Seattle City Councilmembers Show NIMBY Stripes

It's not pretty

Sara Nelson’s Circus of Failed Governance

Yesterday, the Seattle City Council met to discuss the future of growth in Seattle. They put on a performance that will remind anyone watching why so many voters in cities have lost their faith in blue governance.

Erica Barnett of Publicola did a superb job of highlighting comments from council-members and these comments were infuriating. I rely heavily here on Barnett’s reporting, and her in-depth research relies on patreon funding. Please support her work!)

The Rich, White Veto

Barnett reports that a parade of advocates aiming to reject change in their neighborhoods showed up. The council seemed delighted to echo some of their strange claims. This is the same old script that leads to the paralysis that has bedeviled blue states for decades. It is responsible for our housing crisis, has greatly exacerbated our climate crisis, and has raised the cost of government by astronomical amounts.

But no matter, Sara Nelson and Bruce Harrell’s handpicked council seems happy to keep the cycle of expensive and failed governance going.

Setting aside, for a moment, absurdist statements from residents that implied that apartments in single family neighborhoods are killing orcas, let’s turn to a few highlights from the council.

Imbecility on The Dais

Maritza Rivera raised “questions and concerns about the process.” Barnett reports that Rivera claimed that the Office of Planning and Community Development did not do sufficient research and engagement in Northeast Seattle. As with so many things that Rivera says, this is patently false. (Rivera has also specifically made deceitful statements about this particular office in the past; she seems to have some sort of beef with them.) There have been multiple, exhaustive rounds of outreach. The process has taken years, has involved many thousands of public comments in person, in Seattle neighborhoods, and online, with outreach in several languages. In fact, it has been so painstakingly slow that we are in danger of falling out of compliance with state law. Rivera also complained that she hadn’t seen the transportation and climate plans, drafts of which have been out for nine months. Per usual, Rivera just didn’t bother to show up prepared.

Bob Kettle said he likes skinny rectangle apartment districts since they get more buy-in (as in, single family homeowners get to keep apartments out of their neighborhood). Rob Saka decided, without any apparent basis, to question whether the growth targets are even right and where they come from. All of this information is readily available to Saka, of course. Perhaps if he showed up prepared instead of always insisting on inflicting his “just-asking-questions” rants on the room, the city could make more substantive progress on a host of issues.

But Cathy Moore took the cake when it came to NIMBY takes. "Simply equating density with affordable housing is a myth," she said. This is a straw man if I’ve ever met one, and I previously dedicated an entire article to the topic. She topped this off with an even more silly and sarcastic statement: "The market always takes care of itself. The market will always continue to take care of itself.” I know most of the players advocating for more housing in Seattle. Almost none of them make such a claim, and I cannot think of a single prominent advocacy group in Seattle that claims this. But the truth seems not to be an issue for Moore.

She also complained about this being a “giveaway to developers.” While I will readily concede that many developers are often not the most sympathetic characters, (in fact they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep me out of office!) Moore's reasoning is decidedly subpar.

Does Councilmember Moore believe we should put production caps on food, because allowing more food production is a giveaway to big agriculture? How is this substantively different? Both are, for better or for worse, for profit enterprises with too much influence over government, and both also provide for basic needs. With food, we have no production caps and there is enough food to go around, at least with some public aid for those in need. But with housing, we have caps and scarcity and a housing crisis. I also find it pretty galling that she claims Urbanists are being fooled by "the building industry," when she clearly has such a sophomoric understanding of housing markets and housing policy herself.

Moore also said "trees are not a NIMBY issue. They are an ecological necessity." They are an ecological necessity, but whether they are a NIMBY issue is up to those involved. And in this case, Moore has pitted trees against housing–meaning in this case, she has made it a NIMBY issue. I have shown how we can have housing and trees, and this isn’t some secret that only the planning illuminati know about. In fact, an answer to this problem was presented to the council in the meeting by one of the city’s leading tree advocates, Sandy Shettler. Shettler did oppose the changes, and this will irritate many housing advocates. But it’s important to note that her objection was much more narrowly tailored (saying we need “shared walls” instead of spreading housing out across each lot, something she cleverly calls “lot sprawl”) and was not inherently NIMBY. If the council addressed her objection, it could zone for both housing and trees. But Moore seems uninterested in this kind of nuance.

The Mask Comes Off

Moore made a mistake though, and let the mask fall off, if just for a moment. “I’m not prepared to sacrifice my particular neighborhood, by allowing apartments within 2 blocks of 90th and Roosevelt.”

Oof. That’s the rub. She thinks apartments will ruin her neighborhood. I’ll let you speculate your own reasons for why she might feel this way. In any case, the history of this topic is not pretty. Whatever her motivation, this is literal NIMBYism.

Deception on The Dais?

Part of what hurts about this is that I’ve been genuinely disappointed in Moore. I heard her speak in 2023 and she represented herself very differently from what she is saying now. For example, we both spoke to a large audience at the Complete Communities Forum, which was led by a broad array of organizations pushing for a transformational housing strategy, she made all kinds of statements that would lead a person to believe she wouldn’t be advocating for this NIMBY foolishness.

These include: “I have personally experienced just a broad spectrum of housing diversity and my idea is that I am an urbanist and as an urbanist I am committed to the mission stated here” (23:23). “We need to end exclusionary zoning so we need to create inclusionary zoning which allows for a diversity of housing type. When you look at our ecosystems, mono-systems do not perform well; they don't survive well. I think we need to apply that principle to our housing as well we need to have and I think as we expand growth into all of the neighborhoods, because all neighborhoods need to share this responsibility.” (40:47).

In fact, as Barnett reports, during the 2023 campaign Moore specifically said she supported Option 5 for the Comprehensive plan, which would have put apartments in far more places than this plan, and which included the 800 or so feet of up-zoning in her neighborhood that she now opposes.

Residents Call Out Cathy’s Deception

Some of the residents of her district are not pleased with Moore’s complete 180.

Margaret Shield, PhD is a health sciences researcher who works on public health and environmental policies and regulations at the local, state, and national level. She is active with the 46th District Democrats and has lived in Seattle roughly 35 years as a renter and a homeowner. Shield says, “I feel misled by Moore’s public statements, and her responses to questions during the campaign–including during the forums with the 46th Dems.” Shield proceeded to point to Moore’s answers to the King County Dems questionnaire, where Moore cited affordable housing as the first of her top three issues, writing that she “will look to support the Alternative that most successfully increases the spectrum of affordable housing citywide.” Moore also said that “ending single-family zoning is a priority of mine because it is the only way that we will be able to adequately address the ongoing housing shortage and begin to address the legacy of racist housing policy.” She even supported studying “Alternative 6” for the comprehensive plan, which is much more ambitious than what she is rejecting today. Shield sums up her assessment, "Moore lied to us."

Robert Cruickshank, who is the board chair of Sierra Club Seattle (he says the opinions here are his own) and who has been at the forefront of the fight to stop Seattle School closures, including in a guest Rondezvous piece, also feels duped. “I met with Cathy Moore at Cloud City Coffee in mid-2023. She told me she supported more housing density everywhere, and that housing supply helps with affordability and keeping young people in the city. After seeing her comments at the Council meeting on Monday, I feel that she lied to me."

Given that Moore never announced a change in views and has never publicly shared any reasons for changing her mind, it is tough to avoid drawing a similar conclusion at this point.

That is a genuine disappointment. When I was on the trail, I thought Moore was a much more serious candidate, and I appreciated that she was a moderate, rather than a conservative, like Kettle or Rivera. But other than her capital gains tax that went nowhere, she has been reliably reactionary on too many fronts.

But much more important than my disillusionment is the reality that the some on the council looks like they want to trim Harrell’s already too-tepid housing plan. That would mean higher housing prices, more homelessness, more sprawl and traffic, and a worse climate.

Keep in mind that we are in the majority here. A supermajority of people in Washington want more housing in their neighborhoods. Seattlites, by a two to one ratio, would allow four to six story buildings for social housing in every neighborhood. (The city council adamantly opposes social housing).

It is time to organize.