Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels wants to give more tax breaks to developers to encourage them to build moderately priced housing. But there are better ways to make housing affordable.
The mayor’s plan would expand tax breaks for developers who build homes for people who earn middle-income wages. That’s a well-intentioned step to meet a legitimate need.
Instead the city would be better off encouraging significantly larger buildings, especially along transit corridors. Why not allow 25-story condos in places where there’s good infrastructure and they don’t overwhelm neighbors? How about along I-5 near the UW, on major corners of Capitol Hill and next to the light rail station in the Rainier Valley? On this issue, even Federal Way is ahead of Seattle.
Other critical steps are improving in-city transit to serve those buildings and then making neighbohoods more walkable. Expand the streetcar and bus system (and replace the Viaduct with busways) so people can more easily survive without a car. If a middle-class family of four could survive with one car or no car, suddenly Seattle would be a lot more affordable.
It won’t be easy to build support for these changes, even though more housing supply would lower prices for middle-income and poorer residents. The city would need to guarantee good design, which hasn’t been the case with cookie-cutter townhomes overtaking some neighborhoods.
What’s clear is that cutting property taxes starves the city of resources to provide services like parks, police and transit. Even so it’s far from clear that extra tax credits would be enough to lure more development.
Comments
4 responses to “Solving Seattle’s housing crunch”
You really think the city can “guarantee good design”? Isn’t that a subjective preference? I’d bet those townhouses get built because they sell well because people like them.
Road subsidies are a big factor in encouraging people to live far from work, boosting prices in every neighborhood and causing traffic at the same time. Lets target a $10 toll (each way) on the bridges by 2010.
I agree with the logic on point two. Our incentives are all out of whack. But you can’t complain about high housing prices and then not increase the supply.
Of course “good design” is subjective. We’re going to have to find a way to do better if more people are going to fit in a finite space. It shouldn’t be a losing tradeoff. But that’s fodder for another post…
Speaking of walkability, check out this nifty site?
http://www.walkscore.com
It rates walkability using Google maps API. Pretty cool
Our new place’s score is 59. Not bad for a SFH. Let me know what’s the score of your current Eastlake retreat. Would be fun to compare with your former digs in NYC…
Now that,(at least on Greenwood Ave.N and surrounding area’s, we have four units going up with one garage, where previously there had been one, I would like to know where all the property tax $$ is going!
The number of town homes are not only crowding our neighborhoods with three times the amount of vechicles, but I have yet to see a affordable, sensible rapid transit proposal. Perhaps that is where the money should be allocated! Jay