By a unanimous 9-0 vote Tuesday, the Seattle City Council gave the green light for a new 35-project pilot program granting density bonuses to community-based organizations that are building housing projects. Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s “Roots to Roofs” pilot would grant even more zoning capacity in areas of Seattle where now-defunct racially restrictive covenants had kept wide swaths of Seattle off-limits to minority populations over the course of the last century.
The program represents a small step toward rebalancing the areas of the city where affordable housing projects have been located. Wealthier lower-density neighborhoods have largely shunted those affordable projects elsewhere.
In crafting Roots to Roofs, Rinck retooled a 2023 proposal from former District 2 Councilmember Tammy Morales called Connected Communities. Morales’ bill, which received a rare “do not pass” recommendation from the council’s land use committee and ultimately failed last summer, was met with skepticism from several of the centrist councilmembers who took office in early 2024.
This year, the composition of that committee took a big shift, with three members changing out. Rinck secured incoming land use chair Mark Solomon — who replaced Morales on the council as an appointee — as a co-sponsor. The revised bill earned a committee greenlight in a 4-1 vote early this month.
“The idea of bringing back legislation of this kind that failed to pass last year came from conversations with community-based organizations and affordable housing providers back in January of this year,” Rinck said Tuesday ahead of final passage. “And from there, we’ve worked to draft and redraft and redraft again with input from stakeholder roundtables on the changes that needed to be made.”
Qualifying projects would need to set aside 25% of all residential housing units as affordable to working class households for a term of 50 years, and would receive a base-level density bonus that varies across Seattle’s different types of residential zoning. In the city’s lowest-density Neighborhood Residential (NR) zones, that bonus is significant, especially compared to the previous baseline that was in place before the adoption of new rules as part of the Comprehensive Plan update. In denser zones, the bonus is more modest, but could allow nonprofit groups to significantly leverage their properties to add housing.
On parcels within the city that have a documented history of a racially restrictive covenant, the density bonus is even higher. The University of Washington’s Racial Restrictive Covenants project has identified more than 37,000 properties across King County as a whole where deed restrictions locked entire ethnic and religious groups out of home ownership opportunities, with those areas remaining some of Seattle’s most exclusive neighborhoods to this day. This provision around restrictive covenants would even allow a Roots to Roofs project within a city-designated historic district, where it normally wouldn’t be permitted.
Ahead of the vote, Rinck laid out some of the organizations that could be poised to take advantage of this new program, making projects viable that previously wouldn’t have penciled out as financially feasible. They include the Filipino Community Village, Friends of Little Saigon, Central Area Youth Association, Urban Family, Brighton Communities, African Community Housing & Development, the Ethiopian Community of Seattle, Nehemiah Initiative, El Centro de la Raza, Bellwether Greenwood, Mercy Housing, Northwest Greater Mount Baker Baptist Church, the African Cultural Arts Center, and the fledgling Seattle Social Housing Developer.
“Altogether, this represents thousands of homes coming online, a large chunk of which will be affordable. And we need more housing of all kinds. We know we are in the midst of a housing shortage. The data has been clear. We need to create over 112,000 new affordable homes by 2044,” Rinck said. “We know homelessness is a housing problem, and this bill offers an opportunity to help projects pencil now, creating more housing, community ownership and jobs. It adds another tool to our tool box in addressing the housing crisis.”
Going from a failed proposal to a fully unanimous vote is an impressive feat for Rinck, who faces an election this fall in which she’s highly favored to secure a four-year term. Winning 78% of the recent primary vote, Rinck seems to have impressed voters in her first year on council after winning special election last fall, replacing appointee Tanya Woo. The citywide Position 8 seat had previously been held by Teresa Mosqueda, until she won election to the King County Council, creating a vacancy.
The unanimous vote is a partial credit to District 3 Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth, who proposed a series of amendments that appeared to go a long way toward winning over the council’s more moderate members, including District 4 Councilmember Maritza Rivera, who opposed the bill in committee.
“I voted no at committee because I had heard a lot of concern from community about these projects. There were concerns about whether or not these projects are actually going to yield to actual affordable housing, and whether or not this is going to help the very communities it portends [sic] to want to help,” Rivera said. “I still heard from community that they still had concerns, and I will say community still has concerns despite today’s amendments, but I do think that this is in a better place.”
Among the amendments put forward by Hollingsworth: a cap that ensures that no more than five projects are approved in any individual city council district, a requirement for tree preservation in “environmental justice priority areas,” an exemption for off-street parking from floor-area requirements, and a stipulation that all affordable units built under the pilot have at least two bedrooms.
“I think I had seven [amendments] to this, trying to make sure that I listened to everyone in the community, and trying to find a right balance in supporting the concept and spirit of this bill,” Hollingworth said. “There are some projects that I’m looking forward to getting off the ground, and hopefully this is an avenue for them.”
The land use committee did reject an amendment Rivera put forward that would have restricted Roots to Roofs projects to the city’s growth centers, a move that would have kept most of the city’s most exclusive areas completely off-limits.
“When I think about some of the community organizations that are in District 2, and where they actually own property, they’re not in neighborhood centers or urban centers,” Solomon said in voting against that change. “Thinking specifically about [the] Ethiopian community, Somalian community, Eritrean community, Filipino community… when they already have stuff there, this seems to restrict their ability to build on stuff they already own.”
Unless the pilot program is renewed, Roots to Roofs would sunset in 2035, or sooner in the event all 35 projects take advantage of the program. This new program’s approval came just days after the council’s Comprehensive Plan committee finalized amendments to create new rules on overall residential development citywide in Seattle, work that also sets the stage for zoning changes to allow denser housing within growth centers and close to frequent transit.
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.
