City of Seattle

Department of Planning & Development

Diane Sugimura, Director



City of Seattle, Department of Planning and Development
700 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2000
P.O. Box 34019, Seattle, WA 98124-4019
An equal employment opportunity, affirmative action employer. Accommodations for people with disabilities provided upon request.



September 22, 2014

Dear Jay Janette:

I wanted to let you know about the status of your micro-housing residence project. Approval of
another project with a configuration similar to yours was recently challenged in King County
Superior Court. Like yours, that project included multiple bedrooms, each with a private
bathroom and a counter area, including a sink, which appeared to be suited for food preparation.
In a decision issued August 13 and currently under appeal, the judge ruled that each bedroom
was configured for use as a separate dwelling unit, and must be regulated accordingly. We have
re-examined other similar projects, including your own, in light of that decision. We have
concluded that the individual rooms within your proposed development, project no. 3014342,
also must be regulated as separate dwelling units.

If you want us to proceed with review of your project before a decision is reached on the appeal,
you must either revise the project to meet code requirements based on the larger number of
dwelling units, or else modify the plans so that the bedrooms no longer would be regarded as
separate dwelling units.

If you wish to revise the project to reflect a larger number of dwelling units, it will be necessary
to add Design Review. Development standards based on the number of units, such as
requirements for bicycle parking and trash storage areas, and any applicable density
requirements, must be met. Alternatively, you may wait and redesign based on standards for
small efficiency dwelling units, currently under consideration by the City Council, once those
standards have been adopted.

If you wish to modify the plans so that the rooms are no longer counted as separate dwelling
units, you must modify the plans so that bathrooms are shared rather than privately associated
with individual bedrooms, or else you must eliminate food preparation areas within each room,
including sinks outside of bathrooms, cooking or refrigeration equipment and built-in counters
and cabinets.

Additional modifications may be required based on Building Code standards for separate
dwelling units. If the project has received bonus floor area for provision of affordable housing
under Section 23.58A.014, that approval must be reviewed to ensure continued eligibility based
on the change in unit count or any changes to the structure.

Please let us know how you wish to proceed. If you have questions or concerns about this letter,
please contact Christopher Ndifon, at (206) 233-7938 or christopher.ndifon@seattle.gov.