Last week I posted at Forbes that neither candidate for Mayor, Jenny Durkan and Cary Moon, are voteworthy when it comes to their views about housing and the language they use about their views. I said the same thing on this blog too. In the Forbes post I said,

So Seattle is faced with a choice between a Mayor who sees her own departments in charge of land use and housing policy in City government as the “zoning and housing people,” and a Mayor who will waste lots of time and resources of those same staff trying to chase some invisible cabal of foreign investors. Maybe, as people often suggest, what candidates say is often very different from what elected officials actually do. That’s about the only hope Seattle as at this point when it comes to the next four years.

Well, I shared the post to the Market Urbanism Facebook page. Like the City Builders page, where Moon is leading in a poll I posted (Moon 62%, Durkan 26%, None of the Above 9%), the response was very pro-moon.

Christopher Young I think you’re being unduly harsh. They have to say SOMETHING to get elected, and sometimes they have to throw a bone to the NIMBYs, who vote. I haven’t heard either candidate say anything crazypants, like we need to put a moratorium on all new construction to protect this mythical affordable housing that the “greedy developers” are destroying. Moon is criticizing real estate speculation in general, not just by foreigners, but she has never articulated a plan to do anything about it. Probably because they only thing we could do is dramatically increase building to keep up with supply, which the NIMBYs don’t want to hear.

And then someone else chimed in.

Evan Derickson Moon voices support for Missing Middle housing just about every chance she gets. She said the right amount of single-family zoning for Seattle is “somewhere between zero and less than we have now.” That’s about as strong in support for increasing the housing supply as a candidate can be in Seattle without throwing their campaign in the trash.

Loosening zoning restrictions in dense areas like Capitol Hill or the CBD is low-hanging fruit, politically-speaking. Moon is in the unenviable position of convincing SFH property owners that a little more density does not mean their house will be bulldozed tomorrow. Economic arguments in Seattle will turn off more voters than they bring in.

It’s not really a candidate’s job to be at the ideological vanguard. It’s the job of advocacy organizations to set up a political landscape where these sorts of candidates can get elected.

And I said this:

Well you . . . are persuasive.

I cannot and will not vote for Durkan. She ran a really horrible add that was paid for by the Chamber and NAIOP saying she’d hold developers accountable for building 20,000 units of affordable housing.

This shows that she’s in the thrall of big time high rise developers who know they won’t be doing any inclusion or paying very many fees (the so called Grand Bargain is great for their portfolios — like a rounding error — where our folks get huge fees that make projects infeasible).

Durkan doesn’t get it.

My concern is that Moon sees Builders and developers as “bad” and she’s obsessed with the Bigfoot of “speculation.”

Remember, missing middle housing isn’t built by the Keebler Elves — banks have to finance it and Builders have to build it.

Take a look at this despicable ad put together by the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce and paid for by NAIOP among others.

Who pays for the 20,000 units of housing? In the end consumers of housing will pay, but not before the costs are absorbed by small and medium sized builders in the city. This the so called “Grand Bargain,” really a bribe paid by big time developers like Vulcan, laundered through the Office of Housing, and paid to giant non-profit developers who build housing at as much as $500,000 per unit. How much will it cost the non-profits to build 20,000 units at that cost?

That’s $10,000,000,000 or 10 billion with a “B” dollars. Let that sink in for a minute: ten billion dollars. That’s not just absurd, it’s completely unacceptable. Imagine the housing economy trying to absorb even a fraction of that cost which will ultimately be passed on in higher prices. And in Seattle what happens when prices go up? So do fees, fines, regulations, and costly permitting delays. So for builders and developers who haven’t already cashed out with the non-profits there is no way to cast a self-interested vote in Jenny Durkan. I also think the Chamber has permanently alienated a big part of the business community because of a complete lack of leadership and principles. It’s going to take a long time to put that back together after this campaign.