As the process to update the Seattle Comprehensive Plan drags on, Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck is looking to kickstart more affordable housing within areas of the city that have been effectively off-limits to new affordable housing for decades. Rinck’s “Roots to Roofs” proposal is a retooling of a pilot program that had been put forward by former Councilmember Tammy Morales, taking the same basic idea but significantly ramping up the development capacity provided to builders.
Still pitched as a pilot program, Roots to Roofs would allow up to 35 projects across the city to take advantage of additional density allowances as long as they set aside at least 25% of planned housing units as affordable for lower-income households for up to 50 years. Furthermore, the proposal includes additional density bonuses on parcels that previously been under racially restrictive covenants, now-illegal clauses in property deeds that prohibited certain racial and ethnic groups from being able to live in those areas.
Rinck’s legislation will face its first committee discussion on Wednesday.
“The spirit of this legislation is to make sure that we have more community-led affordable housing, especially in areas that haven’t seen affordable housing growth,” Rinck told The Urbanist. “We know affordable housing is such a critical need right now, and we know it’s also an increasingly challenging time to be able to build and develop. So steps that we’re taking at the city level to make it easier for projects to pencil is something absolutely within our power. Beyond staff time, this doesn’t cost the city anything.”
Morales’s Connected Communities pilot was relatively straightforward: new housing projects partnering with community organizations and setting aside a certain number of units as badly needed affordable housing would receive additional development capacity. In the works before the 2023 council elections but put forward after a wave of five new moderate councilmembers took office, the idea faced a litany of concerns that seemed secondary to the fact that Morales was the bill sponsor.
Roots to Roofs, by contrast, already another co-sponsor in Land Use Committee Chair Mark Solomon, whose support for the bill could help help convince other centrist councilmembers to get behind the idea.
To qualify as a Roots to Roofs projects, developers would have to have ties to a non-profit organization, a public housing authority, or a public development authority — a group that includes the Seattle Social Housing Developer. Participating projects would be able to rise to four stories in the city’s lowest density Neighborhood Residential (NR) zones, scaling up as allowed density increases in the city’s Low Rise (LR) zones. Projects in LR2 would be allowed to be five stories, and those in LR3 zones inside urban villages and centers six stories. In Midrise (MR) zones, projects could rise to nine stories.
Roots to Roofs projects could also take advantage of additional development capacity provided in terms of floor-area ratio (FAR) allowances. FAR determines the maximum amount of space that buildings are able to take up on a lot. It is calculated by adding up area across all floors in a building and dividing it by size of the lot.
A baseline Roots to Roofs project would be able to increase their FAR by anywhere from 27% — in a denser neighborhood commercial zone — to 260% on a lot within a neighborhood residential (NR) zone.
Projects would be eligible for even more FAR if the parcel’s history includes a racially restrictive covenant, a move that could allow a project in a neighborhood residential zone to increase total FAR by five times what the existing limit is, and double the amount that was proposed in Connected Communities.
The University of Washington’s Racial Restrictive Covenants Project has mapped tens of thousands of properties where covenants were in place, but new ones continue to be uncovered all the time, and it would be up to the property owner to provide proof of a past covenant. In Seattle, the places where covenants were in place largely remain the most exclusive areas of the city today.
In other zones, additional FAR would be provided for projects setting aside space for equitable development uses — arts and cultural uses, child care centers, theaters, educational space, and commercial uses that could include maker’s spaces, commercial kitchens, and cafes. Adding additional development capacity is one way that the city can help scarce Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) funding go even further.
Rinck said the idea to reboot Connected Communities came about, in part, due to delays in advancing the zoning changes included in Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan. The council is not set to adopt the most substantive citywide zoning changes — creating new neighborhood growth centers, expanding existing urban centers, and allowing apartment buildings along frequent transit corridors — until early 2026. Meanwhile, the environmental review for Connected Communities had already been completed, and was sitting on a shelf.
“It’s on a prolonged timeline, and we don’t want that to stand in the way of making progress on building more housing. By being able to pass something like this over the next couple months, we can get the ball rolling on some of these projects, be able to the go into the design phase, start working on permits,” Rinck said.
The Roots to Roofs proposal has been in the works for months. Rinck said legal review by City Attorney Ann Davison’s office took longer than expected, and needed to be cleared before the bill could move forward. The bill also builds in some ramp-up time, providing up to 160 days for the city to create rules around how EDI projects qualify to take advantage of the program, and around how the city will integrate a Community Preference policy, which would prioritize systemically disadvantaged populations when it comes to finding tenants or homebuyers for new housing in areas of high risk of displacement.
Even with those delays, Roots to Roofs could still take effect before the biggest zoning changes included in the Comprehensive Plan.
Connected Communities faced the most skepticism from three councilmembers: Maritza Rivera, Cathy Moore, and Tanya Woo, who Rinck replaced on the council in November. With Moore’s forthcoming departure from the council, the dynamics look to be very different this time around.
Moore’s Council-appointed replacement to fill the District 5 vacancy is set to be seated on the Land Use Committee by late July — likely before Roots to Roofs will come up for a vote. So, that council vote remains a wild card. Also on Land Use Committee is Dan Strauss, who was the only other final vote in favor of Connected Communities, apart from Morales. The fact that Connected Communities didn’t receive a “do pass” recommendation from committee went a long way toward dooming the proposal. Councilmembers can pass legislation without a committee recommendation, but it often is cited as a reason to oppose legislation.
Through the city council has spent considerable time considering land use proposals submitted by Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, no significant proposal to encourage the development of affordable housing has come out of the council itself, at least since the failure of Connected Communities. Whether Roots to Roofs can advance will be a big test of whether this council can advance big ideas that are geared at tackling the city’s housing crisis.
The Land Use Committee will take up Roots to Roofs this Wednesday at 2pm.
Ryan Packer has been writing for The Urbanist since 2015, and currently reports full-time as Contributing Editor. Their beats are transportation, land use, public space, traffic safety, and obscure community meetings. Packer has also reported for other regional outlets including BikePortland, Seattle Met, and PubliCola. They live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.