Seattle Nice: Council President Sara Nelson Talks About Housing in the Stadium District, Addiction Treatment, and More

Listen to this week's episode!

By Erica C. Barnett

Council President Sara Nelson was our guest on this week's Seattle Nice podcast, where we talked at length about the council's recent 6-3 vote to allow up to 990 apartments, half of them affordable to moderate-income renters, in a small, industrially zoned area just south of the city's two stadiums.

Affordable housing groups, nearby neighborhoods, and the Building Trades Union supported the proposal to allow housing as part of a planned "makers' district" where artists, food producers, and small manufacturers will have access to more affordable work and retail space than they would in other parts of the city. The longshoremen's union, the Port, and some urbanists opposed the plan: Maritime groups claimed the housing would destroy Seattle's industrial base in SoDo by clogging the area with too many cars, and some advocates for citywide density said it was just another example of the city putting housing along dirty, traffic-clogged arterials instead of single-family areas.

Nelson said she doesn't understand why "the urbanists" opposed the housing proposal, and said her goal was to create affordable housing while improving public safety in the area, by adding more eyes on the street in a part of the city that has few permanent residents. Hotels are allowed in the area already, but there's a big difference between people living in a neighborhood and people just passing through.

Opponents may not find Nelson's arguments convincing, but as I said when she challenged me on this, I've never argued that she's a straightforward NIMBY, despite disagreeing with most of her positions on public safety, workers' rights, and renter-vs.-landlord issues.

Nelson has taken many centrist or conservative positions during her three-plus years on the council—pushing to eliminate the minimum wage for gig workers, lower testing standards for new police hires, protect landlords who don't want to reveal how much they charge in rent, and crack down on people who use drugs in public (not to mention those who protest council actions in public meetings).

But beyond "protecting mom and pop landlords" by preserving old apartment buildings (ahem—"naturally occurring affordable housing"), Nelson has not been among the council's many vocal advocates against housing in neighborhoods, and has voted against proposals that would restrict housing, like former council member Alex Pedersen's proposed tree removal restrictions that would have made it difficult or impossible to build middle housing in historically single-family areas.

While I have argued vociferously against laws restricting housing to busy arterials (I think we should allow apartments everywhere), I don't think a policy unfairly restricting housing to certain areas is a reason to ban housing in the stadium district—an area that's right next to Pioneer Square, another car-choked neighborhood directly adjacent to industrial uses (and a vast new waterfront highway whose opening city officials have celebrated).

Listen to Seattle Nice—where we also discussed the city's comprehensive plan, the funding Nelson secured in the budget for addiction treatment at Lakeside-Milam, and the council's upcoming budget challenges.