Top Policy Priorities

Allow midrise housing (4-8 stories) and mixed uses in all residential areas within walking distance of frequent transit

Rendering of midrise, mixed-use housing

Allow middle housing like triplexes, fourplexes, sixplexes, townhouses, and stacked flats throughout all residential areas

Rendering of middle housing on a residential street

Create significant floor area, height, and density bonuses for affordable and social housing development

Affordable housing rendering

Reaction to the Revised One Seattle Plan

The Revised One Seattle Plan released by the Mayor and OPCD aspires to expand housing opportunities across the city, promote equitable development citywide, focus growth and investment in complete, walkable communities, and meet the challenges of climate change for a resilient future.

We believe this revised plan makes major steps towards these shared goals and lays a strong foundation for the next decade of growth. However, there are still meaningful improvements that can and should be made to the plan, to create a more affordable, equitable, and sustainable Seattle.

Draft One Seattle Plan
Future Land Use Map

Notable Strengths of the Revised Plan

  • Citywide Middle Housing: Allowance of fourplexes and other middle housing, with increased Floor Area Ratio (FAR) to accommodate family-sized homes.

  • Stacked Flat Bonus: Introduction of an innovative incentive to encourage accessible housing options, beyond traditional townhomes.

  • New Neighborhood Centers: Creation of 30 Neighborhood Centers across Seattle, including five additional centers from the Draft Plan in North Magnolia, High Point, Mid-Beacon Hill, Upper Fremont, and Hillman City.

  • Expanded Urban Centers: Extending Urban Centers around light rail and frequent bus stops, including NE 130th St, Upper Queen Anne, Greenwood, West Seattle Junction, and the Admiral District.

Continued Areas for Improvement

  1. Expand Stacked Flats for Accessible Middle Housing: Allow stacked flats on all lots near frequent transit, regardless of lot size, to maximize opportunities in high-opportunity and transit-rich areas. Restricting stacked flats to lots larger than 6,000 square feet will limit this housing type in many of Seattle’s older and most desirable neighborhoods.

  2. Add Neighborhood Centers Near Major Parks: Create new neighborhood centers in low-displacement risk and high-opportunity areas, including North Broadway, Seward Park, Alki, Gas Works, and Loyal Heights. This would create more housing options near some of Seattle’s most cherished parks and let more people meet their daily needs by walking or biking.

  3. Expand Neighborhood Centers: Expand the boundaries of proposed neighborhood centers to ensure their scale can support essential amenities like grocery stores. We suggest expanding these boundaries to encompass the area within a five-minute walk around a central point.

  4. Allow Mixed-Uses More Broadly: Allow for mixed use development along transit arterials, to create space for childcare, grocery stores, and small businesses. Build on the proposal to allow corner stores in neighborhood residential areas, by creating flexibility for small commercial spaces on all residential lots.

  5. Allow Transit-Oriented Homes Off Arterials: Extend multifamily zoning along transit corridors to include blocks within a five-minute walk of transit stops, enabling quieter, car-light neighborhoods with convenient transportation access.

  6. Expand the Affordable Housing Density Bonus: Allow the affordable housing density bonus to be used citywide, without parking mandates. Additionally, ensure the bonus can be used by a broad range of developers—including private, nonprofit, and social housing developers—to build mixed-income housing without relying on scarce public funding.

These recommendations will strengthen the One Seattle Plan's ability to create a more affordable, equitable, and sustainable city. These changes would help ensure all Seattleites can access the opportunities and amenities that make our city great, while promoting development that supports our climate goals and creates complete communities where people can meet their daily needs close to home.

Detailed Policy Priorities

  • Allow midrise (6-8 story) apartments within a 10 to 15 minute walk of frequent transit and parks. People should have access to affordable housing on safe, residential streets close to transit.

  • Allow the full complement of “middle housing”--duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, accessory dwelling units, cottage clusters, townhomes, stacked flats, and courtyard apartments–in all residential areas across Seattle. These housing options are relatively affordable, fit in well in neighborhood residential areas, and can create affordable homeownership options.

  • Encourage the development of affordable and social housing by providing a height, density, and floor area bonus for properties that contribute to equity goals. This could involve reserving a significant portion for people earning less than 80% of Area Median Income, supporting homeowners at risk of displacement, or all-income housing that maintains full public ownership.

  • Support walkable and complete communities throughout all of Seattle by creating neighborhood anchors that include sufficient capacity for housing and mixed-use developments to truly create 15-minute neighborhoods. Allow and incentivize the development of small ground floor commercial uses and community gathering spaces.

  • Allow high-rise housing near light rail stations and urban centers, particularly in low-displacement risk areas.

  • Allow the most growth in low-displacement areas. Fund community-based developments that utilize an affirmative marketing and/or community preference policy to allow displaced people to return.

  • Consider the health and safety impacts of infrastructure routes in decisions about future land use and housing density. Mitigate the pollution caused by freeways, airports, and other carbon-emitting transportation options, which are disproportionately located in marginalized communities, through lids and other strategies.

  • Expand opportunities for affordable homeownership, to help close the large and persistent racial homeownership and wealth gap. Ensure new affordable homeownership developments are able to benefit from all incentives available to other affordable housing types. Stabilize low-income homeowners at risk of foreclosure and displacement.

  • Ensure permit review timelines are predictable and as fast as possible. Reform design review to ensure it does not delay the production of much-needed housing.

  • Remove residential density limits and requirements for side-setbacks, upper-level stepbacks, modulation, and articulation. Such development standards require more complex building envelopes, directly reducing energy efficiency and making innovative construction methods like cross-laminated timber or modular construction more difficult.

    Remove parking requirements to reduce housing costs and promote sustainable transportation options. The high cost of parking spaces limits the feasibility of affordable housing development. By eliminating these requirements, we can create more affordable and sustainable housing options while also encouraging alternative transportation methods.

  • Encourage sustainable construction by offering incentives for meeting deep green building standards, such as passive house construction or preservation of embedded carbon in existing structures.

    Promote the creation of housing options that are physically accessible to people with disabilities, as well as unit sizes that can accommodate multigenerational households, housing for elders, and housing with sufficient rooms for larger families.

  • Identify gaps in transit frequency and park access, and work towards filling these gaps. Build safe walking, rolling, and biking infrastructure in parts of the city where it is missing. Ensure publicly-owned open spaces located near transit provide a variety of uses that are accessible to a wide range of users.