AN ORDINANCE relating to land use and zoning; amending the Comprehensive Plan to change the name of Single Family areas to Neighborhood Residential areas as part of the 2020-2021 Comprehensive Plan amendment process.
President Gonzalez. High nine in favor. None opposed. The bill passes and the chair will sign it. Will the corpses affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf? Will the clerk please read item 12 into the record? Agenda Item 12 Casper 120 135 Relating to land use and zoning. Amending the comprehensive plan to change the name of single family areas to neighborhood residential areas as part of the 2023 2021 Comprehensive Plan Amendment process, the committee recommends the bill perhaps as amended. Thank you so much. Well, it is my absolute pleasure to hand this back over to Councilmember Strauss, who's the chair of Early and use the Neighborhoods Committee to provide a committee report on the bill. Thank you, Council president and colleagues with such enthusiasm with the vote. Just a moment ago, I bring to you another small and important change. The legislation before us amends the comprehensive plan to change the name of single family areas to neighborhood residential areas, which is a more accurate term. Describing the areas in which they cover neighborhood residential reflects the reality on the ground today, as our so-called single family areas include houses with multiple families or unrelated roommates, as well as attached and detached dwelling units. Legacy duplexes and legacy apartment buildings all built before the current zoning rules took effect, as well as multi-family units apartment buildings that are built in areas that no longer allow them to be built. Thus, neighborhood residential reflects the reality we feel on the ground that there are many different types of buildings that make our residential areas vibrant and many different building types that are already in what we know now as single family zones. This name change was recommended to us by the Seattle Planning Commission in 2018. The City Council has placed this proposal on the table for consideration as part of the Comprehensive Plan Document Process in 2019, 2020 and earlier this year. I want to thank Councilmember Muscadet for her work before I came into office on this, because this has been a long anticipated change. I have heard some concern from community members that this changes, that these changes do nothing more than. Let me take one step back. I've heard I've heard concerns from community members that this leads to so many different things. What I think we need to be grounded in today is that what we have before us is a bill that changes the name of these zones. It does not change the zoning. It does not change the uses. It does not change the height, bulk or scale of buildings in these areas. It simply changes the name in what we call areas of our of our city. We have held two public hearings on this proposal in July and September and notified all affected community councils of the change over this last summer in the Planning Commission's recommendations for this round of comprehensive plan amendments. They showed strong support for this change in committee. We adopted one amendment which was suggested to us by Councilmember Herbert. Thank you for that correction, Councilmember Herbert. Well received. And that amendment removed awkward language in both the Morgan Junction and Northgate Community plans that would have resulted from this change. I was more than happy and glad to work with Councilmember Mosqueda on this change and happy and I feel lucky to get to work with her as she's been leading this effort for so long. I look forward to continuing a conversation about our growth strategy as we lead up to the 2024 comprehensive comprehensive plan. Major update. Thank you. Council President. That is the committee report. Wonderful. And I know that concerned Mesquita is a co-sponsor of this effort with you. So I do want to give her an opportunity to also make introductory remarks on the bill before we open it up for comments from others as as data, please. Thank you, Madam President. And I do want to thank the Land Use and Neighborhoods committee chair. Thank you very much, Councilmember Straus, not just for your co-sponsorship of this proposal, but also for your leadership throughout this process. As you noted, there have been multiple public hearings, committee conversations that we've had. We also, through with Councilmember Morales's office, had a conversation that rooted our conversations today with the research that we received from the Racial Equity Toolkit. Many discussions were had in community, including making sure that the 17 neighborhood plans who currently have references to single family homes were directly reached out to and that those individual neighborhoods knew about the potential change. We received over 400 individuals and organizations who wrote in to us with comments about the 17 neighborhoods and appreciated making sure that. I'm clarifying for the record how much public engagement was done on this with those 17 directly affected neighborhoods. And again, as Councilmember Strauss has has accurately summarized once again, for the record, the importance of the name change, but also centering us on the fact that this is just a name change to address a misnomer. A misnomer that is still in statute that I think is continuing to misrepresent the city that we want to be in the future and currently misrepresents the fabric of our neighborhood right now. I will just include the three comments here that came from letters of support from community members today. The first comes from the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, the letter states. It is true that this legislation is a simple name change, but Seattle must take this first step of passing Council Bill 120155, as well as continue to address the historic and ongoing impacts of exclusionary zoning through changes to existing policies. The other letter that we received today came from the Housing Development Consortium. The letter states, With this amendment, you are laying the groundwork to create more opportunities for diverse housing in neighborhoods in Seattle and the upcoming Comprehensive Plan Update. This is a down payment on on a purpose for opportunity and more opportunity for people in this city, families and children, to have access to wonderful neighborhoods across our city. And finally, from Habitat for Humanity, from Seattle, King County's Habitat for Humanity, they say one example of the kind of change we can see even more by passing this type of proposal is our work in South Park on Saturday. We were blessed to have the opportunity to celebrate the completion of our most recent development on this site, where we turned one single family home into 13 permanent, affordable homes. Today, there are now 13 families living in South Park, in part because of the zoning flexibility that is required by authorizing this legislation. You are taking one step, an important step in continuing to move Seattle to a place where everyone has a place to call home. I raise this three letters as examples of the diverse type of comments that we've received, the diverse type of entities that have written in to support this important but simple piece of legislation in front of us. As we proposed neighborhood residential. We are in all aspects, recognizing that language matters. We we are recognizing that neighborhoods are diverse homes to housing and commerce, diverse homes to parks and services, diverse homes to neighborhood amenities that can make our communities more walkable, climate resilient, that help us achieve our 15 minute commitment so that everyone can access all things they need without ever having to get into a car. The reality is that, quote, single family only doesn't reflect the current use and make up of our neighborhoods that really have duplexes and triplexes, row houses, connected homes, courtyards and apartments. Again, like the one that I lived in in Cleveland that has been zoned out and currently banned from being in existence. So I want to thank finally the members of the housing excuse me, of the Seattle Planning Commission, who, as we've talked about before, have recommended year over year. Every single time the Planning Commission has sent recommendations to council and to the Mayor. Since 2018, they have requested for this proposal to be included. And I spoke with members of the Planning Commission from before 2018 and they said we made that recommendation far before 2018 as well, but very happy that they are very happy to see it finally move into action. And in addition to the 400 individuals and organizations who we are working with on getting feedback from those 17 neighborhoods, letters and communications were sent to all communities affected. And this included deep conversations, especially here in District one at the Morgan Junction Community Association in July, where we met with members of my. First met with Highland Park, Morgan Junction, Alki and other West Seattle neighborhoods. And I bring these up to show how important these conversations are right now with just the simple name change, because we're going to be calling upon those same individuals, organizations, folks who have differing opinions to really set the stage for our 2023 comprehensive plan throughout 2022 will build on the discussions that we've had this year to make informed policy discussions, root decisions rooted in what community is informing us of. So I'm excited about those conversations being able to start from a place of shared understanding of what the current fabric of our city currently is. Again, thank you to Councilmember Strauss and I have to say thank you, Councilmember Waters. And I know she's loving this. Thank you. Peace as I lead into the other thank you's for Representative Macri Representative Fitzgibbon, Representative Shop, the Housing Development Consortium, South Side Chamber of Commerce, Seattle Chamber, Seattle Sierra Club Air. The Institute of Architects Sara City of Streets of Seattle. Seattle for Everyone. Habitat for Humanity. Seattle Planning Commission. Seattle Tech for Housing Lish Woodson Central Staff No on from Councilmember Strauss's office and Aaron House from my office, who have just been incredibly instrumental with helping to shape this policy in front of us. And we know we're going to look ahead to these major changes coming. As Councilmember Strauss said, we're not getting ahead of those discussions in today's piece of legislation that is narrow and scoped in its effect. But those conversations over the next two years, I'm very excited about that. We are going to be able to result in meaningful policy discussions and decisions that help us get at exclusionary zoning, on creating more diverse housing choices and on combating displacement. Setting the stage and setting the narrative that is rooted in language that is meaningful and reflective of our neighborhoods is critical. So I'm excited for this first step. And thank you very much, Councilmember Strauss, for shepherding us through a very inclusive conversation with community. Thank you so much, Councilman. Is there any additional comments on the bill? Councilmember Herbold, please. Thank you. I just wanted to, though. Councilmember Styles very graciously thanked me for the amendment that I had flagged. Even though I'm not a member. I want to thank Councilmember Strauss for bringing it forward. And I want to thank the Morgan Junction Association for identifying it as a as a is a treat that was necessary for for readability. I really appreciate their their fine eye towards towards making sure in in a piece of legislation it's all about creating more clarity about what what uses are allowed. I really appreciate their paying attention to that level of detail. Thank you. Thanks so much, Councilmember Herbold. Any additional comments on the bill? Well, I'll put myself in a queue. You're on mute now. Council President. Apologies. The host mutiny. Was it, Mitch? Yeah. I'm starting to think that number one is taking host responsibilities. I have. Well, you'll be pleased to hear that. My comments are very short. I was just going to say gravy. I was going to say that I'm very excited to vote in support of this bill as the sponsors of this bill have mentioned. We've heard from many stakeholders for a long period of time on this name change, and I also believe that this will better reflect and include residents of a neighborhood. It's my hope that our zoning will also move forward in the near future to reflect our cities, the reality of our city's rapid growth in the last decade, and look forward to continuing to support the Council's work in allowing more neighbors and the density that will be necessary to invite those additional families into into all of our all of our neighborhoods so much thanks seconds member Strauss and the skater for your important work. That being said, Councilmember Strauss, would you like to have the last word? Just echoing the thanks to everyone who called it out and did it belted out well. And Deputy Clerk Schwinn adding to the conversation here. I appreciate all of you and thank you all for your great work. And Noah and Erin House. Thank you for all you've done. Appreciate it. Deputy Clerk Winds small nudge to keep it moving along. With that being said, well, the curfew is called the roll on the passage of verbal. Herbold. Wow. Yes. Oh, thank you. SUAREZ Hi. LEWIS Yes. Morales Yes. Mesquita, I. Petersen. I. So what? Yes. Strauss Yes. President Gonzalez High nine in favor. Nine opposed. The bill passes and the chair will sign. It will affect my signature to the legislation on my behalf. All righty. Well, please read item 13 into the record and I am 13.