In an article entitled “More concrete, less green: A cautionary tale about upzoning from South Park,” Seattle Times opinion columnist Alex Fryer gets pretty much everything wrong.
At a high level, far from being a “cautionary tale,” the actual facts of the property that Fryer complains about are an encouraging success story. Drilling down into the specific inaccuracies really gets to the heart of how he’s steering people wrong about how we should move forward as a city with a housing affordability crisis on a planet in a climate crisis.
Three changes to urban land near transit and jobs help with one or both crises:
- Enabling more people to live on that land;
- Reducing the cost of doing so, and
- Adding trees.
As we’ll see, the development he spotlights aces all three.
More affordable homes are a win, not a warning
The property disparaged in Fryer’s article is on South Thistle Street in the South Park neighborhood.
It’s a 6,000 square foot lot. Thanks to the fact that it is zoned Residential Small Lot (RSL) and Seattle’s updated accessory dwelling unit (ADU) rules, it was possible to replace the large-lot house with six small houses (832 square feet, with two bedrooms and and three baths each).
It’s a configuration Fryer dismisses as “sort of a tiny home village,” which is an odd choice on two counts. First, the original house was no bigger than the new townhomes that replaced it. In fact, it was smaller; City records indicate the old house was 590 square feet.
Second, one of the reasons he argues that Residential Small Lot zoning “probably hasn’t done much for families” is a decline in enrollment in the neighborhood elementary school.
Multiplying the number of equally family-friendly homes on the property by six, village-style, would seem to be just what the doctor ordered to get those numbers back up.
And, of course, for five additional families, the additional homes mean additional homeownership opportunities – and at a price affordable to a lot of essential middle-class and blue-collar workers in the city.
This property last sold for $535,000 in 2022, and another older small house (830 square sold in South Park for $580,000 in January 2025.
Two of the new homes are now listed, one at $489,950 (plus a $32 per month HOA dues and the other at $459,950 (plus a $31 per month HOA).
With a household income of $140,000, approval for a $490,000 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is a slam-dunk at BECU. (For a $460,000 mortgage, it is $131,000). Here are some examples of essential middle-class and blue collar workers who can hit those targets as a two-earner couple (individual annual salaries are shown at entry level and maximum step):
- Custodian Lead (County) ($54,835-$69,523)
- Library Associate II (City) ($57,875-$70,135)
- Nutrition Assistant (County) or Senior Lifeguard (County) ($56,161-$71,196)
- Metro Bus Driver (County) ($64,026-$91,473)
- Surgical Technologist (Scrub Tech)I (Seattle Children’s ($63,036-$102,061)
- Senior Custodial and Janitorial Support Lead (City) ($66,626-$81,008)
- Automotive Mechanic (County) ($67,891- $86,068)
- Animal Care Technician (City) ($72,277-$77,948)
- Assistant Teaching Professor (UW) ($70,200-$88,200)
Far from throwing shade on what the builder accomplished here, anyone who cares about making homeownership more accessible to essential middle-class and blue collar workers ought to be celebrating a big win.
Onto the treepocrisy
Speaking of throwing shade: when his piece was published, Fryer was at least factually accurate when he said that on this property there was “nary a shade tree in sight.”
But he could have learned for more than a year prior that an arborist’s report available on the city’s public permitting portal showed that the redevelopment would in fact increase the number of trees associated with this lot.
The report says that the only trees associated with the property were two street trees, which the redevelopment would (and did) preserve. Then it identifies planting space for 12 trees on the lot itself.
The lack of trees he decries was purely a matter of the timing of construction and landscaping. A dozen net new trees are on the way.
New middle-housing projects replacing large-lot oneplex homes is a win for lowering the cost of family-sized housing in Seattle — even if it’s despised by Seattle Times columnists.
Bryan Kirschner
Bryan Kirschner works in technology and lives in Wallingford.