Other People’s Housing: Seattle’s Debate Continues
Deciding where to live is a decision that each of us has had to make at one point in our lives. Should we live in a house or an apartment? What part of town should we live in? Do we want a yard or not? Our choices are often limited by our income and our [...]
It Takes All Kinds: Housing Supply, Choice, and Variety
Housing, like people, comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors. New housing in single-family neighborhoods doesn’t all look the same. Diversity and variety are good things. Some opponents of new single-family housing argue that new housing is too big. But the facts tell a different story. Here’s an image that shows a typical block face [...]
Discussion of Small Lot Legislation Heats Up
The good news is that people are paying attention to ideas for finalizing small-lot legislation in Seattle. Last week’s Seattle Channel panel gave us a chance to talk about our initiative and how it would create predictability while still creating more housing supply and choice for Seattle. Monday of this week led off with a [...]
Smart Growth on the Seattle Channel
Last week I had the opportunity to represent Smart Growth Seattle on a panel discussing development on small-lots in Seattle. The panel is part of a broader discussion on density and you can watch it by clicking on the embedded video above. The panel covered a lot of ground, but what was especially important is [...]
More Jobs Means We Need More Housing
This Thursday the Seattle City Council’s Planning Land Use and Sustainability (PLUS) Committee will meet to hear recommendations about how to finalize last year’s emergency small-lot legislation. The Department of Planning and Development will present several months worth of work on moving ahead on legislation. One important point that needs to be made in these [...]
KING 5: What’s the Big Story?
Last Friday KING 5 news went out to JMS Homes’ site on 55th and Manning in West Seattle to talk with neighbors and JMS about the project. When Linda Brill the reporter asked me what the big story was I said, “there isn’t one.” I pointed to Bill Richmond the developer of the project and [...]
Fact Check: Proposed West Seattle Homes Are Neighborly
There is something about land use and housing that provokes a lot of interest and emotion. That’s especially true about new housing in single-family neighborhoods. New housing in any neighborhood means change, and change isn’t always easy to accept. A project in West Seattle that will add two new homes where there is only one [...]
Smart Growth Seattle to Promote Neighborhood Density at Downtown Events
Smart Growth Seattle, a new group advocating for more housing choice in Seattle, kicks off the New Year with two back-to-back panels to talk about the importance of smart growth in Seattle’s single-family neighborhoods. First, Dan Duffus will be a panelist at an event on Wednesday, January 23rd sponsored by the Urban Land Institutes Northwest [...]
American appetite for big homes is falling
Trulia released some very compelling charts and graphs based on opinion research suggesting the demise of the McMansion — the huge, mass-produced housing form associated with sprawl. That’s an encouraging sign for policy makers considering new options for smaller, greener homes inside the city in existing single-family neighborhoods. Their data, together with the drop in lot sizes for single-family homes points to [...]
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