Seattle should take steps as other cities have done to protect neighborhoods and make housing more affordable.
THE mayor’s retreat from his proposal to allow more density in single-family neighborhoods means that residential developers can continue to roam the inadequately regulated landscape like locusts, tearing down existing affordable houses, dumping them in the landfill and replacing them with oversized and overpriced mini-mansions.
In pursuit of quick profits, flippers will go on building poorly constructed boxes that are ludicrously out-of-scale and out-of-character compared with neighboring houses. Developers and real-estate agents will continue to drive up the price of residential housing, changing economically diverse neighborhoods into affluent enclaves.