What is the sure sign that something unusual is happening in politics? When unlikely people start to agree on things that really matter to them. Public opinion is coalescing against the Seattle City Council’s iterative, glitchstep, overly cautious, and insular approach to housing policy. Real Change, a publication unalterably committed to doing the right thing for people who find themselves with no housing choices at all and John V. Fox a proponent of no more growth in Seattle both agree with Smart Growth Seattle that the Seattle City Council is making it worse.

Here’s the headline of a story that posted yesterday at Real Change:

As rents rise, City Council offers few fixes to housing policy

And here’s what the reporter found when he talked to Councilmember Sally Clark:

Seattle’s approach to housing affordability is diffuse. “Seattle doesn’t have a single place where we house our housing policy,” Councilmember Sally Clark said. Instead, the city’s housing affordability strategies — incentives to developers, fees and taxes — are scattered among policies and city departments.

Doesn’t that sound familiar?

We’ve asked for a plan and urged people in the city to sign our petition urging the City Council to come up with a plan. It seems like, maybe, Councilmember Clark is listening.

“If we’re going to be successful, we’re going to have to be really intentional and more explicitly thoughtful than we have been about affordable housing,” Clark said.

Still not a commitment to a plan before using tools that won’t work for problems we don’t have. Which brings us to John V. Fox, who repeats, almost verbatim what we’ve been saying about workforce housing in an e-mail he issued yesterday.

In light of these numbers, we find it perplexing that O’Brien and his committee, and now we learn also the Mayor, have made it a priority to add to the stock of units serving those whose incomes are between 60% and 80% of median.  To top it off, according to Washington State Employment Securities, the majority of the County’s wage earners (as opposed to those who receive income from investments, retirement, and the like) actually earn less than 60 percent of area median.

Why have our leaders continued to fixate on this group when the real problem is finding solutions to the shortage of units affordable to those with lower incomes? For those on the lower rungs of the income scale, it’s literally a matter of forgoing meals, healthcare, the dentist, childcare, and other necessities or become homeless.[link is mine]

That’s what we said in a post in Publicola, siting some of the same numbers Fox does.

The City Council is poised to solve a problem that we don’t have with a tool (incentive zoning) that will only make workforce housing more expensive. More fees and process would, ironically, drive up costs and prices of a housing product that is already, by the city’s standard, affordable.

So what is the problem?

Many people, of all income levels, find it frustrating to find a place to live in Seattle. Seattle needs more housing!

What is the solution?

Seattle needs to allow more housing of all types in all neighborhoods, including small-lot homes, cottages, microhousing, and multifamily housing for families who need two and three bedrooms.

Almost everyone who cares about housing is getting to the same place: the Council doesn’t get housing policy. And this is a serious problem for people who face the biggest challenges trying to find a place to live. The people and groups who are in closest touch with people who wonder where they’ll sleep tonight agree, the Council is squandering their time and power on the wrong problems and the wrong solutions. Let’s hope they hear the consensus that is forming demanding a plan to address housing for everyone in our city.