City Council Greases the Palms of Developers While No One is Looking

[TanDL]

http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/city-council-rushed-to-pass-seattles-grand-bargain/

This “bargain” is filled with amazing loopholes that favor developers. Seriously… take a moment to read this Times editorial if you are concerned at all about how developers are having their way in this city.

Here’s a quote taken from this Seattle Times editorial: “One loophole perversely cuts linkage fees if developers show that poor people won’t get jobs in their new buildings. By the city’s logic, better-paid workers don’t need “affordable” housing and won’t have the same impact on the housing market as lower-paid workers.

So, if a building would be filled with workers earning more than 60 to 80 percent of the median income ($37,680 to $46,100), the developer gets a break on fees, according to the ordinance.”

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[wakeflood]

Yes, HALA, the gift that will keep giving to developers for decades! I’m about to look for Seattle-based REITs to invest in cuz…CHA CHING!!!

You think I’m kidding.

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[rw]

Interesting that even city council members Licata, O’Brien, and Sawant voted in favor of the deal while the Times, which is usually labeled as a tool of the downtown establishment, was opposed.

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[Mark32]

How is this possible in a town run by Democrats?

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[Vienna]

Some of the most “progressive” members of the City Council (and maybe a new member from District 1) are so completely obsessed with the affordable housing issue that they are willing to do deals with folks they used to scorn. The developers are smarter than the activists and the results will be more traffic congestion, higher rents and the loss of single family housing.

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[JanS]

Gee, Vienna, could you be any more obvious? (“and maybe a new member from District 1”). Nice way to slam someone who had no say in this decision.

Could there possibly be more traffic congestion, and higher rents? Don’t answer that. And who do I blame, besides our current CC? I blame our illustrious mayor. I think he should be forced to live on median wages, live in an expensive (with ever increasing rent) apt. in West Seattle, and have to take Metro from the Admiral District, connecting with the full RR buses in the Alaska Junction, for a minimum of 6 months…

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[JanS]

had the hiccups :)

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[JoB]

don’t you just love the edit button

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[JoB]

Jan.. both of our district 1 candidates had very messy fingers in the pie that our city council just baked…

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[wakeflood]

The reason you see the somewhat odd combination of bedfellows on this topic is because nobody really knows what works. And by that I mean, there are very few, highly desirable cities that have figured out how to stay affordable for residents across the income strata.

So, places that desire this type of thing throw spaghetti at the wall, and some of that spaghetti has to include some combination of carrots and sticks and the sticks are hard to enforce and the carrots usually win out because in a freeish market, people with enough $ to buy the property and develop it are powerful and will not be denied their ability to leverage that power for profit.

We’re talking degrees of bad outcomes here. Places like our fair city will squeeze a few units here and there for lower income folks but the inevitable slouch toward an unaffordable Seattle isn’t abating anytime soon.

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[wakeflood]

As for my personal position, I’m trying to hold the line at making developers pay a significant portion of their impact on the infrastructure when they develop.

That means tens of thousands of dollars in linkage fees every time. No exceptions. And those dollars go straight into funding improvements IN THAT DISTRICT.

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