Elections 2023 Feb 3, 2023 at 9:00 am

Progressive Housing Divide Cracks Open a Little in City Council Race

The two housing advocates eyeing the open council seat in District 4 hold sliiiightly different views on the topic. Davis photo: Brandon Hill; Mitnick photo: Avi Kapur; Design: Anthony Keo

Comments

1

It’s a clever branding tool to highjack Yes in My BackYard (YIMBY) from NIMBY. It bothers me that YIMBYs reach beyond their OWN backyard and advocate for development in other parts of the city or state even. Some clever astro turf organizing. Can we please center the most marginalized and impacted folks in these discussions? Not these same well resourced spokespeople with access to the microphone.

3

This isn't rocket science. If you want more affordable housing you must increase the supply.

News Flash to Hannah... the LAW of supply and demand actually works. Its not the hypothosis or theory of supply and demand, but the Law of supply and demand.

Look at egg prices.... egg laying chickens are euthanized due to a bird virus. Supply of eggs is diminished and prices go up...hmm. Now we are getting more laying hens, more eggs are produced and miracle of miracle...egg prices go down.

The current shortage of available, equitably priced housing has its roots... in ... wait for it -- fat ass govenerment intervention in the market place.

-- Really stupid, stupid zoning allowing back yard cottages and IKEA town homes dotting old neighborhoods --but not high density housing along main corridors which is highly efficient.... both in terms of providing housing but in costs and reduction of traffic as all the amenities, shopping, transportation etc are centralized.

Little wonder NIMBY"s go nuts... you have no logical zoning concept. Yimby is a who knows what... I'd say basically an idiot who doesn't think about city planning.

--Then the permit process... which is measured in years and years, and layers and layers of needless regulations. Very, very costly and this drives up the cost of building, slows the speeds and is very inefficient.

-- Next the city having made shipwreck of the zoning and permitting process now wants to enter in the low income housing business by building and operating housing projects. God give me strength..... The city has a piss poor record on building and management... Why have them anywhere near this process.

-- If you let the builders build housing units in a normal fashion.... fix the zoning to make logical sense, reduce the government interference in the permit process and use some basic economic rules... you'll have more and more reasonably priced houses... instead a few costly, poorly managed units.

This concepts of letting the market work normally is as effective on egg prices as on building prices.

4

@2 I agree!
Heaven Forfend we would actually get council members who deal with very, very basic issues -- crime, housing, jobs, city planning, traffic, schools which turn out dolts, and useless government spending which rival the worst excess of roman empire.

Its hard to do any "social equity" work when your city is on fire.... fix the basics, improve the economy and then you might be able to afford to tackle other issues...

5

I don't know the best logistical way to address the housing crisis, it's a complex problem. But I do know that private markets are irresponsible and merciless, even if the actors within them have the best of intentions. I will never trust private markets with essential goods and services.

That said, adding affordable and mixed-income housing to the market seems like a reasonable temporary harm-reduction measure while we figure out the best way to address the problem. There are a lot of ideas to try, but I don't think that anybody knows exactly the best way to fix it. Adding affordable supply is low overhead because it's injecting itself into the system we primarily work with already, and it will do some good even if it doesn't do the most good.

I'm not a fan of "pay a fee to avoid adding affordable units" though. Even if the fee was high enough to fully fund all of the affordable housing needed for everybody (which it demonstrably is not), segregation by class is also problematic. All housing should be mixed-income housing.

6

@3, this is a very simplified application of Econ 101 (and you need a whole lot more econ classes to do it right). Some thoughts 1) housing has submarkets. Flooding the market with high end housing will soften the price in that submarket, but won’t trickle to down market buyers any time soon. Win for tech bros though! 2) The market can be manipulated. See the Pro Publica report in which it appears landlords colluded via software to drive up housing prices. There’s not an adequate substitute for housing, so people will pay more for this than other widgets. We could build all the private housing but with no caps on prices, landlords can just raise it up.

This idea that the market will save itself from record profits or deliver affordable housing is folly. The real culprit is the city’s own affluence and the ability of a large class of well paid professionals to outbid lower paid folks on housing prices.

7

"Mitnick said he wants to force developers to make “well over 50%” of their new units affordable or else stomach the fee. "

Translation: Mitnick is every bit as NIMBY as Petersen, with a elaborate cover story designed to fool the most naive leftists. Here's hoping leftists that naive make up a minority of the SECB this summer.

8

@5 and @6

If you expect the free market to be perfect... it won't be... and in many cases it is due to government interventions or situation created by government. From the Great Depression to the most recent 2008 mortgage collapse.

But over time and we are talking 1000's of years, not mere centuries or even short decades, the free market has done a remarkable job of providing the best product at the best price. There is not other economic model of system which has proved better.

I pointed out quite clearly and plainly the biggest problem affecting the housing market place in Seattle... namely government interference with the free market and why these interferences are causing a serious disruption of the supply. I note you do not address, nor speak to this, but assert.... without any argument... well i don't think the free market works or there are sub markets or instances of problems or market collusion.... but offer no answer which is superior to letting the free markets to their thing.

And then finish with a whacky idea the "city’s own affluence and the ability of a large class of well paid professionals to outbid lower paid folks on housing prices" which is grade A bull plop.

Bill Gates and the Dot. com employees are not outbidding you on your Wallingford bungalow or condo.....frankly they are not interested in buying one at all. If so just show me the last one that did. What happened is the government set interest rates at artificially low rates ... mortgage rates of 2% to 3%, in some cases below the inflation rates... this spurred unprecedented demand as cheap money flooded the market and this is what drove up the prices of real estate and housing... again you don't understand supply and demand and frankly basic economics.

If you doubt that, golly...look around. interest rates are now 6.5% and the price of housing is dropping..... despite inflation of 10% plus....and they are laying off the dot.com folks the thousands.... prices are falling faster and still you cling to this incredibly vacant, naĂŻve regurgitated notion which is wholly unsupported.

Think back to 1990 when the city went nuts on building office towers.... The supply was vast, the demand low and guess what we had Class A space going for $12 a foot. Then few office towers were built and gradually the market rate for Class A space resolved itself and a normal market price was established. all without government intervention.

Oh, you will say rentals and housing is different... well its not. Works on exactly the same principle.

Let me put it another way, we've tried the big ass government solution... namely, social experiments on low income housing, pay -$15 now...which is $18.69 for a high school student, to hand outs galore, rent subsidies, tenant eviction law and advocacy.... tax incentives to build low income housing, government housing projects...which are eye soars dotting the city and you name it... but in the end it didn't solve the problem, in fact its worse now than ever. Such is the history and evidence of the Government Big Ass intervention in the free markets.

Worse it defines the government as good guys and business as bad guys which isn't the case at all.

Would you like to see what would happen if we just let developers build using the building code and follow a logical zoning plan as I've set forth?. The more housing (supply - the harder and harder it is to corner the market.................. By the by, why is it collusion when a landlord uses a program to find the best rental pricing strategy..... Don't you as a consumer pr as consumers in a group...do the same when you go on line and comparative price shop.... and do you really think the landlord is smarter than the free market... hint, hint... they never are.

9

LOL you undercut your own argument with “the market isn’t perfect.” Right, so don’t rely on it for the policy outcomes you want eg affordable housing. Market failure is why government builds public goods (roads, utilities etc) to achieve said policy outcome. It’s a good argument for social housing. As usual you require 1000 words to make a point and the comment section doesn’t need another essay, so, pass on the rest.

10

"I don't believe that housing markets operate on these laws of supply and demand that YIMBYs keep pushing forth," he said. To support his point, he cited the number of vacant units in Seattle and he called for the City to levy "a very high fee" on landlords who "allow rentals to sit vacant."

OMG, could we please elect some adults that have run their own businesses in this town? The law of supply and demand is just a description of how people actually behave in the real world.

Sad that there's literally no one running to the middle that is a serious person yet. Just more of Seattle's failed policies.

I'm a weird one, I know, I vote Democrats in the National Election. But this one-party leftist idiot town makes me feel like I live in Bizarro world.

Economic incentives drive what we build in this town. 300k for ADUs that could be built for less than 100k, that's the kind of incentive that leads to everything torn down and rebuilt as soulless skinny townhouses.

It's amazing how The Stranger just has an endless ability to hire the most immature people to write for them, with just a tragically weak understanding of the world.

11

@9 We'll add poor reading comprehension to you list of problems.... i guess you didn't understand or read the remainder of the sentence.

If you expect the free market to be perfect... it won't be... and in many cases it is due to government interventions or situation created by government.

The next one is even a more moronic statement:

Market failure is why government builds public goods (roads, utilities etc) to achieve said policy outcome.

What are you smoking... and if I may recommend definitely cut back.

Government provides basic services postal service, road, currency, defense. etc. because these are things the private market would not normally do and they are more efficient if done by government. For instance military defense.... unless you want Google creating a private army or a patch work of toll roads and bridges.

Then in an amazing broad jump in logic (world record btw) you equate that these basic government duties as explained to you above are to achieve said policy outcome... which one can only infer to mean "low income housing". When most of us, not you of course, as you live in Wally World, would think the government provides these as basic services which private enterprise would not normally do.....

We do see instances where private enterprise in fact does what would be normally government services... say like in shipping.... Thank God for UPS... otherwise its the US Postal Service.

The market is perfectly capable of building a supply of houses to meet all needs, IF the government would remove its fat ass from the equation. And despite your pointless statements, you really can't point to any successful government program which after billions of dollars spent which has accomplished what you say it can and should do.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

12

@11, There’s a whole line of YIMBY progressives like you in Olympia pushing for the state to get out of the way of the market, zoning laws, etc. Can’t wait to see how it turns out!

13

@9 Don’t bother arguing with Mr. Lonely here. He’s a notorious troll and moron who can’t even keep track of the number of random ellipses in his illiterate rants let alone understand economics beyond some Heritage Foundation aphorism.

14

@11 Well just point to the government successes in this area utilizing billions in taxpayer money... well? The micro-housing tool sheds perhaps, those lovely motels which were converted to drug addict shelters... now upgraded with daily visits for OD and gun shot victims....and we have even more homeless.... Yup government is doing a splendid job.

How is it we didn't have all these problems.... until just recently, since Seattle embarked on its great social experiments.... causation or collation hmm? I wonder?

@13 name calling... is that the whole extent of your ability to reason. I guess so.

15

@2 we need bold leadership to shuffle the homeless from one neighborhood to the other and pretend that fixes the problem

18

Hey Hannah, this is the second time you have mentioned that "Gerry Pollet is considering a run." You have had plenty of time since the last time you wrote it to call Gerry and ask him if it's true or not. Is it somehow beyond your capabilities to do this? If he's considering a run, let's hear it from him at least, instead of repeating something you read on Erica C. Barnett's Twitter, or some other such "source."

19

@17 Amazing.. you want to have an educated discussion, inform and challenge the far left with facts, economics and actual performance of their social experiments ... and the best they can do is name calling.

Well that does sum up the far left position..... name calling, a pedantic whine and then flee office after inflicting horrible damage on the city.... and worse yet irreparable harm to those they were trying to help.

On the bright side, I foresee a shift to the center of the democratic party in the next election... after we weed out the social activist and one goal candidates.

Hopefully, if you read, comprehend and try to understand, these economic lectures will help you during the transition to the real world.

20

Here is a thought on low income housing:

Take all the money which is slated by the city to build government low income housing and simply loan it at "zero" percent interest to developers, provided the housing built are low income units.

When the building is done -sold , the developer pays off the "zero interest loan"

If you want condos instead of apartments, take the zero interest money paid back by the developer and lend it to low income buyers at "zero" interest to buy the condo. In which case, I'll lay a small wager the monthly mortgage would be less than the rent.... and you put the buyer in the game. They have equity and skin in the game now instead of being a perpetual ward of the state.

Happy... a market solution to a social housing need. but be prepared... you may get more low income housing than the market can handle..... oh and you'll also have your money back in the end.

I know its hard to accept there are efficient, intelligent market solutions which do not entail simply giving everything away in a stupid, inefficient moronic manner.

21

@12, @13, @ 17 Come on ... thrill us with your acumen and far left alternative to this proposal @20.

Aside from snide remarks, name calling .... may I ask what do you propose... or what evidence from the last round of city expenditures now running at $150 million per year annually and higher would you point to as a success!

Well.... ? Silence.... or another round of name calling and conspiracy theories. I'll wager next is conspiracy theories.

22

Dude. You were a MAGA lunatic for the last five years! Nobody needs to pay attention to you. You are disqualified from being taken seriously.

But sorry your widdle feewings are so hurt, tho. Maybe post maybe five more times and hit refresh all day to ease your inner pain.

24

@23 Not according to @22.

Only the government can save us! But he shows no reason to put stock in that position or plan which works.

Roger the Shrubber did exactly what I anticipated -- what all cowards and ignoramuses do when confronted with reason -- resort to name calling and then use a conspiracy theory -- like insinuating I'm a MAGA follower. When you can't kill the message you kill the messenger. Like who would follow that idiot in the first place... sorry to all the republicans who voted for him... but its kind of true.

25

"The market supplied adequate quantities of affordable housing in this country for well over 100 years. Didn't have a lot of housing issues until the government stepped in. "

Hahahaha. Holy shit. Are you stupid as fuck or just completely delusional? Are you taking about before roads and when the nation was underpopulated or something? Are you taking about during the Homestead acts (a GOVERNMENT PROGRAM, BYW)?

Because otherwise Trollflake your claim does not hold up to reality. For fuck sake one of the principle compaints about NYC in the late 1800's through the 1940's was lack of and affordability of housing!

The civil war caused massive inflation because the government borrowed heavily and did NOT raise taxes. Including to housing excepting on the frontier. Even with the deaths opening up vacancies - that swallowed up by immigration very quickly. Inflation was even WORSE in your dear Confederacy.

There are dozens of books from the turn of the last century that go at length about the cost of housing in the major cities. Or I mean sure I guess the depression doesn't count as the mighty market anymore and the New Deal interventions keeping people in their homes doesn't count either, right? The fact that the government should "tighten its belt and economize in every way possible" worsened and entrenched the depression and it was government intervention that saved the country.

FFS do you idiots ever even look shit up before you scratch this nonsense?

And housing affordability and ownership climbed dramatically after the post war GI bills, VA Loans, etc. Unless you're going to try and explain to us how that's NOT "the gubmint" involved. In fact when FDR caved to Republicans in 1937 and scaled back New Deal spending the nation went BACK into recession. The 1950's, conservative heaven, was again marked with high inflation. Probably a hang over from inflated war spending. But it was government policies and interventions in the market from 1948-1956 that drastically increased home ownership rates and that is not debatable.

And this is all belied by the fact that the last thirty years have been marked by pos-Reagan DE-REGULATION and the government being less involved and developers having more say than ever in most American cities. Like where do you think Trump came from? Like he made his money when housing was cheap and plentiful or something?

Do fucking morons even think? Read a fucking history book.

31

Belltown still has plenty of parking lots and dilapidated buildings which could be redeveloped into high-density housing. Ride the light rail along MLK, and count the number of vacant lots. Make it easy on yourself, and count only the vacant lots within two blocks of a light-rail stop; the number is still in the dozens.

Yet, somehow, the Stranger’s champions of higher-density housing never talk about increasing density in already-walkable Belltown, or in developing high rise housing (with ground-level retail) right along a light-rail line. Why do you suppose that might be?

“District 4 homeowners will likely find an anti-density champion or two to run on preserving the property values of their Laurelhurst bungalows, housing crisis be damned. […] the strong housing advocates who might face-off against the protectors of landed wealth… […] strictest YIMBYs diagnose the housing crisis as a supply issue and argue that building more apartments, condos, and townhomes in areas currently reserved for single-family houses … “

The Stranger knows it must keep debate strictly within the allowable limit of single-family homes vs. higher density. It must always capitalize on plain class grudge and envy to pit density advocates against homeowners. It must stifle any line of inquiry which might lead to collaborative solutions for all communities.

CM Sawant may be heading for the exit, but her bitter brand of divisive non-solutions continues to have a warm and welcoming home at the Stranger.

33

It doesn't cost the developer twice as much to finish an apartment or condo to a standard that will rent or sell for twice as much. So the market is broken. Market incentives say jack the price up and even if they end up with empty units they still make more money. I grew up a rightwinger but capitalism can't fix this.

34

If I based my vote on dentrifice consumption, I'd be in a terrible pickle to choose between these two!

35

Interesting read and discussion, I agree the gov can better achieve its objectives by working with the market vs against it, but that’s not much of a contention.

the idea that landlords will collude to raise prices is worth addressing, a good example of how short term profit motives can easily destabilize a healthy market. It also presents a scenario where the gov would have to work against the interests of market agents in the interest of the overall market health.

@20’s solution for this is nice in that it supports developers while also inhibiting their self-destructive inclinations.
Some thoughts on the consequences of such a policy:
1: class segregation, a less affluent population would have to be defended from other aggressive business interests, for instance one looking for a cheap way to get rid of byproduct
2. Small business interests may met as low income housing would leave more spending money for non-housing expenses, though the high demand for these units may result in owners paying near the top of what they can afford, which would result in less money for small businesses. I think this concern is mitigated with the first by interspersing income controlled housing with non-income controlled housing.
3. Specifically to the second suggestion of @20 to support buyers (vs renters). It’s not entirely clear how zero interest loans to buyers would create affordable housing, are these condos also income controlled (is there precedent for this in real-estate?) or are these million dollar, market rate loans that will never be paid off? What happens after a buyer pays off their discounted mortgage, does the property remain income controlled? Yes more people would be housed which is a win, but the landscape wouldn’t be much different than today and prices might go up with higher gov supported demand.

36

@33: “It doesn't cost the developer twice as much to finish an apartment or condo to a standard that will rent or sell for twice as much.”

Sure it can. Snootily pretentious celebrity architects, top-of-the line flooring and plumbing fixtures, track lighting, more electrical outlets for kitchen and home-office spaces — all of that costs more and adds up quickly. Not to mention the price of land often being higher for luxury home locations.

“…even if they end up with empty units they still make more money.”

And having a vacancy rate higher than a few percent helps keep the rents down.

“I grew up a rightwinger but capitalism can't fix this.”

Which is why Seattle’s voters keep racing themselves more to pay housing levies.

37

@5, 6, 9, -- very well said.

Housing as Commodity
cannot Work. anyone
need Proof?

@tS:
"With socialist Matthew
Mitnick (right, above)
and. urbanist... "

thnx!

38

is 5 bucks-a-month
enough for an
Edit/Delete
Button?

39

It is really both. @6 is a good starting point. The eggs thing is a good example. Another is oil. Absent a cartel (which is what we have with housing and zoning) prices go up and down with the cost of production. In this case it is the cost of construction. Numerous studies back up what is a pretty basic idea (not "Economics 101", but something simpler a kid selling lemonade understands). In most of the country, zoning really doesn't matter. The cost of housing fluctuates with the cost of construction. But in a handful of cities, zoning is the key issue. https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/hier1948.pdf

But that doesn't mean that with a free market housing is affordable to everyone. Strip out the zoning and you still have families that can't afford rent, just as you have families that can't afford eggs (before bird flu). This is true everywhere in America. Zoning doesn't matter in say Kansas City, but there are plenty of people that can't afford a place to live. Public subsidies still have their place.

But here is the thing: Without YIMBY, PHIMBY is really fucking expensive. It become practically impossible. There are only a handful of places in Seattle where they allow you to build apartments. It that continues, we are screwed. Many of the land owners have no interest in selling. I guess you can just keep jacking up the price until they do, but holy shit, that would cost a fortune. To actually get affordable market rate housing that way is simply unrealistic. You have to increase the supply of affordable land, which means allowing development (of some type or another) on the 2/3 or so of land that is currently restricted to nothing but houses on big lots.

Otherwise you end up with what we have now, which is a lottery system. A handful of people can live in affordable places (i. e. public/social housing) while the vast majority of people can't. More public/social housing simply increases that handful a tiny bit, unless we are willng to spend a fortune, and we simply aren't (in fact, we simply can't, unless we change the tax system, which would require state approval).

41

I find it difficult to articulate the reasons for my opposition to profit-driven, currency-based markets. However, my opposition is based on my observations of the world around me. I will attempt to articulate 3 of my reasons below. But first, I need to attend to some definitional matters.

The metric I care about is number of people with access to shelter that meets some minimum standard. I do not think it is useful to define the exact details of that standard, but rest assured that a tent on the sidewalk does not meet that standard. When I speak about efficiency, what I mean is the proportion of the population which has access to such shelter. In a perfectly efficient system, 100% of the population has access; in a perfectly inefficient system, 0% of the population does.

When I speak about profit-driven, currency-based markets, I am speaking about a subset of markets with particular features. Not all markets have these features. I am unable to produce precise technical explanations of what gives a market these features, so instead I will define by providing an example, the aBsOlUtE bEsT wAy To DeFiNe SoMeThInG. The example I will use is based on an article I read a long time ago about a surplus food distribution center that sent food to multiple food banks. They started with centralized distribution decision-making, and the food banks were frequently dissatisfied with what they received. The distributor switched to a market system. They assigned each food bank a number of "points" based on the size of the population the bank served, and they auctioned off each item that needed distribution. This system has 2 features of (some) markets which I absolutely adore: decentralized decision making and free agency of each actor within the system. However, it is neither profit-driven nor currency-based. It is clearly not profit-based because the distributor receives no benefit from getting the points back from the bank: the food was going to be sent to somebody one way or another. In an academic sense it is currency-based because the points could be considered a currency in some abstract model. However, the "currency" is not a universal and monolithic representation of "value", and so it is not currency-based in the practical sense that I care about (the reason why this is what I care about will become clear when I state my third reason, which is about structural coercion).

Reason 1 (anti-profit): Optimal market states do not value efficiency

Markets operate based on supply and demand. When there is demand, suppliers will attempt to fill it to the best of their ability. However, it is not always possible to fill all of the demand, nor is it always possible to fill the demand at a cost that the demanders can reasonably afford. The market reaches a state which is considered optimal by finding a balance between the supply and the demand. If the balance means that some people simply do not have access to supply, this is not only acceptable it is considered the ideal state by the market, in perpetuity. Any system which considers the existence of the problem we are trying to solve to be part of the ideal state cannot be the correct system for solving the problem at hand

Reason 2 (anti-profit): Resources to create supply are scarce

The obvious retort to reason 1 is that if there is not enough supply, no system will house everybody, and so the market cannot be blamed for this. There is some truth to this, but it is an oversimplification. We have the capacity to create additional supply (eg, build more housing), but the resources with which to do so (available land, usable construction materials, relevant labor power) are scarce. So we must decide which kinds of supply to create. In the current free-market model, the correct supply is whichever supply will concentrate the largest amount of resources on the landowner. This might mean building lots of housing for the large number of people who need it, but it might be possible to extract a greater amount of resources from the population by building vacation residences that are only used part of the year, investment residences that the owners have no intention of ever using, or residences which allocate a disporportionate amount of living space to its residents. All of these residences are inefficient. In the context of a society where wealth and income inequality is already high, it is likely that inefficient residences are the optimal choice for resource extraction, and so they will be built. What is worse, because residences are foundational to wealth and income generation (not only in the "your house is an investment" sense, but also in the "having a stable place of residence is a prerequisite to participation in society, and in some cases to mental health" sense) the inefficient supply allocation exacerbates existing income and wealth inequality, creating a vicious cycle where affordable residences are even less optimal than they were before. A system that values profit is a system that warps supply against the cause of justice.

Reason 3 (anti-currency): Housing is a human right

Equality of opportunity does not exist for unhoused people. Even if we put aside the need to have an address in order to apply for jobs, etc, having a home plays an important function in a healthy lifestyle, which is required to act effectively. Have you ever had an absolute shit day, gone home, and screamed into your pillow? It's cathartic. It's a release that helps you regulate your emotions and have a clearer head when you go out the next day. However, this release is only possible if you have a private space that is "yours" and you will not disturb other people in the process of doing this. Needless to say, these are not the conditions of a tent on the street. In order for each individual to have a fair chance at succes, and in order for society to receieve the best contribution from each member, everybody needs to be housed. This is not optional.

By placing housing on a currency-based market, we have introduced a mechanism of coercion that employers (as a whole) have over employees (as a whole). In order to access housing, you have to receieve payment from an employer, or have enough access to resources to be self-employed. This means that all labor which is performed must benefit the relatively small group of people who offer employment in some shape or form. This is how you get people who believe in human right stocking shelves with chocolate grown by slaves. This is how you get people who believe in privacy rights building software that spies on its users. Our concience might tell us to withdraw our labor from such organizations, but the horror of being unhoused and without food compells us to stay. I said before that 2 features I adore about some markets are decentralized decision-making and free agency of the actors within the systems. So-called "free" markets, as they are currently implemented in the US, have neither of these features.

Measure 135

The reason that I am thinking about this so much right now is not because of the distant council elections, but because of the ongoing initiative to form a PDA. I am not certain that a PDA will have positive outcomes. Expecting certainty from legislation - or any decision-making process, really - is a fool's errand. I view all legislation as experimental, and I hope that we will accurately record the happenings after legislation is passed so that we may learn more about the world, and build an even better future tomorrow, regardless of the outcome of today.

That said, I do have reason to vote for the PDA in particular, aside from the fact that people with far more expertise in this area that I do have presented plausible reasons for why it will be beneficial. First, it will at a minimum add some amount of (relatively) affordable housing into the supply. While I do not see supply manipulation as a permanent solution due to reason 3 above, this is an expedient harm reduction measuer that will do some amount of good. However, I also see the PDA as an important piece of social infrastructure that lowers the future cost of moving to a non-currency based solution. The PDA as it is presented in the measure will operate on the market, charging rent and using this to fund its activities. However, this is incidental to the nature of the PDA, which is organized this way because this is how housing distribution currently works. I don't know exactly what a non-currency based system looks like, but the PDA will have less institiutional resistance to moving towards it than traditional developers. In my view, it is both a short-term solution to provide immediate relief and a single step towards a long-term solution that will prevent the need for such clunky measures as supply manipulation.

42

tbh I was expecting a character limit error and just wasn't sure how much I would have to cut it down...

45

'balance' May be found
on a Beam a Tightrope
(with a l o n g pole)
or in Equivalencies
tho Advocating
for some Here
may be just
a Nobile
notion.

47

The argument presented by the proponents of the initiative, that the mixed-income model will grant them a degree of independence from public funding and avoid draining resources away from previously established developers, is plausible (though not inevitable). A Harvard review of mixed-income housing found that cross-subsidies can bring benefits in some situations (https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/w02-10_smith.pdf Chapter IV Section 3 Subsection a). It also has an extensive discussion about the limitations of cross-subsidy, although most of the criticisms assume that the government is trying to incentivize private developers to create mixed-income housing (this assumption is explicated in the second page of the subsection), which is not the case here. In fact, it points out that non-profit development can see greater success than traditional development because they only need to cover managerial costs, rather than maximize the amount of wasted money in the transaction, as for-profit developers do. The non-profit developers I have looked at in Seattle do not focus on mixed-income housing. This seems to be worth the attempt.

48

@1: "It bothers me that YIMBYs reach beyond their OWN backyard"

Smart public relations. You don't want to be seen as against something (NIMBY). Better that you get behind a movement to put it somewhere else. Like when the people were fighting for/against the North/South bicycle route along 35th Ave NE. The folks along 25th pitched in to support their neighbor's to the East pro-cycle movement. Rather than come out against building the bike lanes along their street.


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.