Last week, I wrote about the residents of a downtown tower who are holding a new city housing affordability program hostage because they're upset about a new building going up next to their million-dollar condos.

Today, the Seattle Times covered the same issue and heard this from John Sosnowy, who owns a condo in the Escala building and filed an appeal to delay the affordability program:

“They should slow down, get this right and make something that will really continue to fund affordable housing and not screw up a great downtown,” said Sosnowy, 74.

The program Escala residents are delaying would require developers to set aside affordable housing in new apartment buildings or to pay toward a fund for building affordable housing.

Consider:

In the final quarter of last year, regional rents rose 11 percent.

Estimates of average rents in Seattle vary, but are as high as $1,900 for a one-bedroom.

A recent report found that renters would need to make $23.56 an hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle without spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent.

And homelessness, which has reached crisis levels in Seattle, increases by about 15 percent with every $100 increase in median rent in urban areas.

There is no time to slow down.