Mike Eliason
Mike is the founder of Larch Lab, an architecture and urbanism think and do tank focusing on prefabricated, decarbonized, climate-adaptive, low-energy urban buildings; sustainable mobility; livable ecodistricts. He is also a dad, writer, and researcher with a passion for passivhaus buildings, baugruppen, social housing, livable cities, and car-free streets. After living in Freiburg, Mike spent 15 years raising his family - nearly car-free, in Fremont. After a brief sojourn to study mass timber buildings in Bayern, he has returned to jumpstart a baugruppe movement and help build a more sustainable, equitable, and livable Seattle. Ohne autos.
In my Sightline piece from May, I described how homeowners in Wallingford have worked for decades to block housing via downzones, increasing development burdens, and dominating the inequitable and anti-tenant neighborhood planning process. Just last year, the Wallingford Community Council (WCC) proposed a comprehensive plan amendment that would have removed over 50...
A few years ago, Seattle ran an interesting experiment on radically densifying low rise neighborhoods with microhousing--a typology of small, minimal units that provide somewhat affordable rents as an alternative to expensive apartments or shared housing. They came in two varieties -- Small Efficiency Dwelling Units (SEDUs), micro-sized studios; and Congregate...
This past spring, the Washington State Legislature passed HB 2382 --a bill that allows public agencies to utilize surplus public land for affordable housing development. The land can be sold, swapped --or leased. This has the potential to be a really powerful bill --not just here in Seattle, but statewide.
This bill is a...
One would think, in the midst of a broad and deep housing crisis, that a nearly three-acre parcel in the heart of the city would be a prime opportunity for social housing. Yet, as was announced a few weeks ago, that is not exactly what the city is planning....
Last week, the sexist, anti-bike (see second image below), anti-safe streets "neighborhood group" Save 35th Ave NE, who has been demanding that the 35th Ave NE repaving not include bike lanes in order to preserve parking, were able to get a late evening meeting with 46th District State Senator...
The other day, one of the board members of the group organizing to kill the (MHA) Mandatory Housing Affordability program's nominal upzones that will increase the construction of affordable housing, stated, "The only family-sized housing for rent is a house, and 23% of Seattle’s standalone single-family houses are rentals....
Three years ago, the previous mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) draft proposal was leaked to the press, which zeroed in on just one of the 65 components, a section on allowing a limited pilot program of more diverse housing typologies in Seattle’s single-family zones--such as duplexes and triplexes....
Seattle is in the midst of a broad and deep housing shortage affecting households across the economic spectrum, which will require bold action on the municipal level — especially in the face of potential housing cuts from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), HUD rent increases, as well...