Apparently I don’t, because now that King County passed the “Critical Areas Ordinance” that tells property owners what percentage of their dirt they can cover with things like structures and driveways, the City of Seattle will soon be looking at regulating how much is too much when you build your home.
Sadly, you’re not going to be left with all that much.
If you’ve ever had the sun blotted or your view blocked by a house on steroids, you’d understand the unneighborly feelings that a megahome can engender.
In a city of neighborhoods, that is not a good thing. Seattle City Councilman Richard Conlin is right to propose housing-code changes that would scale back how large a replacement home in a single-family neighborhood could be.
They are calling them “Megahomes” so as to try and imply that these homes are oversized and basically bias the reader. However, if the house of your dreams meets all other City of Seattle requirements for lot size, they are now going to tell you that going up is a no-no.
I mean, who would want to have an entire floor dedicated to a bedroom, with it’s own bathroom and walk-in closets? Or a living room you could actually enjoy living in? Or a garage to house two commuter vehicles and a weekend ride?
Oh yeah, that would be me.
If I own the dirt, and pay the appropriate amount of taxes on said dirt, and abide by all other building codes, why shouldn’t I be able to go up three stories if my wallet allows it?
Because the folks at the Seattle Times, and apparently the Seattle City Council, think I’m just showing off.
The controversy has been brewing for years as more human-scale older homes have been knocked down and replaced by gargantuan structures that sidle up to lot lines and hoist themselves into the sky, as if — look at me! — they are all that counts on a block.
As the Green Lake Community Council’s Ref Lindmark told Seattle Times reporters Sharon Pian Chan and Ashley Bach, “There are a number of 1,000-square-foot houses and then, all of a sudden, along comes a 4,000-square-foot house and it just dominates.”
The controversy has been brewing for years as more human-scale older homes have been knocked down and replaced by gargantuan structures that sidle up to lot lines and hoist themselves into the sky, as if — look at me! — they are all that counts on a block.
As the Green Lake Community Council’s Ref Lindmark told Seattle Times reporters Sharon Pian Chan and Ashley Bach, “There are a number of 1,000-square-foot houses and then, all of a sudden, along comes a 4,000-square-foot house and it just dominates.”
Tough titties, Ref. It is none of your business why that person wanted a 4000sqft house. Maybe they have a dedicated gun room (like I’d love to have) or maybe it’s a dedicated meda room (like the wife wants). Maybe it has both. It doesn’t matter and it is none of your business it my entire ground floor is a garage to house my six vehicles.
But Ref and the rest of the “more human scale” jackasses Must. Have. Conformity.
I’m not a small guy. I need larger accomodations that a 5’5″ asian woman or some 6′ / 140lb bean eater who likes to live in poverty.
Remodeling and rebuilding are not intrinsically bad. They can freshen up a property and even start the turnaround of an entire area. But when an owner cares not enough about the impacts of his buildout on nearby residents, the social infrastructure of the city begins to fray.
Screw your “social infrastructure”. I have to live in it, they don’t. I’m paying for it, they aren’t. So long as I am not harming their land values or damaging their actual property, what business is it of theirs?
Conlin proposes to lower the height limits of houses that replace demolished homes, from the approximately three stories permitted now to two. Homes would be able to occupy 35 percent of a lot; whereas now it is 35 percent or 1,750 square feet, whichever is more. The latter standard allows for a relatively larger structural footprint on lots under 5,000 square feet. Conlin also proposes to ban the practice of consolidating adjoining properties and replacing multiple homes with a single large one.
And I bet that Conlin probably still wonders why the number of families moving into Seattle proper has been declining over the last decade.
Private citizens do not own land in the US; we only rent it from the government. The rent is referred to as “property tax”.
Hasn’t anyone added up the cost of these new restrictions? If you have a small 1,000 ft/sq home in Lake Forest Park (the kind of neighborhood they are talking about here), it might be valued, for tax purposes, at $400K.
Rip that home down and replace it with a 4,000 ft/sq home worth over a million, and how much does the County stand to gain in property taxes over, say, the next 20 years?
I’d guess that the figure is at least $8K/yr, or $160K over 20 years (actually, you could triple that if the County invested those funds properly).
In Lake Forest Park, there are usually large, treed lots, so there are 10 houses to a block, and maybe 300 blocks to a neighborhood.
I did that math. If the entire neighborhood was upgraded, the County would gain a half-billion dollars over 20 years, and if only 10 percent is upgraded, fifty million over 20 years. Multiply that by the number of neighborhoods affected, and you begin to get significant money involved.
If King County can afford to kiss off all that increased tax revenue, they are WAY overcharging for current real estate taxes, and a ballot measure should be passed to severely cut those taxes.
Or, tell them that if they can do without the revenue they are going to lose, they’ve been lying to residents about the County’s needs all these years.
They can’t have it both ways.