Events, Residential Small Lot

In Seattle thousands of residential lots are now ‘Residential Small Lot’ (RSL) as part of the MHA zoning reform. The rules covering RSL have been rewritten, bringing questions about how RSL will affect Seattle neighborhoods.

First, what is RSL and what kinds of new development are we likely to see?

Second, how does RSL address displacement, affordability, density or sustainability?

If you live in one of the affected urban villages or are interested in innovative infill housing RSVP below to join Matt Hutchins, AIA for monthly informational talks in a neighborhood near you. All engagements are from 5:00 - 6:30pm.

September 25, 2019 Columbia City Library

October 16, 2019 West Seattle Library

November 12, 2019 Douglass-Truth Library (Central District)

December 11, 2019 CAST architecture (Fremont)

Download CAST's RSL Zoning Guide

Seattle is going to change thousands of residential lots from ‘Single Family’ to ‘Residential Small Lot’ (RSL) as part of the MHA zoning reform. The rules covering RSL have been totally rewritten and there are many questions about how it will affect our neighborhoods such as Columbia City and Rainier Beach.

First, what is RSL and what kinds of new development are we likely to see?

Second, how does RSL address displacement, affordability, density or sustainability?

Finally, how can we improve RSL so that it can be the most effective before the ordinance comes before Council?

If you live in an urban village or are interested in innovative infill housing, join Matt Hutchins, AIA for this informational talk.

RSVP here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/envisioning-seattles-residential-small-lot-future-tickets-52921293012

RSL Walk ups and cottage developments create a neighborhood within a neighborhood. 

Seattle is facing a housing shortage, a climate crisis, and an increasingly inequitable city. Allowing more dwelling options, at various sizes and price points, is a great strategy to combat all three. Enter the Residential Small Lot Zone, Seattle’s attempt to add less expensive dwellings in dense, amenity rich urban centers without disrupting the historical fabric of single family detached houses. 

As part of Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA), Seattle is rezoning many of the Urban Village parcels currently zoned ‘Single Family’ to ‘Residential Small Lot‘ (RSL). RSL exists under the code right now, but is applied to only 7 acres of zoned land in Seattle and has narrowly defined housing types and restrictions that have kept it from wider acceptance. Under MHA, RSL will be expanded to 768 acres and include about 6200 Single Family Lots. The proposed code has been rewritten from the ground up, so let’s dig in and see what it is likely to produce for Seattle’s neighborhoods. 

Function

Reading the definition of RSL, it is hard not to feel sorry for this hard working zone.

It has to be a little of everything to everyone. It is uncommon for a zone description to get into issues of affordability, children, and the desires of its residents. We don't expect the description of General Industrial 2 (IG2) to make judgments about dockworkers’ life choices. Or Downtown Office Core-1 (DOC-1) to wonder about whether people in Downtown Office Core 2 (DOC-2 ) feel development there is appropriate.

Nevertheless, it exposes a question. What is the mission of RSL? Is it a transition between Residential zones? Is it meant to capitalize on the proximity to urban centers by putting residents close to amenities, jobs and transit? Is it fighting displacement, or fostering density? What need does it serve, and what is the positive vision of that zone? Right now, it is formulated with a little of everything, including some new stuff, and takes elements from single family, multi family, bridges residential and building code with a dash of high minded mission to address family housing and affordability.  It is a little like this: 

RSL.  Not elegant, but adapted to its environment.

The Nitty Gritty: What does it look like on paper? 

What does RSL look like? 

Before RSL zone, this Single family zoned street has 28 dwellings. 

And again, after a generation of development doubles the number of dwellings:

57 dwellings on the street, double the current density, but not much change at street level. 

Prototypes for RSL Zoning

We've taken the liberty to suggest some prototypes, based on traditional 'missing middle' multifamily, optimized for this zoning.  

Bungalow Court (or the Walk Up Model) 

For lots greater than 11,699 sq.ft, this bungalow court has (6) 3BR 1466 sq.ft. primary units, and (6) 733 sq.ft. 1 or 2BR ADUs.  This walk up is really a module that can be arranged into twos, threes, any grouping based on density limitations. 

Double Up Duplex

Our idea is for a stacked duplex, 1500 sq.ft. configured for an ADU, optimized for the allowable FAR on a minimum 4000 sq.ft. lot. We'd target Passivhaus green building standard, integrate green roof, pv, and rainwater catchment.  

Alternative configurations for ADUs, or future co-housing options. 

Recommendations for code tweaks!

Here are fourteen ways we can improve the Seattle’s MHA’s totally rewritten Residential Small Lot zone, BEFORE it goes into effect:

1.Exempt RSL from MHA fees. New dwellings created in the RSL zone will be subject to MHA, but will anyone built a rent restricted house? No. Therefore, fees due at permit issuance could be as high as $45,650. It will have a dampening effect on any homeowner looking to build a second house on the back of their lot. Many of those homeowners will build an ADU instead (not subject to MHA fee), eliminating the upside of more smaller homes in the marketplace. 

2. Allow ADUs to function as MHA performance! MHA performance is 50% for lots under 5699 sq. ft.. Meanwhile ADUs are by definition limited to a smaller size, and making them affordable would be closer in spirit to the original intent of the ordinance.

3. Eliminate new Maximum Net Unit Area limit. Maximum Net Unit Area is a new, unique limitation that only applies to this zone, and nowhere else. It is Floor Area per Unit, and it is often in conflict with the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) for the parcel. There are no MNUA exceptions for existing houses or additions, meaning many of Seattle’s classic bungalows in RSL zones will suddenly become non-conforming, unable to do a ‘bump out’ or even a SECOND story addition. Because basements count toward MNUA, but not FAR, expect a lot of new buildings with basements apartments. 

A basic RSL block reveals surprising inflexibility unless you want to add a second dwelling

The owners could only do a 230 sq. ft. addition. Not a second story. They could however build a new dwelling behind it up to 2200 sq. ft.

4. Start FAR at 1, give .25 bonus for more dwellings. The FAR is .75, lower than any Low Rise zone, and effectively lower than Single Family zoning (only governed by height and lot coverage). If RSL is meant as a transition between multifamily and single family, it is more restrictive that both.

5. Lower the density ratio to 1 to 1500. Fourteen percent of the newly minted RSL lots will not even support a second dwelling. Why go through this process then wipe the development capacity of 900 lots off the table? Rounding up for density at 1.85 * 2000SF means any lot under 3699SF is still a single family lot, but MNUA effectively limits all dwellings to an FAR as low as of .59.

6. Allow more than one Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU). All these lots are in urban centers, where we are planning to put almost all our growing population. Many lots or owners aren’t going to want to built a full second dwelling. Meanwhile, SFZ will soon allow two ADUs per primary residence. This flexibility will preserve many existing houses, and provide homes for new residents right in the urban villages.

7. Exclude ADUs from MNUA. An accessory dwelling unit counts against the MNUA, meaning many average houses wouldn’t be able to build a cottage without sacrificing square footage in the primary house.

8. Resist the urge to Design Standard. The two Design Standards for RSL are ridiculous. Different color walkways to the house in back? Why? We don’t expect such ham fisted wayfinding in multifamily zones where there’s likely more front doors. One of the great strengths of the proposed code is that it did away with the many of the restrictive types, like ‘tandem housing.’ Let’s not dilute it with well meaning micro management, only to find out that we’ve created a less than graceful solution (remember the platypus!).

9. Allow exceptions from MHA when preserving existing houses. Subdividing existing houses into multiple units will be penalized by the Design Standards, and be subject MHA fee, at the full price for the area of units. The MHA fee calculation is gloss floor area/total units X net increase of units. A 3000 sq ft house, converted into a triplex from single family, would pay MHA on 2000 sq ft as if new, or up to $41,000. That neither incentivizes preservation or the creation of more affordable housing. 

This is a triplex.  Converting it under the MHA regime would cost tens of thousands of dollars in MHA fees in addition to the requirements of retrofitting.

10.Take out limit on number of apartments. The stigma of apartment living results in one of the most efficient (and revered) forms being outlawed. The code is clear: RSL outright outlaws more than three apartments regardless of lot size. No cute Capitol Hill fourplexes.

This fourplex is not allowed under the new RSL zone. 

11. Eliminate owner occupancy requirements. We don’t require owners to live on site in other multifamily zones, owner occupancy requirements will severely limit the number of accessory dwelling units and they reinforce a fundamentally class based stigma against renters.

12. Change all residential zones to ‘Residential’. We now have three titles for zones where residences are the only use; Single Family, Lowrise, Residential Small Lot. While RSL is being treated as a unique bridge between SFZ and LRZ, it should be part of a continuum of dwelling per square foot. Streamline!

13. Amend Seattle Residential Code to cover up to four apartments. Building codes switch to the more demanding SBC for anything more dense than a duplex and ADUs are considered as such. When buildings should be getting more efficient, like stacking a third apartment on top of a double decker, there is a quantum leap in construction cost, driven by code compliance.

14. Allow Live Work and Corner stores. In midrise zones, having residential suites at the street level seems forced. Two blocks from the center of an urban village, having an office space legible from the street makes total sense. Allowing corner stores would expand the walkshed so more people will walk to pick something up, rather than drive to a supermarket.

Neighborhood institutions start with entrepreneurial neighbors. Give them a place.

The ordinance  to allow backyard cottages in the other three quarters of Seattle just passed 9-0!  The council's comments focused on the exhaustive community outreach, successful pilot program and benefit of having this housing choice for Seattle. Excellent work by the planning commission, DPD and council.

Usually, the city's process oriented decision making can be cumbersome, and having spent hours in meetings, testifying, and communicating with council, I feel vindicated that our involvement has helped in some small way to bring some innovation to the Single Family zoning.

We're excited to design some of these--in part because of the opportunity to foster multi-generational housing, and the option of building a smaller free standing structure rather than building an addition.  Plus, it is a really fun scale--I think more people will be thinking about bonus studios rather than housing units.

With the impending vote on the backyard cottage ordinance, everyone in the office has been doing a little daydreaming about the DADUs and what they would build.  I have been working on a idea that started with a little ink drawing. It's now developed into a preliminary model/floor plans.  I've flipped the shed roof to have more volume in the shop/studio and worked out the bathroom so that my shop could easily be converted into an open kitchen/living space.

I have also been working out a simple steel structure, clad with structural insulated panels for easy construction and minimization of waste.  The goal is prefabrication of the components offsite, then assemble.

I'd love to try out using a geothermal pre-heating loop, with a hydronic radiant system run of a domestic hot water heater and test the new PV shingles, but that might get a bit expensive.

We're almost there--the committee passed the measure to allow backyard cottages in Seattle.  Next stop will be City Council. There are some notable amendments to the ordinance--the 50 per year allowed cap has been eliminated.  The heights have changed somewhat.  A discussion to limit the cottage height to no more than 15' above the primary residence's roof (which would affect sloped lots primarily) was tabled without conclusion.

The discussion is a little strange, in that some of the requirements being tossed around are more stringent than for building a single family house.  Case in point--if this relative height limit section passes, you will need a topographic survey to prove that the cottage conforms (not required on a new house if well within setbacks and under height), thus added about $2000 to the pricetag for the drawings.  This doesn't make any sense if the city is serious about this as being an affortable option.

Another case in point--Councilmember Rasmussen was leaning toward a neighborhood notice, similar to a MUP, but the neighbor's recourse, provided the cottage design fits the requirements, is nil.  The cottage is a Level 1 decision (no notice necessary, just like a new single family house), but creating such a provision would form a special class of notice ("Here is what is happening next door, but there is nothing you can do about it.  Thanks for coming down.").

Unfortunately, I had to run out before the discussion on the privacy issue, another NIMBY favorite, but in the end the ordinance is one step closer to fruition.

You can see the entire meeting online at the Seattle Channel here.  Backyard Cottage discussion starts at 107.30.

Seattle's DPD just announced a program to accelerate permitting for sustainable projects, called Green Q, as in 'queue.' Applicants need to commit to construction waste recycling, dwelling units under 2400 sf, and meet LEED silver or better, or BuiltGreen 4 star or better.

The Planning, Land-Use and Neighborhood Committee is planning on voting on the Backyard Cottages on October 8th.  Last chance to make yourself heard on this issue! It will be a packed agenda, with discussions of the Multi-family code revision as well as the design review process (which will be mandatory in Multi-family).

In the last month, the City Council paid 3 groups to study the new MF code and flesh out some likely outcomes (good and bad) and propose revisions to the code.  It is a complex issue--the code revision itself is about 277 pages--and no doubt the Council were daunted by the prospect of interpreting the impact.  It took me two evenings just to get through the entire code and I am still not sure I've got a handle on all the ins and outs.

The three groups were the Masterbuilders Association, the Congress of Residential Architects, and Group Three (composed of unaffiliated concerned citizens).  Each group were paid 5k for their work (our fee went to CORA--not to the  8 individual participants).  Here are my impressions from the three groups:

MBA

The MBA group, lead by Arg Consulting and Pb Elemental focused on fee simple townhomes, 1200 sf-1600sf each, on both the L1 and L3 sites.  One gable style, one flat roof style option for each site given in the program.  The schemes prioritized surface parking (I think one scheme had garages).  The site designs either a central surface parking lot, accessed along a longitudinal drive or perpendicular parking off an alley.  The reduction in setbacks meant the building volumes were spread to the site edges.  These would be cheap to build--fee simple boxes, surface parking, no cantilevers--and  therefore probably the most likely to get built under the new code.  Which is depressing, when you extrapolate it to the scale of the city.

The other remarkable thing is that the MBA group left development capacity on the table in order to have straight forward rectangles.  The most dense scheme had 6 units (on 7200 sf= 1200 sf per unit) well below the 800 sf per unit allowable now.  It seems hard to believe that developers best use of the lot is solely dictated by construction simplicity.  My back of the envelop calculation would put the FAR between 1 and 1.34 (6 units X 1200 or 1600 sf per = between 7200 sf and 9600sf divided by 7200 sf lot), less than the 1.4 allowed.  The outcome of the MBA exploration is big units, minimal density, and pushed to the property lines so there is enough space to have cheap surface parking. That isn't to say that all the other groups' schemes made economic sense, but if this is their best option, the proposed mandatory design review has to have some more bite, because we'll definitely be seeing these bland site plans again all over town.

CORA:

The second presenter, the Congress of Residential Architects, had a lot of diversity in both type, density, good and bad.  CORA explored ground related townhouses, high density apartments, even row houses. We tried to find the limits, loopholes and boy did we create some code compliant cringe-worthy options, as well as some good options that would require departures.  David Neiman and Bradley Khouri deserve praise for herding the cats.   Here is a little conclusion that David Neiman wrote:

"There are certainly some problems with loopholes & some flawed gating mechanisms that we identified.  The bad news is that our bad schemes are even worse than what you can do today.  The good news, however, is that the culprits aren't very hard to find, and they aren't hard to fix.  Overall, we remain strong supporters of the Multi-Family Update.  It just needs some work under the hood.

Code changes recommended to make bad schemes better:

1.  Above 1.1 FAR, the wheels start to come off the cart for most ground based housing schemes.  At 1.4 FAR most ground based housing schemes are a disaster.  We need to revisit allowable FAR & use it as a tool to reward desirable features & outcomes.  For small-lot ground-based housing, FAR needs to be kept relatively low.  For structured parking solutions, large lots, and projects that undergo full design review, higher FAR is appropriate.  See executive summary.

2.   The residential amenities requirement is far too permissive – it reduces open space to an afterthought.  It's not hard to correct.  The requirements just need to be dialed up to be more significant.  See executive summary for proposal.

Code changes recommended to make good outcomes into better outcomes:

1.    Lift the density limits to allow diverse unit types, sizes, affordability levels.

2.    Return to a 30' base height limit for all L-zones w/ a 4' height bonus in L3 for structured parking.

3.    Encourage basements by exempting them from FAR – you get a privacy grade break & create opportunities for inexpensive rental flats.

4.   Green factor.  If it were working, it would incentivize open space, privacy screening, tree planting & permeability.  It does none of those things; it simply covers your land in shrubs & your walls in vines.

5.   See executive summary for more."

There will be more information and a pdf of our work forthcoming.

Group Three:

Because this post is getting long, I am going to rapidly summarize the Group 3:  Lots of double lot schemes, and generally trying to put a bad face on each.  I am not sure if anything they put up there would be something they'd like to see built.  There was a preposterous presentation of anecdotal evidence that when houses are closer than15' to the sidewalk that window blinds are always closed, and it emotes an unsafe neighborhood, therefore the front yard setbacks must be 15' feet.  One merely has to walk around any neighborhood to see front blinds drawn--it is not a function of distance to sidewalk.  There was a recurring complaint that street trees weren't provided or required and that more of the green factor elements would die or get removed (I envisioned a truck with mobile planters with trees being carted from one property to another to fulfill Green Factor, get the final inspection, then on to the next development).  I actually agree with this--by setting the level of Green Factor too high, they will be pushing unsustainable planting (one of their schemes had a vegetable garden at the bottom of a four story light well).   And they ground the axe of allowing developers to subdivide properties to take advantage of the rounding up allowed by unit density rules.  The presentation was a pretty cynical take on the new code.

If you have questions, or comments, I'd love to hear about them!

CAST has been involved in reworking the Multi-family code for the City of Seattle--this byzantine, arcane legacy that seems to produce the dreaded Four Pack/Six Pack around a shared auto court. The proposed code is evolutionary, and at this point, has been watered to down to the point that the impact will not affect the majority of lowrise multifamily that goes up in Seattle.  It is pretty disappointing in general, but a couple of highlights:

1. The move to FAR rather than density limits for number of unit will create more demand for smaller units in the L3 zone

2.  The setbacks are reduced--good for the urban sidewalk edge, and allow raised stoops in the front yard.

3. Height bonuses for workforce housing, and green building are going to get used--an example of incentivizing good construction.

And a couple of lowlights:

1.  Green Factor's heart in is the right place, but the high baseline is going to force some heavy gaming of the rules, such as fences become 'vegetated walls', and green roofs are going to go in then be abandoned.  The city would be better off lowering the baseline and focusing it on green factors that are going to be maintained and become beneficial for the environment and the city.

2.  Density limits in L1 remain, and thus there is zero impetus to alter the 4 pack in any meaningful way.

3.  Partially below grade parking doesn't count toward FAR (that's good), but doesn't give you additional height--meaning no one is going to pay to bury the parking if they are then also not able to offset the cost with a third story of marketable square footage.

I'll post more info later....