Miller Park Livability – Guiding Principles for Planning v2
*DRAFT*
Miller Park
Neighbors embraces the stated goals of HALA to create more affordable housing
and meet the housing needs of our growing city. We support a plan for increased
density that:
1)
Maintains or
improves the affordability of our neighborhood and diversity of our housing
stock while prioritizing family housing over
luxury condominiums and micro-housing.
a. Current
housing stock consists of single-family homes, older affordable apartments and
condos, new townhomes and apartments, Seattle Housing Authority properties,
Capitol Hill Housing properties, and accessory dwelling units (ADUs) – allowing
for a wide variety of people to enjoy in-city living. This diversity of housing
types scale to each other, maintaining the attractiveness and livability of the
area.
b. Providing development
opportunities without guidelines for the type of housing needed for the
long-term is short-sighted. We may lose the exact type of housing we will need
when younger residents desire to have a family in a few years. We could be left
with a glut of housing that isn’t conducive to these families because the City didn’t
require construction of enough 3+ bedroom units with access to outdoor space.
The result will be even higher prices for family housing and a flight of
families to the suburbs, which will exacerbate our region’s transportation
issues.
2)
Maintains or
improves the diversity of our residents, including diversity of ethnicity, age,
family makeup, renters/owners, and economic status.
a. With no
requirement to actually build low-income housing in the same neighborhood where
development occurs, HALA may actually exacerbate the increasing lack of affordability
in our city by replacing lower-rent apartments and condos with more expensive
rental options, and decreasing the stock of much sought-after single-family
homes. This is especially true in the Miller-Madison neighborhood where many
reasonably priced older and multi-bedroom apartments exist.
b. Increased
demand for property by developers could also drive away long-term residents
from this neighborhood, especially those on a fixed income, due to the increased
taxes on their rising home values. An exodus of our active elders is a loss of
history, soul and identity of this city.
c. Not enough
attention is being paid to maintaining housing for mid-income earners, who are
quickly being priced out of Seattle. Many middle-income residents are also
concerned about their ability to stay in their homes due to increased taxes.
d. Decreased
livability due to overstrained infrastructure,
blocked sunlight, lack of thoughtful
setback requirements, and abrupt transitions between larger-scale
buildings and smaller buildings could drive long-term residents and families
out of the neighborhood. With new development likely to be one-bedroom
apartments or vertical-style town homes with no elevators, the neighborhood
won’t be as attractive to families or the aging, and the diversity of residents
would decrease.
3)
Encourages
thoughtful density increases
that happen concurrently with increases in infrastructure such as parks, green
spaces, and transportation to maintain the livability of the neighborhood, and addresses
the aging sewer lines, roads, above-ground utilities and other infrastructure that
will be compromised by additional growth.
a.
The lack of
parking required for new developments, along with the reopening of Meany Middle
School and its large student population, (before planned transportation
improvements are in place) will make parking incredibly difficult for residents
and for those patronizing local businesses. This is an old neighborhood with
narrow streets, where most houses and institutions lack on-site parking.
b.
The Miller
Park Neighborhood is more than 100 years old. The aging sewer lines are often
shared by multiple properties and would likely fail under the added strain
caused by multi-family units.
c.
Miller Park
is already highly utilized, and with Meany Middle School’s re-opening it will
be stretched beyond capacity. Additional green spaces need to be added to the
neighborhood if density is to be increased.
d.
The new
zoning requirements should retain front-yard and back-yard setbacks of 15-20
feet and all established trees (12” trunks or greater), in order to help
maintain the attractiveness of the neighborhood, and diminish the impact of
larger-scale buildings blocking light to other residences, sidewalks and
streets.
e.
Any development
capacity increases in Urban Village expansion areas should ensure that new
development is compatible in scale to the existing neighborhood context, and
that there is a plan for transitions between higher-and lower-scale zones.
4)
Provides
a commercial core scaled to the proportions of the neighborhood that encourages
the continued presence of locally-owned small businesses.
5)
Protects the
presence of single-family homes (or free-standing houses, as many have been
converted into multi-family homes) as a significant component of the Residential
Urban Village, and honors the architectural character of the neighborhood and the
personal investments made by its residents to preserve these historic homes.
a. It doesn’t
make sense to eliminate the largest source of family housing in a neighborhood
that is within walking distance of multiple public and private schools –
including the soon-to-be-reopened Meany Middle School.
b.
ADU's and
other compatible options for increasing density that maintain family housing, such
as RSL zoning, should be encouraged instead of the significant zoning changes that
have been proposed for SF-zoned areas.
c. The City’s
policy is to not increase development capacity in Seattle’s Historic Districts,
even if it means these areas do not contribute to housing affordability through
MHA. The Miller Neighborhood is the south edge of the designated boundary of historic
Capitol Hill. Most of the remaining single-family homes in this neighborhood
were built over 100 years ago, and several are at least 128 years old. These
single-family homes are both historically and culturally significant. (One
example: Jimmy Hendrix first picked up a guitar at Meany Middle School and likely
hung out in these homes.) By eliminating these older neighborhoods, much of the
historic quality of Seattle’s context and style will also be destroyed. Before
this neighborhood is rezoned (and therefore threatened with elimination) there
needs to be a survey of all pre-1940 homes and buildings in the neighborhood by
a historic preservationist as part of the Environmental Impact Survey (E.I.S.)
6)
Represents an
equitable plan for contributing to density and city-wide low-income housing
goals without placing an undo livability and tax burden only on certain neighborhoods
(including the Miller Park Neighborhood.)[EM1]
a. The city’s
density goals for 2035 in the Miller neighborhood have nearly been met, and the
city acknowledges that the density goals for the entire city can be met without
changing current zoning. Therefore any further
increases in development that hurt the livability of certain neighborhoods are
not required to keep up with density demands.
For density purposes, we encourage the use of existing zoning capacity,
and propose looking for ways to support the low-income housing fund so that
residents of the entire city are asked to support equally.
b. The
borders for the upzone in the Miller neighborhood match the city's historically
discriminatory "red-lined" neighborhood borders, and we question why
these particular blocks have been chosen. Other areas on Capitol Hill are
closer to city amenities, which was supposedly the criteria for selection. The
majority of lots in this neighborhood are small, which doesn’t yield maximum effect
with regard to density. And why not upzone further down 19th Ave,
which is already a commercialized zone, past the artificial boundary of Roy all
the way down to Galer? Why wouldn’t 23rd Ave also be upzoned, given
the transportation that already runs along this corridor?
c. Why
destroy neighborhoods in order to collect a minimal amount of money from
builders paying the proposed MHA fees? If the estimate is 6 – 10% of the value
of the project, and there are no impact fees or contribution requirements for enhancing
the infrastructure that will be
strained, then HALA doesn’t appear to be a good deal for the city, its residents,
or those needing affordable housing.
[EM1]As
HALA is being imposed elsewhere in the city I think we should keep a reference
to neighborhoods and then call out that we are one of these neighborhoods.
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