Backyard apartments? Seattle may experiment with the idea

Kate Martin wants to build an apartment in the garage behind her house in Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood, hoping to bring in enough rent money to better care for her mother, who has muscular dystrophy.

But she can't. City officials have prohibited such apartments, fearing complaints about parking, traffic and noise in the single-family neighborhoods that dominate the geographic and political landscape.

Neighborhood leaders in Southeast Seattle see things a little differently, though. They want garage apartments, viewing them as a way to provide affordable housing, keep families together, and help homeowners hold onto their houses in tough financial times.

The City Council will consider a proposal this week to allow such apartments in Southeast Seattle as an experiment, despite protests from other parts of Seattle, where activists consider the plan a step toward permitting "backyard houses" citywide.

The debate, while centered on the appearance and character of individual streets and neighborhoods, goes further. It offers a glimpse at the challenges of creating affordable housing in Seattle, where 70 percent of the land is zoned for single-family houses, and land for apartments is scarce and increasingly expensive in the rush to build upscale condos.

"We need a whole array of housing types ... because there will never be enough subsidies" to meet the need for affordable housing, said City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck, who heads the council's urban-planning committee.

The apartments at issue, known as detached accessory dwelling units, or "DADUs" in short, can be detached garages converted into apartments, old servants' quarters or brand-new structures.

They are not "mother-in-law apartments," which are part of, or added onto single-family homes. The city has permitted roughly 1,500 of those.

Other cities allow detached apartments. Since 1997, Kirkland, Mercer Island, San Diego and Portland have been among them.

Under the Seattle proposal, the structures could not be taller than 23 feet or have more than 1,000 feet of living space. The property owner would have to live in the house or the detached apartment and supply one off-street parking space for the apartment.

Mayor Greg Nickels was ready to propose the apartments citywide in 2003. But he ran into complaints from neighborhood activists already peeved about what they saw as the mayor's pro-development agenda.

So Nickels withdrew the proposal and resubmitted a scaled-back version for Southeast Seattle, from Interstate 90 to the city's southern boundary, and from Lake Washington to Interstate 5.

There's no commitment by Nickels or the council to take the plan citywide. But the Planning Commission sees the southeast pilot program as a "critical first step" to doing just that.

Columbia City resident Tom Smith wants the City Council to adopt the rules so he can build an apartment in the two-story garage behind his house. If he lost his job, Smith figures, he could rent the apartment and be able to keep his house.

"From my perspective it creates affordable housing on two levels. It makes my mortgage payment more affordable and allows me to offer low-cost housing to another person," Smith said.

The Southeast District Council, an umbrella group representing 25 neighborhood groups, agrees. The council voted unanimously last year to support the mayor's proposal, said Leslie Miller, the group's chairwoman.

"It couldn't happen fast enough for me," said Martin, vice president of the Greenwood Community Council, who hopes the program will soon go citywide.

Her mother's disability keeps her from driving, and Martin worries she is feeling increasingly isolated in her Fremont apartment. The solution, as Martin sees it, is to remodel her own Greenwood rambler with a second-story apartment and elevator for her mom.

To defray remodeling costs, she would like to create a garage apartment and rent it.

Martin considers detached apartments not just as a way for baby boomers to care for their parents but as a way to create "density without ripping out single-family housing."

Planning Commissioner Tom Eanes is a strong advocate for detached apartments but says neighborhood anxieties shouldn't be "pooh-poohed as NIMBYism."

Greg Hill, former land-use chairman of the Wallingford Community Council, is probably the city's leading opponent of detached apartments.

With a backyard house nearby, Hill says, come uncomfortably close neighbors, noise, parking hassles, lower property values, and shadows that will make tomato plants wither.

"Picture yourself going out to the backyard. There's a DADU next door. The windows are open. The stereo is blasting. Beer bottles are flying out. The city sells it like it's for grandma and really sweet. But I live next to the U District and it'll be for frat brothers."

Hill sees DADUs as a sign of "creeping deregulation" that's chipping away at single-family zoning. He fears the apartments will lead to the "duplexing" of Seattle. And he suspects Southeast Seattle will get far more garage apartments than the 10 a year planners predict.

Despite Hill's complaints, two key City Council members — Steinbrueck and housing committee Chairman Tom Rasmussen — say they're inclined to support the proposal, which gets a public hearing tonight at 5:30 at NewHolly.

Says Rasmussen, "It's a way of getting more density with perhaps the least adverse impact."

Bob Young: 206-464-2174 or byoung@seattletimes.com