Select Committee on Citywide Mandatory Affordable Housing (MHA) - Special Meeting - Public Hearing

members, but in recognition of the Monday evening, we want to make sure that we got started on time.

I want to orient folks to the program for today.

We're going to do some brief administrative things, reading the title of the bill, for example, to officially open the public hearing.

We'll then have a member of the city staff come up and orient folks to the proposed zoning changes that are in the legislation sent down from the mayor's office.

And then we'll open up the public hearing officially.

We've got about 70 minutes now, so everyone will be given two minutes to make public comment.

with the exception of two groups who've signed up in groups of four or more, and those folks will be given five minutes.

That's, as you can imagine, advantageous for us, because as opposed to taking eight minutes of public testimony, then we get to take five.

So we are going to start with Spencer Williams from my office, who's going to officially read the abbreviated title of this legislation into the record.

And I'll ask Sarah Maxana from the city's Office of Planning and Community Development to come and join us, and she'll do a brief walkthrough of the proposed zoning changes here in District 4.

So we have Council Bill 119184, an ordinance relating to mandatory housing affordability, rezoning certain land, and modifying development standards throughout the city.

Implementing MHA requirements and modifying existing development standards to improve livability.

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

So Sarah Maxana is now joining us from the Office of Planning and Community Development.

For those folks that may be interested, we're going to just do a brief overview of the proposed zoning changes in District 4. This is a comment that you'll see how we start all of our public hearings, and then we'll open it up for public comment in about 15 minutes or so as soon as the presentation is concluded.

Sarah.

Thank you.

So my name is Sarah Maxana.

I'm with the Office of Planning and Community Development, and I'm going to give an overview and context of the rezone proposal that is in front of council and that is the subject of this and future public hearings later this year.

So first, these rezones are being proposed in order to put in place a program called mandatory housing affordability.

And what mandatory housing affordability will do is create a mandatory requirement.

So as opposed to a voluntary incentive, such as one that we have in place in a number of neighborhoods around the city today, this would be a mandatory requirement that all future commercial and multifamily development in the city contribute to affordable housing.

The goal of MHA is to produce at least 6,000 income and rent restricted units in the next 10 years.

So income and rent restricted units would have to remain affordable to someone that makes 60% of the area median income.

That's about $57,000 for a family of four.

and would have to remain affordable at that level and be verified for both income and rent restriction for a 75-year period.

There are two different ways that projects can comply with mandatory housing affordability requirements.

One is called performance.

And they do that when a developer or property owner develops a site and they choose to provide affordable units on site as part of the project that remain affordable for 75 years.

Or they can pay into the city's Office of Housing funding pool that together with housing levy dollars and state and federal resources are used to build housing across the city.

The way that MHA works is that it relies on a state-approved mechanism that's in the Growth Management Act and other places in the state statute.

that allow us to put in place or encumber development with new affordability requirements in exchange for value that is conveyed through a rezone.

So in short, without MHA in place, which is what we have today, you see a market rate building that is developed according to the current zoning, whatever that may be, and there's no affordability requirement.

Regardless of whether they build small or big, there's nothing that they have to contribute.

With MHA in place, The city puts in place a rezone that can be a capacity, and there's value in that capacity, because you can build a larger building, you can build more units.

But with that, the city requires that the developer participate in MHA, either by providing that fee on a square footage basis to the Office of Housing, or by providing the affordable housing on site.

This is a mechanism, this trade-off between requirements and new development capacity that is used in other cities around the state And it is something that in our state statute is a way for us to have this mandatory inclusionary zoning mechanism.

We've been working on this MHA proposal for the last three or four years.

It came out of the recommendations of the housing affordability and livability agenda.

MHA is just one piece of that agenda.

That broader agenda includes the housing levy, includes tax incentives, a variety of other tools and strategies to help provide over 20,000 affordable housing units in the next 10 years.

But we've been spending the last two and a half years on shaping this proposal through community engagement.

In particular, we've had some deliberate efforts to engage communities that have been historically underrepresented or unrepresented a lot by going to communities where they already meet.

as well as providing other non-in-person ways for folks to communicate and engage.

We've done a number of online engagement strategies.

We've also gone door-to-door to have individual conversations.

The main crux of engagement has been really getting information out to people so that they know that these changes are being proposed.

so that folks can be attending meetings like this, but also to have that input that we received over the last two years shape the proposal that's in front of council today.

In particular, the way that community engagement shaped the proposal, there are over two years and tens of thousands of comments that we received, but some of the common themes that we heard across engagement First and foremost, that there absolutely is an affordable housing crisis going on in the city.

People are feeling that in every neighborhood, that we need more housing for more people at all income levels.

Tremendous concern over displacement of current residents throughout the city.

Interest in family size units in particular, types of housing.

Wanting more opportunities for people to live near transit, parks, schools.

And then also a number of things that don't necessarily relate to the amount of new housing choices, but the way new development looks and feels.

So strengthening urban design, promoting environmental sustainability, including tree preservation, for example.

you know, really with an eye toward how development looks and feels in neighborhoods as they grow and change.

For rezoning the urban villages and other multifamily and commercial areas in District 4, this map shows District 4. It includes four urban villages and partial urban villages, including Eastlake, a portion of Fremont, Wallingford, Roosevelt, and the University District Center much of which was rezoned last year, but there's a portion that is included in the rezone proposal today.

So I'm going to walk very briefly through the urban villages.

There are comprehensive rezones being proposed for every urban village in District 4 and every urban village across the city.

So this is something that would apply to every single urban village and every single corridor that has multifamily and or commercial zoning in place today.

But we did use what is called the Seattle 2035 growth and equity analysis.

This was a body of work that was a part of our city's comprehensive plan that was adopted in 2016 by council.

We did use this growth and equity analysis as a way to differentiate across neighborhoods and distribute the new development capacity that's being given through this program.

differently depending on different characteristics of the community.

In particular, the growth and equity analysis look at two different measures, risk of displacement, which looks at various socioeconomic characteristics, demographic characteristics of community members, and then access to opportunity.

Access to opportunity looks at the relative amount of amenities and infrastructure that's in place in a neighborhood to support a growing neighborhood as it grows and changes.

What's important is that both of these are relative scales, and so when we say that a community is at low risk of displacement, that is relatively low risk of displacement.

I want to emphasize that we're not saying that without vulnerable households and populations.

So in District 4, District 4 urban villages all fall into the same typology on this growth and equity analysis, and they all fall into the category of Communities that have high access to opportunities.

So again, relatively more of those infrastructure assets, amenities to support a growing population.

And then relatively lesser risk of displacement.

So less, other communities have more vulnerable households than exist in this district.

So what, and what this meant, excuse me, I'm trying to go back.

What this meant is that for communities that were at low risk of displacement, people that was applied in the rezone, is that those are the types of places where we can accommodate a little bit or provide more housing choices.

It's important to make sure that we're getting and opening up these neighborhoods to transit, close to parks and schools.

to more housing choices, particularly when those are communities that are at lower risk, relatively lower risk of displacement as those communities change and grow.

For those communities that are at high risk, that we'll be talking about today, but others throughout the city, where the households are going to be particularly vulnerable to changes as their neighborhoods grow, we recommend relatively less development capacity.

But again, there is new development capacity being proposed in every neighborhood.

There we go, forward again.

All right, so I'm going to walk through each of the urban villages in District 4 very quickly at a high level and just talk about where some of the new development capacity would be most notable in the proposal and talk about any other particularly unique local characteristics that impacted the proposal that is in front of council.

So starting with East Lake, there are two-story height increase proposals along the East Lake Avenue neighborhood commercial corridor that runs north-south.

What's important to note is that in East Lake, this is a neighborhood that is entirely multifamily and commercial today.

But it is flanked on one side by I-5 and on the other side by a critical shoreline.

And so we had principles in our rezone proposal that within 500 feet of a major freeway, such as I-5 or 99 or I-90, that due to air quality concerns, we would not be proposing large scale ways because of the air quality concerns.

On the flip side, we had a principle that said for critical areas, steep slopes, critical shorelines, we would not be proposing changes there at all due to environmental degradation concerns.

So those shoreline lots on the western edge of East Lake are not in the rezone proposal.

Moving to Fremont, roughly half of Fremont, the eastern edge is in District 4, and the remainder is in District 6. The larger scale changes that are being proposed in Fremont are two and three story height increases along Stoneway.

And in particular, along Stoneway and other portions on the southern edge of Fremont, there's a proposal to move from commercial to neighborhood commercial zoning.

And what this does is neighborhood commercial zoning allows residential as an outright use.

So it's a way of encouraging residential uses rather than just straight commercial.

It also encourages more of a pedestrian scale.

It encourages buildings to be closer to the sidewalk and for more considered as a way encouraging that type of development and that type of scale in this community.

Similar to Eastlake, minimizing increases within 500 feet of Aurora Avenue, again, due to those air quality concerns.

Moving to Ravenna U-District.

So U-District is part of an urban center, which is a much larger area.

And most of the urban center underwent a rezone in February, this time last year, that council approved.

So the majority of the area in what we think of as the U-District along Brooklyn and the Ave, most of that area was part of a rezone proposal last year that included much larger scale changes.

What's remaining in this proposal is the remaining areas on the northern skirt of this urban center, including the areas adjacent to the Ravenna neighborhood, and in those areas we're proposing the mostly one-story increases in most of those areas.

Again, this is an area that was all multifamily and commercial today.

Moving up to Roosevelt, Roosevelt is the only neighborhood today where we are proposing an expansion of the urban village.

These are the urban village boundaries that were designated in the 1990s.

There is a proposal as part of MHA for nine of those urban villages to expand the boundaries in order to capture the full 10-minute walk shed to frequent transit.

And so you look at the future transit station, light rail transit station in Roosevelt, You map out the 10-minute walk shed, and we propose expanding the urban village boundary to include that full walk shed, really with the intention of providing more opportunity for people to live and work close to high-capacity transit.

In Roosevelt, Roosevelt also is an area similar to U District that did go through a rezone proposal fairly recently, several years ago.

And so in this area, you see mostly one story increases in the commercial core.

And again, because of the air quality concerns, minimizing the changes or the proposal within 500 feet of I-5.

And Wallingford is the last urban village in District 4. Wallingford, some similar issues and themes from other neighborhoods minimizing the increase within 500 feet of Aurora Avenue.

Looking at ways to move from commercial to neighborhood commercial, particularly along Aurora and then Stoneway neighborhood further south in the Fremont urban village really is a way to create more of a pedestrian friendly and pedestrian scale redevelopment as those areas change and grow.

There are some one-story changes being proposed along the neighborhood commercial corridor on 45th and on Stoneway, and then the remaining area, much of which is single-family today, is being proposed to go to low-rise, which would be typically, you'd see townhouses or small apartment buildings.

There are a number of areas outside of urban villages that are also a part of this rezone.

The urban villages, I forgot to define this at the beginning, but urban villages were defined in our 1994 comprehensive plan as places in the city where we were both going to focus investments as we have opportunities for amenities, for infrastructure, but also areas that would accommodate growth.

And our urban villages have, in the last five to 10 years, accommodated over 80% of our city's growth.

So these are places that are growing.

But we do have a lot of multifamily and commercial zoned properties outside of urban villages.

So virtually every major arterial that goes through District 4, such as Lake City Way, Sandpoint Way, North Pacific Street, all of these have some amount of multifamily or commercial zoning in place today.

And in all of those places, the proposal would essentially go up one story or one notch in zoning in order to trigger these MHA affordability requirements.

What this is going to look like in the majority of cases is that development as it naturally occurs over time is just going to be a little bit bigger.

So this proposal is not meant to nor is it expected to accelerate development nor slow down development.

But as development happens, it will be a little bit bigger scale.

So this is a rendering of what, on one side of the street, a single family neighborhood 20 years built out could look like.

Some of the buildings that you see in white are still single family.

And then in gold in the back, you see some infill, some townhouses that are coming up.

On the right is, yes, on the right is multifamily today in this rendering, low rise where you might see townhouses or apartment buildings, and in the back you can see some apartment buildings that are a story higher.

So you start seeing that infill, it's a slightly larger scale.

But it is important to note, as I did earlier, that this ended up not just being an exercise about more development capacity to trigger these requirements, but during the two years of engagement, we heard a lot about urban design.

We heard a lot about tree loss.

We heard a lot about the way these neighborhoods and new development look and feel.

And this was an opportunity, while we had the land use code open in this legislative proposal, to go in and make some proposed changes to respond to that community feedback.

And so with virtually every zone, you will see that there are some proposal that's being made to either create incentives, new incentives for family size units, for example, to create new requirements for tree protection or tree preservation as new development happens, to include new setbacks so that you have more open space and green space adjacent to the streets to create additional considerations for urban design so that we have more light and air getting down to the sidewalk.

But at the end of the day what this is all about is putting this program in place so that we can start generating more income and rent restricted housing to help protect our most vulnerable neighbors as this city continues to change and grow.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah.

So we're going to now move into the official public hearing for the Council Bill.

This is Council Bill 119184. For folks who have signed up to give public testimony, as I mentioned at the outset, we're going to allow everybody two minutes this evening, with the exception of a couple of groups that have signed up.

Those groups will be given up to five minutes.

When your name is called, I would ask you to line up at one of the two microphones provided here in the front of the auditorium.

When I call your name, I'll also call the number that you were handed when you signed up.

laminated note cards, too.

And if you wouldn't mind leaving those note cards in the boxes provided, that way we can recycle them and use them for the next public meeting.

So as I mentioned at the outset, we've got about 70 folks or so that have signed up to give public testimony at two minutes or so each.

That means you should all be home in time for the 9 o'clock news, give or take.

And we're going to start this evening with Brooke Broad.

1A, Mike Ruby, 1B, and Ethan Phelps Goodman, 2A.

Brooke.

Thank you.

My name is Brooke Broad, and I live right at the north end of the University District, kind of on the border of U District, Roosevelt, and Ravenna.

I'm here to speak in favor, once again, on the MHA proposals.

and in favor of really creating more diverse, family-friendly, and equitable neighborhoods.

This is not some out-of-left-field ask.

In fact, our own plans going back many years state that Seattle should be promoting households with children and attracting a greater share of the county's families with children, and that we should be working to achieve a mix of housing types that provide opportunity and choice throughout Seattle for people of various ages, races, ethnicities, and cultural backgrounds, and for a variety of household sizes, types, and incomes.

Unfortunately, we are really falling behind on reaching that goal.

A large percentage of Seattle is still zoned for single-family homes, and 40% of the single-family homes in Seattle are now priced at $1 million or more.

And we're not doing much better right now at creating other options like two- and three-bedroom apartments.

In the past five years, we've built less two- and three-bedroom apartments than most other major cities, including places like San Francisco and Los Angeles.

And sadly, the response to this urgent problem Has it been ways to find more duplexes, triplexes, courtyard apartments, or other family-friendly options?

Instead, we've seen litigation, drawn-out Seattle process, and needless theatrics.

And the result is not more affordability, just more multimillion-dollar McMansions.

I really urge the city council to move as quickly as possible to pass MHA and really ask you to be even bolder about opening up our neighborhoods to more diverse housing types and make district for such a great opportunity to live for people.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mike.

Mike, one B followed by Ethan Phelps Goodman and Mr. Goodman, you're one of the folks that has signed up to be a group of four.

So you'll be given up to five minutes, Mr. Ruby.

Thank you.

What is the real intention of these zoning changes?

We are told it is to increase the amount of affordable housing.

If that is true, this proposal fails to do that.

I can only speak to what has been proposed for the Wallingford Urban Village.

You are proposing to rezone more than 40 city blocks from single-family to low-rise 1, 2, or 3. The intent of such zoning is to replace one family home with two or more structures, possibly a townhouse.

Note that some of the single-family homes also have legal mother-in-law apartments already, what the city calls accessory dwelling units.

On our block face, four of the houses have such ADUs.

Taking down these houses and building two new townhouses will not increase the number of housing units.

Overall, it will certainly increase the density of residential structures, but will it result in housing more people or just different people?

Perhaps it is your desire to drive out middle-class families and replace them with wealthy young couples.

That is what is likely to happen.

A single-family house will be bought, bulldozed, the trees cut down, and replaced with two units that will sell for more than the house that was destroyed.

And will that produce a more resilient and mutually supportive community?

Most of the families and single family homes in our block face have lived there for more than 30 years and have gotten to know each other rather well.

I walk around my neighborhood quite a bit.

I've noticed the townhouses that have been built in the last few years in the LR1 and LR2 zones have a surprisingly rapid turnover.

Quite a few come onto the market.

This does lead to a certain instability in the community.

No sooner do we get to know these neighbors than they are gone.

I've had the opportunity to talk with some of these neighbors as they are selling or after they've sold their units.

It seems that deciding to start a family is the main motivation for moving.

They tell me this is no place to raise a family.

We'll be looking for our own house with a yard.

So the question is, what are you really trying to accomplish?

When the new units are built, you will require them to pay a fee so that you cannot require the construction of one affordable house on one of these 5,000 square foot lots by the builder who's building two or four units.

Thank you, Mr. Ruby.

I'm sorry your time is up.

Thank you, Mr. Ruby.

Hold on for just one second.

So the Phelps Goodman Group, you're going to have five minutes.

You're going to be followed by 2B, Ben Anderson, and then 3A, Norbert Sork.

Hello, my name is Juju, a renter from Wallingford neighborhood since 2006. Thank you to city staff for attending tonight and listening.

I'm here with Seattle Tech for Housing, and I support rezoning Seattle for more affordable housing development.

I'm here today because I had the opportunity to grow up in this district.

I attended this very middle school where teachers instilled in me a love for history and science.

I want more children, those who were born in Seattle and those who moved here with their recently transplanted parents, to have access to this wonderful school.

I am scared of a Seattle that looks like Palo Alto, where a teacher making $200,000 a year is leaving because they couldn't afford to live there.

It's been studied that children that live in high-opportunity neighborhoods are over 30% more likely to go to college, 26% less likely to become single parents, and we'll see, on average, an increase in lifetime learning of over 300,000.

Seattle is changing, and Seattle is growing.

Because of Seattle's geographic constraints, we need to rezone not just the urban villages, but all of Seattle.

We want nurses, paramedics, teachers, and everyone who makes the city work to be able to go to work.

MHA could potentially unlock 6,300 income and rent-restricted homes across Seattle for families and individuals who need them, and at thousands of market-rate homes to our landscape.

I encourage the city to hear the urgency and the fear and the hopes in our hearts unlock this beautiful city and her opportunities for everyone.

Hello.

My name is Laura Villarreal, and I'm here tonight with Seattle Tech for Housing in support of MHA and District 4. Thank you for coming and listening to us tonight.

I'd like to take a minute to share why I care about MHA.

I worked in tech for years and was fortunate enough to afford a one-bedroom apartment.

In those five years, I saw the cost of my one-bedroom almost double, from $870 to $1,600 a month.

This past year, I made the decision to leave tech and to work in education.

I'm now technically a low-income Seattle resident, making below 80% of the area median income.

I understood that with salary change came lifestyle changes.

I left Wallingford, I left my one-bedroom apartment, and I was fortunate to find wonderful roommates in a house in South Seattle.

I know that my income level affects my options for how I can live, but I don't want it to restrict me from where I can live.

I feel that if we don't increase density, people like me will continue to be pushed farther away from the city.

People like me who graduated from college, who have full-time jobs, who actively contribute to and participate in this community.

It's inevitable that Seattle is growing, and it's inevitable that Seattle is changing.

We can't deny this, but we can influence it.

We have the opportunity to inform thoughtful density in our neighborhoods and the opportunity to preserve a neighborhood's character while opening our arms to a diverse range of people who want to be our neighbors.

People are coming to the city, change is coming to the city, and we can't put our heads down.

It's going to happen if we embrace it or if we push it away.

Please embrace it.

Please move forward with MHA and District 4. Thank you.

Thanks, Laura.

My name is Calvin Jones.

I'm here with Seattle Tech for Housing, and I'm a renter in District 3. I'd like to thank you all for coming out tonight.

I know getting lectured for hours on end isn't exactly an ideal Monday night, so thank you.

Back in July, I spent the better part of two months looking for a three-bedroom apartment for my friends and I, and I wanted to keep it within a 45-minute commute.

When I finally found the apartment that met all the criteria, I felt an overwhelming sense of privilege that I could afford to and had the time to search for an apartment that suited my needs.

I worry that without more housing, only boring, privileged white tech bros like me are going to be able to live in a city like this.

And believe me, none of us want that.

So I'm here to support MHA in all capacities.

We need more housing.

We need more affordable housing.

This is not a District 3 housing crisis.

This is not a District 4 housing crisis.

It's a citywide housing crisis, and MHA is a great opportunity to do something about it.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Ethan Phelps-Goodman, also with Seattle Tech for Housing.

Thank you to council members for being here tonight.

I lived in District 4 for four years in my mid-20s.

I loved living in Wallingford, I loved living in Eastlake, and I loved living in the U District.

I don't know that someone like me today could do that.

I don't know where a student could live in Wallingford.

I looked on Craigslist tonight before coming here.

There are single family homes in Wallingford, of course.

They rent for $3,000 and up.

There are some multifamily units in Wallingford.

They're renting at $1,400, $1,500 a month.

That is so much more possible for students to consider living in a neighborhood like Wallingford when there's multifamily options available.

And all we're asking is to increase the options.

You get a more diverse population when you have more diverse housing types.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ben, Ben Anderson, 2B, and then Norbert Sorg, 3A, and then Susanna Lynn, 3B.

Hi, thank you.

I'm Ben Anderson.

I'm a member of Walking Wallingford, but I'm speaking for myself tonight on behalf of the MHA preferred option and allowing more types of housing to be built throughout our neighborhood.

As with anyone who's put an offer on a place to live or rushed to get a rental application in and dealt with an astounding number of competitive offers that are typical in the last few years, I know the reason housing prices are high is simple.

There's a lot more people coming here.

competing for the existing housing stock than there are places to live in the city right now.

I was lucky and five years ago I was able to buy my current home in Wallingford.

Since that time it's doubled in value.

I've watched teardowns and to the studs rehabs go for high prices, as high as I paid, and they're upscaled and upsized replacements sold for truly sky-high valuations.

I don't really have anything against housing for rich people, but we shouldn't be subsidizing those houses by using zoning to restrict most of the residential land in our city to only the most expensive type of housing.

There are many small lot homes as well as apartments and multiplex houses that make up the current character of my neighborhood, Wallingford.

McMansion-style development should have to compete with those and other forms of more affordable housing as our current lots turn over.

While I applaud the increased market rate and affordable housing that will be created by the MHA upzones under current consideration, the injustice of the current large lot, single family, snob zoning, which does not match the built character of many Seattle neighborhoods, is unconscionable.

The viciousness of taking what should be a great benefit to our city, the many good jobs being created here, and turning it into a punishment for those who aren't making those salaries is not something anyone in the city wants.

Please make room for all those who work in the city by continuing to remove restrictions on housing production.

Thanks for your time.

Thank you.

Nobert, you're going to be followed by Susanna Lynn, 3B, and then Sarah Wormsley, 4A.

Good evening.

My name is Norbert Zollick.

I am the President-Elect of Congregation Bet Shalom.

We are located on the 6800 block of 35th Avenue Northeast.

And I am here with a couple more of our congregants to speak about a very specific amendment to the zoning of our block only.

Our block differs from the blocks to the north and to the south.

The middle of the block to the south is already zoned LR2.

The block to the north will be zoned LR2.

And ours is the only one where the middle remains single-family.

There are only four single-family homes there.

We already own them.

We want to replace them with an educational wing with classrooms on the bottom and housing on the top.

So we ask that our block be up-zoned to be in sync with the neighboring blocks and not leave this kind of arbitrary gap in zoning along 35th Avenue Northeast, which is pretty much a kind of commercial avenue.

Thank you.

That's all.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Susanna Lynn.

I'm a board member on Seattle Fair Growth, and I am a resident of Wallingford.

Wallingford is a very welcoming community.

We have a Boys and Girls Club.

We have a food bank.

We have services for homeless youth.

We have a low-cost clinic.

We have an international school.

My block which I know obviously the best I know my neighbors well as a single-family block It's lovely and on my block about 40% of the block is people of color including my own house We have renters and homeowners.

We have people that work in food service We have people that are teachers that are writers.

We have business people It's a diverse Block, it's a welcoming community And it's a community where we all know our neighbors.

And it's a community that we value.

And when we do something like MHA, where we come in and we decide that these are not valuable neighborhoods and that we should change the zoning, it puts those communities and these things that we hold dear in jeopardy.

What I think will happen with MHA is that the most affordable units will be torn down first.

They'll be replaced by luxury units.

Most developers would choose the in-lieu fee option.

And so those affordable units we will get will probably be four or five years later.

They'll be too little, too late, maybe built somewhere else.

We could use the head tax instead, the corporate head tax.

If we want to raise money, we could have impact fees.

We don't need to have MHA, which increases displacement and destroys communities.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sarah Wormsley is going to be followed by Joel Ng, 4B, and then Mike Ettinger, 5A.

Good evening, Council.

Thanks for allowing us to speak.

My name is Sarah Wamsley, and I am a renter in District 4, actually on 66th and Roosevelt.

So I'm in the most up-zoned, up-zoned part of this area.

And I came, actually, to the neighborhood from a city nearby that already has its own version of MHA and has for the last 10 years.

And it's fantastic.

So when I walk around Roosevelt and I see all of the development and all of the cranes that are going up around my single family home that probably won't stand for much longer, I see a lot of misopportunity.

I wish that MHA had been in place for many years already and we could have had all of this affordable housing already so that when the growth happens to my lot, which it will, it is happening already.

and has been happening already, I would have some place to go.

So I would urge you to implement MHA.

Do it now.

We need the levers in place so that we can move them.

And once they are, we can have further conversations.

But we need to do it now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Joel, you're going to be followed by Mike Ettinger, 5A, and then David Preston, 5B.

Council members and the rest of the crowd, my name is Joel Ng.

I'm a real estate developer here in Seattle.

I develop both market rate and affordable housing.

And I was born and raised here in Seattle.

I'm fortunate to attend Seattle Public Schools and even more fortunate to send my kids to Seattle Public Schools.

It's been said before, I hope that they're able to afford when they come back and finish schooling.

You know, housing crisis is very real here in Seattle.

We all know that.

And when you talk about the policies of MHA, they are intended to benefit the teachers that even teach here at this school.

Without these policies, those that teach here at Eckstein Many of them couldn't even afford to live in their own city.

It's well documented, but it's very real.

I live near the Central District, and I see the changes going on every day.

I see what's going on at 23rd and Union.

Just today, over at 23rd and Jackson, the wrecking balls are coming down at the promenade.

And a very big, very well-known developer is taking over there, and I can tell you that the characteristics of that block, that neighborhood, is going to be very different than what it has been and what it should be moving forward.

So the policies of MHA are, and I would add that they were crafted not only by the affordable housing industry, but really the precursor to this was both the affordable housing and the market rate.

industry coming together to recognize there's a real issue here in Seattle.

So as a developer, we look at the numbers every day.

This does make an impact on our budget, but it makes economic sense.

And more so, it's the right policy.

So we believe, as our company and MHA, we will continue to support it and do what we can to further its goals.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mike Edinger, 5A.

I don't see Mike.

Can we do a microphone?

David Preston, 5B.

David Preston, are you here?

How about Bill Sampson, 6A?

Bill?

Bill's coming down.

Come on down, Bill.

And then Peter Horniak, 6B.

Will you all follow Bill?

Hi, my name is Bill Samson, and I live in View Ridge here in District 4. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.

This is bringing back memories for me.

I attended Eckstein, and I remember the concerts on the stage you're on now.

I'm also an environmentalist, and so I'm very supportive of a lot of the ideas of MHA and HALA, because with more dense development, you get opportunities to expand the urban villages.

and have really good transit-oriented development.

I do have a few concerns about the approach, though, by tying the affordable housing to the area median income in an area like District 4, where it's pretty wealthy.

which, you know, called affordable probably isn't really affordable for a lot of people.

So I'm kind of a little bit concerned about that.

And for some of the other districts, I'm wondering, the districts where there's a high risk of displacement, I'm wondering about maybe if there's opportunities to increase the affordable housing requirements in those areas so that you could reduce the risk of displacement and have more affordable housing.

But I'm really excited in District 4 about the opportunities in Roosevelt of expanding that urban village as the light rail station comes in to have lots of really good transit-oriented development and dense housing there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bill.

Peter, 6A, you're going to be followed by Jessica Westgren, 7A, and then Judith Benditch, 7B.

Thank you.

My name is Peter Hornyak, and I live in Fremont.

I value vibrant neighborhoods with busy commercial areas and people out on the streets.

I value walkability and effective public transit for the freedom and the opportunity they provide.

I value inclusion in my neighbors.

I value diversity of economic means ethnicity and a place of origin.

I support the proposed MHA program for Seattle, District 4, and for the Fremont and Wallingford urban villages because it will let more neighbors share these things that I value in Seattle.

In particular, I support the proposed zoning changes within Wallingford Urban Village to the east and west of Stoneway.

East Fremont, or West Wallingford, is a very desirable place to live.

There are shops and restaurants along Stoneway with more going in all the time.

There are eight bus routes nearby.

It's a modest walk to the hearts of Fremont and Wallingford, and it lies between two of our stunning parks, Gasworks and Green Lake.

The proposed up zones will allow more neighbors to share these amenities, including neighbors of lesser privilege because of the MHA program.

I applaud the council for resisting calls for higher MHA fees, which would make some new housing developments financially infeasible and reduce the production of both affordable and market rate housing.

Please closely monitor development after MHA takes effect and raise or lower the fees as necessary to maximize housing production.

With MHA and urban villages, we'll be better off than we are now, but let's not delude ourselves that this will be enough to fix Seattle's affordability crisis.

Let's get MHA done, let's get ADUs done, and let's move on to reopening all residential zones in Seattle for multifamily, missing middle housing, like duplexes and small apartment buildings, so we can truly reduce our housing shortage and make Seattle welcoming for everyone.

Jessica Westgren, 7A, followed by Judith Bindage, 7B, and then Doug Trum, 8A.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Jessica, and I'm a Wallingford renter.

I here represent many different people.

I represent my fellow renting neighbors who could not make it out this evening, my renter friends who have already been displaced out of Wallingford, and I'm also speaking for our baristas, bartenders, waitstaff, and service workers who cannot afford to live in Wallingford.

They are stakeholders in our community as well.

Communities are complex, dynamic, ever-changing, and growing.

They include homeowners, renters, businesses, employees, and the unhoused.

Wallingford can.

and should accept more density.

There are those who oppose MHA upzones on behalf of neighborhood character.

Character is not the facade of a craftsman house.

Character is what is within.

It is the myriad of people who call a neighborhood home.

If Wallingford does not get up-zoned and does not accept MHA, then our neighbourhood character will decline in substance year after year.

It will become a community only for the wealthy, Scrooges, unwilling to share the opportunities and amenities that our neighbourhood provides.

Some oppose HALA and MHA and use rhetoric in their tactics.

They argue to keep Wallingford as it is, using half-truths at best, and misrepresenting facts about what the motivation is behind HALA and the processes it enacts.

Their most recent publication was a call to action to save our neighborhood from the wrecking ball.

And that's simply not what's going to happen.

Every stalling tactic and every lawsuit puts people like myself and our service workers at a greater risk for displacement.

Simply put, it is predatory delay, and it puts our most vulnerable neighbors at risk.

Approve MHA and expand up zones.

Don't let our vibrant, accessible neighborhoods be held hostage by the few, the loud, and the powerful.

Thank you.

Judith, you're next, and you're going to be followed by Doug Trump, but I just want to take a moment to say, Judith, we are in receipt of your great individualized public comment, and if other folks have materials that they would like to leave behind, please just come to the stage, and Spencer and I will put them into the record.

So, Judith, we do have your petition, and please go ahead with your public comment.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson.

I want to speak on behalf of everybody in this room.

who believes that we do not have sufficient affordable housing in this city, that we do not have inclusive neighborhoods.

And I also want to say that the way that the MHA is put together, it will not happen in the Roosevelt up zone.

And that is because the area that is into the expansion area are homes now that are over a million dollars in value.

No developer is ever going to put anything that is inclusive into that area.

And the only reason that it's there is to give some money toward the housing fund.

And in doing so, what you are also doing is actually in derogation of your own comprehensive plan and amendments.

Contrary to what the previous speaker just said, This city values its craftsmen, Tudor, historic preservation areas.

The area that you wish to zone and expand in Ravenna, across 15th Avenue, is precisely that.

It's the most intact area of historic Seattle, dating from 1907, that presently exists as an intact place.

So I want to urge you, and incidentally, the city is supposed to update and survey an inventory when developing or updating an existing plan.

That hasn't happened here, but that's precisely what the city is doing.

Meanwhile, neighbors have gotten together and succeeded in getting 245 affordable units.

into Roosevelt.

We hope that you can expand and use the reservoir for more affordable housing.

There are plenty of opportunities, but this just doesn't cut it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Reynolds.

Doug Trum, 8A.

You're going to be followed by Rhonda Bush, 8B, and then Brittany Bollet, 9A.

Hi, my name's Doug Trump, and I'm a publication director at The Urbanist.

We're pretty big fans of this policy.

And I'm a renter at Freeling Ford, which is what I call the area similar to a previous testifier, kind of between Wallingford and Fremont.

And I'm a grad student at UW.

And I see the struggle that my classmates have to make ends meet, given high housing costs and limited options.

And I think that MHA gives students more options across the city and especially in neighborhoods like this that are close.

And the MHA process from EIS to outreach has been thorough, and I look forward to the policy going citywide so that inclusionary zoning can start adding guaranteed affordable homes and more housing options.

We expect 6,300 affordable guaranteed MHA units in a decade, and I think that it's time to start getting those.

Plus, once we do that, we can go on to passing more recommended HALA policies, and on top of that, takes MHA truly citywide by reforming, if not ending single family zoning, and adding more urban villages to our city, and Wedgwood might not be a bad place to start.

And I think that we can do all these things and still have craftsmen.

It just is a matter of having a diversity of housing types.

And I hope that everything goes smoothly for you guys.

Thanks.

Rhonda Bush 8B followed by Brittany Bollet 9A.

Hi, I'm Rhonda Bush, and I visit a historic, quality, family-oriented neighborhood.

There are currently four large structures that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and three structures that are designated local landmarks by the city.

The Environmental Impact Statement of MHH knows that Wallingford contains one of the city's best examples of grassland bungalow neighborhoods.

This historic fabric is a cultural asset to the entire city.

However, the ESI also states that a growth rate above 50% would subject the neighborhood to potential significant impacts.

Proposed growth rate for Wallingford with a preferred alternative is 95%, with the average over all the UVs is only 38%.

How is this justified?

The EASI also states that areas of M, M1, and M2 would see the greatest change in scale.

All of Wallingford falls in this category.

So with the preferred plan, a 95% growth rate, all M, M1, and M2, the significant impact and greatest change of scale, it seems that the Department of Planning has specifically targeted Wallingford for destruction of historical character.

And once this is gone, this is forever gone.

Jenny Durkan stated, There should not be a one-size-fits-all approach to rezoning and upzoning.

Planning for this added density requires intensive discussions with neighborhood leaders, businesses, and residents to determine.

how and where neighborhoods can grow while allowing both residents and local businesses to flourish.

Creating and expanding historic districts will help preserve our city's rich culture and fabric.

Councilman Johnson, please work with the residents of Wallingford in a truly honest and authentic manner.

As you described in this article, city council candidates want to make Seattle's housing grand bargain work with district force look in this article that you talk about intensive neighborhood planning and allowing in neighborhoods to design how they accept the necessary density.

Your office hosted a design workshop a year ago and the resulting preferred alternative does not reach residents.

Those of us who live there and who will be affected immediately by the proposed changes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Brittany Bollet, U9A.

Clarissa Jaram is 9B, and Jay Laserwitz is 10A.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Brittany Bollet.

I support housing affordability for a lot of reasons, for environmental reasons, for social justice reasons.

But tonight I'm going to be a little selfish, and I'm going to talk about why I support it for personal reasons.

When I moved to Seattle about 11 years ago I got involved in the city's vibrant music scene.

That's how I spent most of my time.

That's where I made most of my friends.

My friends lived in Ballard and Capitol Hill and Uptown in the same neighborhoods where we spent our time.

We would hang out together two or three nights a week seeing bands and then we'd walk or bus home.

Now most of these friends live in Tacoma.

In Burien.

In Olympia.

In Linwood.

They got priced out of Seattle and now they live a 45 minute drive away.

I don't see these people anymore.

I don't want to only be friends with rich people.

I want my friends and neighbors to represent all income levels all professions all interests musicians artists grocers teachers journalists servers.

These low and middle wage workers are the heart of Seattle and when they leave Seattle loses a little bit of its soul.

MHA gives us the tools to make housing in Seattle affordable for everyone and makes us helps us make the city that we all love available to all.

Thank you.

Clarissa, go ahead.

Thank you.

My name is Clarissa Jaram, and I live in the University District.

I might be one of the data points we're talking about when we discuss low-income residents as numbers and not people, and I'm here to share my personal story.

I am generally in favor of the MHA, as I've experienced homelessness for one-third of my childhood, and in the six years since graduating with an education degree, I've worked 60 to 80 hours a week for three and a half of them.

I spend 50% of my expenses on affordable housing.

I'm in an affordable housing unit in the university district.

And I spend that money so that the child I parent alone never experiences homelessness.

She only got her own room two years ago.

She dreams that one day we will live where we have a yard and in a neighborhood with other children like her.

At least I live near enough to take her to play at Green Lake, Ravenna Park, and Wallingford Playground.

I am currently attending an ambitious project spearheaded by Seattle Children's and the University of Washington.

I felt fortunate to live in this building until this past October when a new company purchased it and informed us that they were converting our building and two others they recently bought in the university district to student only housing.

I would like the city to entertain a more nuanced view of what low-income families need.

How are we going to ensure developers don't buy out our vision for an affordable Seattle?

I am told by the Office of Civil Rights that only allowing students isn't discrimination in our city.

But without protection for all low-income tenants from all walks of life, I worry the MHA may become another loophole exploited by large-scale developers.

I am for an MHA that truly addresses the problems raised.

I am for a conversation that isn't only yes or no.

I am grateful that my daughter is growing up in a zip code that data suggests means she will have opportunities I never had.

I hope that the MHA means families like mine aren't forced out of this opportunity zone.

Jay Lazerwitz, 10A.

You're going to be followed by Mehdi Amin, 10B.

I'm Jay Lazerwitz.

I chair the Land Use Committee for the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association.

Seattle's housing problem, no one of us caused the current, now long-standing housing problem, making this city unaffordable and in crisis over growing pains.

Though I'm encouraged the council is taking this on.

These are issues that have been discussed and dissected for a handful of years and need to be resolved as soon as possible or the solutions will be further unreachable.

The Roosevelt Neighborhood Association drafted a report spring of 2017 based on results from an online survey and a community workshop attended by 60 community residents.

There was great support for increased density and understanding of affordability issues, albeit there was not 100% support, and there are still a number of area-specific transition concerns, along with some resistance in single-family areas.

But there was also increased support for even greater density in the commercial central area to even greater higher than it's currently proposed.

And especially given the light rail station, this makes strong sense.

Many people express the desire to have a considerate proportion of the MHA fees that are generated in the neighborhood spent locally there for affordable housing, especially family housing.

The RNA is proposing some companion resolutions for the council to consider.

One is extending the pedestrian overlay within the current and proposed NC zones within the Roosevelt Urban Village, especially in regard to up north and south on Roosevelt Way.

Number two, increasing the low rise front yard setbacks to 10 foot within the urban village.

in order to provide a more substantial landscaping, given the special character of Roosevelt neighborhood, due to the relationship, the Olmstead legacy in parks, and a study of the Roosevelt reservoir area, including for future school, community facilities, affordable housing, and future open spaces.

Thank you, Jay.

Thank you.

Mediamin, 10B.

You're going to be followed by Jonathan Flack, 11A, and Robert Radin, 11B.

Good evening, Councillor.

My name is Mediamin Jawahiri.

I am the owner of the property 221 East Newton Street, which is on the corner of East Newton and Franklin Avenue East.

Recently, on the west of my property, try to give the permit to the agency facility retirement, which is they're applying and the zoning, as far as I know, is zoning and the design review will approve it.

This facility, they did go for height for 70 feet and higher, which is completely blocking my view.

which I've been paid a property tax for it for last 20 years, keep my tenants happy.

And now such a facility are coming over there in order to have a retirement for $8,000 per month for a person and destroying my life, which I have worked hard in this country, this state, this city.

And now such a developer is coming and cities give them 70 feet high, blocking the entire of my view.

And when I wrote the letter to our email to the city, they said, this is their zoning.

It's approved.

Nothing you can do about it.

Where is the justice?

Where is the fairness?

Developers come in, do whatever they want to do to build it, and me has to be sacrificed for it.

This is not fair.

Let's look at the people.

Let's look at what they have done it.

in their life.

And don't let the people come and take advantage of the property, which they can pay a million dollars and destroy the poor people.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Raymond.

Jonathan Flack, 11A.

You're going to be followed by Robert Rudine, 11B.

Thank you, Rob.

I think we can all agree that Seattle needs a strategy for additional housing.

And affordability has to be a big part of that.

The previous speaker makes a very good point, though.

A lot of the changes being proposed by the city right now advantage a number of people and may create additional affordable housing, but they do so to the disadvantage of a great number of Seattle's existing residents.

And I think many of our council members here have forgotten that there exists a social contract between our leadership and the residents of the city of Seattle that created the city that we live in today.

And it is unfair in many ways to disadvantage property owners in a way that helps only newcomers to find affordable housing.

What do we do about the elderly people who have lived in their 1,500 square foot craftsman home in Wallingford from being displaced due to the increase in property values that are coming with an up zone?

There's nothing to protect them from their neighbors selling their property to a developer for $2 million, increasing the neighboring property values, the rippling increase in taxes, then pricing a family who's lived here for 60 or 70 years out of the home that they've known their entire life.

Seattle hasn't done a very good job of taking a look at the topology of Seattle and concentrating growth in a way that centers increases at the tops of the city and slowly settling the height increases as we get further down.

This maintains, in the previous gentleman's point, the property values downslope where views have been a part of the valuation for properties for many decades, and it allows everybody to share in the beauty of the city.

Existing lowland properties as well as newer, higher properties.

Thank you.

10B, Robert Rodin.

Yes.

And then, I'm sorry, there were 11B.

And then Sarah-Jane Siegfried is 12A, and Bonnie Williams is 12B.

Please.

Hi.

Thank you.

I'm Robert Rodin.

I have been both a renter and a property owner in Eastlake, and still am a resident of Eastlake.

I'll be personally adversely affected by HALA.

I think HALA represents a shambolic way to design a city.

There, I am not opposed to the goals of increased density if it's done intelligently, but I think this one-size-fits-all should caution all the renters in our area that they're going to be facing rent increases immediately because of the increased valuations that will occur with the Epson.

So for affordable housing, possibly, possibly not in our neighborhood, for housing that may not be produced for years, but the property tax valuations will occur immediately.

The costs will be passed on to tenants immediately.

Hala is well-intended, and I think we can do better to design a beautiful city worthy of our natural blessings in this town.

And I've vowed to always use the local language whenever I speak in public, so I'm going to say, which is, better we can build a beautiful city.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Sarah Jane Siegfried with Seattle Fair Growth.

And I wanted to address the issue that we're all concerned about, which is affordable housing.

I'm wearing my red scarf from Housing and Homeless Day in Olympia.

I've been a housing advocate for over 20 years.

And I'm concerned that this proposal actually won't result in the kind of affordable housing that we all need and want, and especially not in diverse neighborhoods in diverse parts of the city.

The staff quoted 767 acres of RSL, the single family resulting in, which I believe won't result in any affordable housing, that if we zone RSL, we divide the larger single family lots and we get townhouses.

They sell.

They don't rent, they sell for 700,000 and up.

That's not affordable in anybody's book.

So there's an affordable home ownership part of the proposal, but it's actually coming from the Seattle Housing Levy.

And that's 50 units a year.

It's sweat equity.

It's Habitat.

We're happy to have it.

But that's not really MHA.

So there's no affordable home ownership in this proposal.

We already have that.

I don't see affordable rental housing resulting from RSL at all.

This diversity of housing types is not the goal of the proposal.

It's affordability.

So just diversity, if it's expensive, doesn't really cut it, does it?

The presentation said low-rise too could result in more apartment buildings, but will it?

We don't see it happening.

We see no stacked apartments being built.

All we see is townhouses and row houses.

So the economics of facts on the ground say that we're not getting stacked apartments, which seniors need.

Seniors can't, I don't think, I would never buy a townhouse given the stairs and given my needs, right?

So we have no place for seniors to go in the kinds of housing that's being built, and that's not choice.

Bonnie Williams, 12A.

Hold on for a second, Bonnie.

Bonnie Williams, 12B.

And then Allison Bolgiano, 13A.

And Bart Cena, 13B.

Please, Ms. Williams.

OK.

I've heard a lot of good points this evening.

And I think that MHA is well intended.

I'm from Wallingford.

And I've lived around Redmond, West Seattle, Ballard, Wallingford.

I'm back in Wallingford.

I'm concerned about the future of single-family housing.

Wallingford is targeted for 700 single-family homes.

When I watched the presentation of the select committee this morning, The other urban villages are not targeted for so much destruction of single family home.

I think that MHA loses sight of real people live in these houses.

Real people's lives will be disrupted and they face potential displacement.

I don't think the city has the answer to prevent displacement, even though you put a high opportunity low risk of displacement category on 13 neighborhoods.

You have not been able to prove that people will not be displaced in great numbers in other parts of Seattle, and yet you go ahead with aggressive redevelopment in Wallingford with, I think, no heart when it comes to trying to balance who's coming and who's staying.

I think that land planners sit and look at maps.

Even the focus groups looked at maps.

They forgot the reality of the people that do live there, that are rooted in the communities, that have kids in school.

Moving is a big deal.

Property taxes, because of incentivized zoning, can drive up your property taxes to the point that you can't stay there on a senior fixed income or you are a single family homeowner maybe being divorced with kids, whatever.

So those are some of the things that I want you to consider.

I also feel that public engagement.

I feel that there was a very selective listening process in the public engagement.

Our request for Wallingford were not reflected in the policies that you have come up with for Wallingford.

We got targeted for the highest density, as has been said before.

Thank you.

Allison?

Allison, 13B.

Randy Banneker, 14A.

Good evening, council members and staff.

Thank you for being here.

My name is Allison Bolgiano.

I work for Bellwether Housing, a local nonprofit developer and manager of affordable housing.

I've lived in Wallingford in the past, and I'm actually moving back to the neighborhood this Sunday.

So a short walk around Wallingford, and you're sure to see signs exclaiming, keep Seattle livable.

That's an admirable goal and one I agree with, but it makes me ask, for whom are we keeping Seattle livable?

Let me tell you about a person, and Councilmember Johnson, you and I actually met this person together last summer.

She's a person I want to keep Seattle livable for.

Her name is Anissa.

She lives in a bellwether housing unit in the heart of Wallingford.

Anissa is an immigrant from Somalia and the mother of four children.

She walks a few blocks to work at her job as a nursing assistant at a retirement home.

With rent that she and her husband can afford and commutes that don't eat up hours, both are back in school pursuing further education.

And Anissa says, I'm able to be a mother and give time and energy to my kids instead of having to give all my energy just paying rent and bills.

HALA and its MHA provisions will create affordable units that keep Seattle livable for people like Anissa.

People who do the jobs that we all depend on, the medical assistants, the preschool teachers, the hospitality workers.

People who work hard and have high aspirations even if they don't have high salaries or own homes deserve to stay here.

These people add to our city's cultural richness and they give our neighborhoods character.

We can't wait any longer to implement MHA.

The longer we wait, the less growth we can leverage to create affordable homes.

So let's keep Seattle affordable and livable for all.

Let's enact MHA now.

Thank you.

Bart Cena, you're going to be followed by Randy Banneker, 14A, and then Logan Bowers, 14B.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak in behalf of the bill.

I happen to be on the board of directors for Bellwether Housing with Allison, and she's certainly giving you a great example of the people who need the affordable housing.

Bellwether's been around for over 35 years, and in that time, with great effort, they've only been able to generate 2,000 units.

There's a long way to go.

All the other non-profit housings and organizations in town will not be able to make up the gaps that are here.

In fact, on Housing Advocacy Day, as we were gathering our carpool together, we have a new building coming online in the university, and there was two people waiting in line for the door to open, one in a walker, just looking forward for that housing.

We're running occupancy over 98 percent in all the units that we have.

You know, the demand is there, and I think this bill will help improve that.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Randy Banneker, 14A, followed by Logan Bowers, 14B.

Thank you, council members.

I'm Randy Banneker.

I grew up in District 4, and my wife and I are raising our kids in District 4. God willing, we will be empty nesters in about five years.

And I have a couple of wishes that relate to HALA and your work here tonight, both in the district and then throughout the city.

First, I'd like more choices of housing type so when we downsize as empty nesters, we could actually get a smaller place but live in the neighborhood that we love so much.

We'd also like our kids to have the option to live in Seattle, to own in Seattle.

And I'll bet the parents of the kids that fill this auditorium during the day feel much the same way.

I also, my third wish is that I don't want to see our growth sprawl into the rural area that through the Growth Management Act we were so careful to protect beginning that effort about 20, 25 years ago.

These wishes depend on new housing units and lots of them.

I thank you for your work on HALA and MHA.

And I encourage you to be even bolder as you go through the HALA up zones.

Just the ones for the district make a whole lot of sense.

Expanding the Roosevelt Urban Village so that you can take advantage of light rail and access to rail.

Residential small lots can enable that sort of a townhouse development that I can downsize into.

And better use of our arterials.

for residential uses, I think are going to soften those arterials and make them much more livable, add to our quality of life in the city.

So again, these are modest proposals.

I'd encourage you to be even bolder.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Logan Bowers, 14B, you're going to be followed by Kelly Meinig, 15A.

And just as a time check for folks, we're about a quarter of the way there.

Members of the Council, thank you for the opportunity to address you today.

I absolutely support the MHA bill.

I hope you will go further.

I'm a small business owner.

I'm also a tech guy, so I've had both of those perspectives.

I have a small retail shop on Stoneway here in District 4. My wife and I employ about a dozen folks at our little shop.

reflect on kind of their housing opportunities now versus some of the housing opportunities I had when I first got an apartment in Seattle 15 years ago.

Most of them cannot afford to live in the neighborhood they work in, in Fremont or in Wallingford or anywhere nearby.

Many have to commute from outside the city limits, at the very least they're coming from Soto, somewhere that's a little more affordable.

I think back to the time when I first rented an apartment and the landlord negotiations were all, how many free months of rent did you get for signing a lease?

I mean, think about how different that is from today.

I think I negotiated two where everyone was offering one.

And the reason that worked is because the original tech bubble had just burst and a whole bunch of folks had moved on out of town.

So we had a lot of housing and not as many folks.

So if I can leave one thought, when you have more houses than you do people, the prices go down.

And when you have fewer houses than you do people, the prices go up.

So while I really like the part that helps affordability for folks that are on lower incomes.

The real way to make this work is to have enough housing units for all of the people who get here, come here.

Otherwise, the tech guys like me will be able to just price people out and squeeze kind of people out on the bottom end who are just hanging on.

So I hope that you can go further to add more housing, allow further upzoning, perhaps with more additional MHA concessions.

So thank you very much.

Kelly Minig, you're 15A.

And then Robert Canamar, 15B.

And then Deborah O'Connell, 16A.

Hi, my name is Kelly Minick.

Thanks for the opportunity to talk tonight.

I've lived in Seattle for 28 years.

For many of the years back in those 1990s, I was part of the business residential co-chair for the North District Neighborhood Planning Area.

I have a lot of experience with that.

Most of that effort, however, was largely ignored by the city, so I'm highly cynical 25 years later.

Today, our district has changed remarkably.

In the last few years, we at our house have had squatters take over the house next to us for six months that utterly destroyed the single-family house.

We've heard gunshots, smashing windows in the middle of the night, cleaned up used needles in the compost bins.

It sucks.

And it's only the beginning.

Right now, and in a very short period of time, the next 20 years, we're going to have a large population of unemployed baby boomers who cannot find housing at all.

And that's in addition to what we're already dealing with now, and we're already 20 years, we keep getting 20 years behind.

At this point, we need to think outside the box we're in.

We need to provide housing that's respectable, dignified, and part of our communities, not hidden and crammed away.

in some hidden lot that no one will see and we can pretend doesn't exist, or at the top of some high rise that even gets higher and higher as the years go on.

Housing code revised to allow parcels to hold multiple tiny houses, not just for those that are currently homeless or pending homelessness, but for those who choose to live responsibly small.

We need a new definition of housing and tiny houses and tiny house communities are a viable option.

Other communities are doing this across the country and it's time Seattle pick up the step and start getting into rhythm.

I'd like to see sprinkled in the city throughout our entire communities small like four-house communities of 300 square foot where there's a shared garden and a shared common area where people can share and be integrated in our overall community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. White.

Hi, Mike.

My name is Robert Canamar.

I'm a retired commissioner for the City of Seattle Commission for People with Disabilities.

Mandatory housing agreement, the basic premise is a good one.

And I advocated that 20 years ago.

Just ask Jean Godwin.

I rung her ears about that one.

But you don't go far enough.

One, you only talk about affordable units.

There's a difference between affordable units and low income units.

We have 3,500 known known homeless on the streets of Seattle.

We have seven districts.

That means 500 units needed per district.

And you're not supplying them.

The city of Seattle has been a day late and a dollar short for too long.

The other thing wrong with your agreement is that, OK, you say they don't go along with the plan.

Your developers would get Their life is taken away after one job.

It only takes them one job to become rich.

All they have to do is one project.

They walk away with millions still thumbing their noses at the city of Seattle.

And you are standing there with AIDS on your face because you let it happen.

Go back to the drawing board.

Use the mandatory housing agreement.

That's a good idea.

But make it stronger.

Make it worth something.

Not just empty piece of paper.

And quit making little ticky tacky boxes for people to be crammed into.

They're ugly.

Thank you.

Deborah O'Connor 16A.

Julie McCleary 16B.

Bruce Nourish 17A.

Hi my name is Deborah O'Connor.

I'm an approaching retiree.

I agree with what the previous gentleman said in that I'm affordable houses on the market or apartments I should say.

Many of us such as myself are being priced out.

I'm a professional.

I make above a low income salary.

At this time, I want to be consciously responsible and put money toward my retirement so that I can not become one of those low income in retirement.

But I'm being priced out of being able to rent because my belief is these large buildings that are being built in this city, the prices escalate when they give you these little apartments, these lower income apartments.

The apartment that I rented nine years ago has doubled, and it places me in a place that I'm not able to put money into retirement so that I don't become one of these low-income.

I believe there is an ageism in this.

I think there are a lot of us at this age who are experiencing this.

We're not able to get into the rental market because it's exceeded what we're able to appropriately appropriate toward a rental and therefore be able to plan for the future.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. McCleary.

Ms. McCleary, you're going to be followed by Bruce Nouris, 17A, and Corey Crocker, 17B.

And it takes me 10 seconds or so to remind folks who's coming up next.

You'll notice I don't do that when people come to the microphone.

So I would encourage you to come to one of those microphones.

And every 10 seconds we save is 10 seconds you get out of here earlier.

Thank you, Ms. McCleary.

Hi, thank you for your time.

I think it's important to note that one could be for increased density but against this particular proposal.

I'm against this legislation for a number of reasons, but we'll focus on the lack of feasibility study, mitigation, and concurrency planning.

Specifically, the lack of neighborhood-centric planning means that the plan for Wallingford fails to take into account a variety of issues that warrant consideration prior to determining density levels and that, if not addressed, run directly counter to the principles at the heart of urban villages.

These issues include but aren't limited to the following.

Wallingford will be the only urban village with a middle and high school within its boundaries.

2,000 young people will come and go daily.

No consideration was given to that fact in the redesign of Lincoln High School or in the urban village.

Nowhere in this city do we have a model for what it looks like to manage the school buses, metro buses, cars, cars with teen drivers, bikes, and pedestrians in a high-density area with two schools.

The safety and transit implications warrant your attention.

Further, these schools will be the only ones in the whole city without athletic fields.

Wallingford is the only community without adequate access, as defined by the city itself, without adequate access to a community center, and it has the second smallest library in the city.

Therefore, all of these students, as well as the residents, have to leave the urban village for these services, increasing dependence on transit and running counter to the plans for the walkable, inclusive neighborhoods you're supposedly designing.

The city has worked hard to build civic infrastructure near students, seniors, and those in need in many communities.

Serving the residents, both existing and new, of all the urban villages should be a priority and part of the larger vision of HALA, which means high quality, low cost access to services should be in the land use, urban planning, and design conversation with density and not as an afterthought.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Bruce Norrish.

I write for Seattle Transit Blog.

I suspect people are more used to reading me than hearing me.

So I've always been interested in issues of scale and making things work efficiently.

And I devoted a lot of my life to, my time in Seattle, to making transit work better, to be more efficient.

And in the time I've been here, it has drastically improved.

And we've also To make this happen, we've reappropriated street space away from cars in favor of bicycles and transit, and that's what we need to become a real city.

And one of the other things we need to become a real city is more growth.

That means more people.

That means more houses.

That means more apartments.

That means both affordable housing, so subsidized, below-market-rate housing, and that also means more market-rate housing.

The HALA proposal accomplishes both of those things.

I would support either of them by themselves, but together, I'll take them together too.

My biggest complaint about HALA is that it doesn't go far enough.

You know, a city, an organic city grows out like a wedding cake.

You have the high-rises downtown, you have the mid-rises and the low-rise apartment neighborhoods spreading out from downtown, and then you have these single-family neighborhoods at the periphery.

Like most American cities, Seattle froze itself in amber in the 1920s with the zoning code that prohibited growth.

And we were able to get away with that through the 60s and the 70s because people were leaving the city.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work anymore.

Zoning that limits growth only works, you can only get away with that when you're not growing.

We are now paying the bill, every one of us who pays rent, we are paying the bill for a zoning code that was passed in the 20s and is mostly only being made more restrictive since then.

Let's do this.

I want more market rate housing.

I want more affordable housing.

I want more transit.

I want more sidewalks.

I want more bikeability.

Let's do this.

Thank you, Mr. Hirsch.

Cory Crocker.

Cory Crocker is 17B.

Cory, are you here?

Okay, Mark Brunson, 18A.

Michael Shergott, you're going to follow Mr. Brunson.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Mark Brunson.

I'm currently on staff at the University of Washington, though I of course don't speak for the administration.

And I've also been a graduate student there.

I strongly support more density and more affordable housing in District 4 because we need to use every tool at our disposal to build affordable housing.

that the neighborhood is surrounded by one of the city's largest systems of flood barriers, so that there's not too much more housing available.

especially housing that is affordable for students and the families of researchers and staff that keep this institution at the forefront of its field.

Several of my colleagues currently making long commutes every day because they lack affordable homes near transit.

These include graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and fellow staff who could all use more time with their families.

Furthermore, we are only a few years from the opening of the new link stations at the U District and Roosevelt.

Our region has invested billions in improving our mobility and our ability to live car-free, reducing a major cost to student and family budgets.

Every home that does not get built near these stations represents a waste of that investment and represents another person forced into long commutes from the city.

As such, I strongly support more housing, especially affordable housing, in high-opportunity areas.

near the university and near the new light rail stations.

I also strongly support allowing more dense housing in single family zones, such as duplexes and triplexes that will reduce prices for families and detached dwelling units that are great for students.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Mr. Shergott.

Mark Shergott, 18B.

I'm sorry, Michael Shergott, sorry.

Michael Shergott, 18B, and then Glenn Bowman, 19A.

OK, I thought this gentleman was ahead of me.

We'll get to Mr. Zimmerman in just a couple of minutes.

OK, thank you.

My name is Michael Shergott.

My wife and I have lived on 31st Avenue, just a stone's throw from here.

35 years.

This is an obviously enormously complicated issue.

We're not going to solve it tonight.

But what I would like to do is introduce a slightly different perspective.

I grew up in Buffalo, New York.

I was born there in 1943 to go to graduate school.

And when I was living in Buffalo, one of the most spectacular neighborhoods was along what was then called Humboldt Parkway.

It was primarily an African-American middle-class neighborhood.

Huge old stately two-story homes.

Humboldt Boulevard was wide and beautiful.

There were hundreds and hundreds of trees.

There were elk.

rather, elm, oak, and maple trees.

You can imagine that in the fall it was absolutely gorgeous.

In the late 50s, early 60s, the city decided that it needed a freeway from the suburbs south of the city to downtown.

So it simply condemned the neighborhood, raised the homes, and built what became known as the Humboldt Parkway.

so were the Humboldt Freeway.

What was lost was the social integrity of a very fine neighborhood and the architectural history of that neighborhood.

And that's what I'd ask you to think about.

If you go ahead willy-nilly with all kinds of redevelopment plans for whatever social purposes you think are necessary, some of which have been discussed here tonight.

If you lose a significant portion of the architectural history of a city, you cannot get it back.

It's gone.

And I urge you, when you do your planning, regardless of where in the city you do it, you think about what we have and the kinds of architectural history that makes this city unique, and save as much of it as you can.

Because when it's gone, it's gone.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Glenn Bowman, 19A.

You're going to be followed by Joshua Newman, 19B, and then Mark Foltz, 28.

Hi, I'm Glenn Bowman.

I live just down on the Ravenna-Green Lake border between these two guys.

And I am I fit the description of a lot of things you've heard.

I'm a tech bro, or at least I would be if I were 10 or 20 years younger.

I'm a single dad with two kids.

I have lived in the area for 17 years, and I moved to Seattle about three or four years ago.

And at the time, looking for family housing, I'm well employed, I make good money, but I had a really hard time finding something that I could afford.

The types of housing that people need, even people like me, have not been getting built.

Finally, I was able to find a townhouse, which is a part of an eight townhouse pod that was built on a single lot.

So listening to some of these people who are saying you're going to tear down a house in a.

Mother in law suite and build two townhouses.

That's not the way it works and.

My you know I couldn't afford to buy that house that was on that lot.

And the one and it was built 18 years ago and it was a rental the whole time.

These aren't just houses that people that people buy out of those eight townhomes.

Four of them are renters right now, some of them with, you know.

234 unrelated people renting them.

That's affordable housing and we need more of it.

People saying they're going to get priced out by their their taxes going up.

I mean, it's possible, but that's not really what's going to happen.

There.

The people who want to preserve the architecture, if they own the architecture, they can preserve it.

Just don't tear down your house.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

Joshua Newman.

Joshua Newman seated is timed to me.

I've got 19B.

My name's Tim Gould.

I'm here on behalf of the Sierra Club.

I'd just like to state a very strong preference for moving ahead with the mandatory housing affordability.

We were means to get both additional affordable housing and additional all types of housing all market rate housing.

throughout the city if we're going to be able to get a handle on climate change.

The only way that we can really be able to accommodate all the people that are interested in living in this area in a way that is sustainable is if we provide for added density within the city neighborhoods.

This is a much better alternative than to allow a stall to go up the foothills of the Cascades.

We've tried to rein that in, but yet when the growth boundaries were drawn for urban areas, I think you could make a good case they were drawn to include too much land.

At this point, it's really imperative to turn our attention to providing for more housing, more affordable housing in the city, to do that in a way that is equitable, to provide opportunities for all people of different incomes to be able to live in the city, and to do this in a way that takes advantage of our transit investments so that we can reduce our footprint in a way that we get around.

Let's move ahead with MHA.

Thank you.

Mark Foltz, you're going to be followed by Alex Zimmerman.

Hello.

My name is Mark Foltz.

I'm fortunate enough to be able to own a home in Wallingford I bought in 2008 for all the reasons that other people have stated.

I'd love to be able to share Wallingford with more neighbors.

However, since moving here in the last 10 years, the cost of housing has spiraled out of control, making it so that only the wealthy can afford to move to Wallingford.

I don't think that's right.

We need to make it possible for individuals and families at a variety of income levels to afford to live in the neighborhoods that work best for them.

And the best ways to do this are by building enough houses for everyone and making as much of it guaranteed affordable as possible.

So I support the City's efforts to create more housing and more affordable housing through the MHA Preferred Alternative.

The zoning changes will encourage a wider variety of housing, which will be naturally more affordable, than the million-plus detached single-family homes the most expensive type of housing you can find on scarce urban land, which is what we have in Seattle.

However, it's still not enough relative to the need.

According to the FEIS, it will only generate 60 odd guaranteed affordable units in Wallingford through 2035 that could be much higher and could be accomplished through higher up zones, M2 and M3, and additional incentives for on-site performance.

The area affected by MHA is also far too small.

Wallingford has excellent transit and already has hundreds of duplexes, triplexes and multifamily housing types, including my own house.

Expanding the upzone to include residential small lot in the rest of Wallingford and other Seattle neighborhoods will re-legalize the housing that already exists and supercharge MHA to double or triple the revenue for affordable housing.

MHA is a step, but it's not enough.

The Council needs to be bold and ambitious.

Let's truly make Seattle a welcoming city by doing everything necessary to resolve our housing affordability crisis.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Hi, my dirty WF Fuhrer, a Nazi social democratic mafia with progressive Gestapo principle.

My name Alex Zimmerman is because I have A trust passed from consul for 900 days, so I cannot go to consul chamber and speak.

He's a pure fascist, a Nazi, no question.

I like nice people who are in this room.

So I have a very simple proposition how we can fix it.

We have two nice people, one nice people in this chamber, a pure criminal, a bandit, a killer, a Nazi, pure Nazi, two Mexicans, one

Mr. Zimmerman, Mr. Zimmerman, I'm finding you disruptive.

You see this?

Mr. Zimmerman.

Exactly.

This is exactly my purpose in this room.

What I call Seattle.

They generate idiots.

So these nice people and these nice people talking and talking and talking and talking for how many years you freaking idiot will be talking.

Is this will be changed?

No.

How we can make changes?

It's very simple.

because you freaking idiot, emerald degenerate idiot elect these crooks again and again and again and nothing change for 20 years and nothing will be changed for another 20 years because you will be nice and look how many people come here and everybody talk nice no one talk clean this chamber from this crook, from this bandit, from this killer, from this Nazi communist everybody will be nice So to me, you look like a...

with rabid mentality.

That's exactly who you are.

700,000 emirate idiot.

Cannot change this ninth crook.

Why?

Why you freaking idiot so quiet?

Mr. Zimmerman, your time is up.

Um...

This is just part of the public process.

Sometimes I, uh...

I'm going to filibuster just to have the change of tone in the room and ask Ms. Warren if you might help us with that change in tone.

Barbara Warren, you are next, 28A, and I apologize for that disruptive behavior from earlier.

David Ward, you're going to follow Barbara with 21B, and then Phil Cochran, 22A.

Thank you, Ms. Warren.

I am here to speak about the expansion of the Roosevelt Urban Village into Ravenna, a very small part of the MHA.

I am a 40-year resident of Ravenna and a retired legal services attorney who mostly represented low-income tenants, so I have strong feelings on both of the sides of this issue.

And I have friends on both sides of the issues here.

And it's been very difficult.

I strongly support the MHA inclusionary zoning policy, which I think can help create more equitable neighborhoods with mixed income housing, especially if more units are required.

not just payments, especially important in high-priced neighborhoods like Roosevelt and Ravenna.

The city's preferred alternative is a compromise with its original proposals, which had more density.

Now, only LR2 is proposed on 15th Avenue Northeast and RSL elsewhere in the expansion.

I believe it is the wrong compromise, which doesn't satisfy either the unhappy neighbors or meet the city's goals of expanding housing opportunity.

I offer an alternative compromise.

Simply put, instead of moving the boundary of Roosevelt from 15th to 17th, retain the existing boundary, but create the transition between the two neighborhoods in Ravenna.

Keep the city's original LR3 higher density zoning along north of 65th on 15th facing the high school and the new seven story buildings we're going to have.

And rezone the west side of 16th north of 65th to LR1 for townhouses or row houses instead of RSL.

This area is ripe for redevelopment because of landlord neglect.

It would be a missed opportunity to put single-family houses there.

Thank you, Ms. Warren.

Okay.

If you wouldn't mind leaving your comments so that we can make sure to register that compromise proposal that you've got.

And I appreciate you getting on track.

It's always a hard act to follow, Mr. Zimmerman, and I'm grateful to you for that.

David Ward.

David, you're going to be followed by Phil Cochran and then Frank Fay.

Well, I'm David Ward.

I rent in the Ravenna neighborhood with five housemates, making under $20,000 a year.

I would never be able to afford to live there if I was not renting with others.

And I'm the president of SCALE, the Seattle Coalition for Affordability, Livability, and Equity.

It's clear we have an affordable housing crisis in Seattle, but MHA really does very little to solve that problem.

We need more city policies that could and should do much more.

Head tax would be one.

There are also 50 recommendations and solutions to Seattle's housing emergency, which the city should do, which does not require up zones, but which could be done.

Many solutions that are much more affordable that don't primarily benefit developers that have mostly built 92% luxury units.

They're not building affordable housing.

From 1994 to 2003, under a previous comprehensive plan, the city activated 30,000 people from the bottom up to decide what their neighborhood projects and growth would be.

The city's policy has been top down, and we should go back to that policy of involving more of the neighborhoods.

The proposed legislation does some things which I don't like.

It is letting the UW build without providing affordable housing, which I think is a very bad policy.

It's also reducing family housing from three bedrooms to two bedrooms and 800 feet, calling that family housing, but that will not support immigrant families.

MHA policies in the south end will also displace many people of color all along MLK and Rainier, just as 80% of the population has gone from people of color to 20% in the central area.

And also, the Trump tax cuts will cause a loss of 9,500 affordable units in Washington state over 10 years.

And I would like to find out how that's going to impact of this policy, the MHA policy.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dave.

Phil?

Hello.

All right, just a few points here.

You know, when the city and its supporters on HALA talk about a single family homeowner as a, say, a greedy and selfish We're just concerned about our equity.

I would like to say that I and all my friends and neighbors around me, I'm pretty sure we didn't buy our homes as an investment.

We bought them to live in, to be a part of a community, a community where we know our neighbors and our kids grew up playing together.

All right?

Second of all, I think we all know, whether or not you want to admit it, that MHA will not work.

Roger Valdez will tell you that.

And just a week or two ago, the Portland Mercury, had a very interesting article that their version of MHA, it's been a disaster so far.

After a year, housing, new apartment construction has gone off the cliff, the article said.

And finally, Rob, I would like to suggest, and I think your YIMBY friends would agree with me on this, that we should expand the Roosevelt up zone just a little bit east along 65th, just about two or three blocks further east to include your house and your block, right?

So you get to have a nice big apartment built right by you.

Would you like that?

You're close to the Roosevelt Light Rail Station, right?

Transit-orientated development.

You support that, right?

Come on.

You've got the power.

What are you waiting for?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Frank Fay, 22B.

You're going to be followed by Jesse Simpson, 23A, and then Scott Starr, 23B.

Thank you, Frank.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

My wife, Nicole Horvitz, couldn't be here tonight, so I'm going to read her comments.

The MHA Grand Bargain is a targeted disruption and displacement campaign waged upon Seattle's most vulnerable citizens.

There has been no planning to mitigate displacement, green space destruction, transportation fiascos, noise, and air pollution or school overcrowding.

The grand bargain's only promise is to densify, gentrify, and disrupt a huge number of middle class and low income citizens and neighborhoods.

The city's stated goal is to increase the supply of affordable housing, but these percentages are minuscule.

The grand bargain's real purpose appears to be to intensify housing churn and thereby extract city revenues without any guarantee of truly affordable housing ever being built in the most severely impacted neighborhoods.

The city gets the money, the developers get the money, and the neighborhoods get the shaft.

South Lake Union's Cascade neighborhood gives us a glimpse into the future for Seattle's urban villages, traffic choked streets, safety threats for pedestrian and bicyclists, skyrocketing rents, and massive displacement of low-income residents and small businesses.

And if some Seattle citizens think they are safe because they do not currently live within an urban village, think again.

The city wants the right to change urban village zoning and boundaries wherever and whenever it sees fit.

City Council should stop the speculation driven train wreck now.

It needs to work with not against Seattle residents and organizations to achieve an equitable future for all Seattle citizens before it's too late.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jesse.

Hi, I'm Jesse from the Miller Park Yabers and Capitol Hill Renters Initiative.

I'm a native Seattleite and recent college graduate living in a micro studio because that's all I can afford in Seattle.

My parents came to Seattle when it was a rather different place.

It was the midst of the 70s, a Boeing bust, and Seattle was a sleepy and affordable city.

By the time I was born in the 90s, home ownership in Fremont, where they'd been living, was already out of reach for them.

though they were able to find entitlement, parental assistance.

I know that I will never be able to own a single family house in Seattle.

I hope that I'll be able to stay here, but that's only going to be if we develop more missing middle housing options and more affordable rentership opportunities within the city.

Our rules have frozen neighborhoods in amber and have prevented them from adding the housing variety and density needed to accommodate and welcome more people into the city.

As it exists today, our zoning is exclusionary.

Single family zoning is a classist project created to protect property values and driven by a wrongheaded belief that homogenous neighborhoods are healthy neighborhoods.

I don't think anyone in this room can honestly say that property values in Seattle need protection.

People need protection.

They need housing which is affordable and suits their needs.

Growing taller and denser is not a bad thing.

It means that there are more people to meet, to sustain local businesses and walking distance, and to support more frequent and useful public transit.

Healthy neighborhoods are welcoming and diverse places made stronger by the variety of people who are able to live in, belong in and contribute to a place.

I don't think MHA is sufficient to address our housing crisis, but I think this policy of mandating contributions towards affordable housing and allowing more homes to be built in the city moves us in the right direction.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Hello, my name's Scott Starr, calling for neighborhood.

I've been a resident there for 15 years.

And I'd like to speak in support of the MHA rules that are going to be, well, hopefully passed by the city of Seattle soon.

In my neighborhood, there's been a lot of development recently.

A lot of single-family homes have been torn down and replaced by even larger, boxy single-family homes.

They're really nice if you like that kind of thing.

And that's going on right now without any rezone.

When I look at these kind of boxy, modern, single-family houses that occupy as much of the lot as they possibly can, I think they look like apartments.

And if they had been apartments, they would have provided a lot more affordable housing for people in the neighborhood.

Wallingford's changing right now, and I think that the rezone contemplated by the Grand Bargain would increase the diversity and affordability of housing in the neighborhood.

In Tangle Town, where I live, there's a lot of remnants from the old apartment buildings that used to be built before zoning was enacted in the city of Seattle.

If you drive through Tangle Town, you see scattered apartment buildings, old duplexes, old townhomes all over the place.

We're used to them.

They're part of the fabric of the neighborhood, and I have a feeling that that's the way things will be in Wallingford if MHA is enacted.

I'd also like to speak in support of the possible rezone of some of the single-family lots along 35th Avenue Northeast, as mentioned by Norbert Song earlier in this meeting.

I find it interesting that we're not upzoning single-family lots that are on a major transportation arterial in North Seattle.

Thank you.

So just for those of you who are following along here in the audience, we're just a little shy of 8 o'clock, and we're about half the way through.

So if you're signed up in the 40s or 50s, we're going to be getting to you about 9 o'clock, 9.30 or so.

Natalia Yudkowsky, you're 24A, you're next, followed by Richard Ellison, 24B, and then Eric Wolak, 25A.

Hi, my name is Natalia Yudkowsky, and I'm speaking in support of MHA.

And I've lived in this neighborhood for almost 20 years, not that far from Rob Johnson.

I love its walkability and its proximity to good schools, the library, restaurants, and soon the light rail station.

Unfortunately, these desirable traits are increasing property values and making this neighborhood exclusive.

I have two kids.

and I want them to grow up in a diverse neighborhood maybe even one that their teachers could afford to live in.

Without more density that will never happen.

Three years ago I moved my elderly father to Seattle so that I could lend him a hand as he got older.

Finding a nearby apartment was very difficult.

He didn't qualify for low income senior housing but he couldn't afford any of the new expensive units and didn't want to live in somebody's basement.

Units that were in a mid-price range were incredibly scarce, mainly because apartments in general in this neighborhood are scarce.

More buildings mean more housing to choose from, more people on our streets, and a more vibrant economy.

More buildings should also mean more options.

The city should encourage apartments not just for students or young single workers, but also for young families and older people whose kids have moved out.

As single detached homes become less affordable, We need more options to house more people.

I think we can all agree that we want our neighborhood to be a place for everyone, not just the wealthy few.

And I would also add that I think this idea of having mother-in-laws and things is great, but it just doesn't work for everyone.

Not everyone wants to live in someone else's house.

People want their own space.

Thank you.

Richard Ellison, you're going to be followed by Jeff Wolak, 25A.

I'm sorry, Eric Wolak, 25A.

Hello, I'm Richard Ellison.

I'm a homeowner and I rent affordable rooms to students.

I was told at the EIS scoping meeting by Brennan Staley of the planning office that exceptional trees are incompatible with urban villages and backyard cottages.

Trees, trees, who needs these?

We've got warrants for more affordable housing, please.

No surplus city properties can be made into parks.

Abandoned utility shacks could be condos with mini-marts.

Trees, trees, who needs these?

The green factor will protect the city's apologies.

Cement walls can have ivy and putting greens on roofs.

Native birds can leave for Bellevue if they want a big treed roost.

When will Robins learn that it's not for bird seed these developers' decisions, it's for the greater greed that all the big trees are grieving?

Trees, trees, who needs these?

Chickadees can't just do as they please.

Affordable housing is the new Seattle mantra.

The owls can sleep with the pigeons in the Walmart Santa.

Trees are not prostitutes just swaying in the breezes, that we must bust them at each light rail station for indecent densification.

In his famous speech, Chief Seattle was just kidding about incentive zoning for Blue Herons at the land auction bidding.

Where is the thicket?

Gone.

Where is the eagle?

Gone.

The end of living and the beginning of survival.

You know, Chief, you can't have your owl in Cedar too.

Trees, trees, who needs these?

The mayor and city council will do what they please.

Unless we stop them with a tree revolution.

Yes, a tree permit solution for the overcrowding and pollution amidst the noise and concrete jungles and stagnant politicians.

We need a Lorax for tree sheriff in our government institution.

Trees, trees, who needs these?

It's not trees versus density, it's trees or the view.

Can't there be room for big trees and people too?

We all need humanity, not eco-humiliation.

It's not just the lattes and micro-brews in sports pork stadiums.

We need big trees to survive this densification.

Killed for a condo, save Seattle's trees.

Your time is up, sir.

Eric, you're going to be followed by Laura Bernstein, 25B, and then Jeff Meyer, 26A.

Hi, I'm Eric Wolak, and I live on Stoneway, on the Fremont side of Stoneway.

And I want to urge the council to pursue MHA, the up zones, and the rest of the HALA agenda as quickly and as swiftly as possible because I've seen what happens when you don't.

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area back when it was vaguely livable, I've seen what happens when you restrict zoning across a region.

It displaces teachers, service workers, civil servants, firefighters.

They even have a ferry system for ferrying firefighters into the city in a disaster because they can't afford to live there.

Without a strong regional rail backbone, the Puget Sound is not ready for tens of thousands of more commuters coming in one, two hours into Seattle.

And that's what they have in the Bay Area.

I saw the neighborhood that I went to elementary school in go through exactly the same big boxing process that's starting to happen here in Seattle.

And once that's done, you can't roll it back.

We have to enact this swiftly and aggressively so that we can get the right inventory in place before it's too late.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Laura Lowe Bernstein, and I'm a renter in the U District.

I'm a musician.

I've been in about four bands.

I rent a single-family home in the U District.

I faced a 350-month rent increase in fall of 2016. If that happens again, I will be evicted out of Seattle.

I went to Burien the other night to check out maybe my future home there if I have to move there in the fall if my rent goes up again.

I support everything that was said, especially by Jessica from welcoming Wallingford, Juju from Seattle Tech for Housing, folks from Bellwether Housing.

There's a lot of wonderful voices talking about housing choice.

There's a picture here of different kinds of housing choice that facilitate different kinds of families.

There's courtyards, and garden homes, and dingbats, and Fonzie Flats, and garden apartments, and trailer parks, and accessory units.

We need all of this.

And we're not going to get all of this because of MHA.

We're not going to get all of this because of hollow.

We need to think beyond what we're doing now and be much bolder to make sure that we get all of this in our city.

Row homes, residential hotels, we need residential hotels, boarding houses, four floors and corner stores is kind of what I use as a shorthand for missing middle.

We also need a green HALA.

We need a HALA 2.0 that talks about green buildings, green infill, climate justice, and a climate-friendly city.

We need to go beyond what we're doing now.

We weren't bold enough, and we're going to pay the price for it.

We're spending all of this energy on MHA, and MHA is only 1 65th of the plan.

MHA is only going to get us 6,300 affordable units in 10 years.

MHA might work inversely and cause a suppression of development.

It might lead to a lack of fair exchange.

Under the state laws, we have to have a fair exchange.

I talked to somebody today who's not building a building because it's not penciling out.

The extra floor they're getting through MHA is being eroded through neighborhood design guidelines and setbacks.

And so they're not able to build the project.

So MHA might, if we go too high with the percentages, might suppress building.

And that's the last thing we need in a housing crisis with housing scarcity.

We need to look at Fort Lawton, Tolares, and the Roosevelt Reservoir to build thousands and thousands of units.

Thank you.

Jeff, I'm not seeing 26A.

Jeff Meyer, are you here?

26B, Christine Zhang.

Christine, are you here?

27A, Russ Saunders.

Russ is coming on down.

27B, Evan Derrickson is going to follow Russ.

And then 28A, Angela Compton.

Please.

Hello, my name is Russ Saunders and I represent my family's business called Handy Andy Rent-A-Tool.

And we've been in the Aurora Licton Springs since 1980, serving the community, providing goods and services to the Wallingford area and the surrounding area.

And we were lucky enough to buy a parcel of land a mile from our location, but due to changing C1 property to NC3 along Aurora Avenue and the moratorium put into effect, we're essentially going to be shut down.

The goods and services that we provide to this community and the surrounding community, I think that the C1 commercial along Aurora needs to be reconsidered.

It's the health of making a pedestrian-oriented street, when it's a principal arterial highway, state highway, I think the goods and services we provide there were properly zoned.

But to change it to NC3, which doesn't allow auto-related businesses such as mine, which provides truck rentals for people moving from apartments, pickup trucks for people on the weekends to use to clean their yard up because they don't have a vehicle to haul stuff to the dump, or small contractors working on small homes or small sites.

I think you're ignoring the infrastructure that's necessary to support all this growth.

And Aurora Avenue is centrally located to support that.

And businesses such as mine are important to this economy and to this area.

And I think you should recognize this as a special use permit, conditional use permit.

so that we may continue to serve this community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Evan Derrickson.

I live in Longford.

I'm a renter.

I share a house with four other people.

And I make just over 60% of AMI.

The silver lining to our problem right now is that we know we have a beautiful city.

We have a wonderful city.

Because the problem we have is that won't change if we shoot down MHA.

We'll just have higher and higher prices.

And I think the only responsible thing we can do socially and environmentally is to create as much space as possible for people who want to live here.

I trained as an environmental studies major.

In that process, I learned that density is one of the best things we can do for the environment, living densely, that people who live in cities and neighborhoods and urban villages use fewer resources, have a smaller footprint on the earth than people living in suburbs.

I'm headed by Brady Panera of Arkansas, Magazine Grist, has a nice graphic showing various things that people can do for the environment.

The second biggest, best thing you can do after not having a one fewer kid is to have one fewer automobile.

And MHA is make that possible makes it more possible.

I recognize not everyone can do it but I think as a progressive city as a socially just city that we need to enable people to make those choices.

Lastly I lived in China for a year.

And one of the lessons I took out of that, you can just about watch people rise out of poverty in front of you.

And they don't have minimum parkings, parking minimums.

They don't have single family zoning.

And the opportunities created when people can direct their own finances is pretty impressive.

Thank you.

Angela Compton, 28A.

Angela, you're going to be followed by Richard Feuer, 28B, and Stacy Lewis, 29A.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Angela Compton.

I'm here today on behalf of FutureWise, a smart growth organization that works with urban areas to make our cities livable for all.

I'm also here on behalf of the Miller Park Yabers, a recently formed group in support of affordable housing policies in Seattle.

We're calling ourselves the Yabers because we say yes to welcoming more neighbors across the income spectrum to Seattle.

and our neighborhood.

As I mentioned to you guys previously, we recently had an op-ed published in the Capitol Hill blog.

Please see it for more of our points.

Unlike many of the neighborhood groups you hear from, we're a very diverse group.

group of folks.

Our group represents renters, single family houses.

Although we're all at very different points in our lives and have very different housing needs, we have all been able to find a home in our urban village.

But neighborhoods like ours are a small percentage of Seattle.

In fact, while our city is booming, the growth we're seeing has happened in less than 15% of the city.

We know that people are happier when they're able to live close to jobs, schools, parks, and other amenities.

But in Seattle, our restrictive zoning laws have added to the inequitable access to resources, especially for lower income and more diverse communities.

We need to open up more of our city and build more homes for all of our neighbors who desperately need them.

The mandatory housing affordability plan works on several levels, ensuring that we have market rate housing, working class housing, lower income housing, and housing with services attached.

for our most vulnerable neighbors.

By providing the option to either perform by building units for folks with working class incomes or paying into the Seattle office housing a pot with a premium payment, meaning it's more money, for our lower income neighbors, we can ensure that there's housing being built across the income spectrum.

While these affordability reasons are not enough to solve our lack of affordable housing, they are a great start.

We urge you to look at the other half of our city with exclusionary zoning and change the land use codes to be more welcoming.

Half of an urban city should not be dedicated to single family homes.

We should be allowing more people to live in our city, especially near transit and great amenities.

Thank you.

Richard.

My name is Richard Feuer, and I live right around the corner on 33rd Avenue Northeast, where many perfectly good little houses have been torn down and have been replaced by million-dollar houses.

And a million doesn't go as far as it used to, that's for sure.

So it does seem that the middle class is being driven out of Seattle.

Having said that, here's a couple questions related to MHA.

Number one, how will we pay for the proposed MHA?

I mean, I've heard a lot about create affordable housing, and that's a good goal, but how can you create something?

I mean, everything costs something.

So how will we pay for it?

I haven't heard.

Number two, which is a, particular interest of mine, how will we provide a transportation infrastructure to support the inevitable higher population density when it seems that even now I don't think we have transportation infrastructure to support what we now have?

So we're going to have to think about both of those questions.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Fearon.

There are some staffers in the back of the room who would be happy to answer some of those questions.

And if you're willing to stick around to the end, I'm sure we could chat for a couple of minutes as well.

Stacey Lewis, are you here?

Stacey, 29A.

Patty Wilma, 29B.

Either of you still here?

Stacey Lewis, Patty Wilma.

Tony Bates, 30A.

Or John Heller, 30B.

Tony Bates or John Heller?

Oh, yeah.

Tony, I see you.

You're coming down.

Tawni, you're going to be followed by Toby Thaler, 31A, and Gregory Harrop, 31B.

Thank you for your patience, Tawni.

My name is Tawni Bates.

I share concerns about housing, but I'm also concerned about environmental quality, and in particular, tree canopy.

and especially the large trees, which provide critical environmental benefits via air, water, and people.

Trees are superheroes for slowing climate change.

The 2016 tree canopy study is the only tree data the city has.

It indicated 70% of the trees that we have are in single family zones.

But single family zones, especially in urban villages, are being eliminated.

In Wallingford, all single family goes to low rise.

which uses a five-foot setback.

This dooms large trees in these multi-block areas which need space.

How many trees are doomed?

Is it 10?

Is it 20?

The city has no field data.

It doesn't know.

So I collected my own data.

I walked a small area of my East Fremont urban village, five blocks by one half of a block, counting only trees that were taller or wider than a telephone pole.

I counted 54 large trees.

I was actually surprised.

Nearly all would be required to be removed to build to low rise.

We're talking about hundreds and maybe hundreds of trees for the Wallingford neighborhood.

Yet the preferred plan states the impact of this to be insignificant.

I find this horrific.

This is just a form of arboricide, not unlike what was done to West Seattle.

The 2035 canopy goal is 30% coverage.

Our area has 24% coverage now.

When the city looks again in five years, will there even be any canopy left to survey?

The proposed tree protection rules that you are currently working on, if enacted, provide inadequate protection.

Large trees are not a bus route.

They can't be changed and moved around.

We need development, but we also need strong tree protections to occur alongside development, not instead of it.

Thank you, Ms. Bates.

I'm shaking because it's freezing in here.

Not from nervousness so much.

Okay, I want more affordable housing in my neighborhood and city.

I want more diversity and inclusion in my city and neighborhood.

I want to reduce displacement in my neighborhood and city.

MHA as currently crafted will do none of these things.

Well, why not?

Looking at it from a global systemic, none of us here are going to solve global corporate capitalism as a problem.

We're not going to do it.

So what can you do?

Well, people keep talking about more, more this, more that.

I want more affordable housing.

But I wish people would remember that more and more is not really sustainable.

But let's speak to the process here.

There was a developer who spoke earlier.

The problem is that the current MHA proposal was basically developed by developers.

Non-profits for sure, but the profit and non-profit development community created this proposal and it is not inclusionary zoning.

Inclusionary zoning requires the affordable and low-income housing to be at least in the neighborhood where it's being developed.

This does not do it.

I've read the proposed ordinance.

So how do you solve the problem.

We have to as a community as Seattle as a community in our neighborhoods as a community with you and the departments need to have real conversations.

You hear bits and pieces of it happening here tonight but you can't come up here in two minutes and say why are you rezoning the a quadrant center down on Lake Union to 75 feet when it was rebuilt 10 years ago.

It's just absurd.

We need to have conversations not this.

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Greg Harrop.

Greg Harrop you're going to be followed by Patience Malaba.

Patience is 32A and Brock Howell 32B.

Hi I've been listening to all the speakers tonight for housing therefore not heard anyone saying I'm a builder and I think MHA is great because, and I also haven't heard a developer or builder say, if you change it, I'm going to sue you personally and the city.

No one from the other voices here saying anything, which makes me think this is a big setup.

This is a fraud.

that you're here to smile and nod and be nice and make notes and what have you.

But there won't be any change because the rules have been set.

And for example, I live in Wallingford.

I'd like to have affordable housing in Wallingford.

So we need one affordable housing unit.

If you want to build a fourplex of four luxury units, great.

You have to also include four affordable housing units.

one-to-one and require it in Wallingford, Southeast Seattle, South Park, parts of Georgetown, Wallingford, unless you require it.

And you won't.

You won't change the rules.

So scrap MHA.

Thank you, Mr. Wright.

Questions?

Patience.

You're going to be followed by Brock Howell, 32B, and Steve Robstello, 33A.

Good evening.

My name is Patience Malaba.

I am here today on behalf of Seattle for Everyone.

Seattle for Everyone is a broad coalition of social justice advocates, labor groups, affordable housing developers, and for profit developers.

We are really the unique combination of people that want to ensure that affordable housing is created in Seattle.

for both ends of income spectrums.

As Seattle for Everyone, we encourage that the city council supports this absence.

We encourage that the creation of affordable housing begins right here in District 4. District 4 is one of the high opportunity neighborhoods.

And in order to create an inclusive Seattle, in order to create a livable city, we need to ensure that we create housing for those people that are in the working class, for those people that are earning lower income.

From my past experience working in Seattle in communities, immigrant communities, and working people, I was able to see how hard it is for people to access housing.

I know how hard it is. to be able to get an apartment that is affordable in Seattle.

So I urge the city council to support the MHA statewide.

I urge the city council to support up zones in District 4. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Brock Howell and I live in Wallington.

These are people.

Places change.

We cut down trees.

We sleuth away our hills.

We constructed, we built buildings, tore them down, and rebuilt them.

From 1850 to today, we've rebuilt the city many times over, welcoming new people over and over again.

How we build, how we plan our places determines how many people and what people can live here.

And that's critical because communities are people.

At the very core of this MHA proposal today is whether when somebody knocks on our neighborhood's door, whether we turn them away or whether we welcome them in to have a home, whether it's an apartment, condo, townhouse, duplex, or a craftsman.

We need to decide who we are as communities, who we are as people.

Are we going to be inclusive communities?

Are we going to be inclusive people?

Places change.

Let's not turn away our neighbors.

Let's choose to be a welcoming community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Steve?

Steve, hang on for just one second.

Steve Rupstel, you're 33A.

Greg Flood is 33B.

And then Tejal Pastakia is 34A.

Please.

This proposal is not going to be good for Seattle.

It's not going to do what it said.

Let's look at what you've done with your zoning in the Central District.

80% black.

When you talk about welcoming, but you pushed a lot of people out.

Are you a city?

people so unhappy with your citizens that you must flush them out.

We're seeing a huge number of people who cannot afford to live in the city anymore.

There's a lot of tweeners, not so poor and lucky to be helped by a social agency, but also not rich enough to live in Seattle.

We're seeing people pushed out, not because of their color, but because of the green color, which you so seem to love.

The people who come to you with the most money seem to get the most interest.

Your EIS is not done.

Now, because the nonprofit builders and the for-profit builders agree to this doesn't mean that it is grand bar people who are not at the table.

Let's start our zoning from the bottom up.

Let's care about the people that are here.

And caring about people who might live here to the detriment of people who already do all good planning.

Now, is this urban renewal?

Are people who make $30,000 or $40,000 or $50,000 a year, are they the scum you must get rid of?

The people who do a lot of the work the city needs to be done.

Or do you just want to train them in and out every day and say, Seattle's not for them, not anymore.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Thank you for coming to Near Air Neighborhood.

Basically, I mean, I hear a lot of comments about how great MHA is going to be, but it's always this list of of positive, it's going to be so effective.

My concern is basically, I see it as not going to accomplish what you want to accomplish.

I've been a resident of Seattle for 36 years.

I grew a business here, raised two daughters in Seattle.

I've been involved in community projects and community planning in Wallingford for many years.

And I understand about the density, and I understand about the need for affordability.

simply doesn't have to be this painful, and infill housing does not have to create conflict.

Basically, I don't feel it's going to accomplish what you claim, and I fear that it might even do the opposite while simultaneously asking for something special in the first place.

MHA promotes single occupancy apartments.

We have 35,000 units reportedly in the pipeline already.

We've supposedly already built 60,000 units since 2013. None of those units were three-bedroom units.

Two percent were two-bedroom units.

We have no family housing.

We are losing family housing.

MHA will incentivize deep pocket developers to replace it with studios, micro-apartments, and mid-scale apartments, which are high profit.

You can't fight the profit.

MHA would allow an 18-unit micro-apartment.

Tear down a house, build an 18-unit micro-apartment building.

The profit there is incredible.

You can't say that there isn't an incentive to tear down those homes.

Thank you, Greg.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Tejal, you're going to be followed by Deb Barker, 34B, and then Linda Corbus, 35A.

Good evening.

My name is Tejal Pustakia.

I'm here to support MHA and the Housing Affordability and Livability Act.

I'm a local resident.

I'm a local real estate developer specializing in mixed-use multifamily housing in the local Seattle area.

I'm also a board member for Bellwether Housing, who whose mission is to really create stable communities and provide access to opportunities through affordable housing.

We live in the state of Washington where the Growth Management Act has really allowed us to protect our natural resources and focus urban growth in urban infill areas.

This is important because upzoning in these areas is really allowing residents of limited income to have access to public transport, to services, and to job centers.

Last year, our firm had the privilege of working with the Office of Housing to go through a voluntary contract rezone process, which provided MHA units at 40% and 60% MHA.

downtown area.

There is an option which could be applied to the up zones coming in these areas.

Currently as you go through the entitlement process for the incorporation of the MHA housing, We have to go through parallel processes for entitlement, which is creating lengthy timelines to the development, but also not providing the much-needed housing that these areas need.

Streamlining that process and allowing more affordable housing in these areas will really provide community to these areas.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Wow.

There's so many people who think MHA is the best thing on the earth and others who think it's not.

I would really hate to be up at that table right now with the three of you.

And I know that you're going to have some interesting things to tell all your fellow council members who aren't here tonight.

MHA is A grand bargain.

It was the result of a grand bargain with developers.

But MHA does not generate and does not guarantee that any of the affordable housing that we really, really need is going to be going back to the neighborhoods.

where the dollars were generated.

And that is really frustrating to me.

Displacement hasn't been measured.

That sort of displacement hasn't been measured.

And that sort of displacement isn't even mitigated.

Not when the land prices in District 4 and in District 5 and on and on are the way they are.

There's nothing that ensures that any units are going to be built.

Nothing.

Nothing you guys will do will do that.

And that's because the grand bargain was really grand for developers, but not for the nits.

Thanks, you guys.

Thank you, Deb.

Linda, you're going to be followed by Alex Peterson, 35B, and then Gordy, 36A.

I've lived in the Wallingford area for 30 years.

3-0.

It's been a long time.

So I've seen a change.

here is that the MHA is flawed.

It's not going to create what you think it's going to create.

It will create far more adverse impacts than necessary to achieve the reasonable increase in density.

Please do not give away the fabric of Seattle to developers.

The proposed zoning changes to eliminate single-family zones from the residential urban village is a giveaway to the developers and their greed.

The reason why I say this is that the current zoning in the Wallingford neighborhood still has at least two times the capacity of the 2035 goals.

Okay.

The proposed citywide zoning changes will change all the definitions of LR parcels.

In other words, a future LR2 will basically be the same as LR3.

The future LR3 will allow buildings 15 feet taller than the current LR3.

Hence, those changes alone will allow considerably more density and capacity and create potentially intense adverse impacts.

The proposed city-wise zoning changes to allow ADUs and DADUs on the same properties will also increase the density and possibly provide affordable housing smaller units at far less adverse impacts than larger apartment buildings of single occupant rentals.

I'm going to run out of my time.

So I just I think you need to rethink what's going on with the single family zones.

Thank you.

Good evening Northeast Seattle.

Thank you so late.

My name is Alex Peterson.

My family and I live in Ravenna.

For the past several years we've published a neighborhood newsletter that celebrates Northeast Seattle.

As someone who's worked in both the public and private sectors analyzing affordable housing, let me say this about the proposal before you tonight.

We can do better.

We can do better by increasing the percentages of affordable housing, setting aside only 2% to 12% is not enough.

We can do better by inserting meaningful protections against economic displacement.

Upzoning too much too soon causes land values to spike.

Higher land values mean higher taxes, which can push out vulnerable populations, including senior citizens.

We can do better by requiring more affordable housing on site.

We want the affordable housing in our neighborhoods.

That's the right thing.

That's the equitable thing.

Build it now.

Build it on site.

We can do better by crafting sensible impact fees to help us to build public schools like this one.

Finally, we can do better by letting our new mayor, Jenny Durkan, have the time to provide more affordability and more livability, rather than ramming through the backroom deal of the former mayor.

Please continue your hard work for our city by rapidly revising the proposal so that it is truly affordable, truly livable, and much better for everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Gordon, hang on for one second.

Gordon, you're going to be followed by Sharon Langs, 36B, and then Gary Fredrickson, 37A.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Gordon Haggerty.

I thank you for this opportunity to address you.

Born into the East Lake neighborhood some 70 years ago, and resident and business member there for a long time.

I've seen a lot of changes going on through there.

I'm a property owner now there, and I own some affordable housing.

And we bought it back in the early seventies during the Boeing depression when prices were depressed and the last one out was Seattle was to turn out the lights.

We've seen a lot of changes since then and now The building that we have is a six unit, so we're pretty small in the whole scope of things.

But it's one of the original buildings in the East Lake neighborhood.

It's got a lot of character.

It's got architectural history that was mentioned before.

It's a landmark in the neighborhood there.

We are attached to it for a lot more than just the profits we can get from rent.

make it affordable housing because we bought it in an affordable way.

We put a lot of sweat equity into it.

We've seen back in the 70s our apartments rent for about $70 a month.

Now it's way more than that.

And our taxes have increased too to where last year we Our property taxes comprised about 25% of our gross income.

So the expenses of living, of managing that there, we've kept our apartments up.

They're great apartments.

People love to live there.

And so we want to stay there.

We don't want to sell it to developers from out of town that don't have a connection to the land.

But we feel like we are going to be an unintended consequence of upzoning where we can't afford to sell it to anybody but a developer.

Nobody could afford to keep it at these rates.

So I just want you to consider that, too.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Sharon Langs.

For 35 years.

And I'm going down 45th Street today.

I saw a sign that said.

Due to budget cuts, the light at the tunnel has been turned off.

Well, I think this is what's happening here.

The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be getting turned off.

You can barely drive down 45th Street or 50th Street.

It's so crowded.

There's so many people.

But I would like to tell you about my block.

It's single family homes.

I think I know almost everyone in every house.

And it's a wonderful neighborhood.

Everybody is helpful to each other.

You can't buy something like that.

You can't replace that.

If we are forced, because being a senior, we can't really afford the taxes, OK, what's going to happen to that neighborhood?

I don't know.

But it's going to lose something.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sharon.

Gary Fredrickson.

Gary Fredrickson, 30, not seeing Gary.

How about Mitchell Hameth, 38, B.

Mitchell.

Glenda Wormuth, 39, A.

Glenda.

Glenda, you're gonna be followed by Philippa Nye, 40, A, and Mike Eliason, 40, B.

I'm sorry, I'm jumping around a little bit, but some folks kinda crossed their names out after they signed up.

Glenda, please.

Good evening.

My name is Glenda Warmoth.

I'm a resident of Seattle.

I live in the Northgate area.

I'm a former resident of View Ridge.

And in full disclosure, I'm also a senior land use planner for the city of Seattle.

I'm here with regard to my other home, Congregation Beth Shalom, and looking at the rezone potential along 35th Avenue.

There are a number of single family homes there that could and should be up zoned to a multifamily or higher zoning to concentrate the new development that is encouraged in that area along the arterial where I feel it belongs and to keep some of the single family nature to the homes that are east and west of that.

So I hope that that is considered as part of the rezoning changes within District 4. Thank you.

Thank you.

Felipe, are you still here?

Felipe?

How about Mike Eliason?

Mike, come on down.

And you're going to be followed by Robert Snyder, Gregory 41B.

And we've got about 25.

OK, thanks for being here, council members.

Rob, our kids used to go to daycare together.

I know how difficult it is to be out here and not put your kids to bed.

I'd like to say I'm a middle class household.

We have two kids.

We have a dog.

We rent a two-bedroom, family-sized ADU.

We bike and bus everywhere.

We have a car.

We're about to get rid of it.

We haven't gotten rid of it yet.

The issue of affordable housing is paramount to our household, just like it is every other.

Some District 4 facts.

It's a majority-renter household in population and in dwelling units.

All of the urban villages are overwhelmingly young renters, even Wallingford.

You might not realize that, given what happened here tonight.

I support all 65 of HALA's recommendations and support the MHA preferred alternative.

I would have liked to have seen broader and deeper rezones.

And ridiculously, none of the urban village boundaries are expanding to the degree they need to be.

So we will quickly need to pivot beyond HALA and beyond MHA to HALA 2.0.

We could have built thousands of units in Fort Lauderdale.

We could build 1,000 units in Tulare.

It's social housing, affordable housing.

We could build 1,000 units at Roosevelt Reservoir, blocks from the light rail station.

Urban villages should start at four stories, not one.

We do not have adequate zoning capacity in the last 12 months.

Seattle single-family houses have increased over $14 billion.

That's 40,000 homes.

Nearly double the proposed budget cuts of HUD, I would point out.

Why are we preserving and subsidizing the least sustainable form of housing via exclusionary zoning when there are thousands living in houselessness?

There are hundreds of thousands of tenants struggling to survive in this city.

Today, affordable and multifamily housing are illegal on three quarters of all of the land where housing is legal in Seattle.

Until we address that inequity, we will never address our housing crisis.

Share the city, build the homes.

Thank you.

Robert Snyder, 41A.

Robert, are you still here?

How about Barbara Gregory, 41B?

Barbara?

Claire Peterski, 42A?

Peterski?

I'm sorry about that, Claire.

I'm sorry.

And you're going to be followed by Steve Zemke, which is another rhyming word.

Claire and then Steve, please.

Hi, I'm Claire Peterski.

I'm the executive director of the Wallingford Community Senior Center.

I'm speaking on my own behalf, not on the behalf of the senior center.

Nonetheless, I do work with older adults every day.

My office is next to that of a social worker.

I can't hear the exact conversations that are going on there, but if people are crying hard enough and loud enough, I can hear their sobbing from my office.

I've talked to my social worker, the issue for the majority of the seniors that are coming in looking for assistance from our social worker is because of housing affordability.

We have seniors that are renters that live in North Seattle in general and very specifically for the Wallingford Community Senior Center in Wallingford, Fremont, Green Lake, that community who are renters and they're being priced out and they don't know what they're going to do.

And apparently we need to do more communication with homeowners that are facing higher and higher property taxes so they know about the property tax exemption.

So that they don't have to suffer when housing prices go up and they can continue to live in their own homes.

I'm speaking on the behalf of these seniors, I hope to some extent.

in that we need more housing, we need more housing affordability.

It can be done through the MHA, and I feel like it is not enough.

I would like to see more housing built in the city, greater density, so that the people can live in the neighborhoods that they want to live in.

Our seniors are not being pushed out of the city, and they can continue to live in the neighborhoods that they've lived in for decades.

Thank you.

Thank you, Claire.

My name is Steve Zemke.

I'm a chair of TREPAC and also Friends of Seattle's Urban Forest.

I was involved many years ago in the effort to put the Growth Management Act in place in this state, but the idea of the Growth Management Act isn't just allowing for Trees outside the city the idea was also to keep the city livable And that's what I'm here tonight to speak to the fact that we are losing large trees in the city We're losing evergreen trees.

They're being replaced with small trees or not replaced at all That was confirmed by the city to report last year the tree regulation research report that came out and I think the thing is you need to look at a How are we going to compensate for the loss of trees?

We have a goal in the comprehensive plan of no net loss of canopy and we have goals to increase the canopy to 30% and long-term goal to 40%.

If we continue to let developers in the city remove trees, but they don't have to pay for replanting trees anywhere in the city, that means the taxpayers pay for it or they don't get planted at all.

And we need to put in place, this is the opportunity now in this legislation to put in place, the fee in lieu for trees being removed so that they can be replaced someplace else in the community for the public.

Otherwise, we're going to lose those and once lost, they're not going to come back.

So this is a pretty simple proposition, but this is the time to do it, to put in place the tree replacement and maintenance fund.

And so I urge you to put this into the legislation.

Also, I think you need to be thinking more long-term in terms of what you're doing here.

We're in this situation, I think, partly as a crisis situation that we've ignored some of the options the city has had, like to put in place impact fees like 80 other cities around the state does for parks and roads and schools.

We need to look at raising the question I never hear answered, what's the ideal size for the city?

What do we want to be 20, 40, 50 years from now?

Are we really planning ahead for that?

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

43A, Tenant Z, and then 43B, Noah Ahn.

Either of you here?

How about 44A, John Lisbon?

I think I saw you, John.

Oh, please.

Tenant Z. Tenant Z. And then you're going to be followed by John Lisbon, 44A, and then Loretta Juarez, 44B.

Councilmember Rob Johnson, District 4 representative for me, of the Land Use Committee, and now Chair of the Committee of the Whole for all nine members of the City Council, yes?

Correct.

To deal with what this is.

Is this Ordinance 119184?

It is.

And also thank you to you and Mike O'Brien and all the city council for voting unanimously for the Seattle income tax, which I'm sure everyone supports here.

Not wanting more property tax to move one out of a house that one bought to live in.

Yes, Y40 ins or more sales taxes once any more of that.

So after all the lawsuits against the city, we're going to have income tax if we have to go to a citizen's initiative.

Now, the problem here is not just property tax and people being displaced out of their single family homes and street trees and architecture and loss of commons, but the amount of requirement We're developers for affordable units in their buildings.

Rob Johnson, I met you a year or so ago, and you said 2 to 11%.

I said, how about 25%, being a newbie in the weeds of Seattle politics?

And you said, the problem is the legislature.

Of course, we have the ruling class suing us.

And so we need to start over again.

The the HALA and the MHA no one knows if they've been an ordinance.

It's been going for years.

It's been a policy of the city and we need to start over and get something honest going here in Seattle.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

John.

Thanks Rob.

Hello city council members.

I appreciate the opportunity to address you tonight on the proposed ordinance.

Although I do not live in an urban village, I live in Ballard, and I've seen the transformative effects of upzoning in Ballard, and they all haven't been good.

There's rampant homelessness.

There's rampant crime in Ballard.

And throughout Seattle now, we are the consistently the top 10 most congested city in the country, as you know, as far as traffic.

So we have to think real carefully when we decide to create more up zones.

Are we adding the infrastructure that's necessary to support those up zones?

And can we build more affordable housing without displacing more people than we actually accommodate?

So I truly feel sorry for a lot of the young people over here who have no affordable options.

I can't imagine having to try to find a house today and paying for it, yet MHA does not require that housing to be in the same areas that are being developed and are being up-zoned.

So I think that's a critical area that is a big problem.

Also, the city has is expecting 50% of the new units that will be built on site and 50% will be paid in lieu.

But how did that number ever come up?

This whole model is being based on that premise of 50-50.

And where did it come from?

Was it pulled out of a hat?

So as a member of Seattle Fair Growth and as a member of SCALE, We urge you and we want you to be accountable to the citizens of Seattle to make sure that affordable units are built on-site and that the incentives are proper to make sure that developers build on-site.

So thank you very much.

Loretta Juarez, 44B, Loretta Juarez, Loretta.

You're going to be followed by Walter Wagner, 45A, and then Alan Ness, 45B.

Hi, my name is Loretta Juarez, and thank you for being here.

It's late.

So I live in the Roosevelt neighborhood for 28 years, and I own a home there.

And I'm concerned that the MHA will create a loss of beautiful craftsman homes, the reason why I moved to the neighborhood, and a loss of the trees.

I am for density, and the RNA had a density plan for the urban village.

I am not convinced that the HSA upscale, there will be $2 million homes next to me, because developers will buy a home for a million dollars, which they're selling for now, and I did not, I'm a social worker, I did not pay a million dollars for my home, but that's what it is now.

I won't be able to afford to remain there, I think.

However, so developers are going to buy this home, knock down a beautiful craftsman, and build a $2 million home.

So then my neighborhood is going to be full of huge boxes, single-family homes.

These developers aren't going to build duplexes or affordable housing.

It's just going to, you know, we're just going to keep going up and up in our prices and homes.

So currently, there's a lot of development of apartments going on in the Roosevelt area.

Many are vacant.

And as I'm walking around my neighborhood, there's signs, you know, first months free.

Like I haven't seen that in a very long time.

And there's a couple of these new apartment buildings.

So I think I am for density in the urban village in the main, you know, following the RNA in the main center.

and we're losing.

So we need rental caps and we also need, so we talked about development and there's like two original farmhouses in the neighborhood.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Walter Wagner and then Alan Ness.

Hi, my name's Walter Wagner.

Pioneer Square, Seattle had forethought and planning, protected it.

Pike Place Market, Seattle had forethought and planning, protected it.

Right now, this is destruction of single family neighborhoods.

There is no forethought and planning.

This is reactionary.

If we're going to have mandatory affordable housing, it needs to be across the board.

We're essentially being retroactive to the permit of building our house.

So why can't that be done for every single bit of development that is going on in the city?

High rise residential towers, they should have mandatory affordable housing in them.

It's retroactive to the neighborhoods.

We were permitted a long time ago.

They were permitted before this, but it should be retroactive to them also.

And that's how you get a lot of units.

If you just pick on the residential neighborhoods, you're not going to get that many units.

As you up zone, I realize mandatory affordable housing It is a good thing but up zoning a neighborhood just means you're destroying that neighborhood The neighbors that live there.

I choose to live in Seattle.

I've lived here 57 years.

I like it Other people tend to like it too, and they want to take my spot.

It sounds like but if You make it citywide.

It should be more affordable.

Windermere Laurelhurst there's a new housing development that's going to go in Laurelhurst.

Are they going to have affordable housing in that unit down on Lake Washington.

I hope so.

It's got to be citywide.

You can't just destroy single family neighborhoods for a reaction to a housing crisis that's been building for a long time.

You need to think it out.

Thank you.

Alan, hang on for just one second.

Carolyn Kral, 46A, Diana Kincaid, 46B, and Chris Lehman, 47A.

Thank you, Alan.

Thank you.

My name's Alan Ness.

I made it.

When I moved into my house on Capitol Hill, 30 years ago, I never thought I could ever live in a Craftsman bungalow in Wallingford, way out of my reach.

I was a young guy back then, just starting out.

And raised my family there with my kids, apartment building across the street.

Definitely not against, we were really forced out by development, Capitol Hill Development, turning the place into townhouses, except that they went bankrupt.

So now it's a nice little parklet, which is very lovely for where my house used to be.

We found a rundown and Wallingford was about all we could afford and fixed it up.

So we enjoy the neighborhood and like other neighborhoods, we feel it's almost like a historic district because it's so intact with that kind of single family arts and crafts houses.

We see along 45th, we see along Stoneway, tremendous development, high density.

and I think that's very appropriate, but I think that there needs to be some kind of tweaking of the MHA, especially the leg that's coming down from 45th towards the schools, and kind of bisecting that entire neighborhood that's contiguous and sort of breaking like a good idea.

So I'd like to see, you know, some kind of liberalization of the AU laws, we get more backyard cottages, some kind of zoning so that there are setbacks, so we have some light and trees and air as we develop, intensify, and create a good win-win situation for everybody.

Thank you, Alan.

Carolyn?

Carolyn, I don't see Diana Kincaid.

I think she was here earlier, but I think she might have left.

So you're going to be followed by Chris Lehman.

I'm Carolyn Kral.

I'm a resident of Eastlake.

I've been fortunate enough to live there for 30 years as a renter and a homeowner.

And I feel for the young people because

I think I was maybe 45, I don't know, 45, maybe something, when I came to Eastlake.

And I was able to rent, and I was able to buy a house at Eastlake that I could afford.

But anyway, I think I'll be able to buy a house at Eastlake today.

But I want to just mention Rob Johnson, when he was a candidate for the City Council, he was on the Seattle Channel.

I was pretty shocked when he advocated for a land value tax.

And I'm just going to say a few sentences here.

This would allow you to charge somebody based on a value of their assessed property.

So if you had a single charge you for more stories.

I'm going to say that's going to encourage more turnover.

in places where we want to see higher density.

And I just want to know, is that working out okay for you?

Anyway, so anyway, that could be one reason why we're having such high costs for our land values.

It's creating displacement in multifamily zone neighborhoods, like Eastlake, while single family neighborhoods are able to sit on their problem of affordable housing in Seattle.

HALA started under the guise of our former mayor,

Now in the city, let's pause and take a look at what we are losing and how displacement in our multifamily neighborhoods.

Also, time's up.

My time is up.

OK.

Thank you.

Chris Lehman, you're going to be followed by 47B, Andrew Tsang, and then 47A, Paul Chapman.

Eastlake may be the only neighborhood with a jobs-housing balance and in which virtually all of the commercial and residential land is proposed for upzone.

Yes, we have no single-family zones, unless you do count the 350 densely packed houseboats and I'm sure your staff is already working on some way of building them to be 65 feet as well.

As in other neighborhoods, the preferred that the city received at the April East Lake Workshop.

Just like in the White House, HALA seems to be putting developers at the center, worships the market, and ignores livability and conservation.

It's really hard to take these signs, HALA, yes, very seriously when we see so little interest or tolerance even.

for people who are concerned about balancing it with livability.

But that's fundamentally the flaw of HALA, and a number of you up here, I mean, Mr. O'Brien, you know exactly how central you were working with Mayor Murray on the secret grand bargain, which put us in this mess of unnecessary conflict, instead of welcoming balance.

I mean, that's the whole idea.

I'm proud that I can support the Growth Management Act, which requires localities to have comprehensive plans and to obey them.

And I was proud that Eastlake developed housing targets which we were the second that beat us more quickly was Wallingford.

But both of us discovered that within two years of the comprehensive plan we had passed that those targets had been snatched away from us to have a balance struck and to consider having growth elsewhere in the city after we had reached those targets.

There was a failure to consider retaking another look.

Constantly you're adding more and more targets and there's no balance left.

You have to consider livability too.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Lane.

Andrew Tsang.

Andrew Tsang, 47B.

You're going to be followed by Paul Chapman, 48A, and Sandy Martin, 48B.

Good evening, Council.

Thank you so much for the opportunity for me to come here and speak to you tonight on these important issues.

My name is Andrew Tsang.

I am a student at the University of Washington, and I'm a low-income renter as the target demographic for our discussion today, right?

And frankly, truth be told, I'm not able to live in the university district anymore due to the fact of the is that the rents there are just simply out of reach for the average student such as myself.

So what I'm coming here today to talk to you about is I want to support MHA.

I think that it's a good policy and it moves us towards the right direction of being able to build more housing near transit, near opportunity.

And I think that my biggest issue with MHA is that it doesn't go far enough where it needs to.

I'm looking at the voters of the Puget Sound region have authorized us to build this billion-dollar station in Roosevelt, and yet I see these mid-rise, maybe 60, 70-story buildings, and I'm thinking, this is frankly ridiculous.

a billion plus dollars into this one square block, right?

And I think that gimping our own capacity for utilization of this station is frankly a theft of the monies that the Puget Sound voters have authorized, right?

I think that we need to build much denser, closer to public transportation in regions such as Roosevelt.

I'd like to see maybe another 60, 70 feet above you know, wherever it is possible that we can stick this, right?

I think that, you know, as well in East Lake, right?

You know, we have the Roosevelt Rapid Ride that will be coming through in a couple years, right?

And I think that, you know, when this comes through, you know, we will have frequent transit there, you know, during, that's going to be near parity to Link, right?

I think it's frankly ridiculous that, you know, we're not really considering these facts and we're simply leaving so much, you know, additional housing on the table.

I think that we need to up-zone more so we can have a greater percentage of a greater number of units be affordable as well Simply having more units on the market.

So thank you so much council for your time tonight.

Thank you Thank You council members Robert your fortitude and stamina here tonight and also Spencer Williams My name is Paul Chapman.

I have lived in Seattle for about 30 years and in Wallingford for about 20 years.

In that time, I have witnessed profound physical and cultural changes in Seattle that saddened me.

Too many people who used to live in Seattle no longer can because the rent is too damn high.

And the rent is too damn high because our zoning priorities prioritizes detached single-family homes rather than economically, environmentally, and transit-friendly dense multifamily development.

Because we have not built enough housing, my college-age daughters may not be able to live in the city in which they were born.

I fear that the scale appeal will not only cost hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more, of taxpayer dollars, but it will also set affordable housing back many years.

So I urge the Council to enact HALA upzones as soon as possible, and to do more.

Rezone the entire city for multifamily homes.

Rezone the city to encourage beautiful design standards.

Rezone Seattle to encourage family-sized housing for rent and ownership.

Rezone Seattle to prevent environmental destruction by eliminating parking minimum requirements.

Rezone Seattle to give us a better future than our civic leaders gave us a generation ago.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sandy.

Sandy, you're going to be followed by Robert Yeh, 49A, Greg Hill, 49B, and Eric Eric, I can't, I don't know, 50A.

Eric, show light, something like that.

Sorry, go ahead, Sandy.

Okay, thank you.

Before I begin, some facts.

In the last three years, thousands and thousands of new units have been added to housing.

For example, within a three-quarter mile radius of Stoneway, there are over 2,000 new units, yet rental rates have gone up.

Why?

Buildings are not specifically built as affordable housing.

Developers build high-end product to maximize return on their investment.

Affordability is the smokescreen to get away with opportunity to maximize profits.

The city expects little from developers creating real, lasting, affordable housing.

Instead of designating a few affordable units in their building, most pay to opt out.

It is up to the city to find a location and build real, lasting, affordable housing.

That won't happen in most desirable neighborhoods because developers have driven up prices for land and buildings, so affordable housing gets pushed out to areas less convenient and desirable.

If the city was concerned about diversity in affordable housing, you would expect developers to create and keep affordable housing in all neighborhood instead of easy opt-outs, resulting in high-end product, which key most.

We want real results, not hollow promises with miniscule results.

6,500 affordable units compared to the tens of thousands of high-end units that are proposed is unacceptable.

We want more, and you can do better.

And FYI, single housing prices are up because people still want to live in them.

Thank you.

Robert?

Robert Yeh, are you here?

Robert, you're going to be followed by Greg Hill.

Robert?

Robert?

You're first.

Good evening.

My name is Robert Yeh.

I live in Seattle 38 years, and I happen to be a civil engineer.

And I hear all the both sides.

against and pull, and I can see where they come from.

And I would like to share a little bit of experience myself.

You guys probably all remember mid-'80s when we built a convention center.

I wrote a letter to tell them, say, you need to build at least 28 feet or 30 feet higher in case one day you build a second layer of freeway on top of the I-5, you have a chance.

but no one pay attention about it.

Now I see the density increasing.

It's a complicated issue, and I understand everyone has their standard point, but we also have looking into 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, even 50 years after our children, our grandchildren, what they're going to leave in the city, especially if we can create regional city, which is, I'm not quite sure how many will be.

The high could be 20 story, could be 30 story, and then you can set it down.

The next block will be 10 story, next block could be five story, next block maybe three, and then single family.

So the regional city could be really tall, and could be really high, could be really density.

Whoever want to live in the regional city in the high rise, they're welcome to do so.

And they who want to live in a single family, they still have a chance to live in a single family.

The solution is also have to create enough for every single family home and also for the complex also.

I really against say not have providing parking because in Seattle area regional, it's really hard to give up the car.

So every single unit should be still have a parking space and open space.

Thank you, Mr. Yang.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Greg.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you tonight.

is about the commoditization of housing, converting homes to facilitate investment.

A stressed economy always produces charlatans and con artists, and this has been a great run.

In New York, super high rises around Central Park will certainly be affordable.

In Savannah, you name it.

But on the Trump index of developer profits, Seattle's grand bargain is near the top.

Listening to people testify about how letting developers run wild will create affordable housing is a test of what's going on in Seattle.

The grand bargain is at least partially legal, so we can't really predict the outcome, but we can say that allowing more to be built on a lot makes it more affordable to tear down existing apartment houses.

The net outcome of HALA will be a net negative in affordability.

The cost of single-family houses will, of course, go through the roof because there'll be fewer of them, and there'll be fewer family units, lots of 200-square-foot units.

What are the motivations?

We could hold L2, actually reduce the number of units per acre.

We could reinstall density limits in L2.

That would really produce affordability for family housing.

But that would be as profitable, so we're not going to do that.

Wallingford's goal for affordability has gone up.

We're 100% higher than we were to start with, while the light rail neighborhoods have gone down.

Why is that?

Because it's more profitable to build a square foot in Wallingford than it is in the South End.

And Hall is all about pleasing developers.

Thank you, Greg.

This is the end of representative democracy.

I got this.

This is the only thing, anything, and it says nothing about my property being rezoned.

Thank you, Greg.

Eric, hang on for just one second, and I'm sorry that I couldn't pronounce your last name.

Eric, there are two people who have signed up to speak after you, and these are our final two speakers.

Carol Haffer and then Miranda Berner.

Eric, please.

Oh, thank you.

So first, I had a whole lot of arguments in favor of HALA, but I really have to say thank you guys for being here.

This is exhausting for me.

You guys look like you've had a much harder time Secondly, for HALA, there have been many more eloquent speakers than myself, and I won't reiterate all of those points.

But for me, this is about sharing economic opportunity.

This is about these core progressive values that this city is about.

I grew up here.

I love it.

I consider it an enormous privilege.

I see that I have great opportunity because I grew up in Seattle.

And I don't have any illusion that I can afford a house that my parents had.

And if we were to share that opportunity and more opportunity in this country for more people who need it, people need in this country jobs like we have here, but we cannot allow them to come.

And it seems very wrong to me that we say that we can't have people sorry, that we favor those who have the privilege of living here already and the benefits that the city has over those who are yet to come.

That has ugly parallels to the current state of immigration in our country, or the debate about immigration.

And anyway, I think that this is about that, and for me, about climate change.

I'm a geologist, and it's very important to me.

And I think that the most effective thing we can do is to live densely where we have short commutes.

We don't have as much space.

We need the heat.

And yet, we still have good lives.

People like to live in New York City.

I would much rather become New York than Houston if we are going to grow and we are growing.

So I think we need to figure out where people should live.

And I think this is a wonderful plan.

And I hope you guys pass it quickly.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Carol?

Carol Heffer?

Miranda Berner?

I don't see Carol coming down, but I do see, oh, Carol, there you are.

Carol, and then Miranda, you're going to close this out for tonight.

Please.

I got here late.

That's why I'm at the end.

Sorry, and I'm glad you're here.

I didn't know this meeting was happening.

My name's Carol Heffar.

I've lived on 25th Northeast.

That's a big arterial over here, a little west of us.

And, well, it's noisy and terrible, and I'll, you know, I'm not going to talk about it.

But my house is old and small, and it was paid for mostly from wages I earned at a public school daycare.

Many of them are in college now, and I know their parents because working at a daycare, you get to know families.

I saw some parents every day, every weekday.

It was the best job in the world, and I would like people like me to be able to live anywhere in the city where people with a lot more money need care for their kids.

I'm a disabled citizen.

My income is now less than $10,000 a year.

I'm not going to leave my single family home until I'm sure my son's going to afford a place to live anywhere.

It doesn't have to be here.

Some people want to stay in their homes because it's the affordable option.

It's for some seniors and disabled, moving is tough, especially leaving the neighborhoods that they contributed to where they are recognized and known.

There's something else here.

Okay.

Offer an option for single family homeowners to share their homes by converting to duplexes or whatever they can do on their lot.

I'm on a small lot, but I pay the same taxes as somebody with a standard size lot.

It's always been that way.

Um, or and or be sure we have somewhere to go in our neighborhoods when we get older and we have, you know, trouble maintaining a home.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Miranda Burner.

You're our final speaker signed up for the night taking us to just under 3.5 hours.

All right, you know what I'm here for.

I'm here about family housing.

OK, so we want to be welcoming, but we want to be to the middle class.

Right now, without MHA, we're not retaining housing for the middle class.

We're losing it.

And this plan does not do anything to retain or increase.

We're also right now losing, as you heard a lot of people talk about, losing family housing.

whether it's in an old apartment building or whether it's a single family home.

They're getting bought, they're getting demolished, and then they're being replaced with one-bedroom studios and apodments.

One-bedroom studios and apodments.

people have a place to live.

But what about families?

Amazon hired 40,000 people in the city of Seattle, brought them here from all over the country, and a lot of them have families.

And that's part of why the cost of family housing is going up, is because we are not, you cannot go find a brand new three-bedroom apartment in this city.

Because there's no family housing being built in new development, we can't charge impact fees for our schools for the kids.

So as we grow as a city, we're not making sure that we're also investing in the future of the city and in our children and our children's children.

We're not charging impact fees for libraries or community centers.

There's no livability in this plan.

You guys know this.

I just wanted to point it out one more time.

The other thing is, did you find out what happens if MHA goes through, the up zones go through, and a developer sues?

What happens?

What if they win?

Do the up zones stay in place and the city is screwed?

Because they're not going to get that 6,000 affordable housing units, but we're stuck with this new up zone.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miranda.

Please find out and let us know.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I'd like to say thanks to all of you who stuck around for your patients at home or was going to spend three impressive.

We have lunch and learn at City Hall this Friday February 19th at noon where we'll be discussing the overview of the city's high impact strategies to address residential commercial and cultural displacement.

and the city's priority on centering anti-displacement strategies in most marginalized populations.

Our next citywide mandatory housing affordability committee meeting will be Monday, March 12th at 10.30 or so at City Hall.

At that meeting, we will start with an overview of what we've heard in the public hearing and open house here in District 4. We'll move to a topic that is beyond the geographic boundaries of just one district, and then we'll go into a deeper dive on the proposed zoning changes in districts five and six.

We've got an open house on February 28th on district five and six at Woodman Middle School, and then we'll have that public hearing on, I don't remember where that is, More to come on that later.

Oh, Northgate Community Center, thank you.

Thank you all for sticking around tonight.

We are adjourned.

Take care.