i smell a richard conlin redux. burgess is going to drink his (own) koolaid and miss lunch entirely.

Ugh, Jon Grant wants to put Seattle back on the path to being San Francisco, where you'd better be earning more than $130,000 to play the housing market or less than $30,000 to play the affordable housing lotteries.

@3, on the path? Oh no...we've already arrived babe!!

Why is no one challenging Murray yet? Not that Grant should be the guy. I'm just really antsy for a good mayoral candidate to put some pressure on.

Burgess had the fight of his life last time.

First term, he got 64%. Second time he sailed to victory with 83%. Against rookie Grant he spent more money than ever and only got 55%. That's got to hurt. Burgess is hanging by a thread and time is not on his side.

@6, winning by 10 is hanging on by a thread?
You could try arguing the percentages in the primary for an opening for an opponent to Burgess, but that leads to the general election where the answer wasn't Jon Grant.

Grant's argument for a higher percentage of affordable housing required by developers could use some facts to support his opinion.

So the white privilege of patriarchy will challenge the patriarchy of white privilege. Ha, that'll certainly show Trump what's what.

I give his chances in an off year election 5%. It's going to be mostly disgruntled homeowners and old people (a closely overlapping Venn diagram) voting next time around.

@7 Exactly. Grant thinks his problem was that he couldn't afford to get his message out. Grant's actual problem was that he got his message out.

Keep telling yourselves that. Burgess needs to either deliver something or admit* he's done.

*Read David Brooks's latest column if you're wondering if guys like this ever admit they're done. Spoiler: no, they never do.

Nobody should ever read David Brooks.

It would be nice if so called tenant advocates weren't such pussies. These guys attack developers, which is another way of saying "don't worry, house owners -- your neighborhood won't change". There are a bunch of simple things that the city could do which make housing more affordable:

1) Get rid of all zoning rules involving parking.
2) Get rid of floor area ratio restrictions.
3) Get rid of all zoning rules involving density.
4) Get rid the ownership requirement for ADUs and DADUs.

That would lead to a huge increase in units. Developers would put a lot more units into their tall buildings, and homes throughout Seattle would be converted to apartments. Apartment conversion (or new ADUs) are really cheap to build (once you liberalize the rules). This means that people would still add basement apartments or backyard cottages, even if prices dropped. So prices on apartments would fall dramatically. All of this would also mean that money spent on low income housing (such as housing levies) would go a lot farther.

All of this would piss off a lot of ordinary, regular, hypocritical Seattle voters, of course. It would mean apartments going in next to houses (gasp) or taller, bulkier buildings in some neighborhoods (oh, the horror) or (I shutter to even write it) finding a parking space might be more difficult!

No, it is much easier to attack developers (which is like attacking farmers during a food crisis). Yeah, we get it. Those guys are getting rich. But it is foolish to think that taxing them when they actually build more places to live will somehow make things better for the average renter.

"Nobody should ever read David Brooks."

You should if you think Tim Burgess's politics are what Seattle needs, or wants. Where do you think Tim gets his ideas? David fucking Brooks.

Burgess is doomed.

"Right now," he said, "we're essentially giving away those height increases."

I love how he assumes that the city owns those height increases to begin with,

You can't give what you never owned...

@14 right on!

"You can't give what you never owned... "

The reason cities have the right to limit not just height, but setbacks, parking and almost everything you can think of about new construction is that new construction can either add or subtract wealth from existing property. The value of the lot they propose to build on is derived from tangible and intangible city services, and the proximity of all the surrounding property. That gives the collective -- that is, the people, represented by their government -- the right to limit building heights, and demand something in exchange before they raise them.

Don't like the collectivism of zoning? It's a free country: build whatever you like on unincorporated land, which is orders of magnitude cheaper. Did you buy city property without understanding the zoning and the zoning politics of that land? Due diligence, dumbass. Caveat emptor.

Just hope someone who's not a condescending mansplainer will run.