THE STRANGER
By Heidi Groover
Seattle activists fighting density in their neighborhoods—I wouldn’t dare call them NIMBYs—won a temporary but significant victory today.
The city’s hearing examiner has ruled that the city must do more environmental review before making it easier to build backyard cottages in single-family neighborhoods. With this ruling, the hearing examiner is siding with the Queen Anne Community Council, which has argued that allowing more small apartments in neighborhoods like theirs will have negative effects on parking and utilities and will encourage developers to bulldoze houses and replace them with several units instead.
The case — eyebleedingly wonky in its details — underscores a central fight over the future of Seattle: Will the city protect traditionally sacred single-family neighborhoods? (Zones that make up a large portion of the city and in which many homeowners have seen their property values skyrocket as renters have been forced out of the city due to rising costs.) Or will city officials, recognizing a housing crisis on their hands, change the way we treat those single-family neighborhoods? Will they open them up to new types of buildings that can house more people?