Two Perspectives on Downtown Housing (I)

After decades in the doldrums, downtown housing has returned in a big way. The 2000 Census confirmed that downtown population in major U.S. cities reversed a long-term trend, increasing by about 10 percent during the 1990s. While reliable data for the past five years is hard to come by, the numbers that do exist point to even more rapid growth.

We could do well to catch the vision of Vancouver, one of our urban neighbors to the north. Alan Ehrenhalt, executive editor for Governing magazine, recently observed that Vancouver's housing boom has created "a vibrant, safe, glamorous downtown, full of residents who have money to spend and who enjoy themselves spending it at all hours of the day, every day of the week". Nearly twenty percent of Vancouver's total population resides downtown, and that number continues to grow.

Tacoma lacks the comprehensive vision that Ehrenhalt found in Vancouver, but our downtown has nevertheless benefited from the growth trend in urban living. Since the mid-1990s, when Tacoma's downtown population hovered right around 1000 (almost entirely low income), the past few years have seen investments that will eventually result in several thousand new housing units (almost entirely market rate--middle to upper income). A decade of low interest rates, relatively inexpensive property, and generous tax abatements have "primed the pump" for housing; another influence may have been adoption in the mid-1990s of a moratorium on low-income housing downtown through what is today known as the Miller Amendment.

When the Tacoma City Council adopted this legislation in 1995, downtown was open for development of low-income housing and had no market-rate projects on the horizon. The proposal of two significant new low-income projects--a multi-story project proposed by a non-profit housing provider in the block of Pacific just south of 9th, and the Olympus Hotel--set downtown interests to the ramparts. The BIA and other advocates for the measure argued that downtown's demographics were tilted too far in one direction, and that approval for more low-income projects should be halted to allow development of market rate projects until the demographic mix was better balanced.

Recently, members of the City Council's Neighborhoods & Housing Committee have concluded that this time has arrived; they cite the recent proliferation of market rate condos and apartments as evidence that downtown is now--or soon will be--an economically balanced neighborhood. Not all downtown stakeholders agree; they point out that most of the upper-income projects are still on the drawing board and that, even when completed, they will not overbalance the preponderance of low-income residences downtown.

What's our long-term vision for downtown Tacoma? What dispersion of incomes and types of housing support that vision? Certainly there have been significant changes downtown in the past ten years that warrant a collective look at housing policies.