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Taller Downtown = "Affordable" Downtown

Posted on April 14, 2006 by The Tim

In case you missed it last week, the downtown building height / "affordable housing" saga finally came to somewhat of a conclusion.

The repeal of the CAP initiative Monday was unanimous and underwhelming—an anticlimactic finish for a once-sacrosanct law that limited downtown building heights for almost 20 years. So uncontroversial was the new law, proposed by onetime CAP campaigner Peter Steinbrueck, that the only matter left to settle Monday was how much money to make residential developers pay toward affordable housing: The mayor wanted $10 per square foot; Steinbrueck, and affordable-housing advocates like Real Change and the Seattle Alliance for Good Jobs and Housing for Everyone (SAGE), wanted $20. In the end, Steinbrueck (more or less) got his way: a tiered system in which the fee, called an "affordable housing bonus," increases on floors above the current limit, for an average per-foot bonus of $18.94. The bonus, though contentious, will only pay for about 600 new affordable units downtown (2,600 once an uncontroversial $10 bonus for commercial buildings is factored in)—one reason Steinbrueck called it "a very small contribution toward the very large and growing gap in downtown affordability."

I think that when city officials use the word "affordable" they must mean something different than the way that I interpret that word. I have a feeling that the only real measurable change that will come out of all this will be taller buildings downtown.

(Erica C. Barnett, The Stranger, 04.06.2006)

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