Apparently we need to move heaven and earth just to green-light quadruplexes where rich people live. ROMAN_MAKEDONSKY / GETTY IMAGES

Comments

1

I’ll write in favor of the zoning bill if anyone can assure me my taxes won’t go up because “highest and best use” valuation has suddenly skyrocketed number of units from one to six. There is no need to couple the zoning change and tax valuation, especially if you’re looking to keep housing affordable. C’mon policymakers, walk your talk.

2

also, "H" and "ydroelectric Dams" and "O" and "verfishing". Humans will empty the seas.

3

"If Washington wants to get real about housing its residents, then we've got to be building duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes on the lots previously zoned for McMansions."

gotta wonder if "Washington"'s previous
Occupants'd get a chuckle outta this one.

@1 brings up an excellent point:
will WA tax homeowners Off their land
or Wait till they Sell it for a higher mkt. value?

6

"If Washington wants to get real about housing its residents, then we've got to be building duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes on the lots previously zoned for McMansions."

Are there still vacant lots by the dozen along MLK, most of them within a couple of blocks of a light-rail station? Because I’m pretty sure there would be no zoning changes required to erect multi-story apartment buildings on most of them.

7

@6 I do wonder if @1 is on to something. The state could immediately see a massive boost in tax revenue by simply noting your land is now worth more due to the possibility of being able to turn it into a triplex whether or not any housing gets built at all. I seriously doubt they'll address that issue so it will bear watching to see how it plays out.

8

@6
I can assure you, the empty lots are not vacant anymore. Box-like apartment units are going up by the score up and down Rainier Ave and MLK.
You can pay $2K per month for an efficiency unit, while listening to sirens day and night passing by.

10

I think you mean small particles from your cars' tires that are killing the salmon, followed by blocked culverts and creeks, and then climate change.

Thanks for playing.

And our future is, has been, and always will be 40-110 story residential towers with 6-8 stories on the bottom with retail and services. And restoration of the 65 foot MFH zoning the SFH zoning was created from in 1933. Before we did racist zoning.

12

Someone should be able to find Rittenhouse, Trumpy Jr. had him on his “show,” where that special little boy blamed George Soros for his prosecution.

How is Soros still so rich if he keeps spending all of his money on these types of things?

13

The 32 year old teacher- who allegedly had relations with a 16 year old student- has 'porn' as part of his last name! Oh the irony!

14

@Will -- and where do the pollutants
go from our Fabulous;y GREEN lawns
and pesticides & brake asbestos and
round-the-FUCK-Up . seems like all
those Fishies are Downstream from
Everything not to mention tiny litle
Plasticks being Everywhere.

in us too
have our mighty
Salmon even a Prayer?

otoh
look at
the Duwamish R.

15

@7 and @11, and why else it matters is because we are witnessing a consolidation in homeownership and more corporate landlords. We can have more units but with less competition, good luck seeing any “give” in prices. In fact, expect maximum pricing algorithms and borderline collusion amongst or within corporate landlords (see the Pro Publica study that came out late last year). This is not an intended outcome of upzoning, but it’s very possible. Already seeing small landlords get out of the Seattle market.

16

Yay for linking to defector.com!

Here = a fun story they just posted about an Alaskan state rep who just went on record literally advocating for the murder of children.

https://defector.com/alaska-politician-tricks-himself-into-arguing-theres-a-taxpayer-benefit-to-the-murder-of-children

17

Depeche Mode are a good band, but "Personal Jesus" is now forever 100% owned by Johnny Cash. (As is Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt.")

18

@16 -- oddly enough
they're all For post-
Birth Abortion

pick a Lane
neoCons

19

Zoning changes allow lawmakers to look like they are doing something to address housing prices, but don't actually require lawmakers to handle the difficult task of funding and building multi-unit low-income housing. Instead, that is left up to the existing owners of SFH zoned lots and private developers.

I personally see no reason to believe landowners and private developers will suddenly decide to invest in multi-unit low income housing, and anticipate they would instead build luxury townhomes and the like. I anticipate that result because that's what's been happening here for the past 20 years.

Zoning changes are a market-based solution to our housing crisis.

23

@21. Nobody is surprised that you continue to exhibit maximum douchebag status with every post.

25

@20 I believe you are thinking of the value of the buildings which is only a part of the property tax equation. It is true that if a single family home worth $1M is replaced with a triplex of units worth $500K each they would both appreciate at the same rate. What is also equally true is the land those building sit on may now be worth more in the county's eyes due to potential it holds. In the example above the triplex with 3 units is now worth $1.5M whereas the SFH is worth $1M. I could easily see the county coming along and saying yes you have a SFH here now but this land is worth more because it could be redeveloped to a much higher number and adjusting tax bills. It's a similar scenario you have now with view homes where they land there is considered higher value simply because of the view. Hope I'm wrong but gov around here has continuously shown a voracious appeitite for new tax revenue.

26

@2, 5, 10, 22

Habitat loss from the actual McMansions in the burbs (and associated pesticide use on lawns) is way up there on what's killing off the salmon. The pinnipeds and tribal fisheries are way up in the 200's or higher on the death by a thousand cuts.

There aren't that many McMansions in Seattle. An awful lot of our housing lots are on the order of 40x100 and have a smallish house on them.

30

@29. A jury of your douchebag peers who perverted justice to uphold their own privilege to slay without sanction.

31

19: You have it exactly right. Upzoning alone won’t change the economics. It’s quite ironic that as much as some rail against corporate ownership and “monied interests”, they’re going to be the ones that will benefit most from statewide zoning.

33

@29: this suit's not from Huber's family, it's from Grosskreutz. just because a jury finds someone not guilty in a criminal trial doesn't mean that a civil jury won't find them liable. see: OJ.

the people in the crowd had no way to know that Rittenhouse was lawfully self-defending from Rosenbaum's crazy-ass plastic bag-contents throwing. they saw a white dude with an MSSA kill someone. it's likely they too believed they were lawfully self-defending themselves and others from a mass shooter, using the tools they had at hand. Grosskreutz, for his part, asserted under oath that he didn't aim his gun at Rittenhouse.

the fog of war, comedy of errors, and all that.

35

@30. Did he show restraint when he illegally acquired an assault rifle and took it across state lines with the full intent to shoot people who posed no threat to his safety and brandished it at those who were protesting something totally unrelated? If he was there to protect property, he was nowhere near where he was supposed to protect when he entered the crowd and provoked a conflict which gave him an excuse to kill people exercising their first amendment rights.

He put himself there and never should have been there. He was looking for trouble and found it. He just wanted to shoot liberals.

38

@36. "There were a lot of white people who had no real reason to be there other than looking for trouble."

This is exactly why the jury ruled as they did.

40

Um, Mt. Baldy is an hour's drive from LA. It's over 10k feet asl. Most "self respecting Washingtonians" haven't been that high on a mountain.

The San Gabriels are a serious little mountain range, and it will kill you just as easily as a snowshoe trek to Snow Lake in February here.

44

I'm going to go to a MAGA rally with an assault rifle and encounter the angriest looking person and stand my ground in self defense.

45

when you put it like that Garbby
you make it Easy to See.

betchya the Fascists'd
2nd A themselves
to Smithereens

47

@44. Outgunned? Would you consider that to be a potentially irresponsible decision on my part? Do you think it's more likely than not that the average person would consider this to be an irresponsible or negligent decision on my part? I think you'll have a much greater change of convincing a jury of that aspect, even if the jury was too cowardly to show common sense.

If you go looking for trouble and you aren't supposed to be there in the first place, then you bear enough responsibility for the predictable consequences of your actions to pay for it.

48

@46, rather.

I couldn't give a damn if I was laughed at, the point was that it would obviously provoke a conflict that could end in gun violence and death.

50

@49. If the analogy holds, it's the angry MAGA person who encounters me, and since I chose to be in a situation where I'd likely encounter such a person, then the probability of me using my weapon which I am open carrying in "self defense" increases to such a threshold that obviously I'm going to provoke a conflict that could lead to me having to defend myself. It's obvious putting myself in that situation would likely lead to such a scenario as you just described above. If I'm able to ignore all that, whether or not I am legally allowed to do so, then I am irresponsible and inviting disaster. If our laws aren't equipped to cover that aspect, then they should be.

51

And keep in mind this was just after George Floyd was killed and it was obvious just how pissed off protestors were. Try going to a rally following what would have been the actual indictment and arrest of Trump when the FBI invaded Mar-a-Lago, and you had all those civil war fappers raging against the machine. Now that's the equivalent of the mood that I'm talking about.

52

@15, @19, @24, @31: “This is not an intended outcome of upzoning,”

There are never, ever any unintended consequences to any course of action the Stranger’s writers advocate. Their ideas, or the ones they endorse, are always perfectly good, wise, and just. Everything always goes exactly the way they want it to go; therefore, they have no reason to question any of their advocacies, ever. (See, for examples, ending homelessness with the EHT and JumpStart taxes, saving the Showbox, and endorsing NTK for City Attorney.)

57

Hold up, the government and politicians were preventing law enforcement from doing their jobs? Under Trump? You're going to have to explain why suddenly people were responsible for recruiting mercenary security forces to supplement and obviate the police, as if that was the common sense solution under the law.

@54. Kiss my ass with your case law. This isn't a motion for summary judgment, and I'm not going to supplant my own common sense and the context of this case with your disjoint "precedent."

There is another term for being irresponsible and inviting disaster. It's called negligence, and it is wholly the purview of civil law, which is well equipped in this case to stand the test of any arbitrary statute that has been spoon fed by a drafting attorney into an omnibus bill that nobody even knows they are voting for by electing yes men suits. The real law is the spirit, and that must be pursued infinitely. In your heart of hearts you know that there is an injustice here, and it will be meted under the law or in the spirit of a killer.

58

Unofficial mercenary security forces, I mean. You might call them Gangs, perhaps?

59

@56. That's Mizz Garbler to you, swine.

61

@60. Water, Burger King, and a bloody red carpet.

62

I suppose it was inevitable that we’d get cowardly bigots trying to defend the little prick who went out looking for trouble with an illegal assault weapon and ended up killing people.

Fortunately, the standard of proof is much lower in civil lawsuits, and so it’s a pretty good bet that he’ll be hit with a large judgment. Maybe not Alex Jone large, but big enough to follow him around for 20 years.

65

Maybe lil' Kyle fled the country. Or maybe somebody did him in. When you live by the sword, you tend to die by the sword. That's what Jesus said.

66

@64. So now you're trying to silence my opinion because I have standards I believe should be followed? Why do you hate democracy? Why do you hate freedom?

Voir dire in all its sleazy glory being conflated with democracy just shows what a bonehead you are. Go write a seven act play and perform it for yourself like The Dude's landlord. It would be a much better use of your time and wasted legal "research."

67

I don't care if he doesn't have any assets right now. He has a goddamn crowdsourced legal fund. Whether it's held in trust or not, you can't ignore how much publicity the case has and how much popular support he has, and somebody should pay, even if it falls into his lap, to give some measure of recompense to the families of those he negligently harmed.

71

if ya wanna call
Agents Provocateur
"Violent Protesters" that's
Your call but that's rewriting History

78

Indeed, we need affordable housing. Is there a way to preserve classic neighborhoods, however, without razing existing single family homes? I live in an apartment complex in a single family neighborhood (not in Seattle, but we're pretty much in Seattle's rearview mirror). Is there a way to go about providing the additional housing needed without displacing even more people in the process?

@2 Max Solomon and @5 skidmark: And don't forget what starts with a G and ends with "reedy as fuck fossil fuel industry" among those to blame for killing our planet and causing mass extinction, too. At least the disaster that was Doug the Thug Ericksen is but a bad memory and can't damage Washington State any further.
KKKorporate RepubliKKKans should all be fired off one way into outer space, never to return to Earth. Let's see 'em find sustainable life on Mars. Get Mike "Lord of the Flies" Pence on the fucking stand, already! The Orange Turd ordered insurrectionist goons, guilty of committing high treason in their attempted coup, to hang his own Veep, fer chrissakes!
The Orange Turd for Prison 2023! And upon facing the General Population, may it get cornholed in Hell.

@23 Mizz Garb Garblar, re @21: Herr Boob is being his usual trolling dumbass self. It must be a full house at raindrop's. They love the carbs and free cable.

@44 Mizz Garb Garblar for the WIN!!! Hit 'em where it hurts--right between their shriveled dicks and scrotums.

@46 Karl the Fungi: You're so funny we all forgot to laugh. Now go crawl back into your dank, dark hole and leave the commentary to the adults in the room.

@56 Batshit:....said a lonely, trolling MAGA incel dumbass. It's a wonder you can talk with your foot in your mouth.
Take a look in raindrop's bathroom mirror, idiot. Oh, but at least you get free cable, right?

@59 Garb Garblar, re: @56: He's lonely, it's cold outside, and the commentary is a Bazillion lightyears over his pointed little MAGAt head.

79

@13 pat L: I caught that, too. How truly disgusting.

@18: kristofarian: Hardened criminally insane MAGAts and their RWNJ henchmen are into killing women and children, and should all be locked up. If they're not aborted from the womb RepubliKKKans will gladly wait until the kids they "saved" have reached age 17, and are old enough to go faht fer their Free Dumbs. At least they gets to keep their guns!

80

gotta Wonder whose Idea
it was to eliminate PM
it's certainly concen-
trated the commen-
tariat: well-Played,
someone - tho
sans Chas I Do
find it a bit
... hollow

81

heads Up?

Law Enforcement
Warns of Potential
Neo-Nazi ‘Day of Hate’

Police in major cities have announced plans for increased vigilance this weekend, but maintain that they’ve identified no explicit threat of violence

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/day-of-hate-prompts-warnings-police-jewish-groups-1234686596/

not Yet anyways.

83

and teenager Trayvon Martin
walking home with Skittles
(while Black) murdered by
Stand Your Grounder also

the Reich wing
LOVES their Guns* &
will Kill to convince you
that, a comma means Death
& a veritable Killing for the nra
& for Weapons Manufacturers too

*Weapons of War
everyone?

85

@83: It should behoove us to decouple the memory of Travon from Skittles.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/well/eat/skittles-lawsuit-titanium-dioxide.html

86

"Comments: 87."
then why is
this one
86?

optimism
or the olde
bait n'switch?

87

@86: Because there are two 31s.

88

@87 but
that'd be
just one-Half
the discrepency

89

@89: You'll survive.

Interestingly, there's really no programmatic reason why simultaneously arriving comments cannot be queued up to be assigned to the next incrementing number.

90

well Obviously I'LL
survive but whattabout
You dewey? & your Perpetual
seeking of TRUTH at ALL Costs?

you gonna just
let this one
Slide?

"Interestingly, there's really no programmatic reason why simultaneously arriving comments cannot be queued up to be assigned to the next incrementing number."

shit.
you're
Already
on the case.

re-spect!

91

auntie Gee
there's a big C
dead ahead hasn't
been one for Ages
yours for the Taking

mind the Gap!

92

@81 kristofarian: Cops warn of an upcoming Neo-Nazi "Day of Hate"??
Why do I feel like we're living the b & w re-enactment of an unsettlingly disturbing Twilight Zone
episode set back in 1938? When do we get Rod Serling's cigarette lit introduction?

@91 kristofarian: "there's a big C
dead ahead hasn't
been one for Ages
yours for the taking

                       mind the Gap!"

What big C are you referring to?

93

@40 CheeseandWhiskey: I know I wouldn't want to be flying or driving to Los Angeles through the San Gabriels right now. Weather reports of six feet of snow in So Cal--YIKES!!
Thankfully, I heard from my brother who lives in L.A. County, so it's a relief that at least he's okay.
The freeways and LAX must be a total mess.

94

@80 kristofarian: I miss SLOG PM, too. Has Charles Mudede left The Stranger? I wonder if he's in Southern California. The unseasonably cold weather down there sounds like it would be right up his alley.

@40 CheeseandWhiskey: Hopefully on the plus side, does all this snowfall finally end the severity of California's decades long drought problems? It would be nice if regional reservoirs there were replenished by spring 2023. I bet the locals would love to see lush, green, poppy-covered foothills again. It's sad about the atmospheric flooding in Central Coastal California (i.e., San Luis Obispo and surrounding communities).

95

C's the
Roman Numeral
for a hunnert auntie Gee.

like a C-Note
unmusically
but we're
5 shy so
far.

96

@95 kristofarian: Oh---(D'uh!) I gotcha! I guess I'm four comments shy of the big C-note.
I wonder who will make the Hunsky?
I've had a lot on my mind, lately.

97

Just go for it auntie, spill it, tell it like it is, don't hold back.

98

@97: Awwwww, raindrop and kristofarian--wanting me to score the Big Hunsky?
That's sweet of both of you. :)

Stay warm, everybody.

101

well so much
for that. in other
Important News:

well so much for that
in Other News

Newspapers
Drop ‘Dilbert’ Comic
After Creator’s Rant About Black ‘Hate Groups’

Scott Adams, who created the syndicated comic strip, also said that white people should “get the hell away from Black people,” prompting criticism from editors across the country.

In 2019, he used a mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California to advertise an app he created.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that it had stopped carrying “Dilbert” months ago because of jokes he made about reparations and efforts to diversify the workplace.

“His strip went from being hilarious to being hurtful and mean,” Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, the editor in chief of The Chronicle, said. “Very few readers noticed when we killed it, and we only had a handful of complaints.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/dilbert-newspapers-racism.html

looks like mr Adams's
gonna get his wish.

102

uh-oh comment no-
show where'd it Go?
into the Ether never
to Return? or BRB?

with baited breath
awaiting nothing

103

counted!
fixed?

nope.
busted.

sadness

104

Poor salmon. I remember the salmon derbys on Lake Washington during my youth. 60 or 70 pound Chinooks were frequently caught and even though the lake was wall to wall boats, fishermen didn't have trouble catching something.

And then the rich folks started whining about the dank looking lake water. They couldn't see more than a few feet deep off the end of their private Hunt's Point docks. So the state cleaned up the lake. And the fish disappeared. Don't anthropomorphize wild species. Just because you thing the water doesn't look crystal clear doesn't mean that that's not the way the fish like it.

105

Nice looking quadruplexes in that picture. But in places with similar housing problems, they are the problem, not the solution. I'm thinking of San Francisco's "painted ladies" (which these new units look similar to). The most economical construction that will meet the lower income housing supply market will probably look more like Cabrini Green. But our new housing authority certainly won't be using those photos for its publicity

106

!

107

re Quads:
if the porches cannot
accomodate Chairs
then they're mostly
Pointless it seems

does the Design
Improve on
entry?

awful cute.
that fake rock's
fragile shit. be careful

108

the only way to get to pg 2
that I'm aware of is to go
to comment History
and click away till
they Fix it. good
luck. damn 1st
World probs.

110

Generic comment

111

@skiddy -- they oughtta
get dewey to come in
& fix the fucker to
keep posting.

112

If what is depicted in the photo is the architecture that's going to result, then fourplexes should be banned. I've never seen such bad architecture as built in this town and in many W. Washington towns. Just awful.

113

!!

114

@101: The demise of “Dilbert,” while sad, isn’t unexpected. The strip’s humor was about engineers in offices, and now that so many of us engineers work remotely, our humor would be hard to realize in comic-strip form: images of on-line meetings would be impossible to draw legibly in such a small space.

During the decades Adams kept his personal bigotries to himself, “Dilbert” was a touchstone for us engineers, especially those of us who worked at large companies. His absurdist humor fit our real-life workplaces perfectly. Many of us consulted our company directories, looking in vain for his name, convinced he simply must be working amongst us.

Alas, poor Dilbert, we (who were you) knew you well…

115

@8: Google Street Views of MLK, all from the last year, still shows plenty of the exact same vacant lots, parking lots, and lot “for sale” signs as I used to see years ago.

116

!

117

@8: An amble down MLK with Google Street View shows many of the vacant lots, parking lots, derelict low-rise buildings, and “Property For Sale” signs I well recall from my light-rail commutes, even though the data tags all show dates from the last year. Considering Seattle could house tens of thousands of persons along and near MLK without the whole single-family rezone fight, what’s the delay?

118

@104 - It was not cleaning up Lake Washington that wiped out the salmon. The lake water is more like its original condition, which was good for the fish, post-cleanup. It was upstream habitat destruction, taking too much water out of the rivers so that water temps went up, runoff from fertilizers, dams, and toxins from tire particles (if only someone had figured that one out decades ago - it's going to take some time to fix that issue). Not to mention overharvest in some cases. We've fucked up the system in some many ways that putting it back is going to be almost impossible. Fortunately, as Nic Cage might say, "almost impossible" is not the same thing as "impossible."

119

.

120

@100 70s: Congrats on the Hunsky!

@101 kristofarian: +1 Scott Adams lost me when his strip stopped being funny and officially became "Angry, Trolling White Racist Misogynist Male Incel".

@105 Holmes and @107 kristofarian: I don't like the look of these pictured quads at all! The design screams "CALIFORNICATION!!!" Affordable housing is needed, but this is all too much, too fast! If we're not careful we're quickly going to lose everything that has been livable and desirable in the greater Puget Sound region.
I-5 is already a parking lot.

@112 rockyboy: Agreed. Unchecked building construction and "growth is great" pro-density developers will be both the economic as well as bucolic collapse of the entire West Coast. It has proven to be the demise of California for decades.

@118 dvs99: +1 BINGO! Spot on and so well said. You nailed it.

121

Where did my post @120 go?

122

Has Griz been 404ed? ???

123

@120: "I don't like the look of these pictured quads at all! The design screams CALIFORNICATION!!!"

More like Europefication. That's the way they do it over there. Multi-story town homes, all shoulder to shoulder. It's not necessarily bad. But it will look odd if it's just one or two projects stuffed randomly in single family neighborhoods.

124

@123 Holmes: Whether it's Californication or Europefication, it's still happening far too rapidly here in the PNW and, for that matter, entire West Coast.
Once our last remaining open spaces, woods, forests, farmland, and waterways are gone, they're GONE FOR GOOD. And we'll never be able to get them back.

Commenters: Does anyone remember back when there was actually a nice, unspoiled greenbelt stretch of forested land along I-5 north of the Seattle city limits, between Lynnwood / Alderwood and Everett*? For those who do, how many like me miss it terribly? Raise your hands. Anyone?

*Hint: This was loooooooonnnng before all the strip malls and outlet stores came, and traffic was a lot more doable.


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