More of the Same? That’s Up to You!

One thing that is true about politics and advocacy and non-profits is also true about any business: you have to pay the bills. That means raising money and adding some value. The work that Seattle For Growth has done over the last 6 years has been singular in this state and region. There really isn’t any group out there that advocates across new housing development, rehabilitation of existing buildings, and rental housing. Our mission has been pretty simple, more housing of all kinds everywhere for people of all levels of income. I wish it was that easy. But it isn’t. I wrote about why at Forbes last week. We’re either going to fight back or just accept that people will complain about housing prices and government will make it worse in the name of making it better. Here’s the latest and our request.

Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) — This measure passed earlier this year and will now tax each and every new square foot of housing to fund non-profit housing that is averaging $350,000 per unit. I am hearing from builders and developers small and large with fees ranging from $100,000 to $3 million that they can’t pay. We said MHA would make projects infeasible, and when they could be feasible it would be because rents and prices would go up. It’s happening.

Series at Forbes: The Essentials of Housing Economics

I put together a long series at Forbes about what I am calling “housing economics.” Maybe it is more accurate to call it a series about simple supply and demand. How long should something like that take. It is pretty simple. It’s been years now that my interest in cities and how they benefit people was eclipsed by economics. We don’t talk about the sustainability of the city anymore or about reduced carbon emissions or the benefits of being close to our neighbors. Today, the dominant thought in the conversation is “we need more affordable housing!” I guess that’s why I end up repeating, “we need more housing so that it is affordable.” That explains the repetition.

Repetition is annoying, grating on the ear and conscience of the listener. I realized a while ago that I am a housing minimalist. There is a sense each day that I’ve said everything that could be possibly said about housing economics, over and over and over again, especially challenging the notion that somehow taxing, fining, feeing, and restricting housing will somehow make it cheaper.

Mostly the effort to shift us toward supply side policies in Seattle and Washington State hasn’t worked. Powerful non-profits still hold control of political power. There is no interest in becoming more efficient in the production of non-profit housing. In a way that makes sense. If someone is always ready to give you more money what interest do you have in saving it. There’s always more. Still, I think for the sake of the record it is important to keep refining the song by playing it over and over again. I always find new analogies or examples.

In the end, it may be that to really change the way we think about housing will require a recession and economic slow down. Perhaps Donald Trump will finally move off the stage. Maybe with Trump gone and the economy in trouble, the left will drift back to the center and the right will find its principles. Maybe business people will see the value of ideas and how they shape policy that makes innovation easier or more difficult depending on what the policy is. Maybe. All my words and those of others will hopefully still be around when that happens to serve as a guide for a different approach to housing in times of economic growth.

How Not to Write Stories (and Legislation) About Eviction

I’m exhausted from trying to track all the profoundly wrong writing (is it reporting?) about eviction going in in Washington and across the country. For example, we have the Crosscut headline from awhile back about the new report that details Seattle’s eviction epidemic. Well, if David Kroman had considered his use of the word, “epidemic,” he’d have thought to ask the authors of the report, “What is the endemic rate?” How many evictions should we have? He didn’t ask that, and what the report really showed is a tiny and yet undefined problem: about 600 people out of some 168,000 rental units in Seattle were evicted, about .3 percent. Hard to define that as an epidemic, and Kroman’s story didn’t illuminate anything for his readers but their outrage. Now Matt Driscoll at the Tacoma News Tribune has his latest effort to play to legislators and his angry tenant advocate audience with new text book example of how not to write about housing legislation.

First, let’s consider his headline, something that reporters and editors alike always say they don’t write. That’s irrelevant and a completely craven excuse to make. Perhaps we should visit the headline writing room; maybe it’s filled with Bartleby types who, when asked to help explain the news say, “I prefer not to.” His headline is: Landlords hammering tenants with new eviction laws that were supposed to protect them. What constitutes hammering for Driscoll? Giving people (in his case here, one person), a notice letting them know their rent is late. Is that an eviction notice? No it is not. But if I’m Driscoll why would I waste time talking to landlords or people who manage rental housing for a living, let’s use the description of the eviction process described by the Tenants Union.

In order to win in court against an eviction for non-payment of rent, the tenant must be able to establish that they do not owe the rent the landlord is trying to collect. A 14-day pay or vacate notice does not mean that you have to vacate the premises within fourteen days. Eviction is a court process and your landlord cannot have you removed from the premises until a court order has been issued. There are very few ways to stop an eviction for non-payment of rent, if you actually owe the money, besides paying your rent in full within the fourteen day timeframe.

Let’s look at this for a moment. The notice received by the aggrieved tenant in Driscoll’s story is not an eviction notice. And had Driscoll bothered to put any balance in his story at all, he’d use the description above to explain that the tenant in his story has a long way to go before she can be evicted for non-payment of rent. Let that last phrase, “non-payment of rent” sink in. In Washington state you can not pay your rent and have an expectation of staying in your unit for at least a month. Why? Because Democrats in the legislature led by State Senator Patti Kuderer have extended the amount of time a tenant has to pay to 14 days.

Giving this notice, required by the new law is what Driscoll characterizes as: “landlords and property management companies are using laws meant to soften the threat of eviction as a hammer.”

Let’s say Driscoll’s tenant doesn’t pay after the 14 days. Then, and only then, the landlord could initiate court proceedings to remove the tenant from the unit. How does the landlord do this? Again, from the Tenant’s Union:

After the initial notice has expired and you are still in the unit the landlord must have a neutral third party such as a process server or the Sheriff serve you the eviction lawsuit. The landlord cannot serve the lawsuit directly themselves. The lawsuit is made up of two documents served together called the “Summons and Complaint.”

How long doest this process take? It depends. But, again from the Tenant’s Union, “the deadline for your response will generally be one week from the date you received the Summons and Complaint” And as their site points out, receiving the complaint doesn’t mean it has been filed. If all this goes like clockwork and the tenant does respond, the tenant has now not paid in 21 days. Usually all of this takes longer, and if it does (maybe Driscoll could have called more than one landlord) the next due date for rent has arrived. If there is a contested legal process because the lawyers who pushed for this legislation get involved, the tenant may still be in the unit 60 days after the initial failure to pay.

What does this and every other landlord want? The rent to be paid on time. This is what the tenant agreed to do when they signed the lease. Investors and the bank that finance rental housing need to say payments on loans, counties want their taxes paid, and maintenance workers need their paycheck to feed their families. This landlord, I can promise Driscoll, does not want to evict this person. Does Driscoll think that the legal representation to file the eviction is free? It isn’t. Even if the tenant doesn’t respond, the order has to be filed and lawyers aren’t cheap.

Then, guess what? A Sheriff’s deputy has to show up and remove the tenant. I wonder if Driscoll or Senator Kuderer has ever been to an eviction. I have. When I was a non-profit landlord we had a woman who suffered a serious set of problems that I won’t characterize. We tried to keep her in the unit and get help. When she finally agreed to leave, she left everything behind. We had to remove everything from the unit, store it for weeks, and make repairs. Add that to the 60 days along with the emotional pain of having to remove another human being who is already suffering from a unit. It costs money for lawyers and lost rent. It costs time. And it is a painful experience for everyone.

The 14 day notice called “a hammer” isn’t a hammer at all. Its simply what the Senator incentivized when she took dictation from her lawyer friends who told her what to do. She, like Driscoll has probably never managed a rental unit or evicted anyone or, maybe, even managed a small business. Driscoll’s pearl clutching story about a 14 day notice for a person who didn’t pay their rent on time and has 14 days to pay (which is what the #%@$ notice tells the tenant!) is pure hyperbole. And what is absurd and worse is that the story, and the Senator’s legislation, does nothing for this person or for any other tenant who, like the tenant in my eviction story, may have some serious issues.

Journalists these days have declared themselves to be the keepers of the democratic flame. Fine. However, Donald Trump doesn’t mean that journalists don’t have to earn that self-designation by actually doing the work of reporting. Democratic legislators trying to make a name for themselves by being progressive and looking out for the “little guy” should actually do the work of figuring out what the business of managing rental housing is, and what the real problems of tenant are,  before they use their power to ram bad legislation through a one party system. Again, nothing Driscoll or Kuderer has done here helps anyone but their own reputations among a group of people who want to gain more power and donations for their organizations. In truth, they are making things worse for everyone. They ought to be ashamed, not defensive and go back and write the story and the legislation over again.

Out the Window: The Means and Ends of Design and Planning

At Forbes, I indulged in a “5 reasons” post. You know the clickbaiting technique often used by bloggers and news sites to draw people more clicks and eyeballs. “The 10 reasons you should stop eating tree nuts” or “5 reasons Donald Trump will be reelected.” My topic was, “The Five Things Growing Cities Should Do If There Is A Recession.” One thing I suggest in the post is that cities,

• Abolish design standards — Design is luxury we can’t afford during a recession. Fussing in lengthy public meetings about fenestration, relationships between bricks and Juliet balconies, and demanding frosted glass on windows is a silly and costly at time when people face income loss and need to see lower housing costs. Ugly buildings are cheaper buildings and as long as they are safe, cash strapped consumers will benefit from additional and cheaper supply without all the pointless debate from neighbors worried about how hardy panel makes them feel.

And somebody read the post, or at least that paragraph! Yay! Here’s what the person said,

This is just about the worst article I’ve read. Paraphrasing: “in a recession, we should just throw urban use and design principles out the window”. Uh, yeah….

Not exactly an exposition, but somebody ran the words through their brain. And they got the point. Yes, design standards should go out the highly designed window with the Juliette balcony required by the City’s design standards presided over by regional design review boards. Here’s my response.

Thank you for reading. Seriously. I often wonder if anyone does anymore.

And I support these moves as normative yesterday, today, and forever.

Design principles are expensive and until now incumbents and single-family neighbors have shown unwillingness to pay for them; therefore renters and new homebuyers pay that price, creating inflation.

No great public or even private place was ever designed. Places aren’t great, people are. Whether it is a prison courtyard, a poorly designed street, or an ugly building people can create community there.

I hesitate for a moment — just a moment — before I say that for the most part design and planning is largely an elitist enterprise. My getting into the world of cities began because I fell in love with Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City. In that book, Lynch creates the basis for a qualitative method of asking people about their experience of the urban environment. That is different from a normative set of quantitative design standards imposed rigidly with juntas presiding over any effort to depart from them.

All of this design and planning slows production of needed housing, adds costs, and contributes to supply lagging behind demand and it does nothing to protect the health and safety of people who live in the housing being churned through the design process; it is entirely for the benefit of people who walk their dog in front of the building or planners who see design standards as deontological — that is, outside experience. A house on a corner lot should have 25 percent glazing, that’s just what God wants.

This is no indictment (and nobody really cares what I think anyway) of the people who believe in design. I think there is a higher ordered and democratic notion that people do benefit from spaces that contribute to their well being in ways beyond material benefit. I would agree that some designs are better than others and do support quality of life in ways that other designs don’t

The problem is that these higher order interests have become corrupted by those who wish to use them as a Trojan Horse to smuggle in destructive economic self-interest into the process; no housing means single-family equity rises. On the other hand, is bad design more profitable? Of course not. People in a housing market have choices and they can weigh the utility of design over other values and usually, when unconstrained, people with more money do pay for more (not necessarily better) design.

But the notion that because they choose to pay for it means that we should demand that people with less money pay for it too, is unfair especially when that imposition is part of a strategy of supply suppression.

Again, I really appreciate you reading the post

The featured image is a reference to one of the best duos in music ever, Ramon Ayala and Cornelio Reyna. Before they broke up the formed Los Relampagos del Norte. You owe it to yourself to explore their music and especially the accordion of Ramon Ayala. I once owned the cassette tape of this album and have a fond memory of listening to it while my dad translated the words for me as it played. The key lines for the purpose of this post come from an all time favorite song on the album, generally known as the Seranata Huesteca but titled, Canto al Pie de tu ventana, which means “I am singing at the foot of your window.” My dad added the colorful story that the duo broke up because one of them ran off with the other ones wife. Sad!

And as long as we’re here, I’ve included a version, much older, of the song by Pedro Infante. Seranata Huesteca is part of the canon of mariachi songs. Mariachi music, with the full set of guitars, trumpets, and violins is truly amazing, but you’ll note the contrast between the more traditional version by Infante and the more intimate one by Ayala and Reyna. 

Enjoy!

Sermon on the Mont: What Monument Will We Leave Behind?

Yes it is beautiful. And yes it is historic. And yes it is one of those “must see” places. But let’s face it, Mont Saint Michel is what could be considered, like many beautiful and historic places, a tourist trap. Located in Normandy about 4 hours west of Paris, the abbey and town are right up there with the Taj Mahal, the Empire State Building, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We’ve all seen pictures of these places, and while we may not know exactly where these places are, their historical significance, or much about them at all, we intuitively know they are important. Two things about my recent trip there: it exceeded my expectations and I had a un petite révélation about innovation while I was there.

I’m not going to give you a boring travel log here. But it is enough to say that I was on a trip that took my companions and me to Mont Saint Michel. We braced for the worst. Really braced, packing lunch and our minds with visions of endless lines, no bathrooms, and the pungent aroma of sweaty bodies from all over the world gently rinsed by a steady rain. It was as one companion said, “going to be a shit show.”

It was not. I had just come from England where I waited in a snaking line to get into Westminster Abbey. Again, no travel log here, but I fully expected a Norman version of the Abbey parked on a quaintly inaccessible mountain. I visited and saw many abbeys and they are important. But this one seemed to dial up the difficultly level to 11; I envisioned a long snaking line across the sand to a tiny door. Yay! An abbey. Where’s the restroom? And don’t call me an ugly American. My whole trip was all about history and seeing and being in place to smell, touch, and feel everything I could about what otherwise might seem like just a field, a pile of bricks, or a plaque on a wall.

Instead of our visions of a sclerotic and wending cue, a fast moving line preceded the quick trip by bus from a parking lot some distance from the site to the entrance. We crammed into the bus and saw plenty of restaurants and amenities along the causeway. And it really didn’t take that long to get there. And no, it isn’t just another abbey on big rock; it is a town, a very small town, but a very compact and pleasing town surrounding an abbey. The town and abbey are linked by a series of streets that wrap around the rock, full of shops and restaurants and bars and hotels held together by a wall the top of which functions as a street too.

So if you find yourself in Normandy, go to Mont Saint Michel. Plan to stay for the day and enjoy the wall and the walk and yes, the aroma of the sweaty tourists around you. And if you’re with others, get them all wound up about how the place is the second most visited spot in France and that there will be lots of crowds and walking; and then watch them be stunned by the concentrated and dense beauty and culinary opportunity of the place not to mention the history and the architecture and the efficiency. The town is an example of how density is efficient and that when land is used well, putting more people and things in a compact place, transportation is efficient too.

And the revelation? Well, after walking all the way to the entrance of the abbey, we were ready for our picnic lunch (or peek neek, as they say. Be sure to practice your French accent before you go). We were looking for a place to sit. There was a perfectly good set of steps with a small green sward in front of them. It was a great spot for lunch. But there was a rusty gate about three feet high in front of the small, narrow courtyard. It would be easy to just step over it. Nobody did. We didn’t. We found a spot above it on some different steps. I couldn’t help but wonder why the crowd, with many in it just like us, looking for the right spot, just didn’t step over the little gate. Somebody would come rushing out for sure and shoo people away. Maybe it was something important. Maybe anyone stepping over the gate would be banned from the place for life, or worse.

Well, someone took the risk. While we were eating lunch, someone finally decided to step over the fence. Then someone else followed. Then another. Soon, the little courtyard was as full of people as anyplace else with a flat surface to sit and some shade.

That’s how innovation works. One person decides to do it, jump the fence, and take the space. What will happen? Everyone watches. Then the next person says, “Yes, let’s do it.” Then another. And another. Then it becomes just another space filled with people. But someone has to take that first step, leap, or jump. Someone has to try, to make the call, to make the effort; and they have to wonder about the consequences whether they are official or simply the disapprobation of everyone else that doesn’t follow into the new space but is scandalized or perhaps envious.

I guess this is true of Mont Saint Michel itself. There are a lot of easier places to build a town and an abbey; and this is why it is a “must see.”

Some people resent innovation. They want equality. Some people want everyone to have government enforced equal access to everything that everyone wants, whether it is a place to sit, or a job, or place to live. Sure, let’s try that. But what would be inevitable is that some people just wouldn’t be able to see the city or the abbey at all because they’d have to wait their turn. And maybe the abbey and town wouldn’t have been allowed to be built at all since not everyone could get in and have the same exact experience.

Equal access to scarcity means some get in and some don’t; those that do win, those that don’t wait. Innovation means everyone gets to try to get in, even if it means jumping a fence to do it. This is not an ideological point; scarcity is part of how the world works. Poverty – lacking something – isn’t desirable or fun and can be deadly, but thus it motivates innovation, fence jumping and building something in order to get out of it. If poverty didn’t exist, neither would civilization and the things we value about it. We can guarantee a right to something that doesn’t exist, or we can let people find ways to make more, open new paths, find new solutions, and yes, make more money doing it.

Will we leave a monument to scarcity or abundance? Will we shame and penalize people who try something new because we envy them? When it comes to housing the answer is up to us and it is also obvious: let people climb the mountain, jump the fence, and make more.