Category: Olympia (Page 2 of 13)

Renters are nice people and other thoughts on the demagoguery of the Missing Middle

January 30, 2018 / Emmett O'Connell / 3 Comments

Right now the Olympia planning commission is considering a list of recommendations about the so-called Missing Middle. These recommendations would hopefully increase density in Olympia’s least dense neighborhoods by allowing duplexes, townhomes, courtyard apartments and ADUs in the mostly the upper elevation swaths of single-family homes neighborhoods.

As you would expect, there are a bunch of people who are not fans of this idea. And as you might expect, they belong to existing neighborhood organizations in well established (but I would argue not traditional) residential neighborhoods. As Whitney Bowerman argued in this excellent email she sent to the planning commission, these organizations represent mostly older homeowners who want to preserve the low-density character of their neighborhoods.

This testimony to the planning commission I think almost perfectly encompasses this attitude.

First off, she makes a point that we shouldn’t follow the example of Seattle. Implying that by increasing density you don’t do much to decrease housing costs. The fact is that rents and housing costs have started to decline in Seattle, mostly because of all those cranes on the skyline are starting to make a dent in demand.

Renters are not bad, I’m a renter

About two minutes into her testimony, she starts to get into a caricature of homeownership. “For generations, working people have dreamed of owning a house,” she said. Specifically a house, and in her mind, a detached single family home. Which is also a specific type of home that hasn’t been historically accessible to many people or even now.

“It is not just a financial investment, it is an emotional investment and a social investment as well,” she said. Apparently, when you own a home, your emotions should matter more and your memories are deeper and richer.

“Outside those walls and over the fences, they (homeowners) create social networks,” she said. “Perhaps not in the days of old when someone was home and could build social capital in the neighborhood, but people do participate in Nextdoor, attend annual meetings… they are literally invested in their neighborhoods.”

This is all a slam on the nature of renting a home. Personally, I’ve done both. I’ve rented in almost every quadrant of Olympia and owned two homes in East Olympia. Currently, I rent an apartment in Southeast Olympia and hope one day to own again, but not a single family detached home. My goal is a townhouse with as little yard as possible.

But this belies the philosophy behind this anti-density testimony. The neighbor I had that called me a piece of shit while I was outside with my toddler owned his home. He still owned it when the police arrested him for waving a gun at his wife. I’m sure he had memories in my neighborhood, but they weren’t more meaningful because he paid a mortgage.

I’ve also had a series of neighbors that have quickly moved in from out of state, bought a home and relatively quickly moved out without making a dent in my community. They were not literally invested in anything and their presence, while pleasant, did not have a deeper impact on the neighborhood.

It isn’t about renters vs. homeowners, it’s about density and affordability

I agree the research indicates that homeownership by-in-large means better things for a community.

The testimony is also moving the ball from a debate on increasing density in Olympia’s low-density neighborhoods to a debate over the value of homeowners vs. renters. At least in the examples of townhomes and possibly courtyard apartments, the Missing Middle will be the only actual path to homeownership that some people can ever use. And, the option of duplexes and ADUs will possibly allow some folks, who would like to set down permanent roots in a neighborhood, stay in a neighborhood.

Imagine for a moment a single mother who got a late start on retirement. She has an addition in her small home that she can easily transition into an ADU if it was allowed by the city. That would keep her in her home past retirement.

Currently, a lot of neighborhoods in Olympia fail the test of liveability in two major ways. They are too low density to really be considered walkable. Even if a small neighborhood center like Wildwood did want to located inside some of these neighborhoods, it wouldn’t survive because single-family neighborhoods simply aren’t dense enough.

Also, we fail in terms of variety of housing types, especially in the car-dependent SE neighborhoods. A good neighborhood ensures that multiple generations of the same family can live in the area, that people from a variety of backgrounds can come together. Large swaths of single-family homes, while protecting the nature of a neighborhood, does not promote diversity.

As neighborhoods go, downtown Olympia is pretty valuable

January 17, 2018 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

One of the most incredible things happened last week. The Thurston County GeoData Center released a huge swath of datasets that had previously been prohibitively expensive to access.

All the datasets are available to download, and if you have your own GIS application, you can play with them there. But with a few of the datasets, you can access and play with directly. One of them is this dataset in particular that puts together a lot of information about parcels in Thurston County. Including total acreage and the total value of the parcel.

By comparing value and acreage, you can really see where the most value is in terms of Thurston County neighborhoods. Downtown Olympia, seen here in mostly deep blue, is generally pretty valuable to the county’s bottom line. These tightly developed blocks are fairly consistently assessed at a high value.

When you get out to the Capital Mall area, the colors become less pronounced. There are still a few deep blue parcels, but the mall itself is a lighter shade of blue and its surrounding commercial developments are getting yellow.

When you get out on Martin Way, really the only highly valued property is one brand new commercial building.

The same is in Southeast Olympia, where the highly valued properties are newer, nicer homes or actual newer “missing middle” townhomes.

You see the same pattern in interior Lacey, where parking lot developments like the South Sound Mall and Fred Meyer are less highly valued than smaller parcels in Lacey’s adjacent “downtown.”

I made a similar point earlier using anecdotal evidence comparing a downtown block with a similarly sized parcel on the Westside. When you make the same analysis using businesses next door to each other (but only in Tacoma, not Olympia), the result is the same.

Traditional development is more productive than development that prioritizes car infrastructure.

When you compare traditional, non-car centric, blocks to parking lot dominant commercial development, the traditional blocks are always more valuable. They provide more to the community. The video below points out that the blocks in downtown Olympia are a lot like the blocks that we’ve built in cities for thousands of years. These are the dense, easily walkable blocks that have only become rare in communities that were built in the last 60 years. Only newer cities like Lacey lack them at all.

The academic background of why you should hold a ballot party

October 20, 2017 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

On the most recent edition of the Olympia Standard (the local politics podcast I host with Dani Madrone) we introduce our ballot party challenge. Basically we want to get as many people interested in local politics to invite their non-political friends to a house party where everyone fills out their ballots.

On the surface, this is meant to be a fun, social way to get people civically involved. But there is a real world, political science backing to this challenge. I am convinced that ballot parties, especially in vote by mail states, can be the most effective tool to boosting local election turnout.

In Thurston County, turnout for local elections is depressingly and not-uncommonly low. In the last primary in August, Thurston County turnout was only just over 22 percent. That’s bad.

Study #1 Impact of media on local knowledge

In the past sixty years or so turnout in local elections has been decreasing nationwide. At least one paper I found attributes this trend to the influence of television on the local information system. In short, television has been forcing out local radio and newspapers from the attention span of media consumers. While television is good at covering national news and providing entertainment, it is horrible at doing what local radio and newspapers used to do, provide meaningful local coverage.

I’d also lump in the contraction of newspapers overall and the consolidation of radio ownership as well. Outside the influence of television, radio and newspapers aren’t doing the same work they used to.

But this doesn’t mean that informed people don’t exist. You may know some folks that know a lot about local politics. I mean, I write a blog and co-host a podcast. It is just a matter of getting those people together with folks who may not know much and therefore won’t vote.

Study #2 You’ll vote if you know your friends are voting

Or, if there is social pressure to vote, you’ll vote. In one of the largest studies on voting, researchers in 2008 figured out that when voters realized that there was social shame to not voting, it had an impact. They theorized that the decline in voting had a lot to do with how our political culture has changed since the 19th century:

From an historical vantage point, one could argue
that the sharp declines in turnout rates that occurred in the United States after the 1880s reflect social forces,
such as rapid population growth and mobility, coupled
with institutional changes, such as the introduction of
secret balloting and rules requiring that party officials
remain a long distance away from where ballots are
cast, that diminished both the surveillance of voters
and their sense that their voting behavior was being
monitored. Concomitant changes, such as the decline of
party machines, membership organizations, and party aligned
newspapers that openly excoriated nonvoters,
also may have contributed to the erosion of social pressure.

Heap on top of these trends the addition of vote by mail. While it made vote by mail much easier to vote than schlepping down to the Church of Christ, it also took away the last social aspect of voting we had.

Study #3 Big surprise, make voting fun and people will vote

More than direct mail, more than calling people on the phone. It was free food, music and family fun that drives up voting.

Researchers partnered with local community groups and Working Assets, a phone company that funds political campaigns, to organize and advertise Election Day festivals. In the week leading up to the elections, they advertised the festivals through local newspapers, fliers, posters, lawn signs, and pre-recorded phone calls. All festivals were open to the public, family friendly, and featured music and free food. The festivals occurred under large tents near polling places. While advertisements described the events as election festivals, attendance was not contingent on voting.

…

Voters in precincts where a festival occurred were significantly more likely to vote than voters in precincts without a festival. Researchers estimate that in precincts with voter turnout of 50 percent—turnout typical in major US elections—holding an election festival would increase turnout by 6.5 percentage points. In precincts with a 10 percent voter turnout—typical turnout in precincts in this evaluation—election festivals are expected to increase turnout by 2.6 percentage points.

Based on these findings, researchers found that the festivals were a relatively cost-effective way of increasing voter turnout. The festivals increased turnout by 960 voters in total. Organizing and advertising for the festivals cost a total of US $26,630 (in 2006 dollars). This implies that the program spent approximately US $28 on each additional person who voted. If the baseline voter turnout had been 50 percent, the results suggest that 2,339 additional people would have voted and the per-voter cost of the program would be US $11. In comparison, research finds that direct mail campaigns increase voting by US $60 per additional voter and door-to-door campaigns cost roughly US$20 per additional voter.

Now, in this study, it was a polling place festival and we don’t have polling places in Washington State. Literally every kitchen counter is a polling place here. So, we devolve to the idea of a ballot party.

What’s a ballot party?

While if you google “how to throw a ballot party,” you don’t come up with very much, WEC Protects put together a timely one pager on everything you’d ever need to think of. But in my experience, ballot parties are pretty simple. You need to:

a) Do all the things you’d do to bring your friend together and have fun. This may include beer. Or pizza. Or music. Or meet at a bar. Or whatever. I’m not your social director.

b) Make sure everyone brings their ballot. It’s like the price of admission.

c) Bring Pens. You. The organizer, bring pens. It’s like your one job. People will need them.

d) Bring knowledge. Voter pamphlets, your brain. That kind of thing.

e) Everyone fills out their ballot.

I wish there was a non-profit in town, or this was a regular aspect of campaign or party organizing. But it is not, at least yet. I’m hoping we get there.

For this round of voting, Dani and I are throwing down the challenge. Get your parties going and make sure your friends are all voting. But in the future for a vote by mail place like Olympia, I hope going to a ballot party becomes a regular staple of voting season.

Why downtown Olympia is more productive than the growing edge of Olympia (or Lacey or Tumwater)

October 11, 2017 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

Why would you want other parts of Thurston County (Lacey, westside Olympia and Tumwater) to become more like downtown Olympia? Because it is more valuable. Way more valuable.

Take two blocks, one nondescript block in downtown Olympia and another out in the westside.

Here’s what you have in downtown Olympia:

These are about as nondescript as you can get in downtown. One story blocks, about six or so businesses. I’m looking only at the north end of this block between Capitol Way and Columbia Street, bounded on the north by 5th Avenue.

Taken together, these businesses cover about 30,000 square feet and pay over $38,000 in property taxes each year.

So, now let’s move to the westside. This building is located at near the end of Harrison before it becomes Mud Bay:

In no way is this a new building. It was built in 1981 and the difference between it and the downtown half block is striking. The newest building in the downtown example dates to 1937. This westside building too is one story, but the lot it is one is dominated by road and parking. It was built in an era we’re still living through when how you’d drive somewhere was the most important aspect in development. The need for parking makes this much larger parcel (at almost 45,000 feet), much less profitable with only $17,000 in property taxes.

This is a difference between $1.27 in taxes per square foot and $.37 per square foot. The price of providing space for cars and making neighborhoods unwalkable is real.

Strong Towns writes about this phenomenon, the older “blighted” areas of a community subsidizing the newer, shinier and automobile-centric developments. In the Strong Towns example, a series of closely packed buildings were leveled for a single Taco Johns, which removed much and the economic development from the land and replaced it with parking.

In an area like downtown Olympia, with even more housing coming on top of commercial activity, the need for large empty parking lots becomes less necessary. These aren’t just people orientate places, but they’re more productive by the acre.

And, because even the dense part of downtown Olympia pays property taxes to both the city and the county, everyone benefits from the high density productivity of these blocks.

How Olympia’s schools rate for immunization rates and why Lincoln is a good candidate for whooping cough

October 4, 2017 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

With the pertussis (whooping cough) outbreak at Lincoln Elementary, it’s time to take another periodic deep dive into vaccination data for Olympia School District.

The last two times I’ve written about this I’ve done much higher altitude views, comparing Olympia and Thurston County to other areas. Now I want to take a deeper dive into the information, and go school by school. The state Department of Health provides data on a school by school basis.

So, I took that data and began cutting it up into smaller pieces. Here’s what I was working with.

That last spreadsheet is where I came up with this map:

This is a map that plots non-medical immunization exemptions on file at each school with more than 100 students by rate. No surprise, Lincoln is top of the list. It also isn’t that big of a surprise then that Lincoln is near the top of the schools with exemptions specifically citing pertussis at 12 percent.

Here is an explanation on how those exemptions work.

If you’re somewhat aware of this issue, you’ve heard about herd immunity, or how the vaccination rate in a group of people that protects people who can’t receive a vaccine. This is why a 12 percent exemption rate at Lincoln is sort of scary.

According to the CDC, an immunization rate of 94 percent is necessary to prevent pertussis from persisting in a community. That is above the 88 percent that the exemption rate at Lincoln would indicate is that school’s immunization rate.

Property is in fact more valuable in Lacey. Go figure.

June 10, 2017 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

Ken has a very Ken-esque post about how he’s totally okay with moving the county courthouse, but on as long as it lands in Lacey. Or, in fact, move the entire county seat.

Olympia is old hat at retaining titles like county seat, or say, state capital, so I’m not worried.

But, also with his post, he makes this bold statement: “Land is cheaper in Lacey.” Well, okay then, I can take a look at that.

First, let’s think about why he might say that. Sure, Olympia is a much older city with nice(r) neighborhoods and some pretty great shoreline properties. But, when you get up into the Hawks Prairie north end of things for Lacey, the neighborhoods tend to get much nicer and much newer.

So, maybe its a bit of Lacey “aw-shucks, look at us, we’re so cheap?”

I don’t know, but either way, the numbers don’t seem to stand up his point. First, looking at recent home sales from Trulia data, there isn’t a very big difference between sales of house in Olympia and in Lacey.

Even when I clear away all the other data in the original Trulia map, the main three zip codes in central Thurston County are pretty much the same. Maybe Olympia is a bit higher, but since 98501 isn’t just Olympia, it’s hard to tell.

Also, this is home sales, which may not be a good guide for the type of land that a courthouse could be built on.

So, I tried to find a way to figure out total land value of each city. Good thing we have a county official whose job that is.

Before you give me the lecture about “assessed value not being actual market value,” find a way to figure out an actual market value city-wide. Also, even if assessed =/= actual, it is still likely a good estimate when you’re comparing values between two cities.

So, here you go:

–>

	Assessed value	Acreage	Assessed value per acre
Lacey	4,919,604,019	10,570	465,430.84
Olympia	5,785,389,448	12,590	459,522.59

Olympia as a city is more valuable, but only because it is larger. When you get down the actual value of the land by acres, Lacey is slightly more valuable. And, on a city-wide basis, who knows why? I don’t.

Maybe property with newer buildings are more valuable?

“Building Ghosts” is a really good book, it’s a freaking pillar of light. You know?

April 25, 2017 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

I dropped the library copy of “Building Ghost” by Jim Burlingame into my nine year old son’s lap, hoping he’d hold onto it as we pulled away from the library. He immediately started flipping through it as I explained it was a book about a part of Olympia’s history.

Specifically, it was a book with pictures of new buildings placed next to photos of the same location in the past.

“Building Ghosts” pairs a series of photos Burlingame took in 2014 of vacant buildings with historic photos of the the same location at some point in the past. Also included in the book is a well thought out essay on why he did what he did.

[By the way, you should buy this book. You can do so here.]

“How can this be the same building,” he said, thinking hard on pages 28 and 29 (the former Last Word Book location at 211 E. 4th). But, then he realized it was taken from a different perspective. And, then it all made sense to him, especially 3900 Martin Way East, one page further in. That page shows a series of small houses on the former side paired with a former Subway franchise location in an anonymous strip mall on the more current side.

Burlingame’s book is like that, it makes you think harder about seemingly anonymous corners of Olympia. It’s easy for us to roll around in the prettier and more stately buildings in town, but much more of our human history revolves around small anonymous houses on the edge of town replaced by strip malls on roads like Martin Way.

He starts the essay in the front of the book talking about the experiences at the old video store on the westside, how anonymous strip mall commercialism is unrecognized human history:

All around us, we have chances to see the literal infrastructure we pass through and spend time in every day as aspects of another kind of infrastructure altogether: the brick by brick accretion of details that sustain the meaning of those locations, both for individuals and the community they’re a part of. Of course, the latter is made up of an ever-changing set of members, most of whom don’t have much knowledge of the earlier incarnations of the places they frequent. Thus the near-invisibility — yet ubiquity — of these pillars means there’s a phantom palace overlaid upon the mundane world we know.

I bolded that last phrase, because I’m trying to set up the criticism of my next point nicely.

This book makes me want another book. As much as I like Jim’s effort here, it seems like more of a proof of concept than a finished piece. That he took his 2014 photos before researching what historic photos were available of the same locations means (as my son figured out) that they’re often of different perspectives.

I would have also like there to be a way for his essay to not be separated from the photos. The ideas are so powerful that reading them across the same wide pages the photos were laid out on was tiring. I’ve read and reread the essay and it speaks to me. I really like it, but laid out narrower, next to the photos, would have been better.

The way he talks about trying to draw out the mundane past into the mundane future and the phantom palace (and later in the essay his “pillars of light” vs. Springsteen’s darkness on the edge of town) makes me want more.

Read David Scherer Water’s “Olympia”

February 23, 2017 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

There are a few books about Olympia that I’d say were necessary to own. To be honest, most of the stuff written about Olympia is pretty bad. Either poorly written, poorly researched or just repetitive, not hoeing new ground. Rogues, Buffoons and Statesmen is on that list, not because it is entirely accurate, but because it is expansive. Confederacy of Ambition is also on that list because it is insanely well researched.

You can buy Olympia at BuyOlympia.com (which is based in Portland).

Olympia by David Scherer Water is also on that list. Not because it is entirely accurate, it really isn’t. It is mostly, strictly speaking, inaccurate. But, in the way that smaller details give way to larger truths, it is the most accurate book about the city we live in today.

Zach Mandeville’s zine series Funwater Awesome was as close a true (but not really true) capturing of what is is like to live here nowadays.

“Olympia” is a thin volume, it won’t take you too long to get through it. But, because the truths are so large and so well presented, I’ve had to backtrack and slowly take the entire book in.

Visitors, especially ones from cities with “bad” crime statistics have noticed Olympia’s “good” crime statistics mask a difficult to gauge social unsafety. “I should feel safe here, but somehow this place feels terrifying. Why is that?”

These are true things about Olympia, but usually they’re put out by five or ten year residents that finally got tired of being polite about one aspect of the way we live here and are just reduced to being whiney. David, an Olympian of 25 years, spells them out with calm and without judgement (seemingly) and at times tries to dig down to or origins.

But then there is the Holy Sh*t Park.

I’m not going to say any more, other than to say that every one of us is blind. David is the only one that can see. I’m too far gone, and most everyone I know is as well. David sees reality in the case of this park. Just read the book, you’ll see what I mean. I don’t want to go over it too much, David will lose his patience.

Opportunity for Olympia for All

November 23, 2016 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

A week or so ago I took a look at the geography of the failed income tax in Olympia.

And a while back I looked at the geography of voter drop-off in citywide elections.

Now this week, I put them together!

The exercise I did on drop off was to figure out if there were neighborhoods that were more robust in their support of the original statewide income tax and the local version. Where did the vote for the first tax (which passed in Olympia) drop the least when it came to the second vote (which failed in Olympia)?

The purpose is to find out if there is a correlation between a neighborhood a robust supporter of an income tax and a neighborhood where fewer people would vote in a city council election.

It looks like there is a “slight” correlation (in the words of a smarter person that I asked to take a look at the numbers for me):

This chart is not mine (that smarter person did it), but I did collect the data:

So, if you’re a local political group that is interested in progressive politics, changing city hall and increasing participation in local elections (like Olympia for All, amiright?) these precincts that ranked both high in tax support and low in local voter turnout would be your main targets, right?

In the map below, I categorized the neighborhoods, combining their rank in voter turnout with tax support, and came up with four categories. Green is the best, then yellow, orange and red.

Except for downtown, this is a very interesting map to me. Southeast Olympia as a broad swath of orange, that’s not surprising at all. That’s where you’d expect higher turnout and a lot of side-eying of progressive ideas.

But, the green neighborhoods are fascinating. They’re mostly newer, non-walkable and high density neighborhoods on the edge of Olympia. There is a large collection of them along Harrison Avenue west of division and the most of the ones on the east side are east of South Bay Road.

And, a lot of the typical close-in, very walkable neighborhoods rank very poorly. And, this isn’t just because they retain participation in local elections. If you go back to the Opportunity for Olympia map, you see less support for the local property tax.

There is opportunity out there, but it’s among the newer apartment buildings and neighborhoods on the edges of town.

The Geography of the Opportunity for Olympia loss

November 13, 2016 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

From what I heard, there were several reasons for Opportunity for Olympia coming to Olympia. The income tax to pay for the first year of college for Olympia high school graduates was run here because Olympia was particularly fertile ground. We had supported the last statewide attempt at an income-like tax and we have a good track record of supporting school levies.

But, in the wash, Initiative 1 ran far worse in Olympia than either 1098 (47 percent to 56 percent) or local school levies (over 75 percent last time around).

So, first let’s take a look at how Initiative 1 ran against our 1098 results precinct by precinct.

The lighter the placemark, the worse Initiative 1 did against 1098. In a few places (farish westside and far Eastside) Initiative 1 actually did better than 1098. But, the losses in the close in neighborhoods and Southeast Olympia were too much to overcome.

Let’s take a close look, though, at the precincts where Initiative 1 did better. These aren’t usually precincts I play close attention to when I think about Olympia politics. They seem to be areas around the malls and hospitals. A few precincts around the South Sound Center St. Petes and then up Lilly Road supported the local income tax over the statewide one, as well as precincts around the Capital Mall and Capital Medical Center. I have no idea what this means.

Again, the lighter the placemark, the worse Initiative 1 did against the last levy in February 2016.

But, again, there were no precincts where the initiative did better than the levy. We can’t see a repeat of the South Sound Mall/St. Pete’s precincts, since they’re inside the North Thurston school district. But we can see some dark spots in the westside near Capital Mall/Medical center. And, again the South Capitol to SE Olympia axis, Initiative 1 did far worse.

Most interesting is that there are a few well off westside, water view precincts on the westside where the levy (property tax) did worse than generally than the initiative (property tax). My guess, people with lower incomes but better home values (water view westside) like Initiative 1 better than people with lower home values and higher incomes in the deep SE side. Just a wild guess based on neighborhood stereotypes.