Though housing advocates consider micro-housing units a helpful tool in keeping housing affordable, the city of Seattle has nonetheless produced a series of regulations making such projects harder and harder to build.
Architect David Neiman writes: "Taking stock and looking back over that last couple years, I think I’m ready to call it: The war against micro-housing is over…and micro-housing has lost."
Neiman is admittedly self-interested in the proliferation of micro-housing. His firm Neiman Taber has a business practice he describes as "deeply involved in micro-housing – as architects, as developers, and as proponents in the public policy sphere."
Nonetheless, Neiman reports that regulations pertaining to micro-housing in Seattle have finally procuded the "straw that broke the camel's back." Namely, "a recent SDCI director’s rule [pdf] that places new restrictions on Small Efficiency Dwelling Units (SEDU’s) to the extent that that they will no longer be meaningfully smaller than a typical studio apartment."
Before this last straw, however, came "a series of unforced errors that has taken Seattle from being a national leader on this issue to leaving the stage altogether," according to Neiman, who then provides a timeline of how the city killed micro-housing, starting in 2009, when examples first starting appearing in the Seattle housing market, provoking public "outrage."
hat tip to Josh Feit for sharing Neiman's blog post, along with a few other relevant, Seattle-area stories.
Read the full story: The War Against Micro-housing is Over. Micro-housing Lost.
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