15 Replies to "City Council sets public hearing for "backyard cottages" plan"

• Cindi B July 28, 2009 (11:24 am)

  How timely. Backyard cottages were an element under consideration during the 1995-9 Neighborhood Planning process, and all of the neighborhoods working on a plan were given the opportunity to put them in to plans at that time as well. Check you local plan to see what the result back then was.

• d July 28, 2009 (11:48 am)

  Great info Cindi B! Thx!

• Hipster Mom July 28, 2009 (11:53 am)

  I think Backyard Cottages are a wonderful thing. I grew up in Southern California and these were some of the most coveted housing options around. It gives people a lot more choices of where they want to live. I lived in one in Santa Monica and it was so nice to have a little garden of my own in a quiet neighborhood (and have a cat that lounged around the garden). I could have never afforded to live in the neighborhood otherwise.

  I also think it is so great for extended or multi generational families. I own a house on Alki on an alley and would love to be able to build a little cottage in the backyard for my rapidly aging parents. I’d love to have them around to help take care of my son (but under a separate roof). They could never afford to buy (or even rent) anything in Seattle but we could afford the 75-100 K investment and when the inevitable happens to my parents we could rent it or keep it as a guest house.

  I am totally in favor of this!!!

• JEM July 28, 2009 (1:15 pm)

  I’m all for it. I could re-build the garage off my alley and have living quarters upstairs. I’ve had 3 lots on my street divided so there are now 6 homes where there were 3, but I can’t have an apartment attached to my garage? Seems like this is a much lesser evil than the townhomes in back yards that we have been seeing.

• Cottage?Nulu July 28, 2009 (1:57 pm)

  Hipster Mom, you ought to be another poster-child for the backyard cottage lobby.
  Not quite as unassailable as the couple featured in the Seattle Times, but still great!
  This issue seems to be getting a free ride and similar to the City’s last free ride to density, the notorious multi-packs and windowless living spaces, may have some negative consequences.
  With the “extended family”, where will everyone park?
  I remember visiting friends in Santa Monica and having to pay park in the City Garage. Seattle can be much worse with peoples propensity to own boats not surfboards and keep their “second car” on the street. Adding several residents per house without on-site parking can add even more vehicles than residents.
  It appears that the Rainier Beach example added no parking.
  Los Angeles and Santa Monica have street cleaning once a week which effectively prevents people from storing extra cars on the street. Seattle does not and shows no interest in solving street parking through enforcement of existing laws.
  Beyond more cars, more congestion and less available parking, why aren’t we hearing howls about:
  Reduction of Foliage?
  Reduction of Light?
  Increased Shade?
  Increased hard surface?

• 37Ray July 28, 2009 (3:45 pm)

  Why we are not hearing howling? Because the people who normally might otherwise howl are all thinking they would like to build a cottage! lol jk

• charlabob July 28, 2009 (5:56 pm)

  Perhaps because the people who normally would howl understand that if we want an economically diverse city, we have to make it possible for people to afford to live here. Perhaps because some of us who might normally howl are busy trying to figure out how to hang on to our devalued house? Or perhaps because we’re starting to understand what it means to live in a city.

• kstineback July 28, 2009 (8:55 pm)

  i love this idea as well, particularly because it affords families flexibility as they age or need more space. i also think that as a city we need to come to grips with the fact that there will never, ever be enough room for our collective obsession with the automobile. we had to give up our second car over a year ago because we couldn’t afford the cost to fix it. i thought we wouldn’t survive! seriously, i started taking the bus and thought it would be so awful. now we are a committed one car family and i either bus it or ride my bike to work on capitol hill. i know this is not possible for everyone, but we have really great bus service here in west seattle, and as we grow our community is going to have to make hard decisions about cars and how we use them!

• Mike D. July 28, 2009 (10:27 pm)

  Cottage?Nulu – There is an on-site parking requirement for both Backyard Cottages and ADU’s. Granted, there is a waiver process.

• matt July 29, 2009 (11:39 pm)

  It is a great idea and it is time that Seattle allowed it citywide.

  The planning department has done a thorough job with this code:
  Heights are limited, size is limited, quantity are limited, additional parking on site must be provided.

  And since the city already allows you to build a mother-in-law apartment, adding a backyard cottage instead just gives homeowners more options, not more density.

• Cottage?Nulu July 30, 2009 (11:04 am)

  “more options, not more density”????????

  Add hard surface, remove mature trees, add tall structures with hot roofs, add more people and more vehicles living on the same residential parcel and claim that this does not increase “density”.
  What word is this “density” being used?
  Sure, “The planning department has done a thorough job with this code:
  Heights are limited, size is limited, quantity are limited, additional parking on site must be provided.”
  This is the same planning department whose thorough job gave the multi-packs and windowless structures already plaguing us.
  All of the terrible housing we see popping up along our growth corridors are regulated in height, size, parking, etc..
  Where did that get us?
  How does our Green Mayor,..more trees, more green space, less lot coverage, mandatory recycling, manage to support this.
  I also wonder about little details like trash and recycling, imagine doubleing our minimum requirement of large paper bin, garbage can, and yard waste can (the cottage footprint and increased density will likely obviate any composting.

• Living in West Seattle since 1985 July 30, 2009 (11:29 pm)

  “Cottage” sound like a wonderful idea. The word makes me think of an artist living off the beaten trail or a grandparent gardening or baking cookies. The romanticized idea may not be Seattle’s reality 10 years from now. “Cottages” may NOT always be what will be put in back yards. It will only be a detached home addition, much like a garage with plumbing. Hopefully there will be a great deal of quality control to make sure we don’t end up having a bunch of remodeled garages or ugly little boxes on our hands.

• Matt July 30, 2009 (11:54 pm)

  Compared to what is allowed outright currently in terms of house size, lot coverage, heights etc, (McMansion anyone?) the backyard cottage code actually is a lot more restrictive about what you can build.

  And rather than building a dark apartment in the basement (allowed by code), I can build a little house for my parents to stay when they want to hang with the kids (but not feel like a house guest), have a art studio with a loft, or rent it out to a grad student to help pay the mortgage. It would be a much better place, and because the height, size, location and number permited per year (50) are controlled, the impact on my neighbors, or any neighborhood is pretty minimal.

  The city has a bunch of info online.

• Cottage?Nulu August 3, 2009 (12:38 pm)

  DCLU Discussion Board has some thoughtful participants from other neighborhoods;

  “7/17/09 10:52 AM by Anon in Ballard
  I am opposed to accessory dwellings/cottages/shacks as proposed. The current situation in which thoughtful schoolteachers break the law to sneak wonderful, quiet tenants into converted garages WORKS PERFECTLY. It’s self-regulating and forces everyone to get along with neighbors or get ratted out. Every neighborhood has these garage rentals. When problems arise, it�s usually because too many people move in and tip the balance. The current proposal would allow 8 people to live on one Single Family (SF) zoned lot–without being related. So what�s the point of SF zoning? Can you imagine what that density could be like in your SF neighborhood? Instead of adjusting, you would sell your house and lucrative accessory dwelling for a big fat profit and move to a low-density, expensive neighborhood that doesn�t allow backyard rentals. Just ask the folks who subdivided their city lots in the 1980s to build those skinny houses and finance their waterfront retirement homes. D�j� vu. If you can’t afford the big house/lot you own, you should move and downsize, like the rest of us. If your lot is big enough to add another dwelling, it’s big enough to add a bedroom and bath to the main house for your elderly parents or teenager. If you need rental income, buy a duplex. Why should you be allowed to build a rental in your backyard? The proposed size allowances are monstrous. A 2-story 1000-sq ft shack at a height of 18 ft is a tower exactly like those townhouses everyone loathes. That’s no cottage–it’s bigger than most condos. 800 sq ft is the size of FOUR one-car garages or a one-story skinny house! This is just a financial give-away to owners of big city lots.”

• Bryan Lovely August 13, 2009 (10:13 pm)

  Cottage?Nulu, perhaps you missed the part of the proposal that says a maximum of 50 per year can be built in the ENTIRE CITY. That’s hardly “your neighborhood doubles in density overnight” — plus most lots won’t qualify, so density wouldn’t *ever* double.

  My wife and I are buying a short sale in south Delridge on a double lot with a driveway off the street and the alley, so we’re in a perfect situation to eventually build a backyard cottage in the place of one of the two garage/storage buildings. We wouldn’t be cutting down any mature trees and we’d only be adding about 100 sf of hard surface.

  I love this proposal.

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