(Image: City of Seattle)

A Monday night online meeting will cap off the city’s public engagement process around the draft plans for the so-called “One Seattle” plan, an update to Seattle’s 20-year plan to guide its development and growth and, many hope, do more to address the region’s ongoing housing crisis over affordability and homelessness.

It comes as many housing, development, and affordability advocates say the five plans being carried forward in the process will not go far enough to create the thousands of new homes, townhomes, condos, and apartments the city needs to meet predicted demand.

Those calling for an “Alternative 6” include City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda and pro-growth advocacy and information group The Urbanist, arguing that the city should keep up its housing pace established since 2015 and not slow down the effort to build new housing:

Study adding 200,000 homes by 2044. Maintaining our same pace of housing growth since 2015 would entail 160,000 new homes by 2044. Why assume and plan for a deceleration of urban housing growth in the future if we want to drive down housing prices and regional climate pollution, and create climate-resilient 15-minute neighborhoods?

You can review the city’s report and analysis on the comprehensive plan alternatives along with amendments and more documentation at seattle.gov.

Monday’s meeting is billed as a citywide opportunity to provide “feedback to help guide how the City will invest in our communities to shape the city’s future” and follows a series of engagement sessions and meetings:

• We are hosting a One Seattle Plan Virtual Community Meeting on Monday, January 30, 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. We will present an update and what to look forward to in the near future, and an opportunity to participate in a question and answer session. View our conversation prompts before you join.

Virtual Citywide Meeting:
Monday, January 30th, 6:00-7:30pm
Meeting Link:
https://bit.ly/OneSeattlePlanOnlineMeeting

This meeting is hosted on Microsoft Teams, which is required for attendance. Once Teams is installed, you can click on the meeting link above or join via your internet browser. More information below.

Additional attendance options:

• Join this meeting via your internet browser:
  Meeting ID: 289 244 083 201
  Passcode: VATQ4F
• Call into this meeting (audio only)
  Phone Conference ID: 363 728 176#

You can also add your voice via survey — click on TAKE THE SURVEY here — through February 3rd.

CHS reported last spring on the process as the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict worked to represent the area with expanded development capacity creating more “complete neighborhoods” in the city. We checked in again in October as the process had moved forward to alternatives hoped to guide Seattle away from its longtime “urban village” strategy in which development has been concentrated in the city’s most densely populated areas.

Now the call for “Alternative 6” would add an option to the city’s planning that would open up Seattle to levels of development matching the expanded growth achieved since 2015 thanks to emergency measures and expansions like the Mandatory Housing Affordability legislation. One strategy would be allowing multistory “four-plex” development in more areas of the city. It would also include planks to boost affordability with incentives for public and middle to low income housing, height bonuses for meeting high level environmental standards, and incentives for preserving tree canopy.

Meanwhile, officials project Seattle’s population will hit 1 million by 2044 — an additional 240,000 residents over the next 20 years.

$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻 
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍