Why the U District Rezone is a Victory for Seattle’s Future
On February 21, 2017 the Seattle City Council approved the U District Design Changes unanimously. This victory is the culmination of collaborative efforts from environmental organizations, non-profit developers, social justice organizations, individual residents and more. The Sierra Club is proud to be a member of this diverse coalition. We are committed to advocating for policies that increase housing near transit to facilitate walkable cities and enable low-carbon, healthy lives.
We would like to take this opportunity to celebrate the passage of the U District rezone and review how we won — by emphasizing the importance of valuing the connections between housing, the environment, and our community’s deeply held values of justice.
In June 2015, Sierra Club leaders outlined an affordable housing platform: Social Justice Urbanism. In it, we pointed to the connections between economic inequality, racial exclusion, and housing policy.
“The housing crisis and antidensity attitudes are based in a history of exclusion and injustice made worse by rising inequality. Those suffering the most from our current affordability crisis are those who have suffered the most from historic injustice.”
Building on that platform, Sierra Club wrote in July 2015 that the City of Seattle’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Committee Recommendations would succeed only to the degree that it connected housing, the environment, and social justice:
“The 65 policy recommendations released this week by the HALA committee represent bold, progressive action to tackle Seattle’s affordability crisis. The HALA recommendations are a great first step toward creating a sustainable and equitable Seattle that is affordable and welcoming to all. We have consistently supported progressive land use policies that allow new housing in urban areas to increase affordability and combat sprawl, congestion, and climate change — policies that support social justice urbanism. The committee’s strong recommendations to allow more housing types in single family zones, expand urban village boundaries, and upzone multifamily and transit-accessible areas of the city are both necessary and welcome.”
Based on those core values and principles, the Sierra Club took a strong position in support of the U District zoning changes. In a November 2016 op-ed in The Stranger, we included the following:
“Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment reported that the city is not on pace to meet its climate goals for the year 2030. We believe one major reason for that is our sluggishness in addressing housing affordability. Rents continue to rise across the city, pushing more residents out of their neighborhoods and, often, out of the city entirely. Often, those residents end up in low-density suburbs with a larger carbon footprint.
The Sierra Club and the Young Democrats at the University of Washington agree that climate issues and affordability are closely linked — and so are their solutions. We need more housing, and for reasons of environmental and economic justice, that housing ought to be as close to transit as possible.”
Stopping Sprawl & Moving Beyond Oil
The passage of the U District rezone, along with future rezones across the city and the new Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) framework, are a critical piece in expanding housing choices for people at all income levels. We want to stop sprawl and help Seattle residents move beyond oil. Sierra Club is encouraged that the City of Seattle is planning for growth in a way that improves everyone’s quality of life. It is important that our housing policy is grounded in equity and environmental justice. We must stop the suburbanization of poverty.
Sierra Club continues to be a loud voice on social justice urbanism. We plan to support land use policies that impact the urban environment and to inform our membership on the connections between housing policy and environmental justice. This is consistent with Sierra Club’s mission “…to practice and promote the responsible use of the earth’s ecosystems and resources; to educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment”. We will continue to work alongside fantastic partner organizations, (Futurewise, Puget Sound Sage, and others), to enact land use policies that support our mission.
We have formed a housing work group in Seattle and invite you to learn more. Please email Laura Bernstein, laura.ea.bernstein@gmail.com, to attend our next meeting on March 4, 2017.
