Check back for updates-Have been attending too many meetings to update recently

Thanks for visiting. As you can see, I haven’t posted in a while. I have been attending a number of microhousing related events or preparing for them. I do intend to blog on a more regular basis. But meanwhile……..the site is full of information for you to check out…..

Reminder: Council Meeting on Microhousing on Thursday, April 18, 2013

The Council’s Transportation Committee will be having a Brown Bag Lunch on Microhousing. Because of the significance of these issue, I imagine that a number of Councilmembers who are not on the Committee will attend. The meeting begins at 11:30 A.M.  A link to the agenda can be found here: http://clerk.seattle.gov/~scripts/nph-brs.exe?s1=transportation.comm.&S3=&s2=&s4=&Sect4=AND&l=20&Sect6=HITOFF&Sect5=AGEN1&Sect3=PLURON&d=AGEN&p=1&u=%2F~public%2Fagen1.htm&r=1&f=G

Contact information for the Councilmembers can be found here: http://www.seattle.gov/council/councilcontact.htm

We’d dearly love to see you at the meeting, but if you cannot attend, call or email Councilmembers. Your voice will be counted!

Who are the Developers behind the Microhousing Projects?

Given the number of projects that have been built or are to be built, the number of developers turns out to be just a few individuals:

• Dirk and Gary Mulhair (Calhoun Properties)
• Jim Potter
• Randall Spaan
• Tyler Carr
• Kelten Johnson
• Kevinne Wilkins (CPA in Snohomish, WA who has notarized a number of microhousing project documents)
• Robert Pantley
• Paul J. Bellarte
• Hugh Schaeffer
• Scott Shapiro
• Robert Dedon
• Eric Friedland
• Alex Dejneka
• Michael J. Swindling

The field has been dominated by the first five individuals or corporations on the list above, with Jim Potter and the Mulhairs doing the lion’s share of these projects. The Mulhairs are the public face of microhousing, having received substantial media coverage for bringing a number of these projects to market, and  being credited with being the creators of microhousing. The typical corporate structure for microhousing projects is a limited liability corporation (LLC). Potter has frequently been involved in Mulhair LLCs, either as a managing member or with a 48% interest in the project. Potter has also been involved in some of Kelten Johnson’s projects, as well as those of Randall Spaan.

A Call to Action to the Neighborhoods of Seattle:

While the Capitol Hill and Eastlake neighborhoods have been very active on this issue, it is past time for the neighborhoods of Seattle to rise up and demand action by the City Council to put a stop to these charades, and demand accountability from the DPD, not to mention calling a halt to aPODment projects until legislation can be put in place to stop this unbridled development phenomenon, which is being driven by, and for the benefit of a handful of developers. Failure to act promptly will lead to the wholesale destruction of the neighborhood character that we have all come to love, and for which the City of Seattle is nationally known. Proposals for microhousing projects are beginning to fan out from the neighborhoods where they are currently concentrated – Capitol Hill (16 proposed or built) and the University District (13 proposed or built)- into neighborhoods where they would never be expected, and where neighbors are kept more in the dark than even those of us in the fiefdom of Capitol Hill. City Council needs to be inundated with emails. Council Chambers need to be packed on April 18th at 11:30 a.m. Spread the word of my website to friends and neighbors. Go there armed with the information I am providing on this blog. There will be more to follow.

Here is a list of Councilmember emails and phone numbers:

richard.conlin@seattle.gov  206-684-8805

sally.clark@seattle.gov  206-684-8802

nick.licata@seattle.gov  206-684-8803

tom.rasmussen@seattle.gov  206-684-8808

tim.burgess@seattle.gov  206-684-8806

jean.godden@seattle.gov  206-684-8807

bruce.harrell@seattle.gov  206-684-8804

sally.bagshaw@seattle.gov  206-684-8801

mike.obrien@seattle.gov  206-684-8800

Well, I have a glitch in this post, but you have the basic information you need to contact Councilmembers. I will try to repair the glitch tomorrow.  All of this information and more is available here.

If Nero Fiddled While Rome Burned, Why Can’t the DPD Monitor While Neighborhood Character and Context are Trashed?

Yeah, I know,  I have just consumed millions of pixels explaining the DPD’s efforts to remedy the confusion around microhousing – at least three years after they realized there was a problem. It seems that the DPD’s strategy has always been to monitor the problem.

May 16, 2011:  In a letter to Bill Zosel, Diane Sugimura states: “We will continue to monitor this type of development.”

On June 19, 2012, Councilmember Sally Clark sent an email to Councilmember Richard Conlin, noting the batch of emails she had received on aPODments, and asking: “Is this something you’ve already discussed with Diane and DPD? Any chance there will be a more formal discussion at committee of the rate or intensity of aPodment [sic]/micro-unit development? Conlin replied later that afternoon:

I discussed it with her, and she does not see an issue as yet. but we are watching it. I think one more will put us over the tipping point on getting something going.

June 28, 2012: In a letter to Franklin Avenue neighbors, Diane Sugimura states:

“I have discussed this type of housing with the Mayor and several Councilmembers. At this time, our direction is to monitor them to determine if we are seeing unintended consequences from such development, and determine if any code changes are needed.”

July 19, 2012: In a letter to Chris Leman of the Eastlake District Council, Diane Sugimura states:

“I have discussed this type of housing with the Mayor and several Councilmembers. At this time, our direction is to monitor them to determine if we are seeing unintended consequences from such development, and determine if any code changes are needed.”

September 11, 2012;  In an email from Bryan Stevens to Mike Podowski and Andy McKim, two very senior land use and policy figures in the DPD re a microhousing meeting, an item on the agenda was listed as:

Microhousing policy

-monitoring proposals, but no changes planned

-proposed in areas where growth is encouraged, frequent transit, good/services nearby

September 18, 2012: Bryan Jones of the DPD tells Doug Dempster, a concerned Capitol Hill resident:

“At this point, we are monitoring the complaints we receive on proposed projects, as up to this point we have not received any regarding constructed and occupied buildings.”

Hmmmm…what artful wording.

At an early December 2012 meeting with irate Capitol Hill neighbors, Conlin and Sugimura repeatedly state they see no problem with microhousing and that they had not heard anything yet that would move them to take further action at this point. Though Conlin did state his belief that microhousing projects did not qualify for the MFTE, and that he was going to stop that.

Do you detect the same pattern here that I do?

Having heard so often about  this monitoring, I couldn’t resist asking the DPD what it meant by monitoring. I received the following reply from Vicki Baucom, Code Compliance Analyst at the DPD:

I

after a customer comes into the Applicant Services Center (ASC – on the 20^th

• floor) with a project that appears to be microhousing, the ASC staff person contacts Mike
• Mike then adds the information to the attached spreadsheet.
• The plans are reviewed and if it is confirmed to be microhousing, it stays on the attached spreadsheet.

I hope this clarifies how we are monitoring the microhousing situation.

I was left wanting more. Hardly the type of monitoring that is called for in the situation. Though the process may explain why the DPD and I have never had lists of microhousing projects that agree. At Capitol Hill neighbors’ first meeting with Tom Rasmussen, I told him that while I had a list of 39 microhousing projects across the City of Seattle, DPD only had 22 projects listed. To this day, our lists do not agree, and many of the items that have made it to more recent lists of microhousing compiled by the DPD contain projects that in no way could be construed by a knowledgeable person as microhousing.

The Consequences to Neighborhoods of the DPD’s and City Council’s Monitoring

In 2007, one microhousing project was permitted.

In 2008, three were permitted.

In 2009, one was permitted.

In 2010, three were permitted.

In 2011, four were permitted.  Two or three of them after Sugimura told Bill Zosel she was monitoring the situation.

In 2012, nineteen were permitted or permits were applied for, fourteen of them after all the protestations of monitoring by officials which I presented above:

As of March 4 2013, 5 permits have been granted or applied for.

Into the Land Use Thicket

This is a continuation of my second post. My apologies, dear reader, but it will be necessary to take a trip into the land use thicket. I will endeavor to make it understandable, but if nothing else, this post should give you a feel for why microhousing has been such a difficult phenomenon to get a handle on for proponents, developers and citizens. Since there is no microhousing section in Seattle’s Codes, it has been necessary for individuals to try to shoe-horn it into existing land-use categories, which may or may not be an appropriate fit. Think of it as the new shoe experience in land use.

Is Microhousing Really Something New?

Some individuals maintain that microhousing is just the latest reincarnation of the boarding house or congregate residence, housing types which they allege have been around forever. However, if that assertion is true, why has the City struggled so with the permitting of these buildings. Even Dianne Sugimura, Director of the Department of Planning and Development,  stated, in a letter to concerned Eastlake neighbors:

[T]his is a nontraditional housing type, but one which we’ve been seeing more in recent times.

A DPD reviewer for one project stated in an October 11, 2011 correction notice:

[A]s you may know, boarding houses are something we have recently been seeing more of, and without the code being written to directly address them, the Department has been in the process of figuring out how best to apply the code requirements to boarding houses.

A proposed rule drafted by senior DPD staff also noted:

The difficulty of distinguishing a single-family dwelling from a boarding house during the plan review process and the diverging definitions and purposes of land use and building codes means that many times the building might be classified as a boarding house for building code purposes and as a single-family residence for land-use purposes, causing confusion for applicants, staff and the general public.

That’s an excellent summary of the situation. Even Seattle developers, who are generally very sharp individuals, had difficulty navigating the permit process. On May 13, 2011, Chip Kouba, of Ecco Design Inc., who stated he had been working with Dirk and Gary Mulhair and Jim Potter on a number of boarding house projects, developing the product as they went, wrote to Roberta Baker of the DPD seeking clarification on a land-use issue. The question was:

[O]n a current project all land-use and structural and ordinance requirements appear to allow us to build a five story building with a basement with vertical congregate residences from basement to roof.… In the past, for a number of reasons, we ended up in townhouse territory, however believe that by definition these would not be included in that definition. If you could address this question, or advise on how best to review this with DPD would greatly appreciate it!

The argument that microhousing/boarding houses are nothing new does not hold water.

Can I sleep in that loft or mezzanine? It depends on

Whether you want to avoid State Environmental Protection Act (SEPA) Review.

In a correction notice from the DPD for one building, it was noted that the loft area could be used as another bedroom, and that this would lead to the dwelling units being considered as having nine bedrooms, which would cause it to be classified as a congregate residence, which classification would make the project subject to SEPA review. Given this warning from the DPD, the remark of Councilmember Sally Bagshaw regarding her tour of a microhousing unit is of considerable significance and irony: “It’s definitely small, maybe 250 or 300 square feet, but the one I went into had a little loft area for sleeping,…” The full report of her tour can be found here. It seems that the crucial behavior during the review of a project by the DPD would be for a developer to assert that the loft will not be used as a bedroom, regardless of the subsequent reality.

On another project, the developer was advised to limit the size of the lofts to the size of a bed. Using a bed as measure of acceptability in this case, when it was used as a measure of unacceptability in the case above suggests a lack of consistency in how the DPD handled project reviews.

Another Loft Issue

In those buildings with units on the fifth story which included a loft, correction notices from the DPD often referred to the size of the lofts, noting that the lofts could not exceed 50% of the area of the room below. Developers were warned that oversize lofts would lead to the lofts being counted as a sixth story. On the plan drawings at least, those requirements appear to have been met.

Useful definitions for understanding this post:

Correction notice: Request to the developer for correction of errors found by the DPD during plan review for code compliance. Many of the microhousing projects had multiple and lengthy corrections notices. Some errors were cited multiple times in multiple notices before the developer corrected them, if the developer ever did.

Congregate residence: From Seattle Municipal Code Section 23.84A.032 “R” residential use: “Congregate residence” means a use in which rooms or lodging, with or without meals are provided for nine or more non-transient persons, not constituting a single household, excluding single-family dwelling units for which special or reasonable accommodation has been granted.

How many square feet in the average microhousing unit? It depends on who you ask……

If you read the online articles, you will frequently see figures of 150-200 square feet, with 200 being a frequent average. They never say where they get these averages.

The Department of Planning and Development gives an estimate of 257 square feet per unit on average. When I inquired as to how they arrived at that estimate, they said it was the figure generated by dividing the total square footage of a project by the number of estimated units in a project. This would result in a higher than average square footage, as it does not make adjustments for corridors, stairways, utility areas and common areas. The DPD’s average is not credible and cannot be relied on.

My thorough examination of drawings for microhousing projects showed the following:

Of 1751 total units, the drawings do not contain sufficiently fine-grained information to determine the size of 767 separately leasable units. Some of the projects do not yet have drawings prepared and submitted. None of the drawings specify whether the square footage is net (minus corridors and stairways) or gross. Of the 691 units that are marked with a square footage number, 473 or 68.3% are contain less than 204 square feet. Why isn’t the DPD requesting this information on all of the drawings? Mike Podowski says that it is because the DPD doesn’t have the authority to request it.  Seattle City Council should request the DPD to obtain accurate square footage, specified as to whether it is net or gross, for all separately leasable units.

My analysis of all zones showed: 5% of units are under 100 square feet, 22% are under 140 square feet, 57% are under 180 square feet, 80% are under 220 square feet, 94% are under 260 square feet, 99% are under 300 square feet, and 1% are greater than 300 square feet. In an analysis of information I provided to him, Bill Bradburd examined the square footage for the Lowrise 3 zone. In the Lowrise 3 zone, nearly all – 97% –  of the 407 reviewed units are under 220 square feet.

Close analysis provides information that varies considerably from the conventional wisdom.

How many units in that microhousing project? It depends on

Whether or not the project developer is trying to qualify for a multifamily tax exemption from the Seattle Office of Housing.

Unit count has been subject to different counting practices depending on whether the DPD is permitting projects or whether it is trying to qualify them for the multifamily tax exemption. Since this issue will be discussed more in depth elsewhere, I will just provide a couple of examples here. For purposes of permitting a project, the DPD, will list a project as having 7 dwelling units, when in fact, it has 56-64 separately leasable units. So a developer feels justified in telling project neighbors that he is only adding 7 dwelling units to the neighborhood’s residential stock, when in fact he is adding 56-64 separately leasable units. These actions led one neighborhood to organize a group to address the difference between permitting language and residential realities. Its website can be found here. In the Capitol Hill neighborhood, a  group also established a website to publish information on these issues.

On September 14, 2012, these conflicting classifications became subject to greater scrutiny when an aide to Councilmember Tim Burgess observed  that the Office of Housing counts each bathroom as a unit, and asked if this concept had been questioned. He asked the Office of Housing to check with the DPD on its interpretation of dwelling unit as it related to aPODments. The answer that the DPD provided to the Office of Housing was that since each living space has its own bathroom, sink, refrigerator and microwave, each living space was considered a unit. This DPD statement was in direct conflict with its usual practice of classifying multiple separate living spaces as a single dwelling unit, as evidenced by the number of dwelling units listed on numerous microhousing project permits.

Seattle Office of Housing Truth and Consequences

The Office of Housing also questioned whether developers were representing units to it in a manner different from the way the same developers were representing units to the DPD. Rick Hooper, Director of the Office of Housing, to his credit, stated in a memo to the Mayor’s Office, dated December 13, 2012:

Microhousing developments generally present fewer than 8 ‘dwelling units’ when entering the DPD permitting system. However, when seeking approval for MFTE, the same developers present OH with the total number of subdivided microunits that house individual tenants. As a result, under current practice it would be possible for a building permit that has seven dwelling units to obtain a tax exemption by capping income-eligibility and rents for 20% of  50 microunits. Were the building to present the same number of units to OH as to DPD, it is likely the combined income of all the tenants occupying one permitted dwelling unit would exceed MFTE standards.

Approximately two years before the email from Burgess’s aide, on September 22, 2010, Amy Gray of the Seattle Office of Housing sent an email to Rick Lupton, Engineering & Technical Codes Manager at the DPD re the Solana aPODments project of the Mulhairs. She told Lupton that the developer, on its application for the Multifamily Property Tax Exemption had represented to the Office of Housing that it intended to develop 34 units, but that when Gray had checked the permit status she had found the work following work description: “construct one structure with 4 boarding house units separated by fire wall….” She asked Lupton to confirm that Mulhair “can do the 34 boarding house type units under this permit.” Lupton’s reply follows immediately below. Amy’s question and Lupton’s reply are good examples of how confused discussions around these units had become:

I’m sorry the answer is not so simple. For building code purposes, we treated this as a boarding house. However, for land-use purposes, this is treated as a four unit apartment. For land use, a boarding house is considered lodging which may not be allowed in the zone. And generally (though I don’t currently have plans available) 34 bedrooms (or sleeping units for bldg code) would be considered as exceeding (by 2) the allowable number of unrelated persons within a dwelling unit (for land use). I know this is likely confusing-so please let me know what further information you need.

In the end, it was determined the project had only 32 sleeping units, but the incident is nonetheless useful in illustrating the confusion engendered by the DPD’s approach – a confusion that has been long running.

On November 29, 2012, Amy Gray, Seattle Office of Housing, wrote to Mike Podowski, DPD again seeking clarification on how the units were being presented to Office of Housing and the DPD:

Is there any way you can check on the attached list of micro-unit projects to see if they were permitted as ‘dwelling units’ and not ‘sleeping units’? We are trying to get a handle on whether or not any represented the projects to DPD the same way it was represented to OH.

The DPD responded the next day that they were pretty sure they had obtained the known micro unit count from a list of microhousing units provided to the Office of Housing. They stated:

so they are sleeping rooms, not dwelling units. I added the column to reflect the dwelling units, and they are consistent with our microhousing list.

This statement is not credible: in DPD documents, microhousing projects are typically represented as creating a smaller number of dwelling units than the number of units that house individual tenants, and they are permitted on that basis, not on the basis of being sleeping units. Indeed, it appears that the Office of Housing had a list showing that the number of units represented to them by project developers consistently exceeded, by a large margin, the number of dwelling units presented to the DPD. Ultimately, in a memorandum from the Office of Housing to Mayor McGinn, the Office of Housing recommended “to allow the tax exemption only when a developer presented the same number of units to the DPD and OH, and to disallow future tax year exemptions for existing MFTE projects in cases where the number of units presented to OH substantially exceeds the number of units presented to DPD.” Councilmember Richard Conlin stated at the meeting with irate Capitol Hill residents that he did not believe these projects qualified for the MFTE, and that he was going to stop the practice.

Isn’t microhousing good because it is affordable? It depends……..affordable for whom?

I’m learning that one of the great things about blogging is that you can change direction rapidly, I decided that, before delving into eye-glazing discussion of Code definitions and characterizations, it would be better to cover two topics that always prove of interest: money and size.

The affordability of microhousing has often been the chief factor the City has pleaded in defense of it, regardless of how messy the permit process has been or how out of character with the existing neighborhood architectural context microhousing development has been. Diane Sugimura, Director of the Department of Planning and Development, went so far as to say, in a letter to Franklin Avenue Eastlake) neighbors dated June 28, 2012:

As I noted earlier, this is a non-traditional housing type, but is one which we’ve been seeing more in recent times. We recognize that this type of housing is meeting an important need by providing an affordable housing option without public subsidies.

This assertion that this affordable housing was being provided without public subsidies intrigued me. Given the emphasis the City places on public/private partnership, it was difficult to believe that anything in Seattle was built without a public subsidy. The opportunity to explore this issue further was presented when Councilmember Richard Conlin and Ms. Sugimura came to a meeting of the East District Neighborhood Council to hear the concerns of citizens irate about the proliferation of microhousing in Capitol Hill’s lowrise zones. Having previously found information at the Seattle Office of Housing that 53.48% of microhousing projects had applied for or were receiving the 12-year benefits of the multifamily tax exemption, I repeated the quote of Ms. Sugimura presented above, and asked her if she did not consider the multifamily tax exemption to be a public subsidy. Her reply: “Well, you got me.” It was good that she was so forthright in acknowledging this, but one must always wonder if she had the information I provided when she told the Franklin Avenue neighbors that microhousing was being built without public subsidies.