Freya Apartment Launch - Artist in Residence Program - 5 Months Free Rent

The Freya Apartments, our latest co-living community, will open its doors next month. As part of the launch, we are trying out a new idea: An artist-in-residence program that will provide a dozen artists free rent for five months as they live at The Freya and use their art to capture their experiences and the process of building a community.

Credit for the idea belongs to OpenDoor, a co-living management company based in the Bay area that we recruited to open a Seattle office to manage Freya and its cousin project Karsti (opening in Ballard early 2021). They are a mission-driven property management company focused solely on co-living communities. They have really dug into the nuts and bolts of living together to provide a range of innovative practices for how to operate co-living communities. We are beyond excited to combine their unique skill set with the physical environment we have created at Freya.

To apply for the Artist-in-Residence program visit:  http://join.opendoor.io/lb8bn4

In addition to the Artist-in-Residence program, notable features of the building operations will include:

• The project will feature a shared grocery and meals program to both build community and help residents save money on food costs.
• Community leaders will be recruited to help support day-to-day operations in exchange for a rent stipend.
• Some of the building fixture budget will be left unspent at the project launch to allow for community input as to how these areas can be best outfitted.
• Special interests of the residents will be identified and become part of the branding for the community to create distinctive cohorts within the building.
• Twenty (20) of the units will be reserved for income qualified applicants and rented at 40% AMI (currently $760/mo).

The Case for Re-legalizing Microhousing

It's been over five years since the City of Seattle passed legislation that effectively ended Seattle's run as an international leader in microhousing. I documented these changes in a series of articles in Sightline. How Seattle Killed Microhousing describes the effects of the legislation on housing production and affordability. How Seattle Killed Microhousing Again describes a failed initiative to get the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection to reconsider some administrative policies that were further inflating the size and cost of people's homes. In the intervening years, a removal of the restrictions on microhousing has been proposed by Mayor Murray's Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA), and Mayor Durkan's Affordable Middle Income Housing Advisory Council.

The response has been a growing consensus among housing advocates and opinion leaders that changes need to be made. The City Council and the Mayors office have responded with the gentle chirping of crickets. In a political culture obsessed with loud, high-profile, symbolic gestures there never seems to be space on the agenda to consider some simple common sense fixes for microhousing.

Should it be on the agenda? In this talk, given at the 2019 Green Building Slam, I tell the story of The Roost - an artist live-work microhousing community we recently designed and developed in Seattle's Rainier Valley. I make the case for why re-legalizing microhousing should be a priority on our legislative agenda. How many more years and blue ribbon commissions need to pass before we actually do something about it?