Well, that didn’t take long. From the Seattle Times:
Mayor Murray withdraws proposal to allow more density in single-family zones
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Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said Wednesday he’ll no longer seek to allow more types of housing in the city’s single-family zones, after all.
Permitting duplexes, triplexes, stacked flats and other multifamily structures in those zones was perhaps the most controversial of 65 strategies recommended earlier this month by Murray’s Housing Affordability and Livability Advisory (HALA) Committee. …
Murray, the HALA Committee and other proponents of more density argued that allowing more housing types in single-family zones would increase the overall housing supply, a key to making the rapidly growing city more affordable.
They noted height restrictions in those zones would remain the same.
“Fundamentally, this is a conversation about building a Seattle that welcomes people from all walks of life — where working people, low-income families, seniors, young people and the kids of current residents all can live in our city,” the mayor said Wednesday.
But some homeowners raised concerns about the changes encouraging developers to tear down bungalows and thereby alter the character of neighborhoods. …
Alan Durning, executive director of the Sightline Institute and a HALA Committee member, said the mayor is “trying to quell the furor” in some neighborhoods.
“I’m disappointed the mayor has folded so quickly, but I’m not terribly surprised because the political blowback has been so intense,” Durning said.
“Politically, I think what the mayor is trying to do is stop the argument about one of the 65 recommendations so he and the council can get to work on the other 64.” …
I’m thinking there has to be a policy solution to this problem of political density resistance. So if it’s true that a new building creates more value for society than it destroys, then if society can compensate the losers sufficiently there should be no objections. Maybe existing homeowners can just be paid off for their acquiescence? If some neighbors will be paid if the project proceeds maybe there would emerge a vocal group of proponents to counter the vocal group of opponents.
There could be some formula with compensation diminishing exponentially by distance from the building. Crude example: maybe for a particular 300,000 square foot building $100,000 is to be distributed among 50 nearby households. I think the current fees for CACs are $3 per square foot. So this building would be paying $900,000 in CACs already. Perhaps we could take out some portion to literally buy the consent of the neighbors?
Then if the building proceeds, a NIMBY will notice a line on their bank statement:
“$2,000 CR – Compensation: The Independent @ Kingsway and E. Broadway”
Another avenue along these lines is to form a “Density Benefit District” based on property taxes. One of the benefits of density is that high density neighbourhoods require less city spending per tax dollar collected. Adding density increases tax income for the city, and increases spending at a proportionally lower rate. So adding density in one area of Vancouver effectively lowers property taxes (which are need-based) all over Vancouver. But why distribute all of those benefits evenly across all of Vancouver? How about passing some of those savings on directly to nearby property owners?
Right now downtown property taxes make up 23% of CoV tax revenue, while only occupying 5% of the land. More info on this here: http://doodles.mountainmath.ca/blog/2015/05/31/density-in-vancouver/ and a zoomable map with tax density down to the building level is here: https://mountainmath.ca/map/assessment?layer=10
Those homeowners would be compensated by increased value of there homes. A potential rezone of your home is like factoring an option on the value of the home. But the reality is that this is too complicated for the average home owner.