Dear Mayor and Councilmembers,

I am writing to urge you to enact stronger anti-displacement protections, update growth assumptions, and have a clear plan for who benefits and who pays before passing the next phases of the One Seattle Plan. Seattle should not legislate first and hope affordability follows; instead, we should write the rules so affordable middle housing is built by design.

Seattle should not accelerate broad upzones while longtime residents are already struggling to stay. More zoning capacity does not automatically create affordable homes for working families, seniors, renters, or multigenerational households. Without binding protections, massive upzoning can raise land values, invite speculation and redevelopment, and turn naturally affordable homes into targets for demolition.

The City also needs to revisit demand. People and employers are already leaving Seattle, regional growth is shifting, and the old Amazon-boom assumptions no longer fit the city we are actually living in. If Seattle becomes less livable, less green, and less welcoming to families, we may get more buildings but lose the main reason people choose to live here.

Vancouver, B.C. should serve us as a warning. A flood of market-rate development did not “trickle down” into affordability for ordinary families. It helped create a city where global capital bought and parked their money, but many residents could no longer afford to stay. Vancouver became the third most expensive city on the planet. Seattle should not repeat that mistake.

Before approving more upzones and accelerating the process through “Taller, Denser, Faster,” please include community and neighborhood participation in a meaningful way. The existing process has been exclusionary, has prioritized the wishlists of private equity and developers, and has not listened to the residents who will be most impacted. Require real anti-displacement rules, family-sized housing, limits on speculation and empty units, protection for existing residents, and a serious analysis of whether the plan will preserve the trees, neighborhoods, public safety, and livability that make Seattle worth calling home.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Neighborhood]