Seattle’s micro-housing boom offers an affordable alternative

I Love Seattle. I don't know why I didn't follow through on my dreams in the 80's of moving there. Probably because the kids didn't understand and would not leave their friends, which at the time were the most important aspect of their young lives. Many notable trends emerged from Seattle. Among them is Micro housing. The Seattle Times have featured several young architects leading this trend for several years now. This article is just the latest.
At last count, 780 micro-housing units were cleared for occupancy in Seattle, with another 1,598 units in the pipeline. No other American city comes close.


THE SMELL of garlic rises from the frying pan as two women in flannel pajama pants and beige slippers sauté shrimp and noodles on a range top in a shared kitchen just inside the main entrance to the apartment building.

As they cook, a steady stream of sneaker-clad tenants, some walking dogs, stride down the hall toward the elevator. They barely glance into the kitchen despite the pungent aromas and the conversation taking place around the square, steel table that dominates the room.

The women make fast work of the cooking, then quickly clean up and head back to their apartment to study over steaming bowls of noodles. “They’re the only ones I’ve seen use the kitchen, but then, I really don’t use the physical space that much,’’ says Jesse Yem, 21, a psychology major at Seattle University who has lived here for five months. “I come here to sleep, and that’s about it.’’

Footprint 1806, a micro-apartment building on 23rd Avenue, has 61 sleeping rooms and common kitchens. (Benjamin Benschneider / The Seattle Times)
In fact, he’s home now only because he got a rare break between school and work as a part-time IT assistant, and returned to take a shower. His typical routine: “I get home from work, relax a little bit, go to sleep, wake up and go to class.” His meals usually consist of ramen, bagels or all manner of sandwich. Yem, whose thick black hair hangs over sleepy eyes, occupies one of the 92 micro-units at Alder Flats, a clean, modern, seven-story complex that occupies a city block between 10th and 11th streets on the edge of First Hill, a few blocks from Seattle U, where old multifamily housing once sat. It’s Yem’s first venture in solo living, and he’s still adjusting to the silence and the cost of living: $1,000 for 200 square feet, utilities and Wi-Fi included. It’s a lot for a small space, but in pure dollar terms, it’s a deal, he says. Other complexes nearby rent for hundreds more, don’t include utilities and usually rent to people with established credit or rental histories. “I’m perfectly fine with my apartment,’’ says Yem. “It’s not outrageous compared to other places on the hill.”

In a year or two, he’ll probably be living with his girlfriend or starting a new job, he says. But, for now, his tiny piece of the city is home, just as it is for thousands of others living in small apartments and even smaller rooms off and on the grid throughout the city. Their desire to live alone in the most dense and urban parts of the city, and their willingness to trade space for amenities, represents a seismic shift in the way people live in Seattle.

TINY APARTMENTS are hardly a new thing, but they’ve attracted attention and controversy here because developers have been building them at a quick clip — sometimes over the objections of neighbors — and filling them quickly with people seeking rents that match their circumstances and mobile lifestyles. The first of the breed, an aPodment development on 23rd Avenue East, opened in 2009 with 46 dormlike sleeping rooms with common kitchens. It was the brainchild of the late Bellevue developer Jim Potter, who found a loophole in Seattle’s building regulations. At the time, the city allowed up to eight unrelated people to live in one “dwelling” with a shared kitchen. The code didn’t say the rooms had to be tied together as a single unit, so Potter built a cross between an apartment building and a boardinghouse, where someone could rent a sleeping room as small as 100 square feet with a private bath and share a kitchen with up to seven others renters. A micro-housing building spree ensued that gave Seattle more such units than any city in the country. At last count, 782 micro-housing units were cleared for occupancy in Seattle, with another 1,598 units in the pipeline. No other American city comes close. Once the pipeline is cleared, though, no future Potter-style hybrids will be allowed: The city changed the rules in October after neighbors railed against the projects. Congregate housing — group housing arrangements such as dorms and senior housing that use common areas — is still allowed.

But in the future, micro-housing will mean efficiency apartments of at least 220 square feet, each with its own bath and kitchen. Potter’s idea lives on elsewhere. His former partner, Cathy Reines, now of Koz Development of Portland, says her company has plans to expand the concept nationwide. Reines, speaking at a recent conference, says micro-housing evolved from the early town-home-style developments that featured sleeping rooms of 150 to 180 square feet with shared bathrooms and small shared kitchens, to the more modern buildings with larger units.
Architect Jay Janette was at ground zero for Potter’s first micro-housing project, and has designed 21 micro-housing projects in Seattle, Redmond and Kirkland. “I didn’t realize it was going to take off like a rocket,’’ he says of his first project with Potter. We’re seated at a conference table in the modest storefront office of Janette Architecture Planning Design, a residential architectural firm located below the Kickin’ Boot in Ballard.

It’s an open space that feels larger than its footprint thanks to south-facing floor-to-ceiling windows, and a floor plan that places employees in close quarters, their desks pushed together in groups. Janette lives in a two-bedroom bungalow in Ballard with his wife and their three children, so personally and professionally, he’s steeped in the challenges of living small. “People need to be able to bathe; they need to be able to sleep; they need to be able to be safe; they need to be able to have personalized space, something they can call their own,’’ Janette says. “People also need community.” Janette designed the initial projects with students in mind. He was surprised when young professionals and even older adults started moving in. The tenants, he says, “don’t spend a lot of time at home. They go to work, go out and spend time with their friends. They go out to eat, and then go home and do it again. . . . And because of the location, they can live in the city, and the city is an extension of how they live and where they live.”

Janette says two factors are critical to micro-housing: light and height. Earlier designs tended to be tall and skinny to accommodate higher ceilings and capture sunlight; more recent designs include atriums that bring light inside. Micro-living requires a ruthless eye for economy. “What the micros have taught me is that there are a lot of people out there who don’t have as much stuff as I do and don’t need that stuff,” Janette says. “I mean, think about how much of your living space just goes to storage. Footprint (a micro-housing developer) has this great tagline: ‘It’s just what you need.’ ” MORE