Zone, we've done that.

We've increased a lot of supply.

Do we need to really impact families to increase that supply more so?

If we do that, I'd sure hope there's not a reduction in, say, if you have a 4,500 square foot lot, what can you build today once the zoning is done, if it gets done, Will there be a reduction in buildable square footage?

If there is, that violates the basic supply demand of economics, and that would be an obvious foreseeable consequence.

I hate to do that.

Secondly...

Your time is up, so if you could just wrap up, Doug.

I'll wrap it up.

And yeah, I just came here to learn about this, but that's just my first observation.

Thank you.

Great.

Thanks.

Happy to chat more, too.

Ms. Bichard is going to be followed by Eric Adderhold and then Sherry Neumol.

Yes, Ms. Bichard here.

You're talking about dwelling units and I was wondering, are those supposed to be like slave porters?

Because I've heard from people that get in contact with slumlords and they're not happy with the dwelling unit that they're in and I don't see any provisions.

I think I wrote someone about some woman maybe in her 90s said that she didn't even have a manager there at the time when the elevator went out and she had to call the fire department and the fire department had to escort her up the stairs carrying her.

So I am very much concerned when you use the word dwelling units and people using discriminatory practices and then you say you have a race and social justice toolkit.

So I don't know what these provisions are all about, especially when people are getting thrown out of the chambers for just having free speech.

And we have someone that is in violation of their oath, Gonzalez, five times.

and everybody is closed mouth about that.

But other people could have their lives thrown amok by just coming up in here, just having a personal conversation with the council.

And I still haven't gotten anything in writing to tell me how anybody can travel this country and use free speech, but it can't be used in this domain.

It's beyond my mental comprehension, and it should be beyond anybody else's.

else that agrees with free speech.

It is just deplorable, despicable.

And it must come to an end, just like tyranny.

It must come to an end, to a stop and to a halt.

And if you don�t see it through me, God forbid anybody else come up in here challenging you in terms of what the law says versus what you are involved in.

Good afternoon.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for listening.

My name is Eric Aderhold.

I'm a homeowner near Green Lake.

Eric, if you want to just lift the mic up a little bit.

I'm Eric Aderhold.

I'm a homeowner near Green Lake.

I bought my house two years ago and I've been looking forward to this legislation ever since.

I love the idea of building a backyard cottage for my wife and I to retire into after our kids move out of town and we don't need so many bedrooms anymore.

Just have something nice and simple and efficient for us at that point.

And so, you know, there's a lot of things in this legislation that that make it more appealing of an option for us.

But one that I specifically want to talk to you about today is the owner occupancy thing.

I know there's a lot of opponents saying this is all about enabling investors to come tear down our whole neighborhoods and put up rental triplexes and all this stuff.

And, you know, even if you think a rental triplex is bad, which I don't.

I live next to two rental properties and they're great neighbors.

It's about flexibility for homeowners like me as well, because I have every intention of living on my property indefinitely.

If all goes well, I'll be there in 50 years.

But life happens.

Maybe I get a job opportunity that takes me out of town for a couple of years.

Right now, with no ADU, I can go do that.

And I can rent out my house, and it'll still be there for me when I move back.

And I want to move back.

But right now, with owner occupancy, I can't do that.

I'd have to tear down the ADU or something, or sell my house.

I don't know.

But I don't like the idea of having to give up that amount of flexibility just to put another house on my property.

So please consider passing this whole legislation, owner occupancy and all.

Thank you.

Thanks, Eric.

Sherry is next.

Sherry, you're going to be followed by Megan Murphy and then Martin Kaplan.

Hello, thanks for letting me speak today.

And I'm wearing my AIA Seattle hat right now.

I'm on the housing task force for AIA Seattle and just wanted to let the committee know that AIA Seattle fully supports all of the changes that are in the draft legislation.

And we're excited about how much more flexibility it will give to homeowners and others who would like to create ADUs and DADUs.

and also how it will give more opportunity for multi-generational housing.

Additionally, just wearing my own personal hat, as a residential architect, I've had a lot of people asking me when these changes would come into effect, and they're looking forward to them.

And it will make it more possible for more people to build ADUs and DADUs.

And at my own home, where we have a DADU and love having it, we'd like to build an ADU in our basement.

And under the current rules, we can't right now.

And we'd love to do that in the future.

Thanks.

Thanks, Sherry.

Megan?

I've been attending Red May in Seattle and we've been talking about policies of the state and private property and so I think ADUs address that the state private property owners that own capital are consuming like large amounts of rental property and then they make a large amount of profit at the top and And then the people on the bottom of the pyramid are being drained of affordable housing.

So I think ADUs are a good way to offset a more condensed Seattle.

Because where I'm from, I always compare and contrast Iowa and Washington State.

And we have a representative, Stephen King, who I told the city council last week that they should urge him to resign.

And he says that, We in America are on the forefront of Western civilization and we're preserving it and people from Mexico who are immigrants are in the shadows and they need to stay in the shadows.

And he was asked to resign from all his committees at the Senate.

And so I agree that he should definitely resign.

And the thing I like about Washington State policy is that we are in a different way.

We're mixing Western and Eastern civilization.

We're cross-pollinating.

We're using technology to create, like Tamika last week at the Lunch and Learn, we're infiltrating new, we're going to the community stakeholders and asking them how they envision their community, and it's, oh, well, I have a place to live, a permanent place to live, and a place when it gets hot out to play in water, and I can afford food, and I have a job that is actual, you know, it's on a McJob, and I don't, have to worry about McMansions forcing me to work at McJobs.

They have working conditions that are sustainable, and so that's why I like ADUs, because we are envisioning a new way to organize a city, so thank you.

Thanks, Megan.

Martin?

Martin's going to be followed by David Sucher, and then Don Miles.

Hi, good afternoon, council members.

My name is Martin Kaplan, and I'm here representing the Queen Anne Community Council Land Use Review Committee.

And I just want to speak for a second on the legislation.

As you know, we appealed the ADU EIS.

And I just want to try and encourage you to think outside the box when it comes to forwarding this legislation.

In 2006, I was on the Seattle Planning Commission and worked hard with my colleagues to advance this, the original and the existing ADU regulations as they exist right now.

Did a lot of studying in 2010, as you know, went citywide and I've been working on that kind of ever since.

I was a big advocate of that.

Queen Anne has always supported increasing density as we've always increased our density as well above the PSRC.

recommendations.

So why did we appeal this EIS when we actually agree that density is good and when done right, it can make room for others and we have no problem with that?

I want to remind you and I want to ask you to reread the hearing examiner's decision.

The very first sentence in her conclusion, in her decision reads like this.

Given the groundbreaking nature of some of the features of the proposed legislation, it is impossible to know whether none, some, or all of the effects of the claim by the appellant will come to pass.

And that's why we appealed this, is because an EIS should be able to inform you, the decision makers, and inform the public of potential impacts and relative mitigation.

So I would ask you to consider that there are many amendments that can be advanced pursuant to this legislation that could really benefit the entire city and respect the constituents a lot more than it has.

Thank you.

Thanks, Martin.

David?

My name is David Sucher.

I'm very much in favor of this legislation.

It's great.

The thing I have concerned about it is that I would like to build a carriage house adu, dadu, on top of my house.

And the rules haven't yet changed enough.

There's still, I couldn't build it under the current code, and I can't build it under the proposed code.

So I've submitted, it's a very technical suggestion.

I would talk about it here, but it's hard to do without drawings and pictures and getting really into the weeds.

But I do want to make another point about the owner occupancy requirement.

I'm happy to see it changed, but I want to put out the idea that it's not even constitutional to even require owner occupancy.

I think that that's something that you might want to consider, that it's a requirement that we've lived with, but I think it's suspect.

And so just an idea to think about.

Okay.

Thank you, David.

And I'll make sure that I have staff look at the technical aspects of your email, and we can have some back and forth on that too.

Thanks.

Don, you're going to be followed by David Haynes, and then I know some folks have signed up on an additional list, too.

Don Miles, I'm a Queen Anne homeowner.

We purchased our home in 1976, and we purchased a rental house in West Seattle in 85. Our goal with the rental house was to keep it affordable.

We've had our rents always below market value.

We have two Metro bus drivers there that have been there for 10 years.

Our own home was built in the backyard of the mother of the woman who built the home on Queen Anne.

We have no space for a detached dwelling unit of any kind, and very little space on the street for parking off site.

I think it's essential that we think of affordable housing in terms of our own community members.

And there are no incentives to provide affordable housing in our rental property.

There are no benefits.

You know, we're certified.

gone through all the processes, but there are no incentives.

I would think in terms of ADUs and detached dwelling units that it should be about the owners accommodating housing within their property.

Every other week we get a letter and in some cases completed real estate agreements from corporations to buy our rental house in West Seattle.

That's the kind of pressure the city is experiencing.

Every measure should be taken to avoid in any of these land use changes something that would encourage speculation and turning our neighborhoods over to the corporations that are seeking to have them.

Thank you, Don.

David, you're up.

Did city council sell us out?

Did city council sabotage the great American housing build out to appease longtime residents who treaded on and sold out the younger generation and the native locals?

If the front page of the Seattle Times is correct, the council needs an amendment to ensure a more robust use of residential property for living space.

If progressives want credit for increasing green space by denying the still needed land to build housing, this will prove that socialism that seems to make it fair, everyone has a small crappy living space still on the side of the road, doesn't work to solve the problems.

Stop catering to double, triple mortgage speculators worried the younger generation will have a new, affordable, better option of a new home to own, not rent.

Ever seen the brand new so-called quadplex off Leary Avenue on the right corner of 6th Ave, I think, right before the bus stop and the light at Hale's Ale?

The entire ground floor is specifically used only by auto traffic from the neighbors driving by the bedroom, bothering everybody with the headlights and the noise from the car.

Giving rundown housing a small guest house is a McMansion wannabe.

There are many people who aren't lazy, who don't have cars and want to live a hike and a bike away from everywhere.

Please don't gut the core value of robust square footage accommodation.

The sellout speculators already tipped the scale of humanity, remortgaging other people's futures.

Give us the real quadplex with more living space, more square footage, higher up away from the street ambiance with a potential view, and tear down all these run-down homes that keep holding up progress and claiming they're still entitled.

Thank you.

Thank you, David.

I think I saw some folks who signed up come on forward.

Hello, my name is Richard Ellison and I'm representing myself and TREPAC.

The proposed ADA legislation will not protect exceptional trees.

The green infrastructure that is so critical to us right now with climate change.

We're having record heat, we're having record droughts, we have a continued winter rains.

Where are the kids going to play?

Where are the backyards going to be if you're building lots of ADUs in the backyards.

There's going to be no place for big trees.

There must be some means of allowing both big trees and also more ADU units, which means very selectively building these structures.

If we just go ahead and say, build wherever you want, we're going to lose the green infrastructure of this city.

You are a leader in climate change, Legislation for the City of Seattle, how can you propose this bill without doing something to protect the big exceptional trees, the heritage trees?

The existing code is not working.

It's not being enforced and it's not working.

If you really cared about building more homes and also saving the trees, you would put it in the legislation.

You would not take the can down the road.

This is an ADU exceptional tree sacrifice ordinance.

do the right thing and put some clauses in there to not allow the removal of heritage trees.

There are less than 200 heritage trees in the city of Seattle, but you won't pass legislation to protect them.

There are exceptional trees that are 36 inches in diameter, which provide tremendous shade, take stormwater runoff, provide tremendous habitat.

You need to stand up to the developers and say, you can build all your ADUs, but not in certain places.

Please help protect Seattle's infrastructure, its green infrastructure.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else who would like to provide public comment today?

All right.

Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close public comment, and I'll invite the presenter forward.

Once you're settled, if you would introduce yourself.

Allie Panucci, Council Central staff.

Thank you, Allie.

And then, let me see, I will read the agenda item number one, briefing on accessory dwelling units legislation.

Just a really quick history here.

I see, as Mr. Kaplan noted, this is work around backyard cottages have been going on for a couple decades.

And I think when we go to in-law units, even longer than that.

My involvement in this started a little over three and a half years ago when we asked for and received a report back from the time the Department of Planning and Development.

about how many folks are building these units, are we seeing it as a housing option, and started a process by which we heard, did a couple community meetings that had hundreds of people attend and heard a lot of what we heard today.

The intention, my intention at the time was to pass legislation that summer, that would have been summer of 2016. And because of some of the legal challenges, we've been forced to do an environmental impact statement, which we did.

We learned some more in that process.

That was also challenged legally, but recently we got the word from the hearing examiner that we're clear to proceed on that.

And so we're back to where we were, but with new information and a new piece of legislation from 2016. My goal today is to have Allie walk through the draft legislation before us, give us a little bit of background on Some of the conditions we're seeing out there on the ground really highlights some of the changes that have been proposing to make between current regulation and the proposals.

And also where there's an opportunity to talk about if there are different options we could be considering.

And colleagues looking for thoughts or feedback on these.

For the timeline really quick, we'll be, have a public hearing on the evening of Tuesday, June 11th.

at 5.30 here in council.

And then we'll be back in committee on Tuesday, June 18th at 2 p.m.

And my hope would be that we would be ready to consider amendments and voting out final legislation on June 18th.

But Ali's going to need to hear, he's heard a lot from me, but hear from others on if there are different directions we want to consider and have that discussion.

So start that discussion today.

We'll hear more from the public and we have more of that discussion on June 18th.

So take it away, Ali.

Thank you.

So today will be the second in a series of discussions focused on the proposed changes to the land use code to make it easier for people to build accessory dwelling units.

I'll spend a few minutes going over some background, and then I'll walk through the draft proposal.

First, you've seen this slide before.

We often start with it.

I just want to confirm terminology.

When we're talking about accessory dwelling units, there are several terms that get thrown around.

We'll sometimes flip between them, but when we use detached ADUs or DADUs, we're talking about a detached accessory structure, backyard cottage, or often referred to as a carriage house, and attached ADU, garden apartment, basement, suites, that sort of thing.

So why encourage accessory dwelling units?

This has been going on as one of the strategies to think about how to increase housing options in the city, and primarily in this case, it's really looking at increasing the number and variety of housing choices in single-family zones, looking at ways to have more affordable options than a typical single-family home, which many people can't afford, and provide opportunities for homeowners to generate some income or adapt to their changing household needs.

So in looking at some of the barriers to ADU production, there are several things that may be holding people back.

One are regulations, which is primarily the focus of the land use code changes that we'll be walking through today.

The other cost and financing challenges and the complex process that homeowners have to go to.

So when we overlay all of these barriers, it's sort of a small number of people that sort of where all of those things line up, where their lot meets all the requirements.

They have access to the capital needed to develop it and they have interest and the ability to go through the process of building an ADU.

So looking at the production of ADUs in Seattle over time, you can see that in recent years we have seen an increase as the market has picked up an increase in the number of ADUs built, but it's still relatively low.

And if you look at some of the surrounding cities that have regulations that are more similar to what we're looking at in the proposed changes, and you look at the average number produced, Portland is on average about 270 per year.

And what I heard today is they're on track to look at about one per day on average.

That's increasing.

And Vancouver, British Columbia, about 732. And Vancouver allows two ADUs, what they call a laneway house, as well as attached.

What did they call them?

Laneway houses.

So in terms of who is eligible to build an accessory dwelling unit and who benefits, right now it tends to be people who own homes.

And in our current market, fewer and fewer households can afford to buy homes.

This slide is looking at sort of over time who can afford to buy a single family home in Seattle.

So there's a declining share of single family home sales that a four person household can afford based on their income.

In the last column for 2018, less than a quarter of homes sold have been affordable to a four-person household earning the medium income, so, you know, which is around somewhere between $100,000 and $120,000 per year.

And if you're looking at who owns home, Information we have available illustrates that homeownership varies by race, and knowing that 80% of homes in single-family zones are owner-occupied, access to renting in single-family zones under existing conditions, as well as having access to the wealth-building opportunity that ADUs and homeownership can offer, isn't likely to benefit everyone equally absent additional intervention.

So in addition to the land use code changes, there are a number of strategies looking at trying to find ways to help lower income homeowners access financing to build these homes, as well as looking at opportunities to build rent and income restricted units.

And this is from the 2016 ACS?

Yeah, the five-year ACS survey.

And we have been joined by Councilmember Herbold, hence you're here to ask a question.

On that last slide, just so I can get a sense of the scale, the 30% of homeowners under 100% AMI, what, roughly, what number of homes is that?

Oh, how many home sales does that represent?

Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry, that's, and it's not 30, it's 23, 23%.

That's percentage of sales, not percentage of people.

Right, right, so what percent, what number of homes is that, roughly?

I don't have that number off my head.

Okay, all right, yep, I'll follow up.

Thank you, appreciate it.

To be clear, Allie was trying to guess which questions we would ask and where she would have to say, I don't have that number off the top of my head, but Council Member Herbold, you came up with one.

You always surprise me, which is good.

Council Member Sawant.

Actually, I'm glad you invited me back.

Will you pull the microphone over so, I just wanted to just remark upon the dramatic shift that's happened.

in home ownership, access to home ownership by income.

I mean, this, I just wanted to note that we're looking at a graph just over a 10-year period, and this is a dramatic shift in, if you look at livability expressed in terms of housing costs, I mean, this is, We correctly, of course, talk mainly about rents because your next graph indicates it's majority renter city.

And that kind of shift is happening in most metropolitan areas.

But this is also a very strong indicator of housing costs as well.

Nearly half in 2008 were accessible to were 180% of AMI and look at 2018, just 11% of home sales.

Yeah, I think it's an important question as you're looking at thinking about how these changes impact sort of the cost of accessing housing in these areas and it offers a different housing type and so it's a sort of a complicated question and a little bit different in areas where we have consistently been adding density versus many areas that are currently zoned single family.

We've actually seen a decrease in population despite overall significant growth in the city.

The Chapter 3 and Chapter 4.1 in the EIS provides a lot more detailed discussion of sort of historic zoning patterns, some of these trends, as well as what we expect to see in the future.

So this slide is information from a survey that was conducted of ADU owners and occupants in the Portland area, and it is just demonstrating how most people are able to construct and finance an ADU.

It does require that you not only own your home, but that you have equity in it.

So it's just another way of sort of looking at who is benefiting.

And it, again, tends to be wealthier white homeowners who have access to either cash on hand or enough equity in their home, because accessing a traditional loan is difficult.

And this is, just to be clear, this is about how homeowners finance the construction of an accessory unit on their lot.

Is that correct?

I'm glad you have this slide, because I was actually going to ask a question about it at some point, because a lot of, we've heard from a lot of homeowners of color, especially from the black community in the Central District, who, you know, who are some of the more fortunate ones who haven't been completely pushed out and have lived there intergenerationally and now themselves are retirees and want to build an accessory dwelling unit on their lot because it also represents some sort of stable income.

It would represent some stable income for them if they rented it out.

but obviously the first barrier they're going to run into is financing.

Are there examples from other cities in terms of the municipal government providing public financing for homeowners, especially homeowners of lower incomes and so on?

There are some examples of programs in the sort of very early stages and have primarily been driven by sort of a community organization that's partnering with the city or other nonprofits to try to figure out a financing plan.

And so it's not, there are some examples and we went through some of them when we presented on the racial equity toolkit that was conducted.

as part of the EIS work.

And so I can send you those examples, but we don't have a lot of good examples of sort of on the ground what is working.

One of the things that we are trying here is something that Council Member O'Brien sponsored last year during budget is expanding the city's home repair loan program to allow people to access low interest or no interest loans to create more habitable space.

Those loans amounts probably are not going to be enough and to build a detached accessory dwelling unit and that sort of thing, but it's an initial step.

And then there's also other work that I'm involved in a lot with an interdepartmental team looking at other strategies, partnering with sort of nonprofit lenders.

Are there other ways that we could help support the financing options and not put people who may already be sort of, you know, able to afford their home, but don't want to take on a significant more debt that might put them at risk of, foreclosure in the future.

So we're exploring strategies as well as trying to reduce the cost of constructing ADUs that would help sort of bring how much potentially the city could loan in line with what it actually costs to construct.

Another thing, there's a startup in Portland that has a different model where they actually build a modular home.

and deliver it to the site.

They work with homeowners.

There's a couple ways they can do it, but one is that the company would own the home and essentially lease the land from the homeowner, and that lease payment would be a percentage of the rent, and they sign, I think it's a 20-year deal, and then at the end of 20 years, the homeowner gets to own the backyard cottage, and so they do all the work and put it in there.

There's no financing, or they handle all the financing.

And so, you know, there's tools out there that are developing how they pan out and how they make sense, the intriguing.

Yes.

I would, of course, think that the best way to do is to figure out some sort of public financing option that is funded through progressive revenues.

Because even the option that you talked about, of course, that makes it immediately viable.

There's no question about that.

Some corporation is making a profit of the interest payments.

I'm guessing not at the start, but I'm sure the model is that at some point they will make money off that.

Yeah.

Okay, so now I'm going to walk through sort of the main components of the proposed legislation.

And what is going to be described today is what is in the draft legislation that was posted with the agenda today.

I will also highlight some policy options or choices council members could consider.

This is in no way meant to be an exhaustive list of every policy option you could consider.

But if there's a particular area you're interested in exploring, let me know and we will work on what those options could be.

Great.

And colleagues, as we work through these, please feel free to ask questions about this.

The intent of today's discussion is to hear where there's interest worth pursuing and where there's not interest we'll focus elsewhere.

I had a question.

I don't know if this is an interruption in your flow.

Let me go ahead and ask.

What data are we seeing from other cities or even here, even with the restrictions that we have in place?

In terms of the rents at which the accessory units are being rented at, because obviously one thing that we have been talking about that is of interest to us is making it affordable for homeowners to build the units in the first place.

And then the other side of it, of course, is the renters.

And our primary interest in all of this is, I mean, there are two primary interests.

One is to reduce the carbon footprint, as Emily and others were saying in public comment.

But then the other very important thing is affordability, which is very much related to the carbon footprint.

So, are the rents generally affordable?

I mean, what pattern is it following in terms of the market itself having very high rents?

So, in general, what we've looked at in Seattle, it's a little bit hard to parse out exactly what is rent for an ADU versus other types of units, but we did look at sort of rents in single-family zones versus other markets and tried to get some information about what ADUs are renting for.

And in general, compared to average rents in single family zones generally, because a single family home tends to be larger, it rents at a lower cost, but that is somewhat a result of just the per square footage cost.

And then we have not drilled down to sort of getting more detailed information yet.

There's something in the draft legislation that would try to do a survey to get more details on exactly what these types of units are renting for here.

What we've seen in other cities is that anywhere from you know, 15 to 45 percent of ADUs are being rented at or below market rates.

And so one of the key things that we learned from the Portland survey is that homeowners really are looking for flexibility.

Oftentimes they are building them initially to help pay their mortgage, but they end up housing a friend or a family member.

and typically are renting at rates that are lower than market.

So there was three studies in cities in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the East Bay, and in Portland, and all found that you see a much higher number of units being rented at more affordable rents.

What's not clear from that information is who they are being rented to and whether or not they are being rented at lower rents to people who have lower incomes.

What percentage is at or below?

I used a range of about 15 to 45%.

I think the Portland survey, it's in a slide way down the line, but I think it's around 44% of ADUs in Portland are being rented at or below market rate.

And then if you look at those three studies, I think it's about 18% of ADUs are at or below market rate.

So if you sort of compare that to, for example, our mandatory housing affordability requirements, that's a higher rate of affordability than what would be required under that mandatory program, for example.

Okay, so one of the first changes is to increase the number of accessory dwelling units allowed on a lot.

Today, you can have one accessory dwelling unit, and those asterisks should read the lot must have at least 4,000 square feet of lot area to allow a DADU.

This is my week of public typographical errors.

So under current existing, you can have one attached or one detached, and if it's a detached, you have to have a minimum lot area of 4,000 square feet.

The proposal would be to allow two ADUs on a lot.

That could be either two attached or one attached and one detached.

The current draft would require that if the second ADU is in a new structure, it must meet a green building standard.

So there are a number of options council members could consider.

This includes no action, so do not increase the number of ADUs allowed on a lot to adopt as proposed.

You could modify sort of the mix of two, only allow two attached or only allow one attached and one detached.

What was studied in the preferred alternative is requiring that the property owner, that the property is owned by the same person for at least one year prior to adding a second ADU.

That's not in the current draft.

And another option that has been discussed that Councilmember O'Brien has raised is adopting an incentive zoning approach that would only allow a second ADU if one of the units on the lot is rent and income restricted.

What is tricky here is because this would be a land use code incentive program and in Washington state it would require at least a 50 year term of affordability.

And if you look at the current cost of constructing ADUs and what the rent would be if it was rented to someone at 80% AMI, which would be the highest income level we could have, with the requirement, it doesn't really pencil, so it's unlikely that anyone would or very many people would take up the opportunity to add the second ADU if this was required.

The incentive zoning provisions that are authorized under state law are really meant to focus on multifamily larger development projects where there's more of a mix of unit types where the costs are sort of calculated differently.

So while this is an option available to council members, I'll just note that it might be unlikely that many people would take advantage of the building the second ADU.

I'll just comment that I remain very interested in figuring out some way that we could tie affordability to this.

I think, as Allie mentioned, what we do see is we don't have great data in Seattle, but at least both intuitively and from the anecdotes we hear, smaller units in these neighborhoods will almost certainly be more affordable than the other options that are available in the neighborhoods.

But then there's a question of who are they rented to, and if they're being rented to folks that have high incomes, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not going deep to the problem we're trying to solve.

And so some way of having some of these be rent restricted.

I think state law today, at least as we understand it at the moment, the restrictions are pretty significant.

I've spoken to at least one state legislator who's been working on state-level ADU legislation and asked about the concept of giving us some more flexibility about this.

You know, that's not something we're going to get today, but there's there what I heard was interest in in some flexibility going forward to allow that.

So it's something that we may want to I'm interested in maybe crafting this in a way that if we can't get a rent and income restricted unit today, that we can maybe switch to that if the state law were to give us more flexibility.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Yeah, the stat that in other cities we're seeing only 40% be at or below market, I think it's concerning because the market is already really high, particularly here in Seattle.

So if there was a way to couple this approach with some sort of some sort of public funding that might help impact that calculation, I would be interested in looking at that.

And I mentioned when, Allie, you and I were talking, my recollection, and I haven't had a chance to check on it, of whether or not the proposed ANF funding policies talks about a potential pilot for financing rent-restricted ADU units.

Yeah, so that was a perfect segue to that was the program I was mentioning that Councilmember O'Brien proposed during budget and is being discussed as part of the changes to the housing policies which would be a loan program and so there would be an income and rent restriction there and so if there's a financing option attached then we have it sort of a different We can require the rent and income restriction and it's not quite under the same sort of restrictions as when it's a land use code incentive.

So any programs I think that the city would focus on would likely and clearly hearing from all of you that should be focused on providing sort of serving lower income homeowners and low income renters.

But my point is that although the loan program theoretically does not have to be tied to an incentive zoning approach, it could be, right?

We could theoretically say second unit if second unit is affordable and this is the funding under the city's policies that could be made available to make it affordable and allow the project to pencil out.

Yes, you could I guess you could tie the two things together that you could I mean if the requirement in Land Use Code would it would only be a second unit if you can only get a second unit if it was affordable to some rent and income restriction.

And then the loan provisions would be an opportunity for people to actually maybe take advantage of it.

This particular pilot I'm There are too many numbers in my head, and I often say that, but there are a lot of numbers here.

But I think the maximum amount is about $45,000, so it is, in most cases, probably not going to be enough for someone to build a second accessory dwelling unit.

It's more likely to be enough for someone to finish that basement and make a legal bedroom, perhaps create an entirely separate attached accessory dwelling unit.

It's sort of in the early testing phases, so I don't know if, if those things would work.

You know, I don't know if it would be enough to provide enough financing for the second unit.

Yeah, and so it wouldn't need to have to pay for all of the second unit.

It would just be necessary to make up that gap that is making this pro forma that you've developed not pencil out, is what I was thinking in my head.

And a similar approach, but slightly different strategy.

You know, if the city, and I think there's interest beyond just this legislation to continue to try to make these more accessible, and one of the ideas is having some more lending tools.

And if the city wanted to, you know, come up with some sort of subsidized loan program, assuming we can get around, and we can around some of the other constitutional requirements, you know, we would have the flexibility to say, hey, if folks want to participate in this, here's the requirement.

And we could dictate what the length and the rental terms of that.

And so I think there's opportunities.

going forward to figure out, you know, how to find that sweet spot where we can be providing some benefit to the homeowner and maybe that the homeowner was planning to rent to low-income people anyways or that this is what they want to do regardless or that there's enough benefit that it makes sense.

So the next change we'll go over is the increase in maximum household size.

Under existing regulations, how many people can live in a dwelling unit is regulated in all dwelling units within the City of Seattle.

Typically, you can have up to any number of related persons and not more than eight unrelated people living in a dwelling unit.

In single-family zones, that's a little bit different in that it applies to the entire lot.

So under existing regulations, if you have a home or you have a home and an ADU, the maximum number of unrelated people that can live on that lot is eight unrelated people.

This proposal would increase that to 12 unrelated people if there are two accessory dwelling units on the lot.

So that's just recognizing that there are potential for three households living on that lot and providing a little flexibility.

I do, though, think it is worth noting, as a lot of people have latched on to this number of 12, the average household size in Seattle is about 2.12, average family size about 2.9, and so it's pretty rare to have eight unrelated people or an eight-person household in a single unit.

And so although this would provide some flexibility if you had a family of four living in the main house, it would actually allow other families to live in those units.

It's unlikely to be a common feature where you would find 12 unrelated people living on one lot.

So options available would be to take no action, adopt as proposed, or you could modify the proposed increase with the household size for, you know, somewhere between 8 and 12 or provide other requirements.

So the next change is related to minimum lot size and the maximum square footage of a single family home.

Under existing regulations, to add a detached accessory dwelling unit to a lot, you need a minimum of 4,000 square feet of lot area.

The proposal would reduce that to 3,200 square feet.

that would make lots in single family zones that are currently under single family use, it would increase the number of eligible lots from about 87% to about 95% of lots.

Now, this doesn't change other requirements like lot coverage and yard requirements.

So if you have a smaller lot that is already exceeding or at those limits, you wouldn't be able to add a backyard cottage.

In addition, the maximum size of a detached accessory dwelling unit right now is 800 square feet, and that includes any garage or storage area.

And for an attached, it's 1,000 square feet.

The proposal is to allow an increase of 1,000 square feet, excluding garage and storage area.

and keeping the ADU at 1,000, the attached at 1,000 square feet.

And so this will just allow some flexibility, but again, without changes to the maximum lot size and other standards, it doesn't change the overall bulk allowed on the lot.

It just, if you have the space and flexibility, you could accommodate a larger unit.

And just reiterating at the bottom that there are no proposed changes to the minimum lot size to create a new single-family lot.

There's been a lot of comments about increasing the number of subdivisions and that sort of thing.

You still would have to meet the minimum lot size requirements to create a new single-family lot.

Options available would be to not change the minimum lot size or increase the size of ADUs, adopt as proposed, or you could modify the proposal for the lot size or the maximum size.

And as always, you'd be constrained by what was contemplated in the EIS, but there's some flexibility to move somewhere between 3,200 square feet and 4,000 square feet.

That's the current minimum for detached accessory dwelling units, or looking at modifications to the maximum size.

There are also some changes proposed to the existing regulations for detached accessory dwelling unit height limits.

Right now, the height limits vary by the width of your lot and the type of roof you have.

That would continue with some simplification and allowing some additional height that should help accommodate allowing a DADU over a garage in some cases.

This diagram just shows that The change is relatively modest.

The no action would be what is allowed under existing conditions.

The proposed change is to allow an increase of the base height to 16 feet and then an increase to the peak of the roof, and it would allow a couple of feet of additional height if you were incorporating green building features.

options available, no action or adopt as proposed or decrease the proposed height changes and or sort of modify the green building allowance.

Rear lot coverage.

So under existing regulations, a maximum of 40% of the rear yard may be covered by accessory structures in any portion of the main house.

This is in addition to an overall lot coverage.

The proposal, and I'll flip to an image in just a second that illustrates this better than the text, I think, but would increase rear yard coverage to 60% for a detached accessory dwelling unit that's a single story.

And it would only allow this if it doesn't result in removal of trees over a certain size.

So the idea here is to allow some additional rear yard coverage if it is accommodating sort of a aging in place single story DADU that may be better for mobility issues and those sorts of things.

So this, the image on the top, the dotted line sort of outlines where you can build the main structure of the house.

So that is the area outside of required yard.

The darker gray is the footprint of the house and the darker green box is a detached accessory dwelling unit.

The dark green and the darker gray boxes together represent a 35% lot coverage.

So the total you can have structures covering on the lot is not more than 35% can be covered by structures.

And then in addition to that, you can't cover more than 40% of the rear yard, which is generally the rear 25 feet of the lot.

So the dark green structure on the top, or excuse me, the dark green box on the top represents a 400-square-foot footprint of an accessory structure that is covering 40% of the rear yard.

The bottom structure shows what changes when you allow 60% rear yard coverage.

So when you allow more of the rear yard to be covered and you have a larger accessory structure in the back, the footprint of the main house has to get a little bit smaller so that overall you're not exceeding 35% coverage on the entire lot and allowing 60% coverage on the rear yard.

Make sense?

Yeah.

So you could, again, take no action.

Adopt as proposed.

And one of the options you could consider, and this is in response to some comments we've received, one of the speakers today mentioned it, would be to allow that increased rear lot coverage regardless of height if it's to accommodate conversion of an existing structure to add on a backyard cottage.

So the idea would be someone may have an existing two-story garage or accessory structure and they want to keep the parking spot and add on to accommodate an accessory dwelling unit and allow that additional rear yard coverage to sort of incentivizing reusing that main structure.

And that could be combined with option B.

Off-street parking requirements for accessory dwelling units.

Under existing conditions, one off-street parking space is required for an ADU, and there are waivers you can request in certain circumstances.

It doesn't allow you to eliminate an existing off-street parking space that's required for the main house.

The proposal would not require any off-street parking for an accessory dwelling unit.

It would still require one off-street parking space for the main house.

One of the options considered in the EIS, in addition to taking no action or adopting as proposed, would be to require off-street parking space only for the second accessory dwelling unit.

Overall, the analysis in the EIS didn't find that we see significant impacts to on-street parking supply by removing this requirement, but this is an option available too.

Can you talk a little bit about that, about the EIS findings and the impacts on parking?

Sure.

So we looked at, we picked four study areas in four quadrants of the city and used parking data, some of which had been collected previously from the Department of Transportation and some that we collected specifically for this EIS.

and use those sample areas that represent a range of conditions and areas in neighborhoods around the city to understand the potential impacts of if we allow more ADUs, if we allow two ADUs in a lot, and all of them are parking on the street.

And what does that do to parking supply?

And we used a typical threshold of If that demand would increase sort of on street parking usage above an 85% occupancy rate, we identified that it would be a significant impact.

And we didn't find that across the study area.

What we did find is in certain areas where there's already parking constraints, this could have some localized geographic specific impacts, and in those cases, we didn't identify what specific geographies those would be, but just acknowledging there are some blocks, there are certain parts of areas, particularly those that are closer to multifamily and commercial zones that already have some parking constraints.

that those would be addressed through other parking mitigation strategies that the city already uses.

What's interesting, and when looking at these different areas of the city, is where you find the most parking constraints is also where you tend to find the best access to transit, because there's already more density existing in those areas.

So where on-street parking utilization is higher is often within close proximity to those multifamily and commercial zones, so it's sort of a where there are other potential transportation options, not in every case and exclusively, there tends to be higher parking constraints.

So what you're saying is that there are areas of the city that are already at or close to being at 85% capacity and that the EIS shows impacts to those areas but not generalized impacts?

Not generalized impacts.

So in the four sort of specific parking study locations, we found some blocks where capacity would be at or just over 85%, but in this study area as a whole, we didn't find that impact threshold.

We didn't identify a significant impact, but we did acknowledge that some localized impacts And so, you know, an option that's not listed here, there are opportunities, just like with our other parking requirements, if you wanted to have a geographic-specific parking requirement, you could do that.

It just, it's a little, where you see parking constraints, the mitigation is often sort of better access to transit, residential parking zones, and a lot of that infrastructure is in place in some of these areas.

So it's a difficult question.

Certainly, there are plenty of neighborhoods in Seattle where on-street parking is at a premium.

Those are largely places that are already zoned multifamily, more commercial zoning, where it's really hard to find.

And so, as Ali said, I think the single-family neighborhoods that abut those zones, those few blocks is where you'll see a spillover effect as you get deeper into exclusively zoned single-family.

We tend to find that parking is not really a constraint in those areas.

Thank you.

And I just wanted to note because My colleague emailed me on your question earlier about the number of homes that would be affordable to people making about 100 percent AMI.

It would be about 23 percent.

That was about 195 of an estimated 845 home sales.

That's incredible.

I think that really sort of, for me at least, makes that percentage real, you know, about the availability of homes in our city.

And so what that would mean is, how many are going to people above?

Be just...

Sorry, I'm going to have to...

That's about 23%.

So, you know, about...

I said 895 homes, so...

or, you know, whatever, 60% of the rest.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you.

Okay.

Owner occupancy requirements.

So we spent some time talking about this in the next piece at the last committee meeting.

Under existing regulations, a property owner must occupy the main house or the ADU for at least six months of the year.

The proposal would remove the owner occupancy and an owner could add an ADU to their to their rental property.

As I noticed on a previous slide, in the preferred alternative in the EIS, what we contemplated is having a one-year ownership requirement for adding the second ADU.

So that was discussed there.

This proposal will just remove the owner occupancy.

There are a few policy reasons to consider when thinking about removal of the owner occupancy requirement.

One of the main ones is looking at equity and just in terms of how this regulation treats owners and renters differently.

But it also provides flexibility for homeowners.

We heard in testimony today somebody who is an owner occupant and wants to build, but just the potential sort of concern that what if they want to move away?

What if they want to rent it in the future?

may provide some either real or perceived barriers for people to make that significant investment.

And in addition, when we're looking at removing the owner occupancy requirement, in the Portland survey, even though they don't have an owner occupancy requirement, they found that more than half of properties are owner occupied, about 65%.

percent are occupied by the owner even though they don't have that requirement.

And then this was the slide I was referring to earlier where it showed that about 44% are below market value and 49% are at market value.

So I sort of didn't quite phrase those numbers correctly.

So 44% below, almost 50% at, and only 7% above.

So I think that's an important clarification.

Yeah.

And so I think that is one of the sort of indications in looking at, and I can provide more information on the survey, in looking at the ways that people have changed how they've used their accessory dwelling unit over time as their needs have changed or their family situation has changed.

What's the base number on that, of your percentage?

How many were you looking at?

It's on average about 260 a year being built.

I don't know what the total number, I don't have the total number of ADUs built in Portland here, but I can get that for you.

I'm sorry, was that number that you just showed, was that Portland?

Yes.

Okay.

And we have been joined by Council Member Bakeshot.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for being here.

I think it's also worth noting that removing the owner occupancy requirement is one of the key factors that's really increasing the number of estimated ADUs that would be built.

If you look at the analysis in the EIS, one of the main differences between alternative three that was contemplated and the preferred alternative was whether or not there was an owner occupant occupancy requirement, and there's about 1,000 unit difference between the estimated number of ADUs produced.

And that is both due to the fact that about 20% of parcels in single-family zones are renter-occupied now, so those are properties where the property owner cannot add an ADU, even though they're already a landlord.

And it's also due to the choices people make due to, you know, concerns about what if they need to rent it in the future and that type of thing.

So there are several options available.

One would be no action, so not eliminating the owner occupancy.

Adopt as proposed.

We've been starting to get some comments about short-term rental use.

One option would be to only allow short-term rental use on properties with ADUs if it's an owner-occupied property.

The regulations on short-term rentals that were adopted by the council almost two years ago, would never allow for a property with two ADUs and a single-family home to be entirely short-term rental.

The regulations allow you to get a license for your own home plus one additional unit.

So if you live on the lot, your own home and one of the ADUs could be short-term rental use.

If you don't live on the lot under existing regulations and there were two, only one of the three could be used for short-term rental use.

And so I understand that that option is specifically related to the owner occupancy requirement, but I'm also interested in just generally limiting short-term rental use.

I think this legislation is about, in my mind at least, is about increasing the capacity of rental housing, and in doing so, making property ownership more affordable for folks who are already living on those properties, whether or not that means that they are renting to somebody and using that revenue to support their costs, or as mentioned before, allowing a family member to live on the property and spreading out sort of those shared extended family costs and increasing affordability that way.

I'm concerned that allowing, I mean, again, we want homeowners to benefit from the revenue that they generate from an ADU, but I think as a matter of policy, we have the ability to show a preference for the type of tenure.

that is generating that revenue, and I think rental housing is what we need in the city right now.

Yeah, one of the findings in the EIS was actually, if you really, if you look at the full cost of operating a short-term rental and really including your time spent cleaning and flipping the unit and all of those things if you're not hiring someone, it may be actually less profitable, but your sweat equity means something.

So I think there are a number of ways that could be crafted.

That's certainly an option available to council members.

So I'll work with you on that.

Council Member Pacheco.

I hear concern from some constituents that removing the owner occupancy requirement will lead to real estate speculation and more tear down of single family homes.

Can you speak to what the EIS found to this regard?

Sure.

So in the EIS, we looked at that question pretty squarely.

It was one of the main focuses of the analysis.

And if anyone really is interested, I suggest you read Appendix A in the EIS.

But what we found is, in general, while speculation is a thing and it is occurring in single family zones, it is, as we heard today in public comment, it is something that we are seeing today.

What we expect to see with the combination of changes being contemplated in this proposal that it would not have much if any impact on the sort of residual land value and so the likelihood so what will happen is that what continues to be the most profitable outcome is selling the biggest house possible and so that would still continue to be what would be what a developer or speculator would be looking to.

Renting out all three units is not the most profitable option.

So we would expect to see some of that switch if these changes by themselves were going to increase speculation.

And so what it does instead, and it combined the owner occupancy requirement and some of the other changes, but particularly owner occupancy combined with introducing a floor area ratio limit that reduces the maximum size of the house should have sort of a moderating effect on how these changes will impact the sort of speculative market.

So the next floor area ratio limit, again, we talked about this in greater detail at the last committee meeting under, and this is part of the proposal that most of it is focused squarely on accessory dwelling units and regulations about the size and placement of accessory dwelling units.

The floor area ratio limit would affect any development in single family zones that were developed for single family use.

So under existing conditions, there's no FAR limit.

So the maximum size of structures on lots and single family zones are effectively controlled by yard requirements, height limits, and lot coverage, which results in effectively being able to build about a house like 1.05 times the lot area.

So floor area ratio is the relationship, the size of the lot to the size of the house.

So if you have a 5,000 square foot lot and the FAR limit is one, the total square footage on that lot could be 5,000 square feet.

If it's .5, it would be 2,500 square feet.

which is the proposed change would to set um reduce the maximum size of a new single family home but exempt from that calculation any floor area below grade in any floor area in an adu so what this does is it incentivizes adding accessory dwelling units to the lot or if you are tearing down the main house tearing it down and rebuilding it with a new main home plus one or two accessory dwelling units.

So instead of replacing one smaller house with one larger house, you replace one smaller house with three units.

And there was reporting today, and I'm sure it came from your analysis, that showed how many fewer McMansions would have been built if regulations like this were in place.

Yeah, and some of that was presented at the last meeting, but only about 10% of homes throughout the city in single-family zones that are currently built would exceed the proposed limit, but almost 50% of homes that have been built since 2010 would not be permitted under this proposed FAR limit.

Several of the examples in the article today, not all of them, but some of them, would be allowed if it was a main house plus one or two accessory dwelling units.

So I'll just flip to this slide.

The house on the upper left is a older, smaller house that would be below the limit.

The one on the top right would be exactly at the limit of 0.5.

The one in the bottom right that is a 0.9 FAR is about 4,500 square feet.

That would not be permitted as one single unit, but it could be permitted as one unit plus two attached accessory dwelling units if the proposal was adopted.

The house on the bottom left would not be allowed, but that's about 5,300 square foot house, almost.

So options available would be to not impose an FAR limit, to adopt as proposed.

You could adjust the FAR limit that is higher than 0.5.

And I should note that it's 0.5 or 2,500 square feet.

So there are many lots in our single family 5,000 zone that don't actually have a minimum lot size of 5,000 square feet.

So they would still be allowed to build up to 2,500 square feet.

And you could expand or reduce floor area that would be exempt from the FAR limit.

So that's sort of the main, the meat of the proposal.

There are some other things in the draft legislation that's worth noting.

This includes adopting a new tree requirement when constructing an ADU.

So it would require if you're building a new ADU and your lot doesn't meet the minimum tree requirements for single family zones to add a tree, as well as introducing flexibility on development standards to facilitate preservation of existing trees.

Flexibility for conversion of existing structures, so if your accessory structure is built in a side yard, there's some flexibility built in there.

Flexibility for entrances and then providing some height limitations for things like dormers that add some interior living space.

Also worth noting in the proposal, which I didn't mention here, there is a request that SDCI report annually to the council on sort of ADU production, looking at how many lots are building two ADUs, how many of those lots resulted from a demolition and complete redevelopment as well as a request to conduct a survey of ADU owners and occupants so we could sort of compare what's happening in Seattle to other cities.

In addition to that, some of the other issues that are starting to come up is questions about how many, if a lot of homeowners take this up, how many new landlords are we introducing to the market and how familiar are they with the local landlord-tenant laws in the state, landlord-tenant laws.

The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection often offers trainings and materials for landlords.

So one thing council members could consider is just a request to sort of think about a tailored training for new homeowner, for new landlords that really are going to be just renting one or two property and thinking about a focus sort of training that would help that emerging landlord market.

Have any of the cities set up mandated trainings for small landlords of this kind?

Not that I'm aware of, and some cities, including our own, certain landlord-tenant laws exempt ADUs so that it doesn't apply to accessory dwelling units.

In some cases, that is due to federal fair housing laws about exemptions if it's in your structure and you live on the site, but in other cases, it's just been a policy choice to not require compliance with certain landlord-tenant laws, but I'm not I'm not aware of anybody requiring it, but I have seen some particularly non-profit organizations who offer it.

A question as it relates to the first bullet on the treatment requirement.

this tree requirement related to preserving existing trees relate to our ongoing discussions around a new tree ordinance, which I'm not really quite sure where that legislation is.

Is this trying to mirror some of the concepts in that citywide bill to apply them for this particular type of development or?

Well, so the last version of the bill I would say it's still it's a it's an open question of whether or not there is consensus about what was in that proposal and whether or not it represents the various interests in making regulation happen.

The three of us here.

Yeah.

However, it does, it borrows some of that and some of sort of the incremental change that was adopted in the MHA legislation, so it's not taking a broad look at all, you know, all of tree regulations, but it is sort of adding flexibility to incentivize preserving existing trees, adds a requirement to add new trees if your law doesn't meet minimum requirements now, as well as, you know, like only allowing the additional rear yard coverage if it does not result in loss of a tree.

So it's bringing in some of the concepts.

It's also stating more clearly within the accessory dwelling unit section, you know, this expectation that you need to be clear on your plans about where trees are, and so the permit reviewers know where there are trees, what the size is, and how the current regulations apply, because I think it was noted that we have existing protections for trees, some of which are not always implemented in the way that was intended.

So if we ended up passing stronger tree regulations sometime in the future in that citywide bill, would that, how would that interact with the tree regulations in this bill?

We would look at all of all three regulations in the city and so when making those broader changes we would be looking at this to see if this is consistent with or needs to be modified to be in line with the proposal.

So for example in the RSL changes as part of the MHA legislation there was a point system adopted for figuring out how much tree is required on a lot that's not currently in place in single family zones and this legislation doesn't propose to do that but that may be something that makes sense to apply in in all zones in the future.

In addition in some cases it may there's been a desire to create a payment in lieu option And if that was in place at some point in the future, we would want to consider whether or not that should apply in single family zones.

So that was all a long way of saying is that is a larger body of work that this would that would address this area.

You know, if we adopt changes now, they might be slightly modified in the future if we take a different approach to regulating trees.

And if I may say, thank you very much.

This is supposed to be in my committee currently.

So I have met with the Urban Forestry Commission.

Dan Strauss in my office, who is holding up the back wall, has been assisting me in this alley, has been fabulous in looking at where we were a year ago.

There's a lot of interest in resurrecting that.

I had hoped that we could get it back in front of council.

before budget, but I've also been told that I may be smoking something and that it probably isn't going to happen.

But there's big interest in more tree canopy, tree canopy study, and of course, the equity issues about some neighborhoods, including Beacon Hill, for example.

We heard from Estella Ortega this morning, and she was very interested in us moving forward with a real assessment.

They would like to see more trees, they'd like help, and getting those trees planted and maintained.

And that's something that I, too, would like to see.

So we've got a lot more work to do on this.

But I think, you know, being a tree advocate, this is something that I think is really important.

And I may have to hand it off to you, Ms. Herbold, to carry it forward next year.

But we'll see what we can do.

Oh, you heard it here.

I think I share an interest with you, Council Member Bakeshaw, in doing whatever we can to get an ordinance in place this year.

My intention with this legislation is to not preclude what's coming there, but a little bit to anticipate, but I think what I heard Ali say is what's coming, you know, At a high level, I think there's a lot of agreement when you get down to writing the actual language.

I think folks start to question what does that mean and how's it interpreted.

So there's a fair amount of work to do, but it'd be great if we can get through that this year.

And it's a big opportunity for us to bring the community together because there are folks that say, oh, we want more trees.

You'll have to preserve the trees.

And of course, we all want to do that.

And then you come up against with principles that may be just opposing each other.

If somebody wants to build, an ADU or a DADU in their backyard for a family member and the only thing that's stopping them is one large Douglas fir.

How do you wait that?

But payment in lieu is one possibility that we've talked about.

I really would love to be and thankful that you're interested in this, see what we can do by the end of the summer.

This slide you've also seen before, but this is just shows what was estimated in the EIS on how many ADUs would be produced under existing conditions, almost 2,000 versus the suite of proposed changes just over 4,400.

And the proposal also is estimated to reduce the number of demolitions of single family zones primarily due to the FAR limit introduction, so reduce the potential number of demolitions over a 10-year period by about 500 units.

So next steps will be to introduce legislation I put here June 3rd but given some of the sort of technical tweaks that may move until June 10th but a draft of the legislation is available on the committee website and it is unlikely to change significantly from that except for some of the components that were discussed today potentially.

As Council Member O'Brien mentioned a public hearing on June 11th and discussion and possible vote on amendments in the proposed legislation on June 18th.

Allie, that was very thorough.

It's almost as if you've been working on this for years.

Colleagues, I seriously thank you for all your work on this, and you're capable of holding an amazing amount of information in numbers, and I won't hold it against you if Councilmember Herbold is able to stump you on one question.

Yes, you have a good team.

Colleagues, I appreciate the discussion and the participation here, so thank you all for being here.

I heard some questions about short-term rentals.

We had a really good discussion, I think, about Affordability, not exactly sure where that goes with this legislation on either of those as far as potential amendments to this.

But to the extent that folks have different directions you want to go with this, I think, well, I would love to hear that if you have that now.

Ali will want to know that as soon as you come up with that so that we can start working alternatives.

Obviously, we will hear from the public.

I imagine there'll be a decent turnout on June 11th, and so I know I'll be listening to hear what things I've missed after three years of working on this.

But if there are concepts that you want to consider that are different than than what's been talked about today, or some of the alternatives that Allie talked about.

They're just concepts at this point, and so if folks want those flushed out about how there would be an amendment proposed for the legislation, it'd be really helpful.

It'd be helpful for me to know that.

If you want to work directly with Allie, obviously that's totally fine too.

Council Member Bankshaw.

Allie and I have actually spoken about this.

One issue that comes up many times when people say you have to have off-street parking, you have to have spaces for people, and I'm interested in looking at the RPCs.

And in particular, I understand on Capitol Hill that a home can have as many as three parking stickers for a single-family home.

And I'm wondering whether we could look at that as an entire lot.

so that lots get three, or whatever the numbers might be as determined in the future.

But to say, okay, this lot gets three parking stickers, and if you want to give one to the person that's living in the DADU, great, which means you've got two left in the home.

or if the individual who's coming into the small home doesn't have a car, then that doesn't impact the neighborhoods as they are.

So I'd love to look at that.

The second is, one of the things I loved about Portland's model five or seven years ago when we first looked at this, Mike, was when they had some pre-approved designs.

So it made it easy for neighbors to say, I want design number two because it'll fit size and scale in my backyard.

I'm really interested in, as we're making these decisions, that they have as little impact on neighbors as possible.

So for example, if it's a tall house, you don't wanna have a tall DADU that's looking into somebody's windows.

So I don't know how we deal with that or assess it.

But I just, as a principle, I'd like to put forward that, of course, we want to make them reasonable so whoever's living in it has a respectable place to live.

And at the same time, I don't want it to have a negative impact on the next door neighbors.

So I'd love to talk to you more about, just as a principle, I'm not, I don't know exactly how that gets defined in legislation.

Yeah, one potential option to think about is the executive has been working on developing a pre-approved plan or design competition.

And so it may be just as simple as providing some direction about some of the expectations and what those designs should be thinking about, including sort of the context of where the neighbor's house is and alignment of windows and that sort of thing to address privacy concerns.

Council Member Swann.

Thank you, Chair Brown.

First of all, Ali.

Thank you very much for the presentation.

It's always enjoyable.

In a sort of mathematical kind of way, it was really enjoyable to go through the presentation.

Just on the question of affordability and amendments, I think that, I mean, to your point, I'm not sure how much of that could be built in concretely into this legislation.

I think this legislation is important, but I also think the conversation on affordability is extremely important because at the end of the day, just simply having zoning changes is not going to bring about affordability.

Affordability has to be a consciously implemented policy and consciously implemented in different policies, including this one.

And so I think really looking into what kind of options we might have in the future for public funding for homeowners, working class and middle class homeowners to build accessory units on their lots is, I think, extremely crucial because, again, as Ali said, the data is indicating it's mostly very well-off homeowners who are building that.

And even just in my anecdotal experience, it's well-off people like physicians who are able to build it, and then well-off people with really good salaries who are able to rent those units as well.

And yes, smaller units are more affordable, in terms of per square foot cost, it still is a limiting component for many working class people.

So I think it's important to consciously keep talking about it.

And I wonder if, as far as the specific thing that you were interested in, Council Member O'Brien, in terms of mandating that the second unit be I wonder if we could put in some sort of clause where it says that, you know, of course, if you're able to, you take advantage of that.

But otherwise, it does come into effect in the sense of, I don't know, when the state laws are changed.

I'm not sure sort of forward-looking thing, something that's legal to do.

may not help at this moment, something of that kind.

I'm just thinking off the top of my head.

Yeah, I've been trying to think through that, too.

And I haven't come to a good answer yet.

But I think if the hive out there can keep thinking up ideas, and maybe we get to something, or at least figure out what makes sense for us to do now to at least preserve that flexibility.

And I'd be very interested in that.

So let's talk about it offline.

And as I mentioned before, I'm interested in the second unit also being a restricted unit and utilizing the pilot project that is identified in the ANF plan to make that second unit affordability pencil out for the homeowner who's developing it.

So again, it wouldn't be paying to build the entire unit.

It would just be funding that would allow the developer to basically recoup the cost of the reduced rent so that it would still be a development that they could afford to build.

Yeah.

The current pilot, as I understand it, one is the only folks eligible to participate in the pilot are low-income homeowners.

Oh, I thought it was low-income homeowners or people who are going to make the unit available to a low-income person.

It's low-income homeowners who are eligible for the loan and then they would make it available to...

So, both.

It's low-income homeowners.

Yeah, and that's the current, that is the current program.

Like, who has access to those loans today?

Right, and my understanding is our hope in the pilot that we put in the budget last year is we might get to five to ten homeowners.

So it's both modest in size and also fairly restrictive, at least based on who can afford a home ownership.

But is there a reason why we couldn't change the requirement, since we have the ANF plan before us, to say that non-low income property owners can access the funding as long as they make the unit available to a low income renter?

I don't know if there, I don't know the answer to that question, but we can look into it.

I think one of the things that is important to think about is this is an assumption that we could find low, those homeowners who are ready to build a second, a second one too, right?

It's just an important clarification.

But yes, I can, I'll talk with my colleague who's working on the A&F plan about that.

I'm not sure.

I'm not certain that we can offer those loans if it's not a loan to a lower income homeowner, but it may be the same as the other.

We have a weatherization program that landlords, regardless of their income, can access, private landlords, regardless of how much wealth they have, but what they have to do in exchange is make sure that units in the building are held affordable.

So I don't know why we couldn't.

Yeah, principle, it seems like there's consistency there.

The other piece is, I mean, one of the reasons we were able to do this pilot in the budget last year was because it was so modest in scale.

And it's using funds that could be used for other uses.

And so I would love to see a program that would help, you know, over a decade, you know, thousands of units, low income be done.

But that scale, that program would be significant enough that it would, There'd be an opportunity cost of other housing units that may not be built because of that.

And so it'd be interesting to find out what are the things we could do now and maybe put some language in there to talk about what opportunities, or maybe in the study to figure out what 10 opportunities might be available so that we could, you know, figure out a bigger picture, how we assign our housing priorities throughout the city where our subsidy dollars are best used, what the right mix is.

Council Member Pacheco.

Just Council Member Beksha, I just want to express my just willingness and desire to work with you on just thinking about the whole parking conversation just offline.

Thank you, Ali, for the presentation.

One question I forgot to ask is how does our FAR limit compare to other cities, the proposed FAR limit?

So the proposed FAR limit is pretty consistent with other cities and how they regulate the size of those who have FAR limits.

For example, the city of Boston has a .5 FAR for their R5 zone that has a 5,000 square foot limit.

Los Angeles has a similar requirement.

The city of Minneapolis has a .5 requirement for their single family zones.

And Portland is also looking at introducing an FAR limit.

It's a little bit different because they're looking at broader changes in single family zones where it would be about .5 for a single family home and you'd get a little bit more FAR if it's a duplex or a triplex or that sort of thing.

But this proposal is consistent with what several other major cities have in place for regulating the size of single family homes.

Thanks.

Thank you for that information.

Colleagues, if there aren't any further questions, we'll wrap up today.

Again, encourage folks who can be at the hearing on June 11th for that.

I imagine we'll hear some more information and maybe get some new ideas.

To the extent that you have ideas you want to continue to flush out, let's continue to discuss about those and certainly make sure the central staff has that so we can work towards this.

We heard today in public comment a number of folks who've been waiting for years to get this done so that they can proceed with permitting and building.

And I want to get this right, so I don't want to rush people, but I do want to not delay it any more than necessary if possible.

I'd just like to say, Council Member O'Brien, how much I appreciate your fortitude on this.

I think from the beginning of our first year on council together, which was 10 years ago now, this has been something that you've really, a charge you've really been leading, and I feel that we've made great progress, and I appreciate that.

Ali, excellent materials, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, with that, we will be adjourned.

Thanks, everyone.

Great, love to work with you on parking.

Yeah.