Neighborhood Activists Pressure the City of Seattle

From Seattle 

Neighborhood Activists Pressure the City of Seattle to Do the Right Thing

In a city choked by the heavy artillery of cranes and construction crews, two Seattle residents are taking a stand in their own Queen Anne neighborhood. Jack and Louise Locke are the voice of reason during the great Seattle construction boom. They want to stop the rezoning of a single family neighborhood that would pave the way for multi-family housing.  The city of Seattle has framed the rezoning within the context of giving developers the freedom to build affordable housing. 

On the surface, the city’s proposal of affordable housing appears to be an equitable solution to the skyrocketing prices of housing citywide. The reality though is quite different from the framing.  Rezoning the high density urban Queen Anne neighborhood that is already stretched to capacity is too heavy a load for the streets to bear.

In June 2015, Mayor Murray presented the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA), which, among 65 recommendations to help solve the city’s housing affordability crisis, included converting all single family zones to multi-family. Neighborhoods and citizens citywide loudly objected.  Mayor Murray promised to take all the single-family zoning changes ‘off the table.’ 

Instead City Councilmember Mike O’Brien proposed legislation to rezone almost all the city’s neighborhoods – 50% of the total area of Seattle – 120,000 properties –  from single-family to “triplex,” and ruling that this unprecedented zoning change will have NO SIGNIFICANT IMPACT upon livability, infrastructure, congestion, traffic, parking, and many other considerations. This proposed legislation is being slid into law under the radar: there are no professional environmental impact studies, no neighborhood outreach, no due process.

Rezoning initiatives that do not take into consideration the needs of the community are typically created to line the pockets of real estate developers.

Take Queen Anne Hill. Located just a stone’s throw from downtown Seattle, Queen Anne offers tree-lined streets, a thriving community center and good schools, but in the last five years the area has grown too fast. Its face has been rearranged by a legion of rapidly built multi-use retail & quasi-luxury apartment complexes. The arterials can no longer handle the increased traffic and the overflow of vehicles has spilled into the narrow side side streets where there is a perpetual bottleneck.

Louise and Jack Locke have a long history of serving the Queen Anne community. The couple have owned a range of property (rentals and residential) in Queen Anne since 1962. Jack Locke is a past president of the Queen Anne Community Council. They’re concerned that a zoning change will further stress a neighborhood that is already buckling with out-of-control and poorly planned growth. Louise and Jack Locke are going door-to-door and standing up in front of groups large and small to let people know that the city of Seattle ought to stop spinning that changing the zoning will have NO impact. The Lockes, along with the Queen Anne Community Council, are putting pressure on the city to do the right thing by ordering an Environmental Impact Study.  Check out the Queen Anne Community Council Appeal or email Louise Locke (rllocke1957@gmail.com) for more information.

Patricia Vaccarino has written award-winning film scripts, press materials, articles, speeches, Web content, marketing collateral, and six books. In her spare time, she trains in ballet, enjoys hiking, biking, gardening and cooking authentic Italian food. She lives in downtown Seattle close to the landmark Pike Place Market. She has another home on the Pacific coast in Manzanita, Oregon, where a herd of Elk frequently visit her property.