KTTH OPINION

Rantz: Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell’s housing plan is literally impossible

Jan 12, 2025, 5:28 PM

Seattle housing...

A project manager examines the construction of a home, with a photo of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell superimposed on top of it. (Photo courtesy of KIRO 7, the City of Seattle)

(Photo courtesy of KIRO 7, the City of Seattle)

The Seattle City Council took up Mayor Bruce Harrell’s housing plan last week. But can you really call it a plan when it’s an absolute fantasy?

Hoping to brand himself as an ambitious visionary ahead of his re-election campaign, Harrell’s plan proposes more than doubling the city’s housing capacity — calling for over 330,000 new housing units within 20 years. But even some on the Seattle City Council aren’t drinking the Kool-Aid. Councilmember Kathy Moore dismissed the idea, saying she’s “not prepared to sacrifice” her neighborhood for Harrell’s pipe dream.

It’s not just Moore’s neighborhood that would need to be sacrificed. To achieve Harrell’s absurd housing goals, the entire city would have to be bulldozed, wiped off the map, and rebuilt from scratch. Seattle simply doesn’t have the land or infrastructure to make this happen. Pretending otherwise is a masterclass in delusion.

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The Seattle housing plan is a joke, right?

The biggest problem with Seattle’s housing plan is, unsurprisingly, reality. There simply isn’t enough space to accommodate this level of expansion, no matter how many years or zoning changes you throw at it.

Harrell’s grand vision includes a mix of duplexes and triplexes in existing neighborhoods, high-rise buildings near transit hubs, and approximately 30 “neighborhood centers” with five-story developments. He even proposes 80,000 new single-family homes. That’s on top of the current housing capacity of roughly 165,000 units. The math doesn’t just fail — it collapses under the weight of its own absurdity.

Even if we rezoned nearly every inch of Seattle, the physical and logistical limitations make Harrell’s promises laughable. Are we building massive high-rises in Wedgwood and Fremont? Are we cramming thousands of claustrophobic micro-apartments into five-story buildings around Greenlake or Georgetown? And let’s not forget the areas we can’t touch, like the Chinatown-International District or the Central District, because the same activists demanding housing would cry “gentrification” the moment plans are unveiled.

Maybe Harrell will bulldoze Capitol Hill and start over — not the worst idea, honestly. But short of such radical steps, his plan is nothing more than a PR stunt dressed up as policy.

While Harrell’s team relies on far-left bloggers and radical urbanists to spin his plan as “modest,” anyone who understands Seattle knows it’s a fantasy. So why are we wasting our time with this?

City of Seattle hasn’t even completed the studies

If the Seattle housing plan was a serious endeavor, and not merely a move to bolster his re-election campaign, the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) would have released plans for transportation and utilities. It would have already completed an Environmental Impact Study. Under state law, those plans are required. But this is an unserious plan.

The OPCD provided none of the materials. Seattle’s utilities infrastructure — from meeting electrical needs to sewer and trash pick-up — cannot accommodate such a plan. Moreover, the infrastructure in many neighborhoods isn’t equipped to support such intensified development. This would strain existing services and severely impact quality of life. Council member Maritza Rivera criticized the plan as rushed, echoing criticisms from colleague Bob Kettle.

“I spoke with many, many constituents in District 4 who felt like they were not reached out to. They didn’t feel like the proper outreach was there,” Rivera added. “Why in Phase 1 did (OPCD) not engage with the public broadly? That’s led to people feeling like this process has not been transparent, and that is unfortunate because when people feel like government is transparent, they trust government more.”

The answer is simple: this was never intended to be a serious housing plan for Seattle.

The Seattle housing plan is detached from the city’s physical realities

Seattle’s housing crisis didn’t appear out of thin air — it was a result of incompetent city leadership over the years.

As Amazon expanded and brought in tens of thousands of new residents, previous leaders botched every opportunity to plan for growth. They blocked high-rises where they were desperately needed, capped apartment building heights unnecessarily, and created a regulatory maze that made construction a costly nightmare. If you wanted to build in Seattle, you needed deep pockets and the patience of a saint.

When Amazon’s footprint grew, Democrats doubled down on bad policies that sent costs skyrocketing.

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Botching Amazon growth

Allowing high-rises in parts of South Lake Union was a rare smart move, but city leaders offset it by destroying street infrastructure for bike lanes that barely anyone uses and bus-only lanes that turn already-bad traffic into gridlock. Meanwhile, they stunted growth in surrounding neighborhoods by limiting building heights. Naturally, well-paid Amazon employees flocked to the limited high-rise apartments to avoid traffic, driving up rents because the market could handle it.

With those units filled, Amazon workers spilled into other nearby neighborhoods. But instead of developing larger apartment complexes to meet demand, the city capped those areas with smaller buildings. Rent predictably skyrocketed.

Then there’s the progressive activists, who love to screech about gentrification every time a new development is proposed in so-called “BIPOC” communities. They blocked projects that could have revitalized neighborhoods, leaving swaths of the city underdeveloped. Now, those same activists have the audacity to whine about high rents and pretend to support big developers rebuilding the city? The hypocrisy is staggering. Seattle’s housing mess is their Frankenstein monster.

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Seattle deserves a serious housing plan

Seattle has real housing challenges, and it deserves a serious plan. But with Mayor Bruce Harrell, serious plans are hard to come by. Instead, we get grandiose visions that crumble under even the slightest scrutiny.

Harrell has proven to be one of Seattle’s laziest mayors. He thrives in the spotlight, preferring speeches, parties, and photo ops to actual governance. His favorite activity? Talking about himself in interviews—though he conveniently avoids tough journalists who might dare to hold him accountable. Meanwhile, the heavy lifting is left to his staff, who often compete with his inflated ego or are driven by radical ideologies that make him seem moderate by comparison. It’s why nothing gets done.

Indeed, the results speak for themselves. His administration sent out a press release celebrating a net gain of one police officer since 2020 — one. It’s as pathetic as his housing plan is unrealistic. This is what passes for success in Harrell’s Seattle.

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So what happens next?

The city has had hardworking mayors in the past, even if their policies missed the mark.

Jenny Durkan was deeply engaged but hamstrung by an incompetent team and inexperience. Ed Murray actively managed the city until his career imploded in scandal. Even Mike McGinn, a committed simpleton who saw everything through the lens of bike lanes, was undeniably engaged. Harrell, by contrast, is coasting, more concerned with nurturing his brand than solving the city’s problems.

Harrell’s re-election is all but guaranteed. And even with that safety net, he won’t put forward a realistic housing plan because it’s not of interest to him. Unfortunately for Seattle, that means the city won’t get the leadership it desperately needs. Harrell’s empty dreams may sound bold, but when they’re impossible, they’re just another way of distracting from the failures of the status quo.

Listen to The Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3-7 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow Jason Rantz on XInstagramYouTube and Facebook.

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Rantz: Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell’s housing plan is literally impossible