With an overly limited urban village around its light rail station, Roosevelt could really use an expansion.
I moved my family to the edge of Roosevelt in 2016, right on the boundary with Ravenna and a few steps away from the University District. We came for the gorgeous parks, great schools, budding amenities, and the fact that it would soon be connected by subway to so much more of the city. With the blistering pace of development today, it’s clear we weren’t the only ones to notice. This growth will build up our local businesses and bring new ones to the area, which will make it an even better place to live. It will also make the neighborhood more inclusive, funding lots of subsidized housing via the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) program.
And, speaking of inclusivity, we were delighted to see that most of our neighbors welcomed the 253 units of affordable housing and a daycare that are under construction right now at the light rail station. We are fast becoming a 15-minute neighborhood, and more importantly, a neighborhood that also understands it should include everyone.
But this wasn’t always true, and that past is about to haunt us, robbing taxpayers of our rightful return on investment, and excluding thousands of families from our neighborhood. I figured this out because I have been surprised to see low-density townhomes being built just a few steps from the brand new station. Nerd that I am, I pulled out the zoning maps. It turns out that dense developments, including even mid-sized multifamily buildings, are prohibited in a big part of the area around our brand new subway stop. In some spots, only single-family homes are allowed. My (very) rough count finds 86 acres of low-density zoning within a 10-minute walk. This does not include the single-family homes in the Ravenna-Cowen Historic District, which the City removed from the upzone and urban village in deference to homeowners who got the area placed on the National Register. Given that wrinkle, I kept it out of the count.
