Councilmember Tim Burgess’ announcement that he will not seek reelection to the Seattle City Council has sparked early conversation among people who build and operate housing about who we should support in 2017. My simple answer is no one, since it is very unlikely that a candidate will emerge that will truly represent our concerns and interests or help undo the damage that Burgess, his Council colleagues, and the Mayor have already done to the housing economy. Yes, it is true that almost anyone is better than Jon Grant, a growth opponent and champion of rent control. But what should we do in 2017 and beyond to help prevent Seattle from an irretrievable slide down the San Francisco Death Spiral? Here’s my first take.

Candidate Vetting

Outgoing Councilmember Tim Burgess is the textbook example of what I’d call a Wet Councilmember. The term comes from the sobriquet attached to Conservative politicians in the United Kingdom who were afraid to fully implement and follow the implications of the policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. These were politicians who publically opposed the Labor party’s blatant socialism, but wanted to maintain vast swaths of socialist policies because they didn’t truly believe in the alternatives. I also call Burgess wet because although he’s been hailed as a voice of moderation, he got soaked carrying Sawant’s water, voting for almost all her measures, including a resolution in favor of rent control.

Burgess took our money and voted against us again and again. I would implore the business and housing development and building community not to support someone unless it is clear that he or she is opposed to rent control, Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ), and would promise to soften or repeal the myriad of so-called tenant rights legislation passed over the last year. Think about it for a minute. Any candidate who can’t take these positions publically is a Wet, and even though they might be nicer to us than Jon Grant (they might even smile and nod when we explain our business) he or she is still going to vote for terrible policy. That isn’t winning. We shouldn’t support a candidate that doesn’t support our work, period.

The Environment

Let’s face it the people of Seattle, the voters, hold views that are simply inconsistent with basic economic facts. If I were to take on my old job as campaign manager for a candidate, I’d advise anyone who wanted to the job to stay as far away from us as possible. In fact, I’d tell my candidate to support almost every one of Grant and Sawant’s ideas but without all the radical language. I’d urge my candidate to be the “reasonable one” and the “adult in the room,” but to support legislation that would attempt to micromanage the business of housing. If you want to win, I’d tell her, you simply must run as a social justice candidate on the side of single-family homeowners and renters and against business and housing developers.

I know. It’s frustrating. But we’ve picked up a really bad hand. And we have weak and ineffective leadership. A mob has formed made up of single-family homeowners who will see their equity rise with housing scarcity, social justice advocates who have confused the production of a few subsidized units with affordability (MIZ), and tenant advocates who base their advocacy on outlier cases of extreme disutility in the housing market. And nobody at City Hall is challenging the mob, only doing its bidding. Even a few leaders who would debate, oppose, and challenge the mob’s assumptions would make a huge difference, but that politician doesn’t exist and wouldn’t likely get elected even if she did.

What Is To Be Done?

Here’s a quick map of what we need to be doing in 2017. We must:

• Be very careful to vet candidates and be unified in not supporting anyone who is a Wet (see above);
• Pay close attention to what candidates say in public and hold then accountable in our publications and reflect their views back to our members;
• Challenge the non-profit housing industry that has taken the moral high ground in the housing debate in Seattle by exposing their inefficiencies; and
• Fund Smart Growth Seattle to expand it’s ability to do effective research and communication

Preparing for the Future: Research, Communication, and Intellectual Infrastructure

I would advise you to take a few minutes (about 8) and watch the story of the resurgence of the market economy in the United Kingdom. Did you watch? OK. It tells the story of the change from a deeply socialist economy to a market based economy. It took time and wasn’t easy. Advent is over, and we now are in Christmas. But Advent is about the waiting for a savior. A prophet emerges, in the Christian story it is John the Baptist, and for market economics it is Keith Joseph. He paved the way for Margaret Thatcher who was the candidate who had the strength of principles to change a country and its economy.

I know. It’s obscure. But my point is that we need to build infrastructure in Seattle for the future for when we do find candidates and support in the electorate for a change. We also need to change the views of the electorate, but that will take years not months and it won’t happen over the course of one election. In the example I cite from the United Kingdom, things didn’t change over night and there were setbacks along the way. But all along that way, there were people working to get the message down, to build that message so that a candidate has solid and positive responses to questions about housing, not affirmations of the mob.

In the clip I linked to one of my intellectual heroes, Fredrich Von Hayek, says

When I was a young man only a very old man believed in the free market . . . I’ve lived long enough to see that the young people believe in it again.

I intend to live that long. And if we invest in the research and the messaging, we’ll be ready.