Greenwood is Our Neighborhood
We, the undersigned, are Seattle residents who are deeply concerned about the future of the Greenwood neighborhood. We live here. We work here. We eat and shop here. Our children and pets play here. We use services here. We have deep roots here. This is our neighborhood.

After reviewing Mayor Harrell’s plan and its proposed changes for our neighborhood, we are strongly in support of the Comprehensive Plan as written, which would further the goals of “OneSeattle” by strengthening resiliency, improving affordability, and ensuring continued vibrancy in our beloved neighborhood. We envision a better future for Greenwood and believe the One Seattle plan provides a roadmap for just that.

Improves Affordability
It’s no secret that Seattle is in an affordability crisis. We applaud the Plans’ efforts to improve affordability in Seattle, including by siting more areas for affordable units, and through relaxed restrictions on development throughout our neighborhood. These actions will provide more income-restricted units and naturally affordable units, ensuring that anyone can have a place in Greenwood to call home.

One of the most affordable types of housing is co-housing, where tenants rent a room and share amenities, which keeps costs down for everyone. The plans for Greenwood rezone more areas to accommodate co-housing projects. This is a huge win for affordability. Seattle residents have also voted to implement social housing, another exciting opportunity to offer income-based homes that helps desegregate and integrate our community. The plans for Greenwood would open up more areas for social housing, a huge win for affordability.

In our neighborhood, as citywide, most new affordable homes are subsidized by development that also includes market-rate units. These multifamily projects include affordable units and/or pay fees, sometimes in the millions of dollars, to support affordable homes. The City’s MFTE program, which provides tax incentives for income-restricted units, also remains hugely popular for new apartment buildings. Finally, allowing more homes at all income levels benefits everyone through the process of filtering. Through these efforts, our children will be able to afford to live here. For those of us with aging parents, relaxing restrictions on ADUs provides opportunities for multi-generational living on a single lot. And those who are most in need can be welcomed in our exceptional neighborhood.

Keeps Our Workers in Greenwood
The plans for Greenwood strike the right balance between creating more homes and minimizing harmful impacts, resulting in a concept that will help keep our workers in Greenwood. A city that takes care of its workers is a better functioning city. Our city can’t function without its workers, including our teachers, firefighters, nurses, and service employees. But with housing costs increasing rapidly, many workers can no longer afford to live here. It’s imperative to act so that our workers have more affordable places to call home. Doing nothing will only make the problem worse. With its strong emphasis on affordability, the proposed changes will help ensure that our workers can stay in Greenwood.

Mitigates Displacement & Advances Racial Equity
We applaud the proposed changes in the Mayor’s plan that are addressed at preventing displacement in Greenwood, including realistic implementation of HB 1110 and identification of additional areas for development of affordable and low-income housing. The Plan recognizes that neighborhoods where you can only purchase or build a single, detached home with a yard are unaffordable to most people in Seattle. Due to the sky-high prices, it’s in these areas where the most displacement is occurring, as wealthier residents are moving in.

By contrast, racial diversity is growing the fastest in tracts within the Urban Centers, as shown in Census data. This makes sense, as it’s where most apartment buildings are being built, which are much less expensive to move into than a detached home, and many of which have units restricted as affordable. Greenwood is no exception, as our Urban Center is becoming more diverse, while the single-family areas are becoming less diverse. If we want to expand diversity in Greenwood, we must expand the area where affordable homes can be built, including zoning for more “Low-rise” and “Neighborhood Commercial” areas and widening the area of the Urban Center. These areas can also support social housing and co-living projects, which are critical tools in supporting our neighbors with lower incomes. We encourage OPCD to identify more areas in Greenwood to support these types of projects.

Supports Small Businesses
We love that our neighborhood contains so many small businesses. Nicknamed the “Miracle Mile,” Greenwood remains a gem for having so many amenities within walking distance. The neighborhood has long relied on its local residents to support its businesses, but times are tough for our merchants and restaurants, some of whom have been closing up shop in recent years. Action is necessary to reverse the tide, and one of the best ways to do this is by placing more people near these cherished businesses. We applaud the proposed plan’s efforts to support and strengthen small businesses in Greenwood, including by designating more areas for commercial establishments, and by bringing more people, aka customers, to live in our neighborhood, where they will spend their money. To keep Greenwood’s business thriving, our neighborhood must grow. It’s that simple.

Good for the Environment
We support the plan’s strong focus on environmental protection and climate resilience. Thanks to valiant efforts by our City Council in 2023, Greenwood’s trees are protected through the new citywide Tree Protection Ordinance, making Seattle one of the few cities to have such strong protections. This is a critically important strategy to ensure that we don’t need to choose between new homes and trees -- we get both! In addition to prohibiting the removal of all large trees, it levies hefty fines against violators that can rise to tens of thousands of dollars. Trees are protected in Greenwood.

We also recognize the environmental and climate benefits to allowing denser development where it most belongs, inside our city limits, including throughout Greenwood. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), allowing more compact and infill development in cities is one of the most important strategies to reduce global climate change. Placing more homes near the amenities, services and other businesses in Greenwood also helps reduce driving, which benefits our air quality, lowers noise impacts, and reduces traffic violence. Less driving will also benefit the salmon in our cherished Pipers Creek, as they suffer from pollution due to tire particles from vehicles that runoff via stormwater into the creek.

Finally, we must acknowledge the environmental benefits that extend outside our city limits. We love getting out into nature. Allowing more homes in Seattle prevents suburban sprawl and helps keep forests forested, ensuring that the nature we love stays natural.

Improved Infrastructure & Accessibility
We support the efforts of the Mayor’s plan to improve infrastructure and accessibility in Greenwood. In an ideal world, Seattle would be adequately funded through taxes on existing properties to pay for infrastructure and accessibility maintenance. But the reality is that our City relies on new development to pay for infrastructure maintenance and upgrades. Our neighborhood lacks sidewalks, especially north of 85th St. By and large, the only areas where new sidewalks are being constructed are lots abutting new developments, which are required to pay for them. These new sidewalks are constructed to the latest accessibility standards, ensuring that our City becomes a little more accessible with each new home.

New housing also pays for critical utility maintenance and upgrades, including sewer and water infrastructure, especially for our neighborhood with so many corroded pipes past their lifespan. New multi-family developments often contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade aging and substandard water mains along a street. Without this critical funding source, our neighborhood could not afford to keep up and running. That’s why we support the Plan’s efforts to improve infrastructure and accessibility in Greenwood.

Improved Transportation & Lower Impacts
We applaud the plan’s emphasis on lowering parking requirements, especially in Greenwood where we suffer from traffic congestion due to too many vehicles. After all, more parking spaces in new developments will only lead to more cars in Greenwood. That’s why we support efforts to get people out of their cars, where possible, and into our world-class transit network. In fact, we have many frequent-transit bus lines in our neighborhood, including King County Metro Line Nos. 5, 28, 40, 45, 61, and the E line. More ridership on these lines helps our bus network become more resilient. The planned “walk-shed” rezoning allowing apartments nearby, but not directly on, corridors supports our transit network by acknowledging that people often walk several minutes to get to a bus stop. New housing does not need to be placed immediately on the busy street to support transit ridership.

Building more affordable homes on quieter streets will also remedy the transportation-related impacts that people living along arterial roads have experienced. While there were benefits to the Urban Village strategy, we must also consider its negative effects, such as placing most new residents where noise pollution, air pollution, and traffic violence are highest. The proposed “walk-shed” strategy advances equity in Greenwood because our neighbors who can’t afford to buy a detached home with a yard also deserve to live on a great street.

With its emphasis on alternative travel, the plans will also promote active transportation to reduce negative impacts. Our neighborhood hosts several “Healthy Street” corridors that provide a safe space for walking, rolling, and biking, such as along Fremont Ave, 1st and 6th Ave NW, and along 83rd and 100th streets. By utilizing these alternative modes, we’ll improve the negative impacts of traffic congestion both in our neighborhood and citywide. And we know that residents in apartments utilize cars less than residents in single, detached homes, according to Commute Seattle data.

Improved City Revenue
Seattle is in a budget crisis, with hundreds of million in unmet revenue needs in the coming years. We either need to find new sources of revenue or risk cutting vital social services that so many of our residents, including people living in Greenwood, rely upon.

We support the plans’ emphasis to create millions in new revenue through incentivizing new development. Because new housing is not subject to the 1% cap on property tax increases, it contributes much more than existing housing to funding the city budget. This supports vital city programs that have been strangled by the statewide tax cap on existing residential properties, ensuring we can thrive as a city and don’t need to cut services, especially for those of us who need the most help.

Supported by Extensive Engagement
The Comprehensive Plan was drafted through years of public engagement, including in-person meetings and public workshops, online surveys, and mapping tools. Hundreds of people left public comment, while hundreds more attended the public meetings and workshops. All of this feedback resulted in the neighborhood plan for Greenwood.

It was critical that the City provided several avenues to contribute public input into the Plan. Many of us cannot attend City Council meetings at the regular time due to pre-existing commitments, such as working full-time jobs or caring for loved ones. Despite these time constraints, our voice matters equally to shaping the future of our neighborhood. We believe that the proposed plans incorporated the essence of the neighborhood-level feedback to create a Greenwood that is more inclusive for all, in line with Mayor Harrell’s citywide goals.