Seattle City Council Sustainability & Transportation Committee Public Hearing 61119

Hello.

Yay.

Well done.

Good evening, everybody.

Sorry for that delay.

For those that are watching on Seattle Channel, wondering what's been going on, we've been trying to get our microphones working, but welcome to Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

It is Tuesday, June 11th, 2019. It is now 5.37 p.m.

My name is Mike O'Brien.

I'm chair of the committee, joined by my colleagues, Councilmembers Sawant, Bangshaw, and Pacheco.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you all for being here.

It's a lovely day outside.

I appreciate you taking the time to come.

provide public comment.

We have one agenda item today.

We will be discussing an ordinance and then taking public comment on that as part of a public hearing notice.

We're gonna start the evening by doing a brief presentation, an overview, and I'll invite Ali Ford of the legislation before us.

And then when that presentation is complete, we will proceed through the sign-up sheets and everyone will have up to two minutes to provide public testimony.

I'll repeat these rules when we get there in a second, but I just want to give folks a heads up.

So you will have two minutes.

If folks want to come as a group, which would be three people or more, you're welcome to come up to the microphone together.

And then that group collectively would have five minutes to speak.

You can have one person speak for five minutes or share it across the group however you want.

But if you're participating, you can either participate in a group or individually.

You can't do both.

So you'll have to decide if you want to be part of a group or speak individually.

And with that, I'm gonna go ahead and read in agenda item one, being staffed today by a lot of great volunteers.

Thank you all for being here, or not volunteers, but staff.

Kelly's staffing the clerk in the meeting, but her voice is out, so I'm gonna read in.

Agenda item number one is Council Bill 119544, an ordinance relating to land use and zoning, amending sections 23.44.11, 23.44.014, 23.44.017, 23.44.020, 23.44.041, 23.45.545, 23.84A.002, 23.84A.032, 23.84A.038, and 23.86.007 of the Seattle Municipal Code to remove barriers to the creation of attached and detached accessory dwelling units and add a floor area ratio requirement in certain single-family zones.

With that I'm going to turn to the presentation table and Allie ask you to introduce yourself, and then we'll jump into the presentation Allie Pucci council central staff Allie thank you for being here, and thanks for all your work on this if you want to just jump into the presentation.

That'd be great

So I will start with the slide I always start with, just so we're all on the same page in what we were talking about tonight.

Accessory dwelling units, often referred to as ADUs, DADUs, detached accessory dwelling units, often referred to as backyard cottage or carriage houses, attached ADUs, garden apartments, basement suites, et cetera.

So attached are those that are part of the main house, and detached are in an accessory structure somewhere else on the lot.

So tonight I'll provide a brief overview of Council Bill 119544 that was introduced yesterday that represents Council Member O'Brien's proposed legislation.

As I walk through some of the slides, sections of the proposal that differ from what has been presented in previous meetings are slides that have a light green background or some people have called that blue.

It looks light green to me.

I'll describe a few potential amendments that have been identified by council members to date.

There'll be more discussion and a potential vote on those at the next committee meeting on the 18th.

Then we'll move into the public hearing.

And then as I just described, the next step would be to discuss potential amendments and potentially vote on those amendments and the legislation at the June 18th meeting.

And then the earliest that the council would take final action would be July 1st.

So the proposal would increase the number of accessory dwelling units allowed on a lot to two, either two attached accessory dwelling units or one attached and two detached.

The proposal is slightly modified from the previous iterations that there's now a requirement that in order to add the second ADU, the structure would have to either meet a green building standard or be affordable to households making less than 80% of area median income.

The maximum household size, so today, not more than eight unrelated people can live on a lot in a single-family zone, and that's regardless of whether or not it's just a main house or a main house and an accessory dwelling unit.

The proposal would allow up to 12 unrelated people on a lot if you have two accessory dwelling units.

And just stop me if you have questions along the way.

There are a few changes to minimum lot size and the maximum square footage for a detached accessory dwelling unit.

Today, you cannot build a detached accessory dwelling unit on lots that are less than 4,000 square feet in lot area.

The proposal would reduce that to 3,200 square feet, and it would increase the maximum size of accessory dwelling units to 1,000 square feet.

Height limits for detached accessory dwelling units.

There are minor modifications adding a few feet for lots based on the width of the lot.

The one change here from the previous version is that if you look at the table on the right under the proposed changes, previously we had three categories, less than 30 feet.

then what is now the 30 to 40 feet category was 30 to 50 feet and then greater than 50 feet.

Based on some feedback from builders and how the construction industry worked, two additional feet and the 40 foot.

Lot width range will allow for more practical livable space for detached accessory dwelling units.

So that's the change there.

In addition, the proposal would allow a few extra feet in height to facilitate green building strategies.

So like allowing green roofs and that type of thing.

The proposal would increase the maximum rear yard coverage allowed on a lot.

So today not more than 35% of the lot overall can have be covered by structures.

There is no change proposed to that overall standard.

But in addition to that 35% maximum, there is a requirement that not more than 40% of the rear yard, so the rear about 25 feet of the lot, can have structures on it.

This would allow an increase to 60% rear yard coverage if it is a one-story structure, so it would facilitate a single-story structure for aging in place and mobility issues.

Under the existing regulations, one off-street parking space is required for an accessory dwelling unit, and one off-street parking space is required for the main unit.

The proposal would eliminate the required parking space for the accessory dwelling unit, but property owners would still have to maintain the parking space for the primary dwelling unit.

Under existing regulations, a property owner must occupy either the main house or the accessory dwelling unit for at least six months of the year, so it needs to be their primary residence.

The proposal would remove the owner occupancy.

And the proposal would introduce a floor area ratio in most single family zones of 0.5 or 2,500 square feet of floor area, whichever is greater.

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

Floor area that's in basements or any floor area in an accessory dwelling unit would be exempt.

In addition, the proposal would exempt up to 500 square feet in addition to a detached accessory dwelling unit.

500 square feet in any accessory structure.

So that would include a detached garage, a shed, that type of thing.

And existing homes that already exceed the limit could expand one time by up to 20% of the existing floor area.

The proposal that was introduced yesterday also modifies the effective date for this specific provision rather than the normal 30 days effective after the mayor signs.

It would have a six-month effective date.

And this addresses a concern we've heard about delays in being able to submit building permit applications for new homes to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections and will allow people who already have plans developed to still continue with those proposals.

In addition to those specific changes, there are a few other provisions in the proposed legislation.

They would add tree requirements when constructing an ADU if the lot is already deficient in what would be required for trees on a single family lot, and would provide flexibility for preservation of existing trees.

It introduces some flexibility for conversion of existing structures into an accessory dwelling unit.

provides more flexibility for where the entrance is located, provides some height exceptions for projections like dormers that add interior space, and also adds in a provision that would require annual reporting on ADU production and would ask that the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections and the Office of Planning and Community Development would conduct a survey of ADU owners and occupants within three years after implementation.

So that's a quick summary of the proposal as it exists today.

If there are no questions, I'll just briefly describe some of the amendments that will be developed and discussed in more detail at the next committee meeting.

The first is a proposal by Councilmember O'Brien that would request that SDCI at the time of permitting provides information to the homeowner about what it means to become a landlord and also provide training for new landlords as this will sort of open up a new landlord, I guess industry is not the right word, but a new crop of landlords potentially.

a proposal from Councilmember Herbold that would prohibit short-term rental use in ADUs constructed after the effective date of this ordinance.

I'll note that this amendment would require introduction of a new bill, but there will be another notice required, so there'll be time between the committee meeting next week and when the earliest date that the full council could vote.

Councilmember Herbold has another proposal that would require Ownership of the property for one year prior to permitting a second accessory dwelling unit, this would be in addition to meeting the green building requirement.

But if they were choosing to go with the affordable unit route, that one-year ownership requirement would not apply.

And this is the proposal that was contemplated in the preferred alternative to have a one-year ownership requirement.

Council President Harold is considering an amendment that would require a parking space only when adding a second accessory dwelling unit.

And then number five, I see I failed to.

put the name there, but Council Member O'Brien is considering an amendment that would allow the increased rear yard coverage for conversion of an existing accessory structure.

So as I mentioned previously, the proposal would allow more rear yard coverage for single-story ADUs.

This would allow a person who has an existing structure in a rear yard to expand that existing structure rather than tearing it down and rebuilding a new structure to have a little bit more yard coverage, even if it is more than a single-story structure.

And then there are a few proposed changes to the reporting requirements.

One would be from Council President Harrell to provide additional information about any parking impacts that may be identified after implementation and consider any amendments that may be appropriate, including considering geographic-based parking requirements.

To report on lessons learned, after implementation of a pilot program that will provide loans to complete an ADU or create more habitable space for low income homeowners.

This is a pilot program that is included in the housing funding policies that are currently being considered by the council and would provide about five to ten loans over the next year to low income homeowners who are interested in either converting a basement or an existing accessory structure to an accessory dwelling unit may help them fund construction of a new accessory dwelling unit or just creating more habitable space within their existing home.

And then a proposal from Council Member O'Brien to report on use of ADUs for short-term rental use.

So if the amendment that would prohibit short-term rental use is passed, this change would not be necessary.

If that amendment is not adopted, this would provide information about how much short-term rental use activity we're actually seeing in accessory dwelling units and whether or not Council wants to make a change in the future based on that information.

That's all I have.

Thank you, Allie.

I'll read the last slide.

Thank you.

Colleagues, I should mention we've been joined by Council Member Herbold.

Do you have any clarifying questions or questions for Allie or if you want to talk to any of the amendments, that's fine too.

Just would love to have my memory refreshed on what the FEIS said about the anticipated number of ADU, DADUs that would be developed.

I think I'm as far, I was looking for it myself, as far as seeing that only 2% of lots that could have them under the current regulation have them, but I haven't gotten any further than that.

So under the existing regulations, we would expect about 1,970 accessory dwelling units over the next 10 years.

With the proposed changes, we would expect just over 4,400.

So more than twice as many would be constructed in the 10-year period.

In addition to that, we would expect about 500 fewer teardowns over that same period.

So 4,400 citywide.

Yep.

citywide over 10 years?

Over 10 years based on these land use code changes.

There's other changes and you know other work happening out there in the market that may increase production as well but from based on just the land use code changes alone.

Okay super helpful thank you.

And then if I might I just I'm reminded that there is one additional potential amendment that I am working on with Council Member Pacheco, which would be looking at opportunities to either require or incentivize space for bike parking on lots to ensure that people are thinking about designing these spaces for people who use bikes as their primary mode of transportation.

So that will likely be maybe an option for discussion next week as well.

Colleagues, any other questions for Ali?

All right, seeing none, we will excuse you, Ali.

Thank you so much for your ongoing work on this and your presentation tonight.

And we're going to jump into the public hearing.

So I will go ahead and open the public hearing.

Folks signed in on, we had A and B sheets, so I will alternate between those two sheets and work my way down the list.

At the moment, we have about 80 folks signed in.

And just a reminder, folks will have up to two minutes.

If you want to come forward as a group, there is a slot on here to indicate that.

But when you come forward, if you come forward with three or more people, we'll make sure we put five minutes up on the timer.

and allow you to do that.

And again, just reminding folks in case you didn't hear earlier, you can participate in a group or participate as an individual, but you can't do both.

So we're going to start off with Mark Cote, followed by Philip Dugan, and then Ellen Milne.

Hello.

My name is Mark Cody.

I live in Judkins Park, District 3. I'm testifying in favor of adopting the proposed ADU legislation as written.

I'm the Executive Director of Parkview Services, a nonprofit organization based in Shoreline, Washington, that develops and manages single-family properties to rent to extremely low-income people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Parkview currently owns 15 properties in Seattle that house 61 people.

And I'm proposing, I'm urging the adoption of the proposed ADU legislation as it would, lifting the only occupancy requirement would allow us to develop up to 20 more units on our existing properties.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mark.

Hello, my name is Philip Duggan, and I live in Pinehurst in D5.

My father, James Duggan, still lives in my childhood home on Queen Anne in District 7. We're looking at options to build a backyard cottage together for a while now, and I strongly support all the changes that you've looked at.

Many of them will help make this new home a reality.

The project is very personal to us.

In my opinion, my father should have retired years ago.

The hope is that selling his home and building something smaller in our backyard will give him enough left over to help make that happen.

So we're making difficult choices that include losing my childhood home, the home he's lived in for 40 years.

And we're not the only ones making difficult choices, though.

But these changes are helping put us in control to make those changes better, make those choices better.

And it allows him to plan ahead on something that will let him age in place for many years to come and allow us to have a multi-generational family in the neighborhood that I love.

This won't be the case if he has to find someplace else to buy or rent at the current prices in Seattle.

He won't have anything in his budget and he certainly won't find something where he can be sure he can still afford it in 10 plus years from now.

Alternatively, he could end up having to move far out of the city or county where we won't see each other nearly as often.

Even the changes that aren't required to make this project possible are still things I support.

Many of them give us the flexibility to make this project better.

I'm particularly interested in the development standards that would, as I would love to make it a bit larger with a second bedroom, so in the future, hopefully far in the future, it would be easier to rent out to a family.

And a side note, I know it's not in the EIS, so it's not going to be considered, but I'd urge you to look at options for multiple detached ADUs in gigantic yards like mine in the future.

I'd love to host a home through the block project as well, but when I'm already doing this, I'm having to choose between helping my father and helping someone who is homeless, but I have more than space.

I'd also love for you to look at opportunities for other spacing, such as front yards, because I think even if it's in front of the setback with tiny houses and really small structures, it makes them part of the community, so these houses join together.

So again, hope you support all the proposed changes and remove barriers to creation of ADUs.

Thank you.

Thank you, Phil.

Ellen, it looks like you have a group for one second.

You're going to be followed by, sorry, Sanam Hogsfeld, and then Ruby Holland, and then Patience Malaba.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Hello, my name is Ellen Milne.

Thank you for the work the Council has done so far to address housing affordability.

I'm here tonight with my parents, Gary, a retired civil engineer, and Janice, a teacher.

The Northwest has been our home my entire life.

They raised me to believe in community and compassion, and that's why we're here tonight.

Thank you for listening to our story.

I've called Seattle home since 1997, and I rent on Capitol Hill so I can live car-free and walk or use transit to work, shop, and live.

It's why I chose my neighborhood over 20 years ago, and why I want my parents to join me in Seattle.

Ten years ago, my parents downsized.

They sold their house in Maple Valley that they'd retired to, and spent the next decade traveling in an RV.

They've been able to spend winters in warmer climates, and summers in Issaquah and Seattle with their grandchildren.

But my father turned 78 this year, and my mother 74. Both drive less, but use transit regularly, and in the last year, we've been having tough conversations about next steps for their future.

But while my brother and I both rent in central Seattle, neither of us are in buildings appropriate for our families to live with us.

They want to remain independent for as long as they can.

They're in good health.

They're physically active.

They're not candidates for assisted living.

And after living in an RV for the last decade, their space needs are modest.

A backyard cottage somewhere like Queen Anne or Capitol Hill would be perfect.

A walkable neighborhood near grocery stores, libraries, and a church community with easy bus connections to their doctors on First and Cherry Hill.

But under the current restrictions on ADUs, there's simply not enough cottages for people like them to rent.

I want to be there to help my parents when they need me.

To make that happen, we need more rental options in all our neighborhoods.

Reducing the barriers to the creation of ADUs will help make that a reality.

Please pass this common sense reform and help our city and my family.

My parents want to be your neighbors.

My name is Janice Milne.

In 1970, my husband and I built our first home, a duplex in an L-shape designed on a corner lot in a single-family residential neighborhood zoned by a progressive city to encourage housing density.

Since then, we have lived in other ownership housing configurations from a second duplex and various size houses in four states.

Along the way, we owned and managed for 30 years a 10-unit apartment building renting to university students.

Most recently, we have traveled much of each year in a 375-square-foot RV, having touched on over 40 states in our journeys.

Because of these varied experiences, we have come to appreciate urban density locations that provide affordable housing in neighborhoods that are walkable to desired and required services.

When Ellen asked us to consider Seattle as our next housing location and explained the proposed added ADU zoning overlays, we included an ADU in Seattle to our list of future options.

We urged passage of the ADU reforms, thereby adding additional creative solutions to the housing needs of Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm the one with the sloppy handwriting.

What is your name?

Sean Hossford.

So first, I want to thank you, Mike, for all the work you've done on behalf of our city.

I've been trying to do an ADU in our neighborhood in Broadview for the last four years, and I've been held up by the building department because their solution for Broadview is that I have a 10,000 square foot lot and I put a backyard cottage there.

But I have neighbors down the hill from me and we have water problems and underground springs in Broadview.

And if I did that, it would affect the neighbors downhill because I would cover impervious land.

So I chose not to do that because my parents taught me to be a good community member.

And I've been waiting to put a carriage house on top of our garage for four years now.

So I really, really urge you to pass this.

In that time of our living in this house for 29 years, we had our daughter live with us.

It's a very small 1930s house, about 1,800 square feet.

Right now, my mother-in-law lives with us.

My mother has moved in and out of our house three different times.

We had my brother-in-law live with us once, and we've had a friend live with us.

And all of that family is fine to live in our home with us, But I want to provide affordable housing in our city.

I am aghast as a third-generation Seattle native and somebody who lives on stolen indigenous land that we don't do better for each other.

It just makes my blood boil.

And so I really urge you to allow me to provide housing that is so needed in our city, as you can see when you drive the freeways, for people who need affordable housing.

Thank you.

One second, Patience.

You're gonna be followed by Michael Austin, and then Laura Lowe Bernstein, and then Kelsey Hamlin.

Okay, thank you.

For the record, my name is Patience Malava, and I am with the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle King County, and I am here today, first of all, thank you for all of the work that you have done to bring us this far.

To me, reducing barriers to enable production of accessory dwelling units is a low-hanging fruit tool that we should be able to pass without having to spend three years of process.

So I hope that this is a time that we are going towards the finish line.

Our members are working across the county, across the city here, providing housing even in single-family homes.

you had from Mark Cody, one of our members with Parkview Services, they are providing housing for people who are low or moderate income and with special conditions throughout the city.

They have 15 properties that could be having more capacity with accessory dwelling units, but they have not been able to produce those units because of the existing barriers, because of the owner occupancy, because of the off-street parking requirements.

But with us being able to uplift those barriers, we will be able to see more production.

And we really appreciate the addition of the option for non-profit developers to be able to play in the space with the availability of them being able to produce income-restricted homes.

We really appreciate the language and we support this legislation and hope to see it move forward.

We also have members who are working in the city, working on a report to look at how accessory dwelling units are actually a tool in enabling homeowners to get supplemental income.

With that, once the report is here, we'll be able to provide with you.

There is data that shows that this is a tool that really helps in addressing the housing crisis, and we hope that you will take it up and see across the finish line.

Thank you.

And Ruby, I apologize, I skipped over you.

So Ruby's next, and then you'll be followed by Michael Austin.

And just for folks who are tracking the numbers they signed in, Ruby's 3A.

My name is Ruby Holland.

Ethnic cleansing is the planned removal of ethnic or racial groups by force or coercion from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, often with the intent of making everyone the same race.

Ethnic cleansing of non-whites is common practice in Seattle.

The Chinese Expulsion of 1886, the Japanese Interment of 1942, and the MHA of 2019. This time, we won't go off quietly into the night.

We'll take to social media and alert the world that racist Jenny Durkan and her powerful cartel is carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against non-whites in order to create an all-white Seattle.

We won't let up until we put an end to this scourge.

I'm asking all people, young and old, to join our social media campaign.

By contrast, the O'Brien ADU plan can bring families together, bring back the middle class, and can bring homeless seniors, college students, and working families off the streets.

The benefits of ADUs outweigh the negatives.

The main objection to ADUs is old school thinking.

Anybody with a truck and nail bag will buy homes and convert them to rentals.

Marty Kaplan, 2017. New school thinking.

With a truck and a nail bag, we can create our own ADUs.

Ruby Holland, 2019. My solution for Marty Kaplan.

create an urban village in his neighborhood, and declare them at high risk of displacement.

I promise you, they will fall in love with addos and daddos.

Mike, I appreciate your effort to save Seattle from itself.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Ruby.

Michael, you can follow Ruby.

Good evening.

Committee Chair O'Brien and Council Members, my name is Michael Austin and I serve as Chair of the Seattle Planning Commission.

The Commission appreciates this opportunity to provide our comments on legislation to promote the production of accessory dwelling units in Seattle.

The Planning Commission strongly supports this proposal.

as ADUs and DADUs support many of the housing goals and policies of the city's comprehensive plan and can provide alternatives in single-family neighborhoods for a variety of different household types, including singles, families with children, and multi-generational households.

We believe that expanding the construction of ADUs could provide more flexibility and accessibility for new housing options throughout Seattle.

We are pleased to see the Council's moving forward with many of the Planning Commission's previous recommendations, especially removing the owner occupancy requirement modifying the code to allow for more than one ADU per lot, removing the requirement for off-street parking, and applying floor area ratio limits on development in single-family zones.

We also look forward to working with city staff as they continue to develop additional strategies focused on affordability and equitable ADU production, including creative financing approaches and a coordinated, simplified permanent construction process.

Those additional efforts can have a larger impact if barriers to ADU production are removed by this legislation.

Again, we commend the leadership of Councilmember O'Brien and the work of City staff from the Office of Planning and Community Development, as well as Council Central staff who work closely with community members to identify those proposed policy options.

Again, the Planning Commission supports the current proposal and encourages Council to approve the legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michael.

Laura is next, and Laura is going to be followed by, oh yeah, Kelsey Hamlin, and then Marty Kaplan.

And we're speaking as a group.

A group.

You've got five minutes.

I just wanted to say how much I support this proposal.

Me and my family live in a quadruplex that started off as an ADU.

We're in a former garage, and it's allowed us to live in a walkable neighborhood that we wouldn't have access to otherwise.

I want more people to have that opportunity.

Thank you.

Thanks, Melissa.

So I'm speaking on behalf of Moore.

My name is Laura.

I'm a renter in Queen Anne.

And I got involved with backyard cottages because it's an intergenerational issue, and I grew up in an intergenerational household.

When I was five, my parents and my grandparents built an addition so my grandparents could live with us and provide child care.

When we moved from New York to California, the same thing happened.

And there was a transition in our life.

And having an ADU down the block when we were building the new addition for them to move in allowed them to live two houses down until they could move in with us.

And so my entire life, it was completely normal to live with me and my grandparents.

My brother did the same thing.

So my brother moved in with his kids with my parents.

And so that kind of living has allowed them to stay together in Santa Monica, a very expensive city.

So I got personally involved for that reason.

And then as a housing activist, I see it as, One tool in the toolkit, a lot of cliches, one more strategy.

If we don't do this, that's 2,000 families, this is family housing, that's 2,000 families that won't have housing in our city.

And for those 2,000 families, that's a big deal, even though it's a drop in the bucket of what we need.

More has hundreds of members online.

We've had a number of events.

It's a really diverse group of folks in terms of class and race and identification and abilities.

This is a really good option for folks with disabilities to age in place and to build ADA accessible unit.

And any barriers that we put in place, I really caution council to be sparse with amendments, if any at all, because everything we do is one more family that can't live in our city.

So please be careful with your amendments and more fully supports the legislation and everything that is said tonight about inclusivity in these communities that are off limits to families right now could be said about duplexes and triplexes and more.

So when more talks about backyard cottages, we're looking to the future and adding other kinds of housing like you heard Melissa lives in a quad with her family.

So these are the kind of housing options that we need in our city.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all.

Kelsey?

Hi, I'm Kelsey Hamlin and I work at Sightline Institute, a sustainability think tank for Cascadia.

The way this legislation and many other housing policies are often portrayed would likely make someone not as engaged think that these policies aren't wanted in Seattle.

I'm here to tell you otherwise.

I didn't realize it until I started working at Sightline, but my father lived in a remodeled garage apartment after his first divorce, and a mother-in-law suite after his second.

I was around nine years old and then 16 years old at those times, and I obviously didn't see any difference between those homes and normal homes that I visited.

My dad was middle class the whole time, yet he desperately needed help from his friends with those convenient, more affordable homes in order to get back on his feet.

Now I also know ADUs cut emissions by nearly half per household due to energy materials and transportation, compared to a single detached home, including modern McMansions.

So to those griping about small spaces and asking about the children, I say to you, is it not more important that children have a planet to live on?

Again, as a child, I clearly didn't have any qualms.

I still don't, and neither does Sightline.

ADUs give property owners more autonomy over their financial burdens and their friends' or their families' needs, like my dad's.

Unlike McMansions, ADUs can create accessible housing with no steps and accessible features, which ensures more housing for our aging residents and or those living with disabilities.

On a related note, when a McMansion replaces a modest home, it's a sign of Seattle's growing disparities, which is unfortunately exactly what city policies incentivize across 75% of Seattle.

That's right, three-fourths.

ADUs are one small step to curb such extravagant space-taking by the wealthy.

They instead make room for at least one more household on the very same lot.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Kelsey.

Marty Kaplan, you're next.

And Marty, you're going to be followed by, Marty's number 5B, so be followed by 6A, which is Jerry Bartlett.

And then Bill, to the SAM Center, Simpson, who's 6B.

And then Bob Morgan is 7A.

So we have a group.

You have a group.

We have a group.

Good evening.

I'm Martin Henry Kaplan, architect and chair of our Queen Anne Community Council Land Use Review Committee.

Thanks for the honor of representing our community and thousands of concerned citywide neighborhood leaders and Seattleites.

Tonight, I urge you to be particularly considerate before acting, reducing and impacting the property rights of over 350,000 citizens who reside in our single family neighborhoods.

In our appeal of the adequacy of the ADU EIS, the hearing examiner purposefully avoided weighing in on the legislation, directing that decision to you instead.

Critically, the first sentence in her decision reads, given the groundbreaking nature of some of the features of the proposed legislation, it is impossible to know whether none, some, or all of the ill effects claimed by the appellant will come to pass.

This sentence is extraordinary.

as she admits to significant uncertainty regarding potential unstudied and unmitigated impacts from this legislation.

To be clear, we share similar goals in finding responsible solutions to smartly accommodating our growth.

As you know, I am a longtime density advocate.

I helped craft the current legislation allowing ADUs citywide by serving as a Seattle Planning Commissioner between 2004 and 2012. We found through a three-year trial period that the input from other cities that informed our research and legislation met the measure of smartly adding density in a manner that respected every Seattleite, and we invited neighborhoods to our table.

The proposal before you today dismantles these regulations that guided our research and founded the current code.

No city in the USA has proposed the unprecedented changes that are now before you.

Instead of neighborhood input and partnership, you chose to rely upon planning advocates and computer modeling to measure potential impacts to every neighborhood and citizen.

We ask that with any legislation, you direct a trial period within a limited area to confirm the unsupported conclusions presented within the EIS.

and the EIS concluded there would be little, if any, impact.

Impacts associated with removing the owner occupancy requirement.

Number one, issues that concern citizens in neighborhoods relate to the obvious, unrestrained, speculative destruction of affordable homes, unprecedented population displacement, an increase in housing values and taxes.

Nationwide impact studies, expert opinions coupled with common sense underlines this significant and proven concern.

Under this proposal, every property over 3,200 square feet can convert to investor-owned triplex speculative development, otherwise called multifamily, which has been expanded through MHA already.

Number two, impacts associated with the moving parking requirements, allowing three units per lot and 12 people living in one property.

This one-size-fits-all policy completely ignores differentiation, age, infrastructure capacities, and all else that should inform the largest change in land use in history.

Increases in densities, cars, utilities, and people should respect obvious differences in concurrent infrastructure and be allowed and located where best accommodated.

One size does not fit all.

And number three, impacts associated with restricting the size of homes to 0.5 FAR.

This proposal ignores the taking of private property rights, and in fact strongly encourages mega buildings that the legislation purports to prevent.

Among many problems under this proposal, for instance, a developer can take a 5,000 square foot piece of property, build a maximum 2,500 square foot house, and two attached 1,000 square foot ADUs, and a 1,750 square foot basement yielding a 6,250 square foot box on a 5,000 foot lot.

Is that what we want?

I don't think that's what you want, but that's what you can do under this proposal.

Additionally, this limitation will force families out of Seattle and only promote maximizing non-affordable market rate condos.

There are many more issues of concern that we will address in our accompanying letter.

We ask that you thoughtfully consider the important amendments that I'll give to you after, in a second.

Please note, our appeals were focused upon process and lack of community input only.

We wholeheartedly support many options available to revise the current codes and reduce some barriers to building ADUs.

However, neighborhoods have been shut out of the important work in crafting respectful, equitable, representative, and economically viable policies.

Let's not be reckless.

Let's do it right.

We got one chance.

Let's do this together as 350,000 neighborhood residents deserve.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Barney.

There's a box for comments.

And I apologize, folks, you were given cards when you signed in for your slot.

And when you're done, if you want to drop the cards in the comment slot too, we'll make sure we get those back and we reuse those.

Let's see, you must be Jerry.

I'm Jerry Bartlett, yes.

Thanks, Jerry.

Yeah, thanks for having this, the ability for people to talk about what exactly this rule in ordinance is talking about.

I believe and I support this ordinance, but I do from a different perspective because I think it's in the right, it's going in the right direction.

But what I'm concerned about is I'm concerned about solar infringement.

And I don't see a lot of issues really focused on the fact that currently I live in a house and there was a mega house built next door.

My sunsets at four o'clock in the afternoon, not nine o'clock.

The plants on my property, the trees on my property are suffering because they don't have direct sunlight.

And I was originally upset about that from a personal perspective, that my plants were suffering because there would be less CO2 uptake, which would reduce climate change related issues.

But then I look at the mega house, and the mega house is really more like a parking lot.

a black roof that absorbs heat and does nothing for energy.

If I had solar panels, I wouldn't be able to actually even use the sunlight.

There's a lot of exemptions to the housing rules, like overhangs and sidewalks and driveways and ADU parking.

that basically makes these houses in these areas not plant uptake possible.

The trees that are being planted that are replacing 100-foot firs are 10-foot dogwoods.

that go into a concrete basin and you can't plant something that has a bigger root structure.

And so I just want to really focus on the fact that whether it's this new ordinance or the existing ordinance, that we focus on the value of carbon and carbon sequestering by the plants that are currently in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jerry.

Bill Simpson.

Hi, my name is Bill Samson.

Thanks, though.

Thanks for giving the opportunity to speak.

I live in District 4. I'm in a single-family home, but I live in what you would call a basement apartment.

It's on the ground level near the top of the hill, so it's technically a basement apartment, but it's kind of ground level.

And my neighbors have a mother-in-law apartment in the back of the house, their house.

And so I volunteer a lot with the Sierra Club, which is how I've gotten involved in this housing issue.

I volunteered a lot on issues like housing and transportation and energy and all three of these.

issues really connect to each other.

The Sierra Club we support more dense housing options because that cuts down on emissions from transportation which are the biggest cause of emissions in Seattle.

And if people live in more dense areas, that promotes more walking, more biking, more public transportation.

And so this promotes more safe, healthy and sustainable communities.

And so I think I support this legislation, especially as a follow up to the MHA policy that was recently passed.

Most of Seattle is still single family zoning.

And so I think Doing add-oos and dad-oos and backyard cottages are a good way to add more affordable housing and options in single family areas.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Gail.

Bob Morgan's next.

Bob, you're going to be followed by Sarah Swanberg, and then Shelley Cohen, and then Karen DeLucas.

Good evening, council members.

I'm Bob Morgan.

I do not support the proposal, except for the anti-McMansion FIR limitation that it contains.

I think you've packed too much together to swallow at once.

But I suggest three amendments if you do go ahead with this legislation.

One would be to change the name of the zone.

It's really a triple family zone, and the title single family just isn't accurate anymore.

Two, I'd like you to require a rezone process in sub areas to apply the new provisions.

There was a great Seattle City Council member named Sam Smith and he had a phrase he used, it was called the meat axe approach.

That applied to proposals like across the board percentage budget cuts because they don't consider how they affect different circumstances differently.

This is meat axe zoning.

There's no regard for area characteristics such as topography, lack of open space, parking congestion, typical lot sizes with the exception of the FAR limit.

And I think you should require a sub-area rezone in order to put this kind of a significant change in the city.

Three, maintain the owner occupancy requirement.

The proposal for a one-year absentee ownership requirement, I think that's going to be a piece of cake to work around.

For any self-respecting LLC with venture capital backing, that's not going to be a problem.

The conclusion that the proposal will reduce teardowns is based on an unfair comparison.

To be fair, you need an option with the McMansion killing FAR limit added to our current single family zone and then see who has more teardowns.

I think we'll get a different result.

Are the opponents of this proposed to or are unconcerned about affordability?

There's not much chance that this housing is gonna be affordable.

A thousand square foot backyard cottage rents for about $2,500 a month.

McMansions, yes, you compare to that, but that's a red herring because that can be addressed other ways.

You're just going to make some rich developers even richer with this.

To other opponents of the ADU changes who feel a lame duck council should not vote on such significant changes to our city, I say please make it out to candidate forums and get pledges that they will repeal this legislation if they have to.

Thank you.

We are going to Shelly.

Oh, Sarah?

Yes, you're right.

Sarah, you're first, and then Shelly.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Sarah Swanberg.

I have been on community associations for 13 years in Northeast Seattle, and I've been on two standing advisory committees.

During this time, I hear terms like character, livability, urban, Triplex, used as a verb.

These are all terms that I've come to believe over the years are used as kind of a call of arms of white people.

to maintain the A-rated neighborhoods that exist in the city so that the A-rated neighborhoods remain good, meaning white, and that our schools remain good, meaning white.

This legislation won't necessarily bring more brown people into my neighborhood, but certainly and certainly having this legislation might just make all the white single family homeowners in my neighborhood more rich.

but it certainly will send a message that the city wants to do something about the racial inequity that exists here.

So for that reason, I support this legislation.

So one thing that I would, like to see as an amendment is that there are a lot of ADUs that exist without being permitted.

And I think that it would be helpful if those people could be grandfathered in so that it can all be legit.

Thank you.

Chair O'Brien and council members, for the record, I am Shelly, S-H-E-L-L-Y Cohen, C-O-H-E-N.

And tonight I'm putting on my Real Change Board of Directors hat.

Real change exists to provide opportunity and a voice for low income and homeless people while taking action for economic, social and racial justice.

Your amendments, Mr. Chair, can do that.

They will allow projects, nonprofit projects, like the Block Project, which is an amazing project, and those of you that aren't familiar with it, become educated, because they could single-handedly solve homelessness.

It won't.

but it could because their goal is to get one dwelling unit in the backyard of each residential block in the city of Seattle.

I think there's like twice as many residential blocks as there are needed for homes.

And you're reducing the minimum size and allowing two ADUs on one block would do it, but I'd encourage you And there are also other nonprofits that are doing similar things, a little bit different, but still can assist.

The importance, though, is look at other ideas that can further allow ADUs in blocks, in communities.

The Block Project is community, and that's what we are all here for, is a real community to make real change.

Thank you.

Thank you, Shelly.

Karen is next.

Karen, you'll be followed by Walter Walsh, then Nancy Helm, and then Jessica Dixon.

And my name is Karen DeLucas, and I am an architect and a homeowner in Madison Valley neighborhood.

Is it a little bit closer?

Yeah, just get right next to it.

Is that better?

Okay.

I'm here.

I'm also a member of AIA Seattle's Housing Task Force.

Thank you for your work on ADU policies over the past several years.

The American Institute of Architects Seattle chapter supports Councilmember O'Brien's ADU legislation without amendments.

AIA is particularly supportive of the parts of the legislation that address what we experience with our clients as the biggest barriers to ADU construction today, removing parking requirements, increasing size, and relaxing owner occupancy rules.

We also strongly support the FAR limitation on home size that will both incentivize density in the form of multiple families living on a single lot and promote good design by encouraging designers and builders to creatively address space and functionality issues.

Encouraging additional ADUs is the gentlest type of infill we can provide that is applicable to all of Seattle neighborhoods.

As our city works to address deep deficits in overall housing availability, and specifically affordable housing availability, this is a needed step to start to open up all of our neighborhoods to everyone in the city.

We encourage you to approve this legislation and its key components.

I also would encourage you, AIE Seattle is hosting a tour of eight datus on this Saturday, and there's more information on AIE Seattle.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Walter Walsh, a University of Washington law professor and an owner-occupant of a grandfather duplex in single-family zoned University Park.

Three amendments.

One, encourage co-op split ownership and ban ADU condominiumization.

Provide that ownership of the principal residence and either or both of its accessory dwelling units may be split only by establishing a residential co-op as defined in the Seattle Cooperative Conversion Ordinance.

do not allow split ownership through a condominium.

Two, before ADU permit issuance require non-occupant landlords to record a covenant of compliance with the Seattle co-op conversion ordinance when selling rented ADUs.

Before sale to the public of any rented ADUs as co-op units, Non-occupant investor landlords must comply with all their code obligations as developers, including offering tenant protections.

Expand the Seattle Co-op Conversion Ordinance to include rented single-family dwellings as well as rented ADUs in single-family dwellings.

And three, do not allow single structure AAADU triplexes under the same roof in single family zones because that fundamental change will jeopardize the entire ADU ordinance.

Restore Councillor O'Brien's 2016 alternative to a single family dwelling lot may have one attached and one detached ADU.

Duplex means a single structure containing only two dwelling units, neither of which is an ADU.

But the code defines triplex much more simply and without any qualification as a single structure containing three dwelling units.

The land use code does not define double ADU lots with DADUs as triplexes, but it certainly does define double AADU lots without DADUs as triplexes.

If allowed, a single structure containing a primary dwelling and two attached ADUs would fall into both definitions, single family dwelling unit and triplex.

Thank you.

Thank you, Walter.

Nancy?

Hello, I'm Nancy Helm.

Thank you for this opportunity and for the work that you're doing on behalf of our city.

I live in a single-family neighborhood that's just outside both the Green Lake and the Roosevelt urban villages.

We need more people in this walkable, bikeable, transit-rich neighborhood.

Making it easier for me and my neighbors to build ADUs and Dadus is the minimum we should be doing.

Seattle is a great place for baby boomers like me to age if we have lots of housing options, great transit, and the ability to walk to parks, restaurants, stores, et cetera.

We can give up our cars, move into backyard cottages, and live well in age-diverse neighborhoods.

I fully support the square footage limits, removal of owner occupancy requirements, and elimination of off-street parking requirements.

We need houses for middle class, not McMansions.

People who want to build more units on a property shouldn't be limited to the properties they live on.

And if storage space for personal vehicles on the public right of way is a problem, then SDOT needs to do a better job of managing that resource.

Four years is way too long to wait for this common sense reform that will make our city more livable and more climate resilient.

Let's do it.

Next we're going to hear from Jessica.

Jessica you're going to be followed by.

Let's see Richard Schwartz then Lane Young and then Brooke Broad and Jessica just for folks that are tracking cards she is 10 a.

Okay.

Thirty seven.

Okay.

Hi, thanks for being here tonight.

I'm a resident of the Finney Greenwood neighborhood and lived there for about 30 years in a single-family zone.

I live in a multi-generational house on a single-family lot.

I live next door to a grandfathered-in duplex with four people upstairs, two people downstairs, a family upstairs, and a couple downstairs.

I live across the street from six young men living very affordably in a small rental house, and they're sharing bedrooms.

And I'm glad accessory dwelling units exist in the city of Seattle.

In fact, I've wanted to build an accessory dwelling unit in my backyard for 15 years since the original legislation was passed.

and have done plans and thought about it.

But I've never, we've never had enough money, the kind of money it takes to build an accessory dwelling unit.

So I was interested when the city proposed last year, tweaking the parameters, such as allowing a little bit more height and removing the parking requirement.

But I'm here to ask you that you maintain the owner occupancy requirement.

Without this in place, we are opening up our neighborhoods to speculation by REITs and global investors.

I'm worried about the impact that this will have on our neighborhoods, including the loss of trees and permeable ground, which not only affects the livability of our neighborhoods, but ultimately the health of Puget Sound.

And that's not sustainable.

Thank you.

We have a little more time.

We have five.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

You only have five if you're a group of three or more.

So if you want to keep your two minutes, I'd come back then.

Otherwise, I'll come back.

OK.

Richard Schwartz.

Hey Richard.

Good evening.

It seems like we have a bit of an echo chamber going here today, so I'll take the opportunity to offer a somewhat different angle, but an important one.

At four, late last Friday afternoon, I received an email notice about this public hearing relating to an extremely significant piece of proposal legislation.

Just two business days' notice for something so important didn't seem very appropriate.

I quickly read through the proposal and realized I had a question on one aspect of it.

The notice said if I had any questions, I should call staff or Alicia at Council Member O'Brien's office.

So at 410 I did so.

Leslie Daniels answered the phone.

I told her what my question was.

She said I would need to speak to Alicia, but that she was gone for the day.

I then asked what the time frame was for moving the proposal forward and for future public comment.

She said I would need to speak to Stafford Kelly, but she too was gone for the day.

Since there was so little time between the notice coming out late Friday and the public hearing, I asked Leslie what I should do to get my question answered before the hearing.

She said she could have Alicia call me Monday morning.

I asked if there was something she could do to be sure Alicia got the message.

She said she would put it directly on her keyboard so she would be sure to see it.

Monday came and went, no call.

Today came and went, no call.

So to summarize, very short notice is given for a very important hearing.

The people who are cited as the ones to answer questions are not available.

The promise for them to get back to me before the meeting is not fulfilled.

So why did I decide to forsake a beautiful Sunday afternoon, sunny afternoon, to come down to speak about this today?

It's because an election is coming up.

If you're an avid citizen and can't call the city and say, hi, I'm so-and-so from Amazon, or hi, I'm so-and-so from the Cascade Bike Club, or hi, I'm so-and-so from Vulcan, you should probably expect to have the same experience I just described.

If you think you deserve more respect than this from your city council members and other city officials, You better start quizzing the candidates in a very specific manner about how they plan to be more responsive to the little guy.

The situation is just another small example in a consistent pattern on the part of a city demonstrating a casual disrespect for people it is supposed to serve.

Is it any wonder that many citizens reach the conclusion that the city's purported interest in public involvement is simply window dressing and as a result drop out and give up on the process?

Finally, I just wanted to add that I'd like to exclude you, Ms. Herbold, from some of my comments.

Both myself and the members of my community have found that you and your office are willing to respond to concerns that are raised, and that is appreciated.

Thanks, Richard.

Next, we have Lane Young.

I'm Laney Young.

I would like to express my support for ADUs overall and most of the provisions proposed.

I particularly appreciate the attempt to use the FAR limitation as a bulwark against raising smaller homes to create disproportionately large structures.

That said, I concur with Marty Kaplan that the deal seems to need a little work that I didn't understand previously.

I am here, however, to strongly oppose the removing of the owner occupancy requirement for all of the reasons articulated so far and some which will be coming, I'm sure.

I fear creating an environment where properties can be passed on to heirs as a perpetual income stream, regardless of whether they live across the street, across town, or across the country, removing them from the local market for generations and removing the pride of ownership incentive to maintain these properties.

I would strongly, strongly encourage you to reconsider that one provision.

Thank you.

Thanks, Lainey.

Brooke, you're going to be followed by Greg Hill, then Delia Flohr, and then Jessica Westgrim.

Hello, yes, my name is Brooke and I'm here to speak in favor of increasing our ability to build mother-in-laws, granny flats, backyard cottages, all of that.

The ability to rent an affordable ADU has been critical to my family's ability to live here in Seattle and make a life for ourselves while working as artists, as teachers in non-profits and more.

Back in 2008, I moved back home to Seattle to work on the Obama campaign.

I wasn't making a lot of money and needed to find a place quickly so I could get to work.

Luckily, a family member had a small basement apartment that I could rent cheaply.

I knew I could count on this affordable option because years earlier, my sister lived in this very same unit after she got out of college when she was just starting out and working a minimum wage job.

Now I'm fortunate enough to own this home, and once again, this little basement apartment has been available to help out yet another family member.

Last fall, the house that my mother, my late mother, and stepfather had rented for over 30 years was scheduled to be redeveloped.

My stepfather is on a wait list for senior apartment, but it could take years for a place to become available.

So once again, it is that little ADU to the rescue.

My father is able to stay in the neighborhood he has lived in for decades, and I get to keep a family member close by.

This is just one example of how ADUs provide affordable housing, support intergenerational living, and help make our neighborhoods welcoming to all kinds of people.

ADUs are not a new idea.

They've been contributing to neighborhood character for decades.

Let's build on what we know works by making it possible for more people to have access by passing the most flexible, least restrictive legislation possible.

Thank you.

Thanks, Brooke.

Greg?

Thank you.

For most families, buying a house is our greatest investment.

The existing ADU-DADU ordinance was carefully crafted by the opinions of many people to provide more housing while respecting neighbors and families.

It recognizes that context and scale matters.

Trees matter.

Gardens matter.

The proposal recognizes that the majority of families do not want to be contractors and they don't want to be landlords.

So the solution is get rid of them.

How will having Seattle homes owned by investment portfolios from people who don't live in this state or even in this country, who've never been here and don't plan to visit, how will that make our neighborhood stronger?

And how will it create affordable housing?

It's not going to.

For the past years, we've heard that if you build a datu, you can pay off your current mortgage.

Where's the performer for that?

It's baloney.

This proposal favors the wealthy, not families, not the poor.

Thank you.

That's great.

Delia?

Hello.

Thank you Councilmember, my name is Delia Floor.

Thank you Councilmember O'Brien and staff for the thoughtful legislation and for responding to community concerns.

As you well know, Seattle's Race and Social Justice Initiative is intended to lift up the voices of those most harmed by past actions and policies and using the Racial Equity Toolkit has seems to have informed your work.

My friend and neighbor, Ruby Holland, has encouraged, informed, and supported people across the city at risk of displacement, not only in her beloved Central Area neighborhood, but throughout the city as well.

And she's advocated for people who choose to stay, who wish to remain in their habitat.

Many Seattle homeowners, particularly the elderly and people of color, receive weekly or even daily offers to purchase their home by mail, phone, and in person.

My hope is that the proposed legislation will be a tool for longtime Seattle residents to remain in their home, to provide affordable rentals for friends and family, members who might otherwise be priced out, and to counter the trend toward homogeneous neighborhoods, unaffordable housing, and real estate speculation.

I hope it provides affordable housing for young people and families and residents who have lost hope not only for home ownership, but even for affordable rental housing.

I live a few blocks from Ruby on a block that's zoned for both single and multifamily properties.

It's a mix of owners and renters.

Long-term renters are an asset and contribute much to our neighborhood.

They know who lives here, they know the history of the neighborhood and our collective place in it.

They garden and block watch and take care of one another in their homes, whether they're apartment or houses, just as property owners do.

I don't want our fair city to become only a playground for the wealthy.

My life is fuller and richer with friends and neighbors that come from a wild cultural and economic demographic.

I especially appreciate the new provision concerning floor area ratios, limiting the size of structures and single family zones.

We raised our sons in a small multifamily property on the same block for 25 years.

It's 1200 square feet.

It was enough for us and it's even enough now when they've temporarily moved home as adults.

Thank you.

Jessica, you'll be next, then you're followed by Peter Ries, and then Jonathan Zegers.

Good evening, Council and staff.

My name is Jessica Westgren, and I'm here to speak as a member of Welcoming Wallingford on behalf of ADU Reform.

I'm going to tell you a story tonight about my friend.

Due to her housing situation, she needs to remain anonymous.

I will call her Victoria.

Victoria bought her 1939 Craftsman house for the purpose of running transitional housing in her community.

She houses the housing unstable, people who have suddenly lost their leases, people saving up funds for security deposits.

people leaving live-in relationships, and people escaping unhealthy or violent housing situations such as domestic violence.

They stay at Victoria's home rent-free for up to three months, giving them some time and space to get stabilized.

If you were to walk past Victoria's house, you'd never know you were looking at an independently owned and operated transitional housing.

Two transitional rooms are upstairs and two are in the basement.

Each transitional bedroom is fully furnished.

There's a community pantry and the rooms are fitted with a mini fridge, which helps those who may also be food insecure.

In addition, there's a small backyard cottage that's also used for temporary stays.

Since its beginning just six years ago, she's been able to assist 47 people experiencing housing insecurity.

She's assisted 17 individuals in 2018 alone.

Victoria wants to provide more transitional housing, but she doesn't have the space to provide a parking space.

Her lot is big enough with enough open area and even has plumbing that runs mostly to the backyard.

But like many Seattle homes, it's built close to the sidewalk atop a hill.

Victoria is also planning for her future as well.

She wants to build a handicap accessible unit.

She suffers from chronic health issues and knows that as she ages, she won't be able to navigate her stairs.

To help Victoria, we need to remove the parking requirement, allow multiple structures, and change the number of unrelated people allowed to live in the space.

In the end, what we're looking at are impactful yet modest changes to the current policies regarding backyard cottages and basement apartments.

With these few changes, people like Victoria can continue and expand upon the community assistance they already provide.

Thank you.

Thanks, Jessica.

Peter?

Thanks to the council members here in the committee for giving me this opportunity to comment on CB 119544. My name is Peter Reese.

I'm an architect.

I've been working throughout Seattle for more than 30 years.

I'm a supporter of accessory dwelling units as a vehicle to provide more and more affordable housing in the context of stable residential neighborhoods.

I'm also in favor of most of the proposed changes that relate to more generous development standards and easing the requirements for on-site parking.

I am, however, strongly opposed to the proposal to eliminate the requirement for owner occupancy of properties developed with ADUs.

In my view, the elimination of an owner occupancy requirement would, in theory, open up all single-family neighborhoods in the city to small-scale multifamily development, and it would, in practice, undermine the following policy objectives that we, as a city, are pursuing.

First, there's the issue of equity.

Along with the primary goal of providing more housing, building ADUs has a secondary goal of allowing homeowners to participate in their economic benefits, often allowing people who might otherwise be priced out of their homes to stay.

When the owner occupancy requirement goes away, the single family housing market is opened up for those entities with access to capital to further concentrate the ownership of communities in the hands of the few.

Second, there's the goal of building strong neighborhoods.

Neighborhood strength grows over time.

Older residents give way to young families, newcomers bring fresh ideas, and longtime residents are free to age in place.

When a home becomes a three-unit rental property with an absentee landlord, opportunities for new homeowners to move in disappear.

Safe neighborhoods rely on strong relationships between neighbors, and homeownership is a strong contributor to those relationships.

And finally, there's the question of affordability.

The Turner Center for Housing Innovation at Cal Berkeley recently surveyed ADU owners in Portland, Vancouver, and Seattle, and found that resident homeowners rent out their units at below market rates approximately 58% of the time, and that rental increases are less frequent than in commercially operated housing stock.

Without the requirement for owner occupancy, that affordability advantage would go away, and the vagaries of the commercial rental market would ensue.

In closing, I'd like to reiterate my support for most of the proposed legislation, but only if a requirement for ongoing owner occupancy is unambiguously retained.

Thank you, Peter.

Jonathan?

Jonathan, you're going to be followed by Pat Griffith and then Louisa Miller.

And for those tracking, Jonathan, you're 14A.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Jonathan.

I'm a proponent of ADUs.

I'm planning on building one in my own home.

Thank you for working towards these goals.

ADUs are a great thing from many perspectives, economic, environmental, and they help to create a diverse housing stock.

A diverse housing stock is important in helping to solve some of the problems we're currently facing.

I'm an architect.

I work on both multifamily and residential projects.

I've lived here in Seattle for over 10 years.

My concerns with this bill are the FAR restrictions being as posed as part of it.

This would effectively cut the development potential of single family zones up to half.

That's a drastic change that could have effects on property values and may create a potential inequity.

Larger homes will still be able to be built.

You'll just need to be more privileged to own a larger lot or multiple lots to do so.

In this way, an FAA restriction would have more of an impact on owners of smaller typical lots.

We're a growing city and we need to be building creative projects that encourage a diversity of home type for a diversity of lifestyles.

Many of the single family houses here in Seattle are over 100 years old and in need of maintenance.

and sustainability update.

The way I see it, there are answers to addressing Seattle's need for home-type diversity, but requiring smaller homes won't make that better.

It will just make them smaller and less functional for homeowners.

One solution could be an FAR of .75, which would limit the largest homes, but allow homes of the average size that are being built today.

If you want to build your house with an ADU, facilitate multi-generational housing, or have room to run a small business from home, you need square footage to do it.

Personally, my vision for the future is one where homeowners can have an ADU and space for all of those things in an efficient package that doesn't impose on neighbors.

Please take more time to consider this FAR restriction and what it would do to our city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Hi, my name is Pat Griffith, and I'm a 45-year Seattle resident.

We live on Queen Anne in the same house we built at the end of the Boeing Depression 44 years ago.

I support the concept of ADUs, but I feel this proposal goes too far and too fast.

It goes, it has inadequate guarantees of affordability.

And it does not guarantee that the units will not be converted to short term rentals.

It encourages investor ownership at the risk of pricing out first time home buyers and families who will build and sustain neighborhoods long term.

You only need to take a drive down MLK or Rainier Avenue and see all the investor wants to buy your home signs.

We have the capability now with backyard cottages, but we do have an issue because I understand about 40% of those are being used for short-term rentals, and those do not help our housing stock.

We need housing that people who actually live and work here can afford.

Let's crunch the numbers a little bit, because as someone else earlier said, that many homeowners aren't necessarily willing to become landlords.

We've been landlords before and kept our rents modest, but we understand the issues on that.

Something that many families or retirees are not willing to do.

An ADU is likely to cost $200,000 or more.

and it would include months of construction and inconvenience for both the owners and neighbors.

Principal interest taxes, maintenance, and a reasonable return on investment would bring the monthly rent required to about $2,000, meaning a tenant would have to have an income of about $70,000 a year.

That's more than most teachers, daycare workers, students, artists, and nonprofit workers earn.

I would urge you to go slow on this proposal, work with neighborhoods to achieve a workable and affordable solution, and please don't rush this through before our new council is elected and seated.

Thank you.

Thank you, Pat.

Louisa Miller is next.

Sorry, I didn't give you a warning.

Louisa is going to be followed by Angela Compton and then Mark Meinrich.

Is Louisa here?

Okay, Angela.

Sorry, I missed Ira Appelman.

Is Ira here?

Ira, you are next.

I'm next.

Thank you.

Skipping over Louisa.

Ira, you're up now.

And then it'll be Mark.

Thank you.

Ira Appelman, I object to this lame duck city council's continuing war on single family neighborhoods, which violates RCW 3670A-072's requirement that single family housing be protected.

Previously, the council eliminated single family zoning in urban villages.

Now Council Bill 119544 incentivizes two additional ADUs per lot, removing parking and setback requirements, making single family neighborhoods de facto multifamily neighborhoods.

I appreciate the Freudian slip from staff that drafted the summary and fiscal note 4G, which says about the bill, quote, the long-term goal is increasing hosing options in single-family zones, unquote.

Residents get hosed by having single-family become multifamily without their knowledge or consent.

Then they get hosed again by being called racists for valuing single-family neighborhoods.

In 2015, Mary Murray tried but failed because of public outcry to eliminate single family neighborhoods and promised the city wouldn't go there again.

I offered the following exhibits to support my view.

The draft HALA report and letter from co-chairs leaked to the Seattle Times that claims, quote, single family zoning is no longer realistic or sustainable, unquote.

And quote, HALA recommends that we abandon the term single family zone, unquote.

And the July 29, 2015 Murray statement that he will not recommend pursuing the HALA recommendations to change single family zones.

And finally, the article on what happened at that time, Seattle upzoning proposal collapses like the Mariners.

This city council should not break the mayor's promise that single family zones would not be changed as recommended by the HALA committee.

And I always wonder why, if you think this really has public support, rather than the support of a few public interests, of special interests, Why not have an advisory vote to see what people in single family neighborhoods actually think?

Thank you.

Thanks, Ira.

Mark, you're going to be followed by Angela Compton and then Ben Wadsworth.

Good evening.

I was born and raised in Seattle in the Magnolia neighborhood.

When I was 25, I married, moved to Ballard, then to Edmonds.

I returned to Seattle in 1993. I live by choice in a 10-unit condo in the East Queen Anne neighborhood.

What is a neighborhood?

Webster defines it as A, a section lived in by neighbors, usually having a distinct characteristic, and B, neighborly relationships.

Your ADU bill has the section part right, but the distinct characteristics and neighborly relationships part is wrong.

If you push this bill, the unique character of each neighborhood will be destroyed.

The relationship between vested homeowners will erode as a steady flow of strangers fill every backyard.

I choose to live in a multifamily zone neighborhood.

The thousands of single family homeowners did not.

They purchased a home with an expectation of a certain quality of life, which includes safety, serenity, convenience, and space to breathe and park.

These values that they chose will be stripped away, death by a thousand cuts, if you pass this ADU bill.

I also find the methodology using cherry-picked computer models to justify broad and sweeping changes in neighborhood zoning troubling.

A rushed solution to a complex problem usually does not end well.

I think this is the case with your ADU bill.

If you allow this bill to become law, Your legacy will be a disservice to the citizens you took an oath to represent.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I don't see Angela, so I'm going to pass over Angela, too, and we'll go to, I guess, Benj Wadsworth, followed by Glenn Pittenger, and then Brian Willison.

Brian is 18A, for those tracking where we are.

Hello, my name is Ben Schwartzworth.

I've lived in Seattle for 27 years and been a homeowner for 20 of those, largely because I've been able to add ADUs to the two houses that I've lived in.

I've been fortunate, and today my brother and I own a rental house in Maple Leaf.

The house was originally purchased by my brother, who lived there for five years before his career took him to Colorado.

During that time, he converted the detached garage into a backyard cottage and rented it out to help pay his mortgage.

When he moved away, I purchased half of the house from him because he didn't want to be an absentee landlord, and we thought it would be wise to hold onto it as a rental.

We're good landlords with happy tenants, and to be frank, the house looks a lot better than several of the owner-occupied houses on the street.

However, given that the house is not owner-occupied, we can't currently rent out the cottage, and it sits mostly empty.

The existing house is only 11,000 square feet, and the lot is close to 8,900 with a back alley.

The existing cottage is about 450 square feet, We're eager to improve and expand the cottage so that it can be rented to a couple, and we're confident that we can do that with very little impact on the neighbors.

There's plenty of space on the lot for parking, no trees would need to be removed, and access off the alley will make the comings and goings of tenants quite discreet.

However, the current owner occupancy requirement is preventing us from using this space as a rental.

Given Seattle's housing crisis and the need for more affordable housing in the desired single family neighborhoods, it's tragic that we have a vacant home on our property.

I encourage you to pass the legislation as written, get rid of this owner occupancy requirement, and let's provide more opportunity in the single family neighborhoods.

Thanks.

Glenn is next.

Hello, thank you, Council.

My name is Glenn Pittenger.

I've lived in Seattle since 1967, over 50 years.

I've moved here with my then single mother.

We lived in a studio in the Green Lake neighborhood, nestled amongst other houses.

And since then, I've lived in 10 different Seattle neighborhoods.

including Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, Ballard, Wallingford and the U District.

I bought my own single family house in 1993 in Maple Leaf.

I've owned it for 26 years and I'm now one of the longest residents on my block.

I know most of my neighbors and most of them know me, both owners and renters.

I fully support the city's preferred alternative and most of the people I know, which includes my neighbors, also support it.

The idea that neighborhoods don't want this is just a false narrative pushed by a small, vocal minority of folks that want you to believe that they speak for the neighborhoods.

They don't.

For someone like me that hopes to keep my house into retirement, this is a useful tool to help me use help us age in place by downsizing in place.

And I think it's important to recognize that Seattle's history of zoning was built on two pillars.

One pillar was classism.

The other pillar was the automobile industrial complex.

I'd prefer that my elected leaders find other pillars on which to shape our zoning policy in the city I've called home since 1967. Please vote yes.

Thanks, Glenn.

Brian, you're going to be followed by Jessica Bergerio and then Glenn Moore.

Michael Bryan, this is your legislation now, so I'm going to talk to you.

When it first appeared, it was simply Mayor Ed Murray's plan to eliminate single-family zoning.

Then you called it workforce housing, and then encouraging backyard cottages, and then encouraging day-dos.

All of these name changes for the same legislation was confusing and made tracking your legislation nearly impossible.

I ask you, was that ignorance or intention?

Michael Bryan, when you received $1 million to study day-dos and then refused to spend a dime on completing code-required DPD reporting of day-do production, was that ignorance or intention?

Michael Bryan, when you became the Council's Kayaktivist environmentalist in 2015, did you ever think that you would receive more than 600 citizens' suggestions on how to make your draft environmental impact statement better?

when the city defended the legality of your EIS and argued neither the merits nor the all-important content of that environmental impact statement, but on the right of the city to choose whether to consider, what to consider.

You stood on the sidelines, and was that ignorance?

or intention, when you focused on increasing peppered housing and transit deficient car ghettos, when you received overwhelmingly more citizen comments, which urged you to keep the owner occupancy requirement for day dues, but your legislation removes that requirement, and when you refused to address the negative impacts of your legislation with hundreds of participants at your so-called community engagement meetings, was that ignorance?

or intention.

Mike O'Brien, when I was told that you live in a big house on a big lot in a multifamily zone, that raised questions about your motivation for this legislation.

I was told you bought all three houses next year to buffer your house from density and development, and that raised more questions about your motivation.

But when your household tried to block a five-unit multifamily from going in next door to you, I think we all understand your motivation and probably your lack of ignorance on those previous points.

For Mike O'Brien, next-door de-dos, development, and density are good for everyone but Mike O'Brien.

So, City Council, I invite you no changes to the de-do code and no to this legislation.

Thank you.

Thanks, Brian.

Jessica.

Your talk isn't that big, Mike.

I shouldn't be here right now.

I should be grading undergraduate essays.

I should be analyzing data, writing up results, preparing for my next experiment, or otherwise working toward my doctoral degree in cognitive psychology.

But alas, I'm here.

I'm here because the owner occupancy requirement on ADU units is threatening my current housing.

I'm here because should the owner occupancy requirement on ADU units stand, I may not be able to find appropriate housing I can afford, which puts my education and future at risk.

I shouldn't be here right now, but I'm here to put a face to the renters who these housing restrictions affect and for the opportunity to stay in my current housing and to keep Fremont a little funky.

Thank you.

Glenn, Glenn Moore.

Glenn, you're 19A.

You're going to be followed by D.

D. Veloper.

So I wish I could say it as eloquently as our architect friend who spoke earlier about

If you want to pull the microphone down, there you go.

I wish I could speak as eloquently as our architect friend who spoke about the owner occupation requirement.

It was perfect.

We're shepherds of a small portfolio, so we could be in the development business if we wanted to.

But it's not a business model that I see is working for us, both from a cost standpoint and an environmental change in the neighborhoods.

And if as you push through your pencils and cost out what it what it takes to put together a project, most people will turn away and that leaves the door completely open to the LLC development money from out of town, and there goes our neighborhoods.

I could be that developer, but I can't, in good conscience, do that to the neighbors that we're going to impact.

If we want to have a DADU or an ADU in a project for any homeowner, if that's a business model that works for them, go ahead.

I'm fine with the rest of the ordinance.

But live.

Live in what you create.

And that's good.

My name is Mr. D. Veloper.

As my name suggests, I make a lot of money by building houses and selling them for a healthy profit.

And I fully support this ADU legislation because other developers and I will become significantly more wealthy because of it.

I particularly want to thank City Council for not requiring that homes be owner-occupied since that would stop developers from developing your property.

In addition to requiring owner occupancy and to ensure rents stay affordable, City Council could have required low-interest loans to build an ADU if the rents were kept affordable and not exceeding 5% a year increases.

But you didn't do that, and for that, developers thank you.

You could have written the ADU legislation to limit additional building to attached ADUs in the same footprint to save trees and open space.

We developers thank you for not doing that, so you can now build far more and larger more to sell for more money.

With all the development that's been going on, there's currently difficulty finding construction workers and housing trades people.

Expanding ADUs will make finding those workers much harder and more expensive.

Developers have the money to hire those workers, but most homeowners don't.

And for that reason, we developers are again thankful that you don't require home occupied units.

ADUs also will increase the values of houses, which will increase taxes, making it harder for lower income people to stay in their homes because they cannot afford the taxes.

Developers, of course, have the money to buy the properties, another benefit for developers.

South Seattle also has the highest percentage of people of color, and most are very low density.

So a lot of the development that's going to happen is going to be in South Seattle, displacing the people of color who currently live there.

And for that reason, developers also thank you for doing this ADU legislation.

Thank you.

Next is Joan Weisler.

And Joan, you're going to be followed by Colleen McAleer and then Emily Johnson.

My name is Joan Weiser and I'm requesting City Council reject CB119544 as presented because substantial revisions to it are required to properly account for and mitigate detrimental impacts it would have on the existing single family stock and the vitality of our single family neighborhoods.

Fatal flaws in CB119544 are due to inadequate scoping direction given in the underlying resolution 31609 Issued in 2015 and blatant disregard of Judge Tanner's direction for completing an EIS with appropriate scope, including studying the adverse indirect impacts of the legislation.

Resolution 31609 simply directed consideration of strategies to increase the availability of affordable housing in Seattle.

In her ruling requiring the city of Seattle complete an EIS on its proposed backyard cottages initiative, Judge Tanner directed study of the adverse indirect impacts the legislation would have on housing and cause displacement of populations.

The subsequent EIS FEIS scope was too narrow because it did not consider or offer mitigation of the social and economic impacts that these new larger and more densely built non-owner occupied DADUs and ADUs will have on the existing remaining single family housing stock in that neighborhood after the ADUs and DADUs are constructed.

Judge Tanner's direction was not followed because the impact on the owners of the existing single family housing stock who remain after adjacent and nearby ADU and DADU development was not studied.

The City of Seattle has allowed DADU construction since 2010 and in-law apartments since 1994. Consequently, decades of adjacent single-family assessed property valuation records are available to study and to extrapolate from.

Yet the city failed to consider any actual resulting economic impacts on adjacent and nearby single family structures remaining from these existing ADUs and DADUs, and did not extrapolate these impacts due to the proposed larger and even more densely constructed ADUs, proposed increasing the allowed number of unrelated occupants to 12, proposed construction of DADUs and ADUs on even smaller lots.

The proposed elimination of required onsite parking for 12 occupants.

Analysis of each of these proposals and the cumulative impacts of these proposals is an essential component to a properly scoped EIS.

Thank you.

and thanks for hearing our comments.

A couple things, I'm a person with numbers as well too.

Seattle has built out and absorbed much of its planned growth targets for the Growth Management Act, and that's our mantra, that's what our state requires us to do, and gosh, we've done it.

So here we are, now we're tapping into the single family neighborhoods.

For example, mine, today I represent 2,200 households, more than 4,000 people.

Last year, we've had on board, permitted and built 1,070 residential units for about 2,000 more folks coming right adjacent to our neighborhood.

That's great.

These are located near transit, and they're more walkability.

Now, this proposal would add two or three times, again, more of that population into the same pipeline.

So last year in our pipelines literally clogged with paper products.

Our sewers were shut down and E.

coli was spilled already into Union Bay and the sewer system couldn't handle the single family residential pipes for that many new folks, let alone, this is before the changes in the regulations.

LCC has long supported ADU's and DADU's accessory dwelling units as an option.

And we ask that the existing regulations be retained.

Owner occupancy is number one.

Being a good neighbor and building neighborhoods require a skin in the game.

Maintain those garbage cans, noise, reasonable, and building relationships with neighbors and just being a good neighbor.

That's important.

Noise violations in our city are a level three violation.

You're not gonna get a police officer to respond.

They're just too doggone busy and there's not enough of them.

So it takes an owner to be on site.

A couple other things, the height should not be increased.

It's interesting that council just to talk to the developers, not homeowners, to see if that would be okay with them for accessory dwelling units.

And finally, on affordability, these units will not add to the housing stock.

They're expensive to build.

You have to get a bank loan.

And that goes down to the new FAR requirements.

Because if you have to add an accessory dwelling unit, you've got to get two bank loans now.

And it really is a blockage where people have access to owning a single family property.

They'll have to build a main house and an ADU probably to get a bank loan for a 5,000 square foot lot to make it pay.

Thanks for hearing it.

Thanks, Colleen.

Emily, you're next.

Emily, you're going to be followed by Adam Kendall and then Mike Stockler.

Stackler, maybe.

Okay, so I'm here today to speak in favor of ADUs and to thank the council, but especially you, Mike, for being stalwarts in the four years that it's taken us to get here.

But the truth is this is such a baby step that I'm struggling to feel the enthusiasm that I'd like to feel at the fact that it seems to be on the verge of passing.

Seattle has a housing crisis.

The world has a catastrophic climate crisis that's already uprooting communities, devastating ecosystems, and killing hundreds of thousands of people every year.

And it's getting much worse.

Here in Seattle, our emissions have been rising in recent years, primarily due to driving.

The fact that some people can't put these two things together and understand that we need to welcome more people into walkable urban neighborhoods well served by transit is a travesty.

It's heartless.

Do they think their children will care more about easy parking than they do about stable food systems?

Do they think that we shouldn't make room for the children already displaced from drought-parched communities in Central America?

Density means that frequent transit is economically sensible.

Density means that people have carbon footprints that are a quarter to a half of those in the suburbs.

Density means that we're committing to being a city that grows and changes and makes room for people.

And density means we're healthier and that local businesses can thrive.

To fight to preserve your neighborhood in amber is both wrong and self-defeating.

So thank you, Council, for listening to the overwhelming majority of people who support this baby step.

We need vastly more housing, workforce housing, vastly more affordable housing, workforce housing, and market rate housing.

This will make Seattle a modestly gentler city and will be a pressure relief valve on our rising regional emissions and our rising housing prices.

When this is done, let's get to the real work of remaking our city into the beautiful, welcoming, progressive place we know that it can be.

Young people worldwide are demanding their right to a stable future, and we owe it to them to do this as swiftly as we can.

Thank you.

Adam?

Hi.

I'm Adam.

No one important.

OK.

Single family housing is bad land use.

If I'm correct, when you do the cost of a single family house, half the cost is actually for the plot of land or the property.

Single-family housing creates urban sprawl and artificial scarcity of land, which drives up the cost of land, which drives up the cost of housing.

Single-family housing is bad for climate change.

It's bad for walkable transit-friendly cities, and it induces driving.

If Seattle were as dense as New York City, we could support the current population on just one third of the space that the city currently takes up, which would make housing way cheaper.

If Seattle were as dense as Paris, we could support three times as many people as we currently do on just half the land as today.

And that would be more walkable and transit friendly.

And with the other half of the city freed up, it could be used for rewilding, parks.

We could even return it to the indigenous as land reparations.

Abolishing single family housing along with other degrowth policies such as abolishing intellectual property, surveillance, prisons, military, police, monopoly, the state, cars, and other things would result in housing being at least 33% cheaper, health care at least 66% cheaper.

The overall cost of living would be reduced by up to 80%.

And emissions would be reduced by over 90%.

And incomes would actually go up.

So basically, why I'm here is to say that anything that makes the city denser is good.

Thanks, Adam.

Looks like this is a group.

We'll give you five minutes.

And you guys are going to be followed by Zach Nostal and then Susan Ahern.

Thank you, Council.

My name is Mike Steckler, and I'm here with my son, Michael Jr., and my daughter, Alexandra, and we call her Cupcake.

And I'd like to talk about affordable housing and affordable home ownership in Seattle.

But I want to talk about my own personal story first.

When I was 25, I got out of college, and I was ready to start my life, and I wanted to buy a home.

So at the time, I just met with a realtor looked at a few houses, made an offer, and a month later, I was mowing my own lawn and washing my own windows and talking to my neighbors and getting involved in my community.

As time went on, I met and eventually married my wife, and we decided to put our two houses together and buy one house that we always wanted.

It was a house in the Wedgwood area.

We ended up, I'm sorry, The Wedgwood house was actually on a plot of land that actually used to be a giant orchard.

And in the 20s, with all the people moving into Seattle, that orchard was divided into building lots and our home was put on one of those lots.

We had our children in that home.

We raised them in that home.

They all went off to college and came back to Seattle and got terrific jobs in the city they love.

And then they moved back home.

They want to be homeowners, but the cost in Seattle is too high.

When the kids were small, we bought a little rental house down the street.

It's a modest little two-story house with an attached garage on a corner lot and a big backyard.

With this legislation, we could We'd build another small, modest two-story house with a detached garage in the backyard, and we'd like to sell that house to our kids with the mommy-daddy discount.

And then they could be homeowners.

And if we wanted to see our kids, we could just walk down the street.

We wouldn't have to get in the car and drive across town in all the traffic, and we wouldn't have to get on the freeway and drive to another city, a city that they might be able to afford to buy a house in.

And the worst thing would be that we would avoid seeing our kids or our potential grandchildren because it's an inconvenience.

So I urge the council to pass this proposal for DADUs and And I especially want to thank Mike O'Brien for proposing this and seeing it through.

Thanks, Mike.

Thanks, Mike.

Zach.

Yeah, I have a group.

That's OK.

I'm Zach Nostal.

I own a home with my wife in Rainier Beach.

And I urge the council to adopt the least restrictive ADU legislation possible.

It'll help us address our housing shortage.

It'll mean that fewer of my friends and neighbors will be priced out of the city.

And I won't be able to see them as much.

I don't like that.

It'll also help us fight climate change.

Personally, I really want to build a backyard cottage myself.

It'll mean one that I can rent out.

But if this legislation passes, particularly with the lower parking requirements, the lot coverage change, and the increase in square footage, it'll mean that on my property, I could build an ADA accessible unit, which would mean in the future, once my parents or maybe my in-laws get to the point that they need to be in an assisted care facility, they could live with us and age in place.

And I think it'd be really cool to have a multi-generational household, which is not currently possible.

I'll pass it to Danielle.

Hi, my name is Danielle Wallace and I live in District 1 in Southwest Seattle.

I'm here to support the DADU changes in legislation because I believe it is one crucial step in addressing our housing affordability crisis in our city.

It's one small step of many more that we need.

I think it's no accident that at the same time in our city we're seeing skyrocketing housing prices, we're also seeing an increase in our neighbors becoming homeless.

And in a city built on racist land use policies, we have much to do to counteract these many injustices.

I personally am fortunate to live and own in a 770 square foot house.

and I am hopeful that these DADU changes and ADU changes might enable me to build an ADU or a DADU in our garage to house my parents one day or potentially contribute to the affordable housing stock in our city.

The proposed changes would allow access to neighbors who wouldn't otherwise have access to my neighborhood.

They would have access to better for transit use, to walkable resources and community.

And I encourage you to support this legislation with minimal changes and especially consider further legislation.

I'm Joe Ringgold.

I live in that 770 square foot house as well in District 1. This legislation is great for my family and for the flexibility that we need in different stages of our lives to continue to live in this house, to continue to live as a part of this community, and expand it to welcome more neighbors to our home and into our neighborhood overall.

You know, I'd also like to specifically address the owner-occupied amendment potentially.

You know, we have a neighbor next door who lives in another 770 square foot home.

He's a great neighbor, has a small family.

I'm thrilled to have them looking over our house when we're gone.

Quite frankly, he probably takes better care of the yard than I do, but I'll you know, I'll be okay with that.

Well, he's a renter, and I'm glad that no one put an owner-occupied requirement on his single-family home.

I think we should not do the same with ADU legislation.

I think it's very important that however we get units, the city needs more homes.

Again, I come back to the homelessness crisis, and there are a lot of claims that we as a city aren't doing enough to handle that.

You know, there are a lot of causes of homelessness, and homelessness requires our humanity and our compassion.

But basically, homelessness is not enough homes.

This legislation would add more homes.

It's a drop in the bucket.

It's not as much as we need, but it's a step in the right direction, and I encourage you to pass it with minimal restrictions.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

I just want to clarify that there has not been an owner-occupied unit amendment proposed.

The amendment that proposes an ownership amendment, so the requirement for the property to have been in ownership for a year before the development of a second unit.

There's not a requirement for the owner to live on site in that amendment.

Obviously, there are other folks that are asking for unoccupied today, too, though.

So, we know there's pressure on that, but there's no planned amendment that I'm aware of at the moment.

So, thank you for testimony.

Susan?

Susan is going to be followed by Carrie Bogner and then Christine Hanna.

Susan, you're 23A.

So, if you're tracking along the numbers, that's where we are.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair O'Brien, Councilmembers.

There is no question that we need to increase density in the city, providing more housing and more affordable housing.

Hence, the city's recent upzoning and enlargement of urban villages.

For the last 10 years, backyard cottages have also been allowed on most lots.

The city's proposed legislation following the appeal of the adequacy of the environmental impact statement raises many extremely troubling concerns.

First and foremost, the wholesale elimination of every single family neighborhood in Seattle, one of the most attractive features of this beautiful city, and I have lived throughout the United States, We have many varied and distinctive neighborhoods, beautiful neighborhoods.

The deputy hearing examiner and her decision regarding the appeal of the adequacy of the EIS wrote, and I quote, given the groundbreaking nature of some of the features of the proposed legislation, it is impossible to know whether none, some, or all of the ill effects claimed by appellant will come to pass.

Yikes.

Should we simply proceed on blind faith?

I think not.

No other city has ever attempted making such sweeping policy changes.

We should be wary without a complete thorough, in-depth study of all the potential impacts associated with upzoning, tripling densities, and the elimination of every single family neighborhood.

This proposed legislation, which threatens to turn the city of Seattle on its end, permanently altering neighborhoods, should not be made by a lame duck city council over summer vacation.

We as citizens deserve better accountability and stewardship.

Let's be smart.

creative, and not act impulsively, suddenly turning Seattle homes into rentals and displacing families who want yards.

Thank you.

Thank you, Susan.

Hi, I'm Carrie Bogner.

Thank you so much for this hearing.

I live in Montlake.

I've lived there for 25 years.

I have a 1985 house.

It's way too big for me.

About four years ago, we put an ADU unit in because we saw our taxes increasing and we wanted to stay where we were.

Four years ago, that ADU, which we rent below market, we've had the same people in who are multiracial.

for the last four years, and four years ago, that rent covered about 90% of our expenses.

Today, it's 60%.

Our taxes have gone up so much.

We would like to retire in place, and so having a second ADU will help us do that, and we're part of the neighborhood.

We like the neighborhood.

We want to stay.

We want to stay in Seattle, and if we can't do this, we'll have to move.

So thank you for the opportunity to speak and thanks for this legislation or whatever you call it.

We'll call it legislation.

Thank you.

Christine, you're going to be followed by Matt Hutchins and then Andy Katz.

Hi, everybody.

Thanks very much.

My name is Christine Hanna, and I'm here in support of the proposed legislation.

Many of the folks have talked about the environmental and social justice and affordability reasons, character reasons for this legislation.

I'm going to focus on the personal reasons for me.

My husband and I bought our 1908 home in Ballard in 2002, and it's got 1,400 square feet of living space and a 700 square foot basement.

And we now have two growing boys and our needs for space have increased.

And this legislation will allow us to provide flexibility of our space needs for our family when we need it.

And when our kids leave for college or otherwise fly the coop, the ability for us to rent that space, which will help us pay for their college education, safer retirement, and pay for the inevitable medical bills that will come with aging.

On that note, and we would like to do that in place, on that note, between my husband and I, we have four sets of parents, thanks to divorce.

We fully expect that one or more of them who vary in age from 70 to 84 and mostly live in other parts of the country, they will need our care when that time comes.

We would like to be close to them.

They're gonna need to move to Seattle, and we would like our children and their grandparents to really know each other.

They really can't afford to buy a place here or to move into an assisted living place.

Some of them can't.

And we know that really the only option is for them to live with us.

And so we need the flexibility that this proposal would make possible.

We're really lucky.

We bought our house at a time when it was relatively affordable, but our little place is now so expensive that despite that our household income is over $100,000 a year, we could not buy the house that we live in today.

And I think about the many 30-somethings that I work with and how the idea, they would like to buy a home, they would like to raise a family here.

There is no way that they can possibly do that.

It's so far out of reach, it seems impossible.

So I really strongly disagree that this legislation would push families out.

I think that the effect may be the opposite because the only way a middle-class family can afford to buy a home in Seattle is if they have the option of renting additional space that may be possible with this legislation.

I know that we would happily rent an ADU or backyard cottage to a stable long-term renter if we didn't need the space ourselves.

And the possibility that legislation could increase the diversity in our neighborhoods would be a hugely valuable contribution to the future of Seattle.

So thank you for bringing this legislation to this point.

We've been waiting for three years to see it happen.

I hope something like this can happen very, very quickly.

Thanks very much.

How are you guys doing tonight?

I'm Matt Hutchins.

I'm an architect.

I'm a homeowner.

I live in West Seattle, D1, and a member of the AIA Housing Task Force and also organized with More Options for Accessory Residences.

Most of all, though, I am a dad.

I kind of got into housing advocacy because I wanted to have a place for my daughter when she was born to grow up and to be able to live in the neighborhood that we love.

When this process started she was a toddler and she's now in first she's about to enter first grade so I hope that we can move fast on these issues so that she might be able to build a place before she's in college.

You know, oftentimes we've heard that this is some sort of a one-size-fits-all proposal, but as an architect who's designed many of these, I can tell you that there is no one size.

Each one of these ends up being highly customized to its site and responds to the owner and what the owner wants, and so no two are ever alike.

And so we see long ones, we see skinny ones, we see ones that jog around trees.

All these things are really, really important to homeowners when they're doing this sort of DIY development for the housing that they want to provide for their family, for friends, for rental.

And so I would like to encourage you guys to make sure that we're preserving as much flexibility in this legislation.

I'd like to also see that we don't institute a ban on short-term rental because that's actually one of the most important ways that people start to finance these.

It's kind of one leg of the three-legged stool between long-term rental, short-term rental, and family and friends.

So don't get rid of that because it's key to the biggest difficulty is financing.

So, I just wanted to make sure that we're focused on just providing more homes for people, for our neighbors.

Thanks.

Thank you, Matt.

So, Andy, you're going to be next.

You're going to be followed by Mike Heinrichsen and then Jesse Simpson.

Go ahead, Andy.

Thanks, council members.

I'll make it quick.

It's late, frankly.

reaching the end of my attention span, but this is a terrific ordinance.

Thanks.

It's a long time coming.

It's a great start on filling in missing middle housing.

I can't top Phil and James Duggan's family story there.

I also, I'm a renter in District 3 on First Hill.

I have a mom who is in a single family home.

She's in her 70s.

And there's sort of been a race against her mobility issues to figure out a living arrangement where she can be close to family, have her independence.

maintain her ability to get around with potentially bad knees and declining driving skills and an ADU, DADU option would be tremendous for the family.

You've heard this several times tonight.

It's not a new story.

So it's been a long night.

There's lots of folks who still want to talk.

Thank you for your time.

Have a great night.

Hello.

Thank you for allowing me to speak.

And thank you, Councilmember O'Brien, for spearheading this.

I don't agree with you on everything, and I've seen your reputation sullied here this evening.

I want to thank you for spearheading this.

I am a realtor and a day-do owner.

I and my partner live in Maple Leaf.

Thank you, Councilmember Pacheco.

And this proposal is something I strongly support without amendment.

Housing is very complex in Seattle today.

And in response to many of the things that I've heard here this evening, I'm changing what I'm going to speak about.

Because I've seen this from all angles.

We've sold houses to developers.

We've sold houses to individuals who have purchased the home just to build day-dos.

Our first tenant in our day-do bought a home and decided to build a day-do, and then we've sold the house.

It didn't go to a developer, it went to a family with aging parents who they wanted nearby them.

It closed last month.

This is the reality of this.

Individuals making their decisions about their housing, and it's good.

We would like to age in place in our home, and so we've created additional space that we would hope to eventually permit as a third rentable space on our property.

Our intent is not to be absentee landlords that get wealthy at the expense of someone who would maybe want this house.

It is to age in place and to be able to afford and stay in this city.

I thank you for this.

I support this.

Please pass this ordinance.

Thanks, Mike.

Jesse, you're going to be next.

You're going to be followed by Claudia Bach and then Barbara Quinn.

Hi, my name is Jesse Simpson, and I volunteer with the Capitol Hill Renter Initiative and Share the Cities.

I grew up in West Seattle and now rent on Capitol Hill.

All too often, I hear from friends and strangers alike that they can't afford to live in Seattle, that they don't feel like the city is for them anymore.

Seattle is in the midst of a housing affordability crisis, and we need to do everything we can to create more homes in the city.

I support ADU reform for these reasons.

It will produce thousands of desperately needed homes, though obviously it alone is insufficient to address this crisis.

ADUs provide options for more people to live in our residential neighborhoods.

They help seniors age in place.

They help with intergenerational living.

We've heard all these great stories tonight.

And if the financing is done right, they can even open up opportunities for low-income homeowners to remain in their communities by renting out space or even condominiumizing and selling it off.

I urge you to pass this ADU reform as is and maximize the number of homes we can create.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jesse.

Hi, thank you council members for the chance to speak with you tonight and for all your attention to affordable housing in our city.

My name is Claudia Bach and my husband and I have lived in our home in Ballard Crown Hill since 1989, raising our now grown children in a modest 1918 house.

I'm here to share my story and a sense of urgency that you pass this legislation.

As the cost of Seattle housing has skyrocketed, we've looked towards finding a way for our school teacher daughter and her musician husband to stay in Seattle and a way for us to age in place.

Our detached garage is in serious need of repair, and our intention has been that that effort would be joined with the construction of a dadu, with the plan that we would move into the dadu and our children would move into the house.

Our hope is to find a way to keep the house as an intergenerational family asset, downsize appropriately, preserve the character of our neighborhood and lot, integrating a backyard cottage with renovation of the garage, and building in a way that's attentive to an existing very large cherry tree and to our neighbors, being fully respectful of those things.

We've been trying to move forward on this for more than three years now, stymied by the strange restrictions of the current zoning that have made building a small but reasonably sized backyard cottage connected in some way to the garage.

It's been virtually impossible to do so.

The delays in finalizing ADU legislation are particularly challenging for us as we're dealing with a reoccurrence of cancer for my husband.

Each time a decision in this legislation is delayed, we are filled with increased frustration because a critical component in making this construction affordable for us is that we use his experience in construction to control costs.

We are in a race against time since his cancer is now terminal, and I'm sure we are not the only people in our city who face a variety of challenging life situations where delays are more than an inconvenience.

We need your help now.

Please, I urge you to pass common sense reform that will let us move ahead and to provide more abundant and affordable housing in our city.

Thank you.

Barbara?

Barbara, you're going to be followed by Paul Chapman, and then Patrick Taylor, and then Ryan Rosenberg.

Ryan is 28B.

Good evening.

I'm Barbara Quinn.

I'm representing here tonight University Park Community Club.

I am actually a fourth generation Seattleite, but have lived in my own home in the university district for 43 years.

I am speaking.

only on the subject of owner occupancy.

And I'm here to tell you about boots on the ground experiences with developers buying and managing properties in the U District versus a computer model kind of EIS interpretation.

We have experienced developers constantly wanting to buy our homes.

I get offers from real estate people with interested clients.

Sometimes those offers even have an earnest money attached to them when I get them in the mail.

We have also experienced developers coming in, even with straw buyers saying this is a family, and then it turns out it's not a family.

It's been very difficult for us to live with absentee landlord people in general.

We, of course, have the University of Washington as a total source of rental income day and night.

all year round.

So that's maybe more of a problem for us than other neighborhoods in the area.

But they will often come in, chop up houses into small units.

It's very difficult to get the city to enforce their own zoning at this point, leaving us skeptical of the city's ability to do that with developer ownership, people who are going to build and then move away to who knows where.

We've experienced vandalism, late night party noise, trash, and even one incident of a gunshot wound at a party in our neighborhood last year.

These are things that would never occur with owner-occupied somebody living on the property in one of the units, we don't really care which, but somebody who's there, boots on the ground, making sure that the neighborhood still stays livable.

The other thing is that often the developers come in and outbid young families who would be our neighbors in the neighborhood.

Increasingly, too, on a good note, these houses do have accessory dwelling units in the houses.

And it provides a way for these young families to be able to afford housing that they otherwise wouldn't.

So there's a lot of good things about 80 addos and daddos and so on.

But really, really, they've got to be one unit occupied by the owner.

Thank you.

Paul.

Hi.

I'm Paul.

I live in Wallingford.

You're looking into the face of the so-called evil rich developer tech trash.

I'm building an ADU right now so that I can welcome more neighbors into Wallingford at a rent that will likely lose me money.

One day I'd like to build a backyard cottage so that I can move in there or have my children move in there.

I'm all in on this ADU reform.

Unfortunately, while Vancouver spent just four months to expand housing from three units per single family lot to four units, A vocal minority have delayed this much-needed reform by four years.

So thank you to the Council, and thank you especially to Mike O'Brien for surviving, kind of, the Seattle process and driving forward this important legislation.

It's now time to pass this reform.

I encourage Council to reject amendments that make it harder to build ADUs.

Thank you, Mike, for considering amendments that would help educate landlords on requirements.

This will help us new landlords do the right thing.

Please reject Council Member Harrell's parking proposal.

It will prevent housing from being built.

Please reject restrictions on short-term rentals.

These will prevent new housing.

We already have adequate restrictions on short-term rentals.

In addition, I encourage Council to consider now or in the near future additional changes that would make it easier to build ADUs, including reducing permit fees and delays.

It has cost me thousands of dollars to permit my ADU versus what it would have cost me to build a man cave with a wet bar.

Consider removing sewage hookup fees for cottages as it adds thousands of dollars to the cost.

Consider options to ease financing.

Consider removing decks from lot coverage limits.

Let's do this small step in the right direction so we can get on to re-legalizing four floors and corner stores across the city.

Thank you.

Patrick?

Taylor?

Is Patrick here?

I don't see Patrick.

Ryan Rosenberg.

Ryan are you here.

OK.

Moving along.

Let's see.

Karen Tripson.

Chad Miller.

OK.

Chad's coming.

I'll call a few more.

Mark Fultz.

Don.

Don Bunnell.

And then Justin Allegro.

Good evening.

My name is Chad Miller, and I own a home in Madison Valley.

I currently live with my partner in a home in Mott Lake.

I support the resolution as written.

In the early 90s, I moved to Seattle after I was honorably discharged from the Navy, and at the time, I was solidly in the lower end of the economic spectrum of this wealthy city.

I rented on Queen Anne for 12 years in a grandfathered home that had been converted to three apartments that was not owner-occupied.

This type of housing provided me a comfortable home for 12 years, which I used the GI Bill to attend Seattle Central Community College, University of Washington, and worked for a long time to afford my first home.

I searched to find and purchase a home in Madison Valley with an ADU to support my housing costs and also provide the opportunity I had received earlier in life to a diverse group that could enrich my neighborhood and enrich my life.

Over the years, I've rented to artists, students, and many racially diverse people.

A few years ago, I met a wonderful partner and we moved into her home.

And now I'm left with a home that I can only legally half fill.

This leaves me with the option to sell the home as is, remodel it to a more financially attractive mega home for me to sell, or to continue to personally lose money.

All of these options reduce the opportunity to adding more diversity to my city.

75% of Seattle is currently zoned single family.

This is economically unattainable by the diverse people I want to be included as my neighbors.

Once again, please pass the resolution as written, and please continue to include the owner-occupied exception.

We need the full housing impact this legislation will provide.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chad.

Mark?

Hello, council members.

I'm Mark Foltz.

I'm a homeowner and a founding member of Welcoming Wallingford.

I'm speaking in support of the accessory homes legislation that legalizes more homes across the city.

Wallingford is a great neighborhood.

I moved here with my family in 2008, but the cost of a home in my neighborhood is prohibitive because zoning only allows expensive old homes to be torn down and replaced by larger and even more exorbitant ones.

This keeps people without wealth from being able to live here.

Instead, we should be keeping the homes we have and allowing all kinds of new homes in my neighborhood and neighborhoods across the city.

Here's a picture of what my house looks like.

It used to be a duplex.

There's a shed in the back that could easily be replaced with a backyard cottage or maybe a block house.

That would allow another family to live in my neighborhood where only one is allowed down.

I would be willing to rent it at below market rate, especially with incentives or help with permitting and things like that.

I think this would be a really cheap and effective way to generate more affordable housing across the city.

Accessory homes are great because they allow more families to live in high opportunity neighborhoods like Wallingford, near parks, schools, and where they work.

They allow families to live alongside their kids.

We've heard lots of stories about that earlier, or parents.

And those who own their homes can afford to stay in Seattle by generating income from their investment.

As we've seen in Los Angeles and Vancouver, there's a large amount of pent-up demand for accessory homes.

I ask you to pass legislation that allows as many accessory homes as possible to be built so we can all benefit sooner.

Thank you for your time, and especially thank you, Council Member O'Brien and your staff for seeing this legislation through.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mark.

I accidentally skipped over Greg Lotakis.

Is Greg here?

All right.

Then we'll go to Don.

Justin.

All right.

Hang on one second, Justin.

Let me just read a few more names off, since it looks like people are thinning out a little bit.

Joe Vaughn, Sherry Newbold, Danielle Wallace, and Andy Fessel.

Thank you.

My name is Justin Allegro.

I'm from Upper Queen Anne, and I'm here to offer my strong support for this legislation, and thank you for your leadership in moving it forward.

I believe you all know the merits of this legislation as well as I do, so maybe I'll just tell my story.

My father-in-law died in 2011, and he left my wife a trust.

We used it to buy a single-family home near Coe Elementary School for our kids.

And though we make just a little more than area median income between the two of us, we do not have a mortgage.

We bought that straight up.

Doing nothing but resting on that intergenerational privilege, my home is now valued at $1.3 million.

So in no way...

Is every long-term homeowner or renter in this city a similar beneficiary of intergenerational wealth as I am?

But when power and privilege keeps in place status quo political benefits, people like me are the only folks we'll see accessing our housing stock in the future.

I'm a single family homeowner two miles from downtown who would welcome dramatic zoning changes to incentivize more housing supply and create more rental opportunities in my backyard.

I don't care who owns a home.

I care about all my current and future neighbors, including the 50% of my neighbors who rent.

But this is not a dramatic proposal and the least we can do, it's just the least we can do as the current ADU policy is not sufficiently providing housing.

I'm asking that you disincentivize teardowns and remove requirements for owner occupation.

And I really appreciate the hard work over the last four years that you all have done to move this forward.

So thank you.

All right.

Sherry.

Sherry, then Joe, then Andy, then Danielle.

Hello, everyone, and thanks for staying with us this evening and allowing us to speak.

My name's Sherry Newbold, and I'd just like to share three really quick stories this evening.

First, I'm a homeowner in Greenwood, and I have a daddo at my house, and I love it, and I've rented it out long-term to someone for the past over four years.

I would also love to add an ADU to the basement of my home.

We have a small home, but we don't need all of that space.

Secondly, I'm very fortunate that I own a small rental house in West Seattle.

And it's about 700 square feet and is at the back of an 8,000 square foot lot.

And I'd really like to be able to convert that house to a dadu and add a modest house near the front of the lot, possibly with an ADU attached to it if I could afford it, which would double or triple the amount of housing on that particular lot.

Third, I'm a residential architect that has designed over 20 ADUs and DADUs.

And I can tell you from firsthand experience that all of the proposed changes are very much needed to make these more easy for people to build and less expensive.

Many people, including myself, have been waiting this long slog for this legislation to pass so that we can move forward incrementally adding housing to our city.

Just think, I could add two or possibly three units myself.

Please pass this legislation as written and make it as easy as possible for people to add ADUs and DADUs.

Thanks.

Thanks, Sherry.

Joe?

All right, Andy.

Danielle.

Hi.

Good evening.

My name is Andy Fessel.

I'm a homeowner in Queen Anne.

And this issue is difficult, but it's also really important.

And in my particular case, I was happily retired in Napa, California three years ago.

drinking wine, taking wine-making classes at the community college.

My daughter called, she lives here in Seattle, and says, Mom, I think I need you and Dad for this family stuff.

Well, what parent could resist?

So we started looking for homes up here in Seattle and didn't know where the kids were going to live.

They rent on Queen Anne.

Where are they going to live?

Where can we live?

I talked to parents who were commuting for an hour to come into the city.

But then we saw a house with a daddo behind it.

We said, that might work for us.

So we looked for another year.

It took us a year to find a space where we could build a daddo.

It happened to be on Queen Inn on the west side of the hill.

It's a 5,300-square-foot lot.

There's a really old 1,000-square-foot house there that you wouldn't want to live in.

And there's plenty of room for the daddo in the backyard.

So we planned to build a second story.

The kids could live there, raise their family.

we could live in the Datu, and we spent six months with Architect, submitted plans April of 2018 with SDCI, and we're still waiting for approval.

It's been the worst year plus in my life, but that's probably for another hearing.

The issue is that For this datu, we tried to design it with 800 square feet.

You can't live in 800 square feet.

The other 200 square feet would allow us to have a second bedroom.

My daughter could come and visit, friends come to visit, my wife could have a place to do her quilting.

The issue is, I don't want to park a car in the front of my datu.

I want to have flowers and a garden.

On our streets, on the west side of Queen Anne, there's plenty of room for cars.

Actually, the neighbours want more cars.

because Waze sends all kinds of cars and trucks through the neighborhood as a shortcut across the hill.

If we park cars on both sides of the street, traffic will slow down.

You know, let's use our streets for parking.

It works great for us.

The other issue is I sold my car and take the bus.

It works great for me.

If you can't give me space in the house, give me some height like you have in this room.

If I live in a small space, let it be high.

But let me just quickly to some of the concerns about this from those who live on Queen Anne, the big investment is their home.

I understand their concern.

Anything that could decrease that investment could be terrible for them.

I paid $800,000 for the house.

I had to outbid developers.

They couldn't go that high.

They need to make a lot of money from their investment.

So then I spent another $200,000 on architects and engineers.

The DADU and house renovation is going to be another million plus.

This is a $2 million investment.

I know I saw signs that you can do that.

It was for $250,000.

You probably can, but in our neighborhood, if you want to match the house, if you want to counterpoint the neighborhood, you spend a lot of money.

And it's going to be a nice place to live next to.

All of our neighbors are really supportive.

I don't have that kind of money.

I'm going back to college now, Seattle Community College, study programming, so I can go back to work and pay for this place.

But, you know, my son and my daughter-in-law are also going to buy in.

Nurse practitioner works 12-hour shifts on Pill Hill.

Her husband toils in the hallways of one of the major corporations here in the city.

And, you know, they're going to take out a $500,000-plus loan.

If they weren't doing that, they'd be buying a house in Bremerton.

Where is that, Mike?

Is that over there?

You're pointing in the right direction.

It's a long ways away.

You know, they're not Doc Cummings.

Neither am I.

But this gives them a chance to buy into the city and live here.

I tell my daughter, dad who stands for dad in you?

So let's make that come true.

Thank you, Mike.

Thank you, Councilman.

Thank you, Sandy.

All right, folks, you stuck it out.

We're going to start reading off lots of names to make sure we get through as many folks who left.

Danielle.

Whitney.

Whitney Reisel.

I see Whitney's coming.

So, Joseph.

Oh, Ringels.

And then Alicia Ruiz, David Lawson, Summer Hanson.

We are at up to number 36. Whitney, right?

Yeah.

Hi, Whitney.

Hi, Whitney Rierich.

Rierich, thank you.

Hi, I wanted to talk a little bit about the homeowner perspective, but in a slightly different way.

I have a partner, and he is one of those dreaded tech dudes.

We were really fortunate to buy a house in a neighborhood that we really like.

We'd been renting there, and he bought a house last year.

And he would really like to build a daddo in the backyard, but because of regulations and because we've got an apartment in the basement, we can't.

Here's a guy who's finally making some good money being a tech dude.

And he wants to do the right thing.

He wants to be a landlord.

And I think his vision is to, you know, have basically three units in our single family zone.

And then we'd go someplace else and maybe do the same thing.

And then we would be developers, I guess.

I don't know.

And I guess I keep hearing these people demonize developers, although I kind of wonder who built their houses in the first place.

But anyway, we keep hearing about how evil developers are.

Well, let's figure out a pathway to help people do the right thing and build more housing and more modest housing and affordable housing.

For me, this is the way to do it.

So I encourage you to add maximum flexibility here.

Resist the urge to require a parking requirement.

I live in this neighborhood that has lots of apartment buildings springing up on the arterials nearby, and I can still park my car for free on the street.

It really isn't a problem, I reassure you.

And just on that note, too, since I'm wandering, I might as well add that I don't think it's fair that we keep putting renters on the arterials.

I think that we need to allow renters and low-income people to live in single-family zones, well, which would be multifamily zones, I suppose, but live in areas that the rest of us do.

I think renters should be able to walk out and help me garden, maybe play with my dog with me, and not have to live on a big, speedy arterial.

Thank you.

Joseph?

Alicia?

Are you Alicia?

Jump right in there.

If we miss someone, you can just come in after, but I'll just keep reading names off.

Okay.

Good evening.

My name is Alicia Ruiz.

I'm here representing the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish County.

ADUs provide an affordable family-friending housing solution that can be easily built in existing neighborhoods.

They are also a great tool to stop displacement as owners and renters realize financial incentives to stay in their community.

For ADUs to create the greatest positive impact on a community, it is essential that there are no owner occupancy or parking requirements.

As an example, California's recent ADU reform did away with these requirements and it led to a 30-fold increase in ADU permits.

So it's very promising and we thank you Council Member O'Brien for your leadership on this issue.

We support this.

We do have some, we have room for discussion on the FAR requirements, but we will provide those in a letter to council members that is forthcoming.

Thank you.

Thanks, Lisa.

David Lawson.

Summer Hanson.

All right.

Summer, you'll be followed by Cynthia Johnson and Janice Brown.

All right.

Hi.

I'm really excited about this bill, and I think it will encourage more small, affordable, and diverse housing in Seattle.

And it's a great way to make effective use of the space that we have here in the city.

I think the proposed amendments are a great start to make it easier for young people like me to to afford living in Seattle's beautiful neighborhoods, and I urge you to consider the addition of allowing tiny houses on wheels in backyards as well.

My name is Summer Hanson, and I'm a small business owner.

I have a community-focused shop in Ballard, which encourages sustainable living, and I live in Fremont with my boyfriend, Michael, who works in construction to help our city grow.

I'm very passionate about sustainable living and let's see.

I love living in a dense city because it allows me to use public transportation.

But right now, my income doesn't cover my cost of living, and I feel like I'm throwing money down the drain by renting, not to mention our rent is increasing substantially each year.

I want to be financially stable and able to invest in my own home like the generation before me.

I want to be able to comfortably commute to my place of work.

We heard about this public hearing today because the two of us spent the afternoon at the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections trying to figure out how to make our dream come true.

We want to build a tiny house on wheels as a creative project and an investment in a more stable future.

We can't afford to buy a house because of the land prices in Seattle, and this would be an option for us to own a home without necessarily owning land.

It also would be a really great way to offer an easy and quick way to make income for homeowners who won't necessarily have the energy that we have to build an extra home.

So I urge you to consider this, and thank you so much for all of your hard work.

Thank you so much for coming out.

Cynthia or Janice?

Hi.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you.

It's great that we have these new ADUs and DADUs and we're increasing some density and allowing flexibility.

I do have some reservations, though, about not having the landowner responsible, the homeowner being involved.

I lived in the U District in the 70s, and we all know what it was like.

It was like raging parties and fights on the street, as the woman said before, and I think Unless you have boots on the ground, you're going to lose that.

And I think that it's fine to have ADUs and DADUs increase the density and the flexibility, but we have to change that.

The last thing I'd like to say is, since we're going to allow the McMansions to keep going for another six months, I think this issue should wait.

until there's a little bit more input.

Seattle City, the Seattle Times did say that we should wait until the lame duck city council is out.

So I think we're maybe going too fast and I think there should be some amendments to this proposal.

Thank you.

Janice?

Janice, you're going to be followed by Let me read off some more names here.

We're up to 37, 38. Michael Camp, Ilse Olsen, Francis Costigan, Charles Costigan, Shane Nesbitt, and Pat Bell.

It's a busy night.

I'm Janice Brown, and I am a condo owner.

I live in Leschi.

I've lived there for 16 years.

I'm a Northwest native.

Grew up.

I've also lived in Southern California.

And some of the things that I'd like to touch on I have to do with more of a macro view.

When I first moved back here 25 years ago to take care of an ill mother, the Growth Management Act had just been incorporated into our area.

And that was to contain the growth in the suburban sprawl.

What's happened with that now is that all of the people that moved, I sold big condo developments for many, many years.

I'm a real estate broker.

And now we have people that have moved to the suburbs who want to come back into our city.

That's exciting.

The kids are grown, they're off to college, let's go have fun in the city.

And our sister city across the lake doesn't have much of a nightlife.

So there's an enticement with as good as we've gotten as a city.

And I was here when the last of the people turn out the lights and it was not a fun time.

And change happens constantly.

Nothing ever stays the same.

And when people complain to me about change and growth, I say, compare it to Detroit, and nothing is flatlined.

You will either go up or down, and I think you'd much rather be on an upward trend.

For the ADU, I highly recommend it.

The people that are worried about developers coming in, I promise you, there's not enough money to collect enough little ADU spots to make any, there are no REITs that are gonna come in and invest in this kind of thing.

It's going to be great for people that want to have someone to age in place.

We have two-story houses where people have mobility issues.

It's a perfect built way to put a relative on a one-level place to age in place because no one wants to go into assisted living.

Thank you.

Thanks, Janice.

Michael?

Ilsa?

Francis.

Hi, Francis.

Followed by Charles, Shane, Pat Bell, Alex Preston, Bonnie Williams, and Richard Ellison.

If any of you are here, get ready.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity to talk, and thank you, council members, for everything you've done thus far to encourage affordable housing in our city.

I want to talk from personal experience, very recent.

At ages 34 and 37, my partner and I are far from able to afford to buy a house in Seattle.

But just about a week ago, we moved into a backyard cottage in Victory Heights, and it has been life-changing, which is not something I say lightly.

We moved from an older, not-inexpensive studio apartment in the heart of Capitol Hill, seeking a quieter, healthier lifestyle, hoping to also save some money.

We are now paying less for rent for a much higher quality of life living in a much more energy efficient space built from largely repurposed materials where we can grow a garden, safely bike and walk to stores and recreation and catch transit to work just a block away.

While the square footage is small, the high ceilings and windows make our cottage seem spacious and allows for a loft for storage space, living in a smaller, peaceful space means we accumulate less and allows us to live simply and spend our money, time, and energy in other, more meaningful ways, such as attending city council hearings.

And we didn't have to move outside of Seattle, which we were afraid of.

I know there are many people my age who do not have the option to buy in Seattle, are facing skyrocketing rents and less than desirable living situations, and would embrace the opportunity to live in an ADU or a dadu rather than move outside of the city.

ADUs and dadus are one way to induce mixed income neighborhoods and increase density and equity.

And more housing or transit and more small housing options are critical during dual housing and climate emergencies.

So I fully support the proposed amendments to remove barriers to ADU and DADU construction and allow more people to stay in Seattle, contributing to its diversity, vibrancy, and resiliency.

Thank you.

Thank you, Frances.

Charles, Alex, Pat.

How far did I get?

Bonnie.

Hello, my name is Alex Preston.

I'm a renter and a service industry worker in North Seattle, and I'm here today in support of environmentally responsible land use policy that will promote mixed income neighborhoods in all corners of our city.

The legislation being discussed today will bring the city closer to meeting its housing and sustainability goals as we face parallel affordability and climate emergencies.

We know that keeping so much land zoned strictly for detached single-family lots only is very costly from a carbon footprint standpoint and it is also exclusionary by nature.

The city's planning commission has reported that More flexible zoning that accommodates a variety of living situations is a critical point for keeping folks in place in their communities, as well as it is necessary to help mitigate the enduring impacts of historical racist land use policy decisions.

Removing barriers to residential infill strategies will allow more people to live closer to jobs, cultural amenities, and small businesses.

and it will improve the city's walkability.

And in particular, eliminating requirements for vehicle parking will shift priority away from vehicle storage and toward livable, well-connected communities.

And so, as someone who would like to call Seattle home for many years to come, and someone who would like more neighbors with a variety of backgrounds, I hope that the council will adopt the ADU reform as proposed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Richard.

Oh, Bonnie.

Hi, Bonnie.

Thanks for your endurance tonight.

It's kind of a long one.

Anyway, I am not supporting the legislation.

I do support the current code.

I think it's been crafted very carefully.

I know that there are some barriers that people would like those barriers to go away.

Parking is probably one of them.

But I want to bring up the FEIS because in the FEIS the parking Study as I understand it was only done five miles away from the core of downtown Seattle So that I don't think all neighborhoods are the same and I think that anything close to the core is going to be more overwhelmed with additional parking waivers or or the requirement eliminated.

So I think that people need to understand that, you know, five miles from the core can impact neighborhoods quite a bit.

We in Wallingford have a lot of overflow from the UW and RPZs do handle some of it, but not all of it.

And as we continue with MHA, Apartment buildings, they're allowing no parking.

We get more and more.

We get light rail.

But still, where is it going to end?

And we have to have some kind of plan, other than it's all going to work out fine.

So I also have seen some cute backyard cottages, I mean, well-designed.

And to me, a cottage at 800 square feet is a cottage.

When you start doing two-story, 1,000 square feet, I'm sorry, to me that's not, you know, bring the mother-in-law in or a child or whatever.

They're a real advantage to families, I get that.

The affordability aspect is highly exaggerated and it's not that you can't get into a neighborhood like Wallingford because there are duplexes and small apart buildings all over the place.

I'm surrounded by them.

I think that you need to remember that neighborhoods with MHA on March 18th opened up 69,000 additional capacity.

In Wallingford, 700 single-family homes were eliminated.

They were converted to low-rise.

Why can't, I'm not, as I understand your legislation, it's citywide.

I don't think all single-family homeowners want to be landlords, want to pay higher taxes for that increased capacity, or have the 2,500 square foot restriction, which also restricts a remodel of a home, of an older home.

So those are things that I really object to.

I think the code should be kept as it is without, you know, if there's a way to put cottages experimentally maybe into the urban villages with all this increased capacity, the single family zones went away, their RSL, their low rise, 12 people to a lot, to me, that's multifamily and that's where it belongs.

Thank you.

Okay, thanks.

Let's see, Richard.

Did I go beyond that?

Shane.

What's that?

Oh, I skipped over you, Shane.

I'm sorry.

And then Angela, I see we called you about an hour ago, but you can get in after Shane.

So after Shane, let's see.

So we'll skip over Richard Ellison.

Joy Brothers.

Joelle Brothers maybe, Jay Lazanier, Brittany Bollet, David Mooring, and John Tho.

Shane.

Hi.

I just want to thank you for having this today.

I'm just here to say I'm in support of the DADU legislation.

I've been trying for three years to build one on my garage.

The garage interior square footage accounting for the overall dadu square footage stymied me.

In that time construction costs have gone up significantly.

I'm fine though doing the due diligence I've done here.

I do want to say that there's a lot of dadus in my neighborhood and those people are some of my favorite people in the neighborhood so that's all.

Thank you.

Thanks for sticking around Shane.

Hello, I'm Richard Ellison.

I've spoken about trees before and I'll speak about trees again.

Can Seattle grow denser and still save its tree canopy?

Why should we save the tree canopy?

That's a good question.

Well, it's going to be hotter tomorrow than it is today.

It's nice and cool in here, but it's, according to NOAA, it's 85 degrees outside right now.

So how hot is it going to be tomorrow?

Well, they say 86 or some say 90. In April of 2019, we set a new record of nine days of rain in a row, exceeding eight days of rain in a row another year.

Last year, we set record heat of 86 degrees in May.

Excuse me, this year we set a record temperatures in May of 86 degrees one day and 83 degrees in May.

This is the hottest it's ever been.

How hot is it going to be this year?

The record heat is expected to be again set tomorrow.

So do we need trees?

Well, you know, they provide shade, they provide habitat, they provide things to protect us from the urban heat island effect if it can happen.

King 5 News says that in 2018, we had 11 days above 90 degrees.

That was a new record.

It was only 12 days, excuse me, it was 12 days was the record in 2015. We didn't quite break that last year, 11 days over 90. The hottest day in Seattle was 103 in July of 2009. Again, are trees important?

Are big trees important?

Yes, they are.

Why are they?

Well, the Washington Department of Health says that hospitalization for heat-related illnesses in Washington is about 25 to 113 per year, with 50% of the people 65 years of age or older.

Quote, extreme heat events, heat waves, are predicted to happen more often and last longer due to climate change.

You are a person trying to deal with climate change effects, right?

Okay.

At the recent urban forestry symposium in Seattle, your time is up, so you just wrap up, Richard.

A Seattle Parks representative, Michael Yardrick, said that the urban heat island effect makes it 17 degrees hotter.

in Seattle than the rural areas.

So we're saving saddles for protecting the trees out in the rural areas.

So we're going to burn ourselves up here, have increased mortality here.

Thank you.

There's a lot more to be said on this issue, and I really urge you to read about it.

If you want to put comments in the box, you can do that too.

I put my slip in there first.

Angela.

Hi, good evening.

Thank you all for still being here tonight.

I know it's been a very long night.

I got here at like 4.20 today, so I'd been here for a while also, so thank you for letting me speak again.

I am very supportive of the proposed ADU legislation and would really encourage you guys to pass this legislation.

I grew up in Seattle, and I've seen the way that Seattle's been changing, and I think that this talks for the entire region.

And I think that one thing that's been noted tonight and I think like needs to be emphasized is that for every home that we're not building in Seattle, we have to build somewhere else and that creates sprawl.

We need to be building up our cities and making an urban livable area so that way we can preserve our green space and our farmlands.

In my lifetime, Issaquah has basically disappeared from the forest land that it was when I was a child.

And if we had built up Seattle thoughtfully, and if we had really thought about the way we were building our entire region and community, that is forest land that we could have saved today that we could all still be enjoying.

Instead, there's multi-million dollar homes over on that land where there used to be forest land as long ago as five years ago, if not sooner.

In addition to just the environmental impacts that this legislation will make, I also support it on a livability standard.

I am a first-generation college student or an actually first-generation high school graduate.

Neither of my parents graduated high school.

And I'm really worried about their future.

My dad is currently housing unstable in Spokane.

My mom and my stepdad pay more than half of their income on rent in South Tacoma.

And I don't know where they're going to be in 20 years, in 30 years.

And I would really love if someday I could be a homeowner where I could have a backyard cottage or a mother-in-law apartment where my parents could live, so that way they don't have to be homeless on the streets like so many of my most vulnerable neighbors that I know.

So please pass this legislation.

Thank you.

Thanks, Angela.

So, Brittany, you'll be next.

Let me call off some more names, just doubling back.

Josh Brothers, Jay Lez.

Lassender, Ron Chambers, John Thoe, David Mormering, Erica Bush, Nancy Ritzenthal.

You can come up in any order after Brittany goes.

Go ahead, Brittany.

Hi, thank you.

My name is Brittany Bollet.

I am the chair of the Sierra Club Seattle Group, and I am also here to talk about climate change.

We have long been supportive of ADUs.

We're really excited to see this legislation moving forward.

ADUs are an important tool to combat our interlinked climate and housing crises.

From 2011 to 2018, Seattle rents rose 59% and home values by 85%.

This has pushed more and more residents out to the suburbs, where most must drive to reach jobs, friends, and cultural amenities.

Also, as Angela mentioned, development pressure in the suburbs also damages or eliminates vulnerable wetlands, forests, and agricultural land.

In a time of climate crisis, refusing to act on these issues in any way we can is a dereliction of duty.

Increasing people's freedom to create ADUs lets us make space in our city for more neighbors.

This makes it easier for people to choose to walk, bike, or ride the bus.

It lets us address our need for more homes with small, energy-efficient buildings.

And it lets families stay together and seniors age in place.

It helps us to continue our mission of creating a city that is accessible and sustainable for everyone, and I'm really excited to see it happen.

Thank you.

Thanks, Brittany.

Good evening.

My name is Josh Brothers and I'm fortunate enough to be a 20 year plus resident here in Seattle.

I own a home and live in the Portage Bay neighborhood.

I really do love living here and want this to remain my home.

Unfortunately, I'm concerned that the FAR limits are really going to prevent me from keeping this as my home.

I'm fortunate enough to live in a relatively modest home.

It's about 100 years old.

with my wife and my two children.

When we moved into the home, our hope was that we'd be able to do construction because of the way the home was set up to accommodate us and our growing family.

However, the .5 FAR limit is going to prevent us from making that expansion on our home to make it a space that we want to live in.

We're not looking to create a McMansion to create a massive house.

We're looking to expand and remodel to create a space that accommodates my family and the growing nature of that.

And I really don't wanna leave Seattle.

I don't wanna live in the suburbs, but these limits are really, I think, gonna force me to do this.

So I'd urge the council to truly think about those limits, that FAR limit, and think about either increasing that limit or eliminating it completely to allow families like me to remain in Seattle.

Thank you.

Thanks, Josh.

Hi, my name is Erica Bush.

I'm here to support the ADU regulation on behalf of the AIA Committee on Homelessness.

I'm also a homeowner in Delridge, and I'm originally from New York City.

And I live on the most diverse block I've lived on my entire life.

I have neighbors from all over the world.

They're amazing.

They're all renters for the most part.

And I moved to Seattle because I think it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.

And I moved here because I was able to have a garden, and I was able to have green space, and I was able to sort of celebrate the outdoors in a way that I couldn't do on the East Coast.

And I want to be able to allow other people to come to this city and do the same in an affordable and diverse way.

And I think that this would allow that to happen.

And so I greatly support what you guys are trying to do.

I really thank you for your effort.

And I think that it will continue to make this city a place for people like me that came here to find other people that love greenery.

Thank you.

Thank you, Erica.

Hello, thank you Honorable Counsel for listening to us today.

My name is David Maring, an architect of Magnolia.

No one objects to accessory dwelling units, especially those often described as quaint backyard cottages or granny flats tucked away in a daylight basement.

No one objects to homeowners with rental revenues, especially if that means rental income will avoid those folks from being displaced.

So, what is there to be concerned about?

Well, in the decades to follow, the City Council would not be around to explain the City's increased urban temperatures as a result of losing Seattle's tree canopy.

The appeal on the ADU dismissed any concerns relative to the tree canopy, saying it doesn't matter.

Yet Seattle is the 10th worst in the nation relative to urban heat island effect.

The Seattle LiDAR maps prove that increased surface temperature results from areas with fewer trees.

Why is it a matter here?

Well, two-thirds of Seattle's trees are on single-family properties where these daddos and additional accessory dwelling units will be built.

Two-thirds.

So as we take down the trees, what happens to Seattle's tree canopy?

The current stats for development today on single-family lots show that the tree canopy is losing an average of 25%.

Currently, single-family is like 32%, They're showing right now that lots that are developed are all the way down to about 24%.

What does that tell you?

We have a problem on our hands that we just can't glance over and say, hey, we're providing additional housing.

We also have to accommodate the trees.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, David.

I'm going to read off the last three names that have signed up, and then anyone can come up in order.

So go ahead and step up to the mic.

Nicholas.

Kiliom, Michael Maddox, and Calvin Jones.

Hi, I'm Nancy Ritzenthaler, and I'm a Seattle native.

We live in West Seattle and also have a rental house in West Seattle that we have had in the family for about 25 years.

First of all, thanks so much for all the work that you've done on this.

This is just excellent, really good community work.

We need density for social justice, for housing, for transit.

And I've been interested in today just to hearing the different arguments for why that isn't a good thing.

What I've heard is kind of bad developers.

I've heard renters are bad people.

we're going to lose all the trees.

And I just don't believe that that's actually correct.

I really don't think those are going to come to pass.

First of all, it is very expensive to build an ADU.

We have a tiny little We have a detached garage and a 1,400-square-foot house on an 11,000-square-foot lot that's 7,500 minimum, so we can't subdivide it.

So we're going to do an ADU in the detached garage.

It's going to be expensive.

It's not something that is, you know, going to be something that a developer would go and do that.

They would actually, in fact, either side of us are kind of huge houses on these big lots.

And that kind of huge house that spans the whole rent, that's what's going to hurt the tree canopy, not us taking a little detached garage and building on top of it.

We're not even going to take down any trees to do this.

It's really, I think it's just not, tree canopy shouldn't be that much of an issue.

Bad developers, I don't know.

Are we a bad developer because we have a rental house and we rent it out and we live somewhere else?

We live in the same neighborhood.

Our renters are great.

They're really good neighbors to our other neighbors.

That's just not the case.

Short-term rentals, I actually, I think I've mentioned this before in emails, I think that there is a possibility that we could take that detached garage and short-term rental it, and that is a possibility.

We'll have to be really careful.

You might not get quite as many long-term rentals as you expect from this legislation, but I still think I support it as stands.

The one amendment I would make would be what we'd like to do is we'd like to make it high enough so we can actually see a view over our little single story 1,400 square foot rambler.

So we have a second story.

Right now the height limitations for a 50 foot square foot wide lot are equal or greater than the given heights.

So if we can change that just to kind of actually I think it's Well, basically there's an equal or greater than and we would like suggest that you remove the greater than put equal there.

Does that make sense?

So anyway, so that we have a little bit more height availability on that 50 foot wide lot.

And also streamlining permitting that'll really help That'll really help people not have to spend so much money to do these.

I just don't think we're going to have developers coming in and buying up properties and doing this.

I just think that's just not going to happen.

It's expensive to build these things.

These are things for people to have their grandparents in and their kids.

Thank you, Nancy.

Thanks.

Hi.

My name is Nicholas.

I've been following the evolution of this effort for a while now, and it's been very interesting.

Thank you for all the work you've put in, and I'm grateful for that.

I lived in Seattle for seven years, and I'm now living in Magnolia, where I have an 8,000-square-foot lot.

And I'm lucky enough to be one of the tech dudes around here.

And so I could afford a house here.

And when I looked for a house, it was hard to find a house that actually fitted my need, which was not a big house.

I didn't care for a big house.

I wanted a smaller house.

And just me and my girlfriend, I don't need to have a large house.

And so I looked for a small house, and it wasn't that easy.

And so I ended up buying a house that's about 2,000 square feet, which is more than what I need.

on the 8,000 square foot lot with the hope that one day I will be able to build an ADU that will be more in line with what I want to build and what I want to live in.

And so with the new rule, I would be able to build a 1,000 square foot ADU, which allows me to have a small second bedroom so I can have guests over and have a normal family life.

And that would be great.

And I could rent a bigger house for a family that actually needs the bigger space.

So I think this is great.

One thing, and I'm not going to repeat everything, because today it's obvious that most people are in favor of that rule.

But one thing that I think is interesting is the tree canopy thing.

I love trees, and I want trees to remain.

Nobody is talking about green roofs.

The green roofs could help significantly lower the effect of the heat island that the city has.

Today, I'm designing an ADU with an architect that has a green roof, and it's expensive, and it has a cost, and it hopefully will look good.

And so I would like to see more in the long term, not part of that rule, but in the longer term, more incentives for people to build green roofs, maybe lower fees for permitting or something like that, that helps people finance these green roofs because they are expensive to build.

And I think they will be greatly valuable for the city.

Thank you.

Thanks, Nicolas.

My name is John Thoe, and I've lived in the same neighborhood for 31 years in Victory Heights.

And I have a double lot.

I'm a homeowner.

and I've planted 12 trees.

And two blocks from my house, about two weeks ago, a developer came into a forested lot and ripped out every tree in the entire lot, not five feet from the border, but the entire lot all the way to the, to the property line and he dug down two to three feet at that line and made a beautiful straight line sculpture right along everybody's property line and he took out trees that were nested among all these other conifer trees and so it's true we in the residence have a blessing that our trees are filtering our air and cooling our city.

And the neighbors that I know from 30 years are furious at this developer.

And he took out one tree that had almost 150 rings.

And he did that in the center of where these two big mansions are gonna be put.

And he could have avoided it, but he ripped it out and he had the stump removed as fast as they could.

Within three days, these trees were taken away.

And the poor couple who border this to the north are now, their entire lot is now gone from a shade, part shade environment to a full sun.

And so how is that vegetation going to make it?

Tree roots have been ripped up on all three borders.

I mean, we're furious.

My time is up.

I appreciate the work that you people have done.

You've got a heavy load and we're no longer living in ward and in the cleavers.

I mean, we've got to think of new solutions, and I appreciate what you've done.

Thanks, John.

So, thanks.

Hello, I'm Ron Chambers, and owner occupied.

The book, Walkable Cities, he talks about backyard cottages.

And he's got five points of why he loves them.

And one of the points is, if anything goes wrong, I'll take four minutes, five, that's fine, seven, great.

He says, if anything goes wrong, the owner's there.

You handle it then.

And I gotta say, I really like that idea.

Let's keep that in there.

and not just for one year, but keep it in there.

Thank you.

Thanks, Ron.

I see Michael Maddox here.

Come on forward.

Calvin Jones.

Anyone else who I've somehow skipped over your name or you didn't sign up, come on up behind Michael.

Welcome, sir.

Good evening, Councilmembers, and thank you for staying here this evening.

My name is Michael Maddox.

I am a resident of the Eastlake neighborhood where I live with my 16-year-old son.

I'm a fifth-generation Washingtonian born at Group Health on Capitol Hill.

How Seattle is that?

Just as my son was.

We live, as renters, in a 50-plus unit apartment building with no owner occupancy, and we don't have gunshots, we don't have noisy parties.

We actually have a really great community of folks who care about each other, and we walk to the bus stop, we walk to the great restaurants and community amenities that we have.

And one of the things that we don't get to walk to as much is parks, because one of the things that we do see in the city of Seattle is that parks, the best parks in our city, like Magnuson Park, Oh bugger, and I'm losing it right now over by Fort Lauderdale.

Discovery, car key.

Thank you, Discovery Park.

And Lincoln Park.

We see these amazing jewels that we have, that we have done extraordinarily amazing investment in this city for decades, are typically surrounded by detached single-family homes.

disallowing opportunity for families like mine who cannot afford to purchase or even rent.

We hear often that 20% of those detached single-family homes are rental units.

We can't even rent them because the cost is too high, disallowing us the opportunity for those great gems throughout our city.

This is a public health issue.

As was mentioned earlier by Whitney Rierich, we see so much of our density focused on arterial roadways, meaning that we are breathing in the air of cars, we are breathing in the air of of all of the congestion throughout the city of Seattle, an Eastlake neighborhood which was rezoned from single-family to LR1 to LR3 25 years ago and still has a significant amount of detached single-family houses.

We're right underneath I-5, so we're breathing that in.

This is a public health aspect as well as an access to parks and opportunity.

issue.

And with respect to the developer comments that we've heard a lot of tonight, I think that we, as was noted, the housing throughout the city was all built by developers.

Developers build housing, that's what happens.

But the evil developers that we often hear about are building the high-rises and mid-rises throughout the city of Seattle.

When we're looking at what can be done in our detached single-family areas with low-density housing opportunities for family-sized units, we're looking at places, developers like SquarePay Construction and Weld, which hires folks who are exiting incarceration, leading to a significantly decreased recidivism rate as a result.

This is the good type of developers that I believe we want to support as a community.

I know that many of you have supported this for years.

It's been on the docket since I and Abel first ran back in 2015. It's very important.

Please get this legislation done so we can move forward with greater housing diversity in our city.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Calvin Jones, and I'm a renter in District 3 and an organizer for Tech4Housing.

I'd like to start by addressing some of the anti-renter rhetoric that we've heard tonight.

It's been a little frustrating.

Don't worry about it.

I've got some of them verbal.

So just a couple of things.

Renters don't need homeowner babysitters and should be legally allowed to live anywhere homeowners are allowed to live.

Rezones that allow renters to move into your neighborhood do not constitute property theft.

And renters, when they move into a neighborhood, don't damage the neighborhood character.

They only add to it.

I was walking the other night around my neighborhood, and I stumbled across three new mansions that were built at the corner of 29th and Denny.

I later looked them up on Zillow, and they were 4,000 square feet and selling for over $2 million a pop, and not a single tree on any of the three lots.

I think in the midst of a housing crisis, we have laws that virtually guarantee this ultra-luxury, mansion-sized housing in 69% of our residential land, and that, to me, is unconscionable.

I like to dream of a world where this legislation had already passed, and instead of three luxury mansions, we would see three more modest single-family homes and six more accessory dwelling units.

So that's six families that can live low-carbon lifestyles riding the number eight and the number two buses that are right nearby.

more families that get to all enjoy the absolutely beautiful tree canopy in the Washington Park Arboretum, six more families that can patronize the Strip on Madison Valley, and six more families that we get to welcome into our wonderful city.

So thank you so much for your work on this Council Member O'Brien.

I encourage the passage of this legislation in the strongest possible form, including the ability to build two ADUs without the owner requirement.

And let's go even further.

Let's legalize more types of housing in our exclusive single family zones and raise more progressive revenue for affordable housing in our city.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Carl.

I've lived in Seattle for two years now.

I'm from North Carolina.

I recently went home to see my parents.

And the first day I was back, my mom was complaining about my neighbor, who was power washing his house from, I think, noon till 9 PM.

So if that's what neighborhood character is.

Someone let me know, because I've been a renter my whole life.

I started thinking about the lifestyle that they lived when I was being raised.

My dad drives half an hour, maybe 45 minutes to work each way.

My mom works maybe 15 minutes away.

And living here, and when they visit me, they absolutely love Seattle.

And it's a point of pride for me.

It's like, yeah, I really love Seattle too.

So I started thinking about, how could they live in Seattle?

North Raleigh, North Carolina, if anyone even knows where Raleigh, North Carolina is.

The idea of them being able to buy a house in Seattle is, you know, we don't even talk about it.

But the idea for me to be able to have a place and for them to maybe live in the backyard and be able to, you know, not too close, but, you know, close enough that, you know, we can see them every now and then.

They can see the grandkids and, you know, we'll have separate kitchens and separate, you know, bedrooms.

I think that, you know, it would be a really great thing for us to have.

So thank you so much for having this legislation to kind of give us and put us in a position where more people are going to be able to be in these situations where they can support their family or they can support people who want this to live in these ADUs.

So thank you.

Thanks, Carl.

Is there anyone else who would like to testify today?

I think just about everyone out there I've seen has testified.

All right.

Seeing none, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing.

I want to thank you all.

That was three and a half hours, just about.

So, quite an endurance race.

I know some folks were here an hour or so before we even started to get signed up.

So, really value the comments across the spectrum, and I really appreciate the respect you all showed for each other today.

So, thanks for being here.

Really quick timing update.

We are going to be back in my committee a week from today, so on June 18th at 2 p.m.

At that point we will, myself and my colleagues, will take up this legislation, consider amendments.

We talked about some of the amendments a little bit today that myself and other colleagues are considering to the base legislation.

It's possible that other amendments will come forward.

My goal would be to pass something out of committee.

We're going to be putting out additional land use notice requirements on Monday.

The soonest we could vote on legislation would be the two weeks from yesterday, no, three weeks from yesterday, two weeks from next Monday, so July 1st.

Obviously, if things come up that we need to do more work on or other amendments come up and it gets more complicated, that would slow it down.

My goal is to have this done by July 1st or really close after that.

So in whatever form we can get it through the council.

Thanks again for all your work.

Thank you for sticking out the whole way.

You made it.

Thank you for staffing us all the way till the end.

And with that, we'll be adjourned.

Good night.

Bye!