Appendix
•

Two policies from Seattle’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA)—the
groundbreaking first-ever comprehensive set of strategies to address housing affordability in
Seattle—underscore limitation in the tools we have as a city to adequately address the housing
affordability crisis we’re facing. Since HALA policy recommendations were released in 2015, the
City got to work in earnest on two of the foremost high-impact policies, ADU reforms and
Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA). Nearly five years later, these policies have yet to be
fully implemented, even as our housing affordability crisis worsens.

•

In the case of our ADU reforms, work began in 2015 to conduct engagement and craft policy,
with the goal of passing legislation in the summer of 2016. The legislation would have eased
restrictions on backyard cottages and in-law units—which had been legalized in Seattle’s singlefamily neighborhoods since 2009, but had yielded only 221 ADUs since. The 2016 legislation
could have produced between an estimated 4,000 and 6,000 ADUs over 20 years. In early 2016,
a small group of residents challenged the environmental review, and a ruling was issued at the
end of that year, requiring the City to complete a full EIS. Upon completion of that
environmental review nearly two years later in October 2018, the same small group of residents
promptly appealed. Now, with an appeal still pending, we hope to pass a stronger piece of
legislation than was introduced in 2016 in the summer of this year, four years since work began.
We are also working to make sure low-income homeowners have access to resources to build
ADUs on their properties and to ensure that low-income renters have access to these housing
options.

•

Another recent example comes from MHA, Seattle’s version of inclusionary zoning, which would
require new multifamily and commercial development to contribute to affordable housing
through a fee payment to the City’s Office of Housing or on-site construction of affordable
homes, in exchange for increased capacity to build granted through zoning changes in all of
Seattle’s urban villages. Although decades of advocacy in the making, work began to craft this
policy in 2014. Policy to implement the program across the city was developed over the course
of the next two years, including hundreds of community meetings. The final EIS was released in
November 2017, which was appealed by a small group of residents largely comprised of
homeowners. A ruling was issued a year later, finding that the FEIS is adequate, with additional
work needed for analysis of historic sites. Full implementation of MHA is set for a vote on March
18, 2019—five years since the policymaking process began.