This week, the Seattle City Council had its first meeting of 2025 and housing was a key topic of discussion. But if the meeting itself was any indication, determining a path forward for the city’s severe housing shortage will be a struggle as elected leaders attempt to ascertain a sustainable plan for the next decade, according to reporting by The Seattle Times.
The city council — which recently experienced a high level of turnover stemming from the 2024 elections and one member’s abrupt resignation — will need to balance a variety of interests as it discusses proposed solutions to address the city’s dire housing needs. The Times report explained that the meeting exposed “fault lines” between the interests of housing advocates, community activists, the council and the administration of Mayor Bruce Harrell.
Last year, Harrell introduced a bold plan that would aim to double the city’s zoning capacity, which City Hall said could lead to the construction of 80,000 additional homes by 2044.
Harrell seeks to increase the number of homes that are allowed on a per-lot basis within neighborhoods previously zoned for single-family homes. He is also looking to create 30 “neighborhood centers” that could allow for the construction of five-story apartment complexes.
The concept of the neighborhood center would be a new land-use designation that would bolster the zoning capacity of commercial centers, adding more residents to areas with existing businesses and amenities. But they would be limited to only a few of the city’s neighborhoods.
Still, council members railed against some aspects of Harrell’s proposal, the Times reported.
“Allowing free-range zoning will not let you get the home you want,” council member Cathy Moore said, adding that additional density would not necessarily translate into increased affordability, and that townhomes could be akin to “giveaways” for developers, according to the reporting.
But fellow council member Dan Strauss said that in the past, the city has severely underestimated its housing needs and that more density would be a good thing for communities.
“I think that (Harrell’s) plan meets the minimum of what this city needs. The last time we had this exercise, we underestimated by twofold the growth that we were going to take up,” Strauss said, according to the report.
The mayor unveiled his housing proposal in March 2024, but some argued that the plan did not go far enough to address the city’s needs. The debate has now become inverted as more leaders, activists and residents are commonly saying that the plan goes too far. At the end of the year, regional public interest news outlet The Urbanist reported that more local groups are pushing to block many of Harrell’s proposals from taking hold in the city’s neighborhoods.
Neighborhood councils have expressed “concerns about the plan’s impact on the city’s tree canopy, their neighborhoods’ specific character and the ability of infrastructure to keep up,” according to the Times. “The new proposed neighborhood centers have attracted the most opposition.”
To comply with state law, the city must pass new density rules by June 2025, the Times reported. While Seattle broke records for new housing construction last year, the total number of new homes created lagged behind the number of new jobs that came to the area for several years, according to a 2021 city report cited by the Times.
In 2023, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed a series of bills that aimed to address housing issues across the state. These included relaxed zoning restrictions, easier construction of accessory dwelling units (ADUs), anti-discriminatory housing policies and changes to requirements related to renters’ security deposits.
