About 6 years ago I found myself with both frustration with local political process around land use and housing and some time. In the first case, I was involved in a regulatory reform effort being pushed by then Seattle Mayor Michael McGinn. I sat in many meetings trying to figure out how to approach the problem and coming up with candidates in the huge overgrowth of land use regulation for revision or elimination. I had time because I was unemployed. These two things led me and allowed me to read the entire land use code from beginning to end and to blog about it on a daily basis at https://seattleslandusecode.wordpress.com.

I did this sort of stunt to draw attention to the size and complexity of the code and in hopes that while joining along with me, readers might find agreement around the idea that less is more; maybe we should use the eraser end of our pencil sometimes when writing code. My wonky stunt ended up getting a fair amount of attention since there were no blogs on land use.

The regulatory reform effort did yield some reforms, reducing environmental review and parking requirements. A very simple and sensible reform allowing ground floor retail in low-rise zones, a zone that permitted a mix of five-story apartments and townhomes, was scuttled by Councilmember Mike O’Brien, and set off, in my view, a chain of neighborhood organizing against good housing policy that we’re still living with today.

At the end of all my reading and writing I felt compelled to write a high level summary that I posted in a series of five posts in August of 2012. When I reread the posts recently, I decided to post them again partially because I feel like the current conversation has become with policies that don’t benefit people with less money, but instead shift capital out of the market into an inefficient and expensive system of non-profit housing development that simply makes things worse.

From the piece on land use over form:

Government, through code, can set limits that are more restrictive than the other two. It can, for example, limit the number of housing units that can be built on a parcel of land to 50 when an analysis of the market shows that 100 units on the site would be financially viable and 150 technically feasible. Government ought to carefully assess the outer limits of each of these limitations on land use, and introduce no regulation that would be more restrictive than the other two, especially in areas with a high supply of public transit.

On the moral dimension of cities:

If we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, it’s awfully hard to do if we have no neighbors. Living in a city means having lots of neighbors and encountering Otherness every day. How we deal with Otherness, our neighbors, shapes how we deal with issues of public spending, priorities for policy, and how we organize our society. Our tendency can often be to push each other and unpleasant things away. Cities make that harder to do, turning the problems of other people into our problems. Other people are hell when they make noise, smell bad, talk to themselves, take your parking spot, or wait in ridiculously long lines for the latest food fad. However, we humans can make the best of our short lives when we try to learn from and love one another; and what better way to do that than have lots of people close together?

In the final post, I discussed the idea of zero-based zoning, which I’d proposed in the Seattle Land Use Code blog:

How would zero based zoning work? Imagine a bunch of lots with common ownership in an area that is underdeveloped, maybe even industrial. The owner wants to develop the property and would have to seek upzones of the kind that we typically see in Seattle. Or she could try the zero based approach. She opts for the zero approach and here’s what would happen: 1. The developer would consult with the Department of Planning and Development and indicate her interest in the program; 2. An initial consult would happen with DPD planners, funders of the project, the developer, and a cross-disciplinary-departmental team to review the site and its potential for development; 3. After City staff and the developers team kick around ideas, an initial set of options are drawn up considering financial needs and potential regulatory road blocks; 4. Three site plan proposals are vetted for issues with the building code, land use code, environmental requirements, and all existing regulations; 5. The same three proposals are screened through at least three focus groups facilitated by the Department of Neighborhoods. The participants are chosen randomly but fit a set of important demographic indicators; 6. Based on steps 3 and 4, the proposals are revised, prioritized and forwarded to three public hearings; 7. One proposal is chosen by the Planning and Development Commission, legislation is drafted and forwarded to the City Council for approval. The Council can vote to approve or disapprove the plan, but they can’t amend it; 8. The legislation, if approved, takes effect in 90 days and construction can begin. Two important notes. All of this process should happen in about 6 months. Tall order, I know. But it has to happen fast on the front end to make it worthwhile. Maybe it would take longer, but the goal would be to turn these proposals around very fast. Slippage could happen but time would have to be of the essence. To developers time is truly money, and the process would have to be kept to a predictable length in order to get their involvement.

You can read the series from beginning to end at Seattle For Growth. As a writer, I was pleased that I had no real quarrel with anything I wrote in 2012 on this topic. But we ought to concentrate on what will actually make housing more affordable: expanding overall housing supply, and focusing government assistance on helping people rent in the open market.