Seattle Election Won’t Mean Better Housing Policy

A month ago, Seattle had its latest election, and some have touted it as a shift away from extreme, ideological politics in favor of a moderate approach, even pragmatism. But for one who has been around long enough to remember, so called moderate Democrats have played a pivotal role in implementing policies that have irrevocably altered the city’s housing economy toward permanent housing inflation. It was, after all, a slew of mostly middle of the road Democrats who imposed something called Mandatory Housing Affordability on new housing in the city, a regime that taxes every new square foot of housing to generate more money for, yes, housing. It’s worth putting the recent contest in context.

Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, himself something of a “moderate” had this to say about the election: “Well, it’s important to say that in Seattle, when we say someone is “moderate,” it means they’re what we used to call a liberal Democrat. This election is really a shift away from politics by bullhorn.”

That might be the case, but when I recall the last decade since Kshama Sawant, an avowed Trotsky quoting socialist, was elected to City Council, it is important to recall what her moderate colleagues did. The City Council,

Add to these a myriad of small rules and regulations that incrementally add costs to housing production in the city and tenant land lord law changes including banning eviction during the wintertime rather than offer what people in trouble need, cash. The truth is that the City Council in each of these cases and others was simply giving the people of Seattle what they always want: a solution that makes them feel better but taxes and punishes someone else. The recent almost billion dollar housing levy, which I solely opposed, passed overwhelmingly because it was a small amount of money that would be thrown at the same problems a previous billion dollars didn’t solve.

The truth is that the problem is the ideological drift of the Seattle City Council, but an electorate that doesn’t understand the economics of real estate and doesn’t want to. Seattle, like most big left leaning cities, is full of people that think greed, not supply and demand, is what sets housing prices. Greed, people in Seattle believe, is what drives up prices not regulatory scarcity. Without a sustained effort to research why people in places like Seattle believe this, and then an effective communication campaign to change the narrative – the stories people tell themselves and believe about housing – the bad policies will continue unabated. Here’s what I wrote about the 2019 election:

“I know, I’ve heard it again and again. We need to support “pro-growth” and “pro-housing” candidates. I’ve said before, over and over, about elections in Seattle won’t change things. In some ways, the upcoming election might make things even worse. The fact is, that unless and until, we change the narrative in Seattle about housing — that more of it makes it more expensive and that price is set by greed, not supply and demand — we will never get any candidates that will make a difference in how housing policy is made.”

There it is. Why don’t people who produce housing listen to this message? People in business tend to seek opportunity, while activists seek outcomes. The average person feels as though the world is something that happens to them, while entrepreneurs tend to see the world as theirs for the making. When prices rise, business people tend to figure out how to price their product more competitively, while the average voter waits for elected officials to identify who is to blame. This has nothing to do with party affiliation or even ideology but the age-old culture of resentment that is far easier to exploit than reform.

The day may come when Seattle truly comes back to some kind of balance politically in which elected officials genuinely listen to constituents and take them seriously, but rather than respond to the person yelling in their face at the moment, try to balance real concerns with data and true leadership instinct. Seattle has no leadership; it is a City government that is like a person sitting backwards on a horse wondering why their destination keeps getting farther and farther away and then digs their spurs into the horse’s side to get there faster.