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Seattle Architects Unveil Designs for Social Housing Ahead of February Vote – The Urbanist

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Seattle Architects Unveil Designs for Social Housing Ahead of February Vote – The Urbanist


A social housing case study by Neiman Taber looks at combining family-sized housing with co-living studios and townhomes. The site is a surplus City-owned lot in Northgate. (Justin Oaksford)

In support of their effort to build social housing in Seattle, the nonprofit House Our Neighbors recently released architectural designs for transforming a piece of surplus publicly-owned land in Northgate. In the vision, designed by Neiman Taber Architects, a row of townhomes, a block of family-sized apartments, and a wing of co-living efficiency studios are wrapped around a central courtyard.

While voters approved formation of the Seattle Social Housing Developer in 2023, the city has a special election on deck in February with dueling ballot measures to actually fund that public developer. House Our Neighbors put forward the grassroots Initiative 137 that will be on next February’s ballot as Proposition 1A, while the centrist majority on Seattle City Council proposed the reactionary alternative. Voters will be asked whether they want to fund social housing at all, and if yes, they’ll have to choose between one of the two options.

“For House Our Neighbors, [Neiman Taber Architects] designed a detailed proposal for this parcel as a proof-of-concept to expand our idea of what a brighter, more equitable future could actually look like,” House Our Neighbors wrote. “Their design shows what is possible when we put people over profit; A variety of unit types to suit all kinds of households — from students and working class people to elderly folks, people with mobility needs, and families with and without children and with ample communal space and an interior courtyard where the community can come together to socialize and support each other. All of it affordable. Forever.”

A cross section shows the guts of the building with captions noting the unit mix, which included 15 two- or three-bedroom apartments, four two-bedroom townhomes, and 16 co-living one-bedroom apartments.
The project envisioned on Northgate Way would create a central courtyard greenspace for socializing. (Neiman Taber Architects)

House Our Neighbors Co-Executive Director Tiffani McCoy said more design examples are on the way, with a call out for architects to lay out their own visions for surplus City-owned parcels.

“This is all pro bono from these architecture firms, but we know from I-135 that architects are incredibly excited about social housing, not just because they would be able to actually afford to live in the city in which they work, because architects are often between 80 to 120% of AMI [area median income], but also, you know, they’re just so restricted in their craft,” McCoy told The Urbanist. “Their creativity is really lost a lot because we’re more focused on quantity over quality, which has its benefits. But especially working in typical affordable housing buildings, the focus is as many as you can with the amount of funding.”

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A rendering of the Northgate proposal show a brick townhome row and brick co-living building next to the larger building with family-sized apartments. The courtyard includes a playground and families playing or relaxing. (Neiman Taber)

The first social housing prototype came from the 2023 Seattle Design Festival with a submission by architects Jacqui Aiello and Anna Brodersen, McCoy said. The pair proposed a nine-unit apartment building with one ground-floor commercial space and a mix of unit sizes including two- and three-bedroom units. The roughly 4,000-square-foot lot being eyed was a surplus City-owned site at 1405 NE 65th Street in Roosevelt.

A diagram lays out the Passivhaus environmental standards of the project, which includes a greenscaping, white roof, cross ventilation, and high quality thermal insulation. (Neiman Taber)

As laid out in the charter for the Seattle Social Housing Developer, the Roosevelt building would be built to Passive House standards, which go above and beyond the energy efficiency and sustainability requirements of Seattle’s already rigorous code.

In addition to meeting very high environmental standards, social housing proponents are also hoping to design spaces that encourage socializing and social wellbeing. The courtyard space in the Northgate proposal seeks to foster those bonds, as does the rooftop and atrium in the Roosevelt proposal.

“You have these spaces that are designated to getting to know people, relationship-building community space,” McCoy said. “There’s this beautiful opportunity there to grow friends, maybe lifelong friends, that you wouldn’t have in a traditional apartment setting.”

House Our Neighbors is also planning to create a financial model, or “pro forma” in developer lingo, to go along with Neiman Taber’s architectural designs. That model would demonstrate the feasibility of actually turning the plan into a real-life building. Nonetheless, part of the value of the architectural plans is helping visualize for voters the work the Seattle Social Housing Developer would do — if they elect to fund it.

“We are just the ones creating the vision and showing people that this is what it looks like this is what could be in your neighborhood,” McCoy said. “People don’t know what this looks like. So that’s what we’re trying to do.”

A site plan shows the landscaping plan around the three buildings and courtyard. The site is at the intersection of Northgate Way and Interlaken Avenue N and used to be a fire station before being replaced. (Neiman Taber)

Social housing advocates are confident of success in the upcoming February special election. McCoy did note that council added a wrinkle by putting a competing measure on the ballot, which will make it a two-part vote. House Our Neighbors is also expecting a more robust opposition campaign than in 2023, when there was no funding source involved.

“We’ll just have a little bit more education to do since the council put on their alternative, which isn’t social housing,” McCoy said. “It’s just getting people to recognize that you have to vote twice. You have to vote yes twice, not just one. You have to make sure to do [Prop] 1 and 1A.”

Nonetheless, recent results point toward likely success.

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“Seattle has already showed us that they’re very, very strongly supportive of social housing. You’ve seen that with the 14-point win in February 2023. We’ve seen that again with over 38,000 people signing Initiative 137, now Proposition 1A,” McCoy said. “And we’ve seen overwhelmingly Washingtonians want to tax the wealthiest in our state in order to provide services that regular people need. I have no problem thinking that we will win resoundingly at the ballot.”


Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrianizing streets, blanketing the city in bus lanes, and unleashing a mass timber building spree to end the affordable housing shortage and avert our coming climate catastrophe. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in East Fremont and loves to explore the city on his bike.



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Seattle, WA

Triggered by Donald Trump’s victory, Seattle woman brutally kills father with ice axe on Election Night

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Triggered by Donald Trump’s victory, Seattle woman brutally kills father with ice axe on Election Night


A space rocket program manager brutally killed her father with an ice axe on Election Night after a breakdown following Donald Trump’s victory. Cops said 33-year-old Corey Burke was found clapping and smiling, covered in her father’s blood, according to New York Post.

Triggered by Donald Trump’s victory, Seattle woman Corey Burke brutally kills father with ice axe on Election Night (Corey Burke/Facebook)

Burke reportedly considered the attack to be an “act of liberation,” according to charging documents. She has been accused of strangling, biting and hacking her father, 67, to death in their $800,000 Seattle home.

According to Burke’s LinkedIn, she is a training program manager at Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ spacecraft company. She is married to prominent transgender writer Samantha Leigh Allen, author of the acclaimed book Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States, as well as an editor at Them, a Conde Nast transgender news publication. Burke told police that the murder was meant to “help people change their attachment to their parents” and “had to happen today.”

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The murder of Timothy Burke

Burke had been upset about the election, and knew Trump would beat Kamala Harris. An already agitated Burke reportedly snapped when her dad, Timothy Burke, refused to switch the lights off.

Burke then went upstairs to bring an ice “pickaxe,” before tripping her father, biting and strangling him on the floor, and then repeatedly hitting him with the blunt and sharp ends of the tool, according to cops. She then sat down beside her father and watched him die, before smashing all the windows of the house “‘as an act of liberation,’” officers said. Cops arrived to find Burke “clapping … because she was so happy.”

Burke told cops that her relationship with her dad had been strained, and there were no strong “boundaries,” which has left her feeling “hyperfocused and disorganized.” She said it was Trump’s victory that “overwhelmed” her and pushed her to the breaking point.

When cops initially arrived at the scene, Burke stepped out of the house with her hands raised and face covered in blood. However, she said she did not know where the blood came from or who broke the windows.

Eventually, she described what happened, and whispered to one of the officers, “I killed him,” according to charging documents. She has been charged with first-degree murder, and is currently being held on a $2 million bail.

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Seattle Mariners’ Randy Arozarena Gets Awesome Social Media Shoutout For Viral Moment

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Seattle Mariners’ Randy Arozarena Gets Awesome Social Media Shoutout For Viral Moment


So far this offseason, we’ve learned the winners of the Gold Glove Awards, Platinum Glove Awards and Silver Slugger Awards for the 2024 season.

Those traditional awards were good to the Seattle Mariners, with catcher Cal Raleigh capturing both the Gold and Platinum Glove honors. Dylan Moore also won a Gold Glove at the utility position in the American League.

Furthermore, Raleigh is currently up for the Heart & Hustle Award, which would be another notch in his belt for a fantastic 2024 campaign that saw him hit 34 homers and drive in 100 runs.

While the traditional awards are certainly impressive, there was also a fun award that went to a Mariners player on social media.

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That’s right, Randy Arozarena won the PitchingNinja Award for “most disrespectful at-bat” of the season. The “PitchingNinja” is obviously known to be pitching dominant, so for him to even acknowledge an offensive player is a shock in and of itself. It goes to show how awesome the moment for Arozarena was.

Playing against the Texas Rangers on Sept. 15, Arozarena stepped out of the box on three consecutive pitches before wailing a home run on a 3-0 count. It’s not usually advised for hitters to step out of the box and give no appearance of swinging the bat, but Arozarena was able to use it to his advantage.

Perhaps he frustrated the pitcher on the first three pitches and then baited him into throwing a cookie in pitch four.

Acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays in a trade deadline deal this year, Arozarena hit 20 homers and had 60 RBI this year. He also stole 20 bases.

Continue to follow our Inside the Mariners coverage on social media by liking us on Facebook and by following Teren Kowatsch and Brady Farkas on “X” @Teren_Kowatsch and @wdevradiobrady. You can subscribe to the “Refuse to Lose” podcast by clicking HERE:





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New Details Emerge on the Contract Situation For Seattle Mariners’ Exec Jerry Dipoto

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New Details Emerge on the Contract Situation For Seattle Mariners’ Exec Jerry Dipoto


Speaking on Seattle Sports 710 on Tuesday, Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times offered some more insight into the future of Seattle Mariners executive Jerry Dipoto. Dipoto serves as the President of Baseball Operations.

The comments were relayed over by popular M’s “X” user, @MarinerMuse:

Interesting note from the Divish interview on 710 today:

Salk asked about Jerry Dipoto’s contract, and Divish indicated that the Mariners and Dipoto agreed to some sort of short-term extension in August about 1-2 weeks before Scott Servais was fired.

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Now, we don’t know the exact length of time that Dipoto was given, but it was certainly something that gave him the freedom and power to move on from Servais. The thought had been that both parties with free agents after the 2024 season and that both could be replaced after the season. Evidently, Dipoto was extended and given the control to make moves he felt were necessary. The team fired Servais and hired former M’s catcher Dan Wilson as his replacement. Seattle still missed the playoffs by 1.0 game.

Dipoto has been with the Mariners since the 2016 season and has only produced one playoff berth. It’s not for lack of trying though, as the M’s have been one of the most active teams in baseball over his tenure.

Despite the playoff berth in 2022 and a number of other “near misses,” the fanbase has grown tired of the underachieving. On a short-term deal, Dipoto likely has a sense of urgency to get things done this offseason, but the question will be if ownership green lights the kind of spending necessary to make those things happen.

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Continue to follow our Inside the Mariners coverage on social media by liking us on Facebook and by following Teren Kowatsch and Brady Farkas on “X” @Teren_Kowatsch and @wdevradiobrady. You can subscribe to the “Refuse to Lose” podcast by clicking HERE:





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