I wasn’t there, but Josh Feit at Publicola has a good run down of Mayor Ed Murray’s kickoff party for his reelection effort in 2017. Yes, it’s true, we have another election coming up. I have to take a minute to point out how this Mayor operates and why he needs to make serious changes to his perspective. Murray puts people in a room, pressures them to compromise, and when some kind of “deal” emerges he takes credit for solving the problem that the people in the room were supposed to solve. The truth is that this approach doesn’t result in a deal in which everyone is part, nor is it a solution to the problem. If being a great Mayor means putting people in rooms, pressuring them, then declaring victory, I suppose Murray is on his way to greatness. The truth is that his Grand Bargain wasn’t grand and it wasn’t a bargain for the vast majority of people building housing in the city.

Here’s what the Mayor said about himself and what he’d done to solve the city’s housing “crisis;” his approach had resulted in the

Ending a 20-year battle between developers and housing advocates [to] build a workable affording housing policy

Um, no it didn’t. What you did is put a non-profit developer (Paul Lambrose of Plymouth Housing Group), their trade group representative (Marty Kooistra of the Housing Development Consortium), one of the non-profit housing industry’s lawyers (Faith Petits of Pacifica Law), together with a lobbyist representative of Vulcan (Ryan Bayne), and their lawyer (Jack McCullough).

Sorry Mr. Mayor but that does not a Grand Bargain make. No representatives of any other developers and builders who create most of the housing in Seattle from single-family housing and townhomes, to microhousing, to mid and high rise housing everywhere outside downtown and South Lake Union were at the table in that room. It’s hard for me to understand how anyone could not bust out laughing at what the Mayor said except that I suppose most people think housing is built by huge corporations and that somehow, McCullough was speaking for them. But housing is built and operated in Seattle, at least for now, by small and medium sized businesses, not by Vulcan or large developers that were in Murray’s locked room.

The Mayor has a stubborn streak. So do I. And I can’t abide it when politicians get up and claim they’ve solved a problem when they’ve done no such thing. Nor can I abide it when the solution is achieved by defining out the vast majority of stakeholders that would have raised concerns and even opposed the proposal. What Murray does isn’t solve problems by brokering agreements, but the equivalent of looking for people that will agree with him, then declaring those people representative of the constituencies who are debating or fighting over an issues, then saying he has “a bargain.” It’s not just bad politics and diplomacy it doesn’t solve the problem, and in this case the problem is not enough housing.

If the Mayor wants to solve the housing shortage in Seattle that is leading to higher prices he simply must:

1. Look at market based data on inventory and vacancies;
2. Listen to the people who build all types of housing in Seattle and help them build more;
3. Find ways to bring non-profit developers and for-profit developers together to reduce costs of production of housing; and
4. End mandated inclusion and fees and look for a real incentive for public and private entities to build more housing, and keep vacancy rates higher.

The best measure of a solution to housing prices is lower prices, not a document and proposal signed by a few people  in a room. And this arrangement is especially not a solution when the proposal is largely infeasible, inflationary when it does work, and is probably illegal. I can assure you, this Mayor will not be remembered years from now as the Mayor that “solved the housing crisis” unless he gets more inclusive and looks at the right measures of success, lower housing prices by creating more housing supply and opportunity.