Rethinking Housing
During a late-night conversation with a new friend (who may or may not know they have that designation yet) regarding housing, a few book recommendations were exchanged. My children were legitimately shocked that I finished an actual book, since I believe the last time I read a physical book from cover-to-cover that was not related to real estate licensing was over five years ago. Long enough ago that it’s hard to remember when you’re only 13.
My reading list now looks like this: Color of Law (started, not finished, because it reads like a history textbook and is so long and the text is so tiny), Underwater (started today), Strong Towns (finished, recommend!) and Fixer Upper (finished - interesting, but I kept seeing Chip & Joanna when I was reading it). I never thought I’d care about housing, but if you’re able to think about real estate in a way that isn’t transaction-oriented (which I feel fortunate to be able to do), then the future of housing should be of great concern.
For much of my childhood Seattle was building McMansions. The Bernadette-bemoaned petite craftsman homes were razed in favor of a home that maximizes height and lot coverage, sacrificing personality and disregarding character in favor of profit. Land is expensive in the city, and it benefits the builder to build bigger homes. But, at what cost? Bigger homes are more to expensive to build, to buy, to heat, to maintain, and I think in many cases we’re living in things that are beyond our actual needs. In a bigger home we buy more furniture, store more stuff we should purge, and I can’t help but think that all that stuff used to be money and all that money used to be time which, no matter how hard we work, we cannot get back.
In 2019 Seattle changed their rules on accessory dwelling units (AADU if attached, DADU if detached) allowing two per lot, and removing the owner-occupancy requirement for them. This opened up two possibilities — one, an investor could add additional, smaller, rental units to a property that was previously a single-family home, or two, additional units could be built and sold separately as part of 2-3 unit condo complex.
These ADUs aren’t large - the DADUs are capped at 1,000sf though there is a below-grade exemption and garages don’t count towards total square footage - that’s kind of the point. With costs of home construction hovering in the $300-350/sf range for builders, constructing a home that is accessible to people living and working in Seattle is only possible when the homes are smaller. Since they can fit in the basement of an existing home or a backyard, these ADUs can preserve the character of the city (sorry, Bernadette) and be located in walkable areas providing more housing options that are, on a number of levels, more eco-friendly.
Let’s hope more cities follow suit.
