As I have mentioned before, one has to brace oneself when doing public disclosure requests; to borrow from Forrest Gump, public disclosure requests are like a box of chocolates, you just never know what you might find. Here’s an example from another Forrest, Forrest Midler an attorney at Nixon Peabody a firm that does a lot of business with Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC):

At Forbes today I have a post that goes into more detail about an exchange that was picked up because of my recent disclosure request for documents from the Washington State Housing Finance Commission (WSHFC). When I wrote at Forbes after the last presidential election about doing something to change the LIHTC program it sparked a lot of agitation among the powerful class of people that do work in the LIHTC field, mostly attorneys. Faith Pettis at Pacifica Law Group, the attorney for the WSHFC and a co-chair of now disgraced former Mayor Ed Murray’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Committee was sharing traffic from a list serve used by LIHTC attorneys.

I suppose the comments aren’t that shocking, but what was interesting is that the lawyers don’t like prevailing wages — except when they do. There’s another project I am looking into in which a Pacifica Law Group attorney was demanding prevailing wage for a private sector project. Why? We’ll see what I find in the documents. It’s probably because Pacifica would rather have one of its non-profit clients do the work and generate fees for them than a private sector partner. More on that later.

But what Forrest Midler points out and another attorney calls “dangerous” is that questioning the LIHTC program which provides lots of capital for inefficient non-profits, is a threat to the people who make a lot of money from “affordable” housing. I’ve been very critical of the non-profits for doing absolutely nothing to reduce costs for housing across the economy; instead they just want more and more money. But where does that money go? To for profit attorneys, consultants, and contractors. Is that bad? Not really. Those companies are earning money from services rendered. But why are they being used in the first place? Why are we building really expensive units instead of just giving families money for rent?

Because lots of interests, for profit companies, make money from producing that expensive housing. I point out at Forbes that is is weird, bizarre even, that socialists and other activists are so anxious to tax corporations simply to take that money and hand it over to a system that produces so much wealth for other corporate interests. It makes no sense. But in the crazy mixed up world of housing, where the housing cost crisis is self-imposed by regulation and the solution is to add costs that drive up prices for consumers there is perverse logic to all this; money gets made from fretting over skyrocketing prices. Will it ever end? I’m not sure. But as long as wealthy interests and law firms stand in the way of getting help to families in need, the “crisis” is unlikely to abate.

Here’s the full document: