Workers Need Homes, So Why Isn't Our Zoning Keeping Up With Job Growth?
When Bellevue boasted they would eat Seattle’s lunch last month, I am not sure they realized the housing crisis was on the full course menu. For years, Bellevue has successfully lobbied to pull high-priced tech jobs away from Seattle, and now political leaders are caught flat-footed scrambling with a zoning plan to house everyone in response. While Bellevue has successfully grown those jobs, their housing growth has been piddling by comparison. Bellevue’s housing crisis has been a ticking time bomb waiting to explode ever since Amazon’s HQ2 announced those 25,000 jobs across the lake.
It’s no wonder politicians lobby for job growth. Job growth is a good thing. Jobs bring revenue to a city and an opportunity to provide residents the chance to participate in upward mobility — if you maintain space for everyone to live nearby and value equitable guidelines in how you grow. Political leaders work extensively and creatively to lure jobs to their city, some going as far as renaming their towns after the company they were hoping to host. But what always seems to be absent is a concurrent plan for increasing housing. Planning for jobs without homes is like luring the NHL to Seattle only to have them play in a high school arena because the city didn’t bother to build a stadium.
Seattle: the cautionary tale
Seattle’s population growth has been unprecedented. But it’s really the city’s job growth that Bellevue should be monitoring. Seattle’s positive job growth was squandered because the city did not have a housing plan to match it. In 2010, Seattle had 462,000 jobs and 308,000 homes. This was a ratio of 1.50 jobs to homes, a ratio that should have been maintained during this last decade of job growth. People move to cities for jobs and Seattle has had a lot of them. By 2020, jobs reached 620,000 but homes only grew 368,000. While 60,000 new homes sounds great, Seattle remains 45,000 homes short of matching its 2010 jobs to homes ratio. Seattleites have experienced firsthand how when there isn’t enough housing to match job growth, housing costs spike. Wealthier buyers and new renters scoop up housing and push existing residents down another rung, a domino effect that results in even the most affordably priced housing increasing in price, which eventually pushes people into homelessness.
But as bad as the situation appears in Seattle, Bellevue is in far worse shape. With 150,000 jobs today, and only about 63,000 homes, the city is already 38,000 homes short of the 1.50 ratio. Not tomorrow, today. This is before Facebook opens their new offices in the Spring District and before Amazon fills the two million square feet of office space currently under construction. There are another 30,000 jobs on the horizon, meaning Bellevue needs to double its current housing stock before those jobs show up. With low vacancies and far less missing middle or apartment housing available, the problems of soaring costs — and increased homelessness — will be exacerbated. Seattle dedicates 75% of residential land to single family zoning — even if two additional dwelling units (ADUs) are now allowed. In Bellevue, the amount land dedicated to single family zoning is similarly aroud 75%, but with larger lot minimums and no ADU allowance. Thus, without substantial zoning changes, Bellevue will have nowhere to grow as new jobs move in.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/12/09/workers-need-homes-so-why-isnt-our-zoning-keeping-up-with-job-growth/