Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels wants to give more tax breaks to developers to encourage them to build moderately priced housing. But there are better ways to make housing affordable.
The mayor's plan would expand tax breaks for developers who build homes for people who earn middle-income wages. That's a well-intentioned step to meet a legitimate need.
Instead the city would be better off encouraging significantly larger buildings, especially along transit corridors. Why not allow 25-story condos in places where there's good infrastructure and they don't overwhelm neighbors? How about along I-5 near the UW, on major corners of Capitol Hill and next to the light rail station in the Rainier Valley? On this issue, even Federal Way is ahead of Seattle.
Other critical steps are improving in-city transit to serve those buildings and then making neighbohoods more walkable. Expand the streetcar and bus system (and replace the Viaduct with busways) so people can more easily survive without a car. If a middle-class family of four could survive with one car or no car, suddenly Seattle would be a lot more affordable.
It won't be easy to build support for these changes, even though more housing supply would lower prices for middle-income and poorer residents. The city would need to guarantee good design, which hasn't been the case with cookie-cutter townhomes overtaking some neighborhoods.
What's clear is that cutting property taxes starves the city of resources to provide services like parks, police and transit. Even so it's far from clear that extra tax credits would be enough to lure more development.