Thesis Highlights

"Love Thy Neighbor"

Zach Braaten, 2022

"Love Thy Neighbor: Digging Deep to Find Housing Solutions in Single-Family Seattle"

Seattle has spent much of its history as a boom town, from the gateway to the Klondike Gold Rush to aerospace manufacture and the present dominance of Big Tech. Throughout all this, strategies for housing newcomers have largely privileged the single-family home. In the present, economic growth has outpaced housing creation as zoning policy prevents new units from entering the market and encourages a tear down and rebuild model. Racially restrictive covenants – a widespread practice in the early 20th century – have historically impeded residents in their quest to attain housing. Decades of single-family zoning across the city has created a fabric prime for redevelopment.

This proposal introduces a strategy of building underground and minimizing demolition. By retaining existing buildings, there is far greater opportunity for residents to remain in place, ensuring that displacement is no longer a given. Building on the piecemeal way existing blocks in North Seattle have developed, future densification is up to the homeowner which creates an opportunity for increased equity while doing a service to their community. A language for housing not predicated on razing what was there hopes to finally provide a housing solution for Seattle’s growth that has longevity and speaks to the capacity for more residents already present in neighborhoods.

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