Last week Crosscut gave me some real estate to talk about housing and why we’re not supportive of Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ), especially the City of Seattle’s version of it, Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA). Simply put, what MHA is squeezes money out of the development of market rate housing and funnels it into a very inefficient system of non-profit subsidized housing. You can read the whole post, “More housing, less bureaucracy: That’ll solve the housing crisis,” but here’s a couple key paragraphs.

Consider the economics of nonprofit housing development in Seattle — a well-intended model but one that recently produced just 88 units at a project called 12th Avenue Arts for a staggering $47 million, or about $500,000 per unit. That’s the purchase price of a townhouse in north Seattle or a condo in Capitol Hill (this figure is disputed by nonprofits and is currently under legislative review). But the project must house homeless people or people who are very poor, right? No. To make the project work, rents had to be set to the subsidy limit, 60 percent of area median income (AMI) — or about $1,100 per unit for a person earning $40,000. A person working full time making $15 an hour earns about $30,000 a year. So, a lot of people, especially among those who most need housing, are priced out from the start.

Why is this housing so expensive to build? For the same reason market-rate housing is: too many barriers, limits, rules and costs like design review and parking requirements that are self-imposed by the City Council. At a recent executive committee meeting of the board of directors of Capitol Hill Housing, a public development authority, a board member said of higher costs: “We could give examples of why it might be more expensive and that those things should be changed [i.e government regulations].”

Still, this is the Thin Slicer solution: Impose more limits on housing production to protect people who live here now. Then, as prices rise and more people struggle and qualify for subsidies, put a fee on the production of housing and give that to nonprofits (who labor under the same regulatory regime) to build some more subsidized housing. This pushes prices higher, creating a need for more subsidies.

While this makes for great political talking points, this cycle of exaction and subsidy is unsustainable and inflationary — making it more and more difficult for people with less money to live in cities.