I mentioned last week that I had recorded what was really the last debate on the City’s plan to impose Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ), a scheme that charges each new square foot of new housing a tax of as much as $30 a square foot and then takes that money and gives it to non-profits to build subsidized housing. The value exchange is supposed to be that new housing can add additional density with “modest” (the City’s word) increases in square footage. The City’s version of this is called Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA).

You can listen to the whole discussion here.

I call it the “last debate” because the City Council simply can’t wait to finalize the passage of MHA. The debate, to the extent there actually was one, is over.

After 4 long and often lonely years (sad!) of opposing MHA, I never had a chance to really debate a Councilmember on the issue. Not even City staff would appear on the same panel as me to argue about the merits of the proposal. There was one panel back in early 2017 where I did push Councilmember Johnson on the MHA program, but the panel wasn’t about MHA but about the real estate market.

Johnson, who is not running for reelection, said some strange things. He said that the City is “asking” developers to pay fees for subsidized housing. I had to point out that they aren’t being asked, they are being told to pay the fees. He also said the City Council has made it easier to build. It hasn’t. The Council, along with the Mayor, has made things far worse. Housing production is slower and more expensive today than it was even two years ago; and there isn’t any indication that will change.

Maybe after the Council takes its final vote on MHA I will reflect back on the whole mess. In my now 25 years of being involved in public policy, I have never seen or been involved with such a boondoggle, and that includes the waterfront tunnel.

That word, boondoggle, sums up the MHA program. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as: “a wasteful or impractical project or activity often involving graft.” Where’s the graft? Well, one comment I made that was edited out of the radio segment was that the Seattle City Council has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Housing Development Consortium (HDC), the non-profit that represents dozens of non-profit organizations that build subsidized housing in Seattle and King County.

Councilmember Johnson never really responded to my points about the high costs of developing subsidized housing, about twice what for-profit developers pay per unit. Nor did he answer how all the money that will be gathered from taxing new housing construction will be spent; he pointed to one project that built some housing for $13,000,000. At the current cost per unit for non-profit housing, something around $325,000 per unit, that would build 40 units. The City says we need more than 25,000. I pointed out that to build the 6,000 units promised by the MHA program, at that cost would be about $1,950,000,000 — that’s $1.95 BILLION dollars. And it will take more than 5 years to build those units. What do people struggling to pay rent do today? Johnson had no answer.

The History Channel page has a longer version of the word, boondoggle than the one offered in the dictionary. Boondoggles are braided cords made by Boy Scouts and word on their uniforms as a neckerchief slide. During the depression, it was learned that the Works Progress Administration was paying millions of dollars to teach people how to “boondoggle.” The Keynesian make work effort was defended by President Roosevelt.

“It is a pretty good word,” Roosevelt admitted in a January 1936 speech before adding, “If we can boondoggle our way out of the Depression, that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of Americans for many years to come.”

Well, like I said on the radio, for $325,000 a unit (and probably more) we could buy families new houses, and they could become homeowners. That’s a boondoggle maybe I could support. That or just giving cash to renters who are struggling to pay rent. Instead the MHA program will raise the cost of new housing, meaning prices will go up widening the gap between housing costs and incomes; then the only answer to “solving” the continuing “crisis” will be to boost the fees and give even more money to non-profits with waiting lists for their new, expensive and slowly built units. The MHA program will be enshrined for sure but not in anyone’s heart. Instead it is likely to be enshrined in case law in years to come when it is found to be illegal and just plain bad policy.