Seattle Mayor Ed Murray is backing away from a controversial proposal to alter nearly all of the city's single-family neighborhood zoning to allow duplexes, triplexes, cottages and other denser housing types.
The idea — one of 65 the city's Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) committee recommended this month — drew significant blowback from neighborhood groups who oppose granting greater flexibility to housing developers.
Murray said he'll still work to recommend legislation based on other key HALA suggestions — including expanding "urban villages," which allow for denser development hubbed around transit and commercial areas; and granting flexibility to developers in exchange for commitments to build more affordable housing.
But in a tersely worded statement Wednesday, the mayor said he was backing away from the changes to single-family zoning "to advance the broader conversation" about the proposed changes.
"Sensationalized reporting by a few media outlets has created a significant distraction and derailed the conversation that we need to have on affordability and equity," Murray said in a press release Wednesday.
At a July 13 press conference, Murray called the HALA recommendations a "grand bargain between developers and housing advocates that will assure 6,000 units of affordable housing for low-income residents," and defended the proposed single-family zoning changes.
"Only in urban villages — which are designated for greater density and have been for two decades, and along major arterials — will single-family zones be upzoned to low-rise residential," he said.
