Micro-housing battle heating up with big decision expected from Seattle City Council

Two blocks from Jules James’ Lake Union Mail off Eastlake Avenue, some very tiny apartments have sparked big outrage among neighbors, and started a citywide debate about the future of urban development.

“We’re talking about two people living in a 200-square-foot unit, which is by the Department of Housing standards, overcrowding. We’re talking 19th century tenements here,” says James.

The Footprint building, at Franklin Avenue and East Louisa Street, has 39 units, between 120 and 200 square feet each. Residents have their own sink, microwave, and bathroom, but share a kitchen and living space.

That configuration is one of many problems James, a 30-year-resident of the Eastlake neighborhood, sees with the tiny apartments.

“The kitchen is the heart of a home,” says James. “Whether you use it or not is your choice, but it has to be in there. These people would use their communal kitchen maybe once over six months. That’s not affordable.”

He says neighbors felt blindsided by this project, which did not go through a design review process with Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development.

Builders of micro-housing have been able to count each cluster of units around a shared kitchen as one apartment, sidestepping regulations.

“It was proposed to be a five-unit apartment house,” says Jules. “It’s seven stories. It’s 40 units. And my city is honest. This is dishonest.”

With rents skyrocketing in the city core, the average $500 to $700 a month price tag and short-term leases make micros attractive for young people and new transplants settling in Seattle.

“The bottom line is if you want prices to stay stable or go down, you have to build more housing and you have to find ways to make it less costly to build,” says Roger Valdez, Director of Smart Growth Seattle. “If we don’t do that, we’re just going to see prices continue to rise, which causes people to complain about prices, which causes the council to impose more rules, which raises prices, and rinse and repeat. We’ve got to stop that cycle or we’re going to end up like San Francisco.”

Valdez says renters deserve the option of micro-housing.

“They’re affordable. They’re in really great neighborhoods and so people love them because they’re giving up extra space for great location,” says Valdez.

“I have yet to hear from a resident that complains about the size or any of the things that the neighbors complain about. So what happens is people are worried about change and that turns into trying to dictate how other people live under the guise of saying, oh this is bad housing.”

But few issues have galvanized neighborhood organizations – like James and the Eastlake Community Council – like Micros.

“When we realized that this was only a poster child for what is going to happen, that is when the group grew larger than a few immediate neighbors and grew into what has become a citywide, very strong movement,” says James.

And the Seattle City Council has responded. On Monday Oct. 6, the full council will vote on new rules passed by the Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability Committee that require units to be at least 220 sq ft, a 50-percent average increase in size.

The apartments would also need two sinks, making a full kitchenette for each resident. Clusters of units around a shared kitchen will be counted as separate units, triggering the design review process for buildings in the pipeline.

Growth advocates say this will put a halt to micro-housing developments as we know them.

“We lead the country in this and what the Council is doing is essentially ending this whole product,” says Valdez. “In a few years, cities like New York, San Francisco, LA, the Twin Cities, they’re all going to have 300 to 400 of these and they’re going to be building more.”

Valdez does agree that neighbors might need better warning when a new micro-housing building is going in next door.

“We hope that we’ll get a chance to address those – what I think are some legitimate issues on, whoa we didn’t know what that was going to be,” says Valdez. “Ok, let’s explain it and let’s make it work.”

But he argues shutting down growth will push the middle class further outside the city.

“The people that lose in that are people with less money,” says Valdez. “This really hurts poor people and people that are struggling to get ahead when you have the City Council imposing a bunch of rules that make housing more costly.”

Meanwhile, James sees progress.

“Two years ago we were accused of being “NIMBY’s.” We were accused of being classist, racist, the whole nine-yards, accused of everything,” says James. “That’s not being said anymore because people are understanding that no, we’ve been right about this, this is not housing, this is lodging.”

James and his allies are celebrating the future of their community.

“I was just walking down the street and a neighbor just came up, shook my hand on the street and just said, ‘We did good.’ I think we’ve done good for Seattle.”