Very few people in town have noticed the odd behavior of socialist Councilmember Kshama Sawant when it comes to the infeasible, inflationary, and illegal program of Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ) being inflicted on the city through the so called Grand Bargain — the notion that we can make housing more affordable by taxing the production of it. On the pro-housing (“mostly,” he says) side only Michael Eliason, a local architect, has consistently challenged Sawant on her passive support of protecting single-family zoning on Twitter. I have noted that Sawant got bored with the idea of using the City’s bonding authority to build publicly owned housing on City owned land. When that idea was shot down by eye-rolling City staff, she shrugged and went to another rally. Now the champion of no-growth Seattle, John Fox, is calling out Sawant as well in a recent post about her lack of enthusiasm for the no or slow-growth agenda calling that lack of support a “gaping hole.” 

The post is worth considering because many who support growth and more housing have been frustrated by Sawant’s mostly successful efforts to complicate the lives of landlords and make rental housing more expensive. I say that because that’s all her measures have done. The first in time legislation she passed accomplishes nothing for people who have less money to spend on housing, all it does is create a new protected class: people who show up first. That group now gets the same protection from discrimination as people of color or born in other countries or people who are gay. It’s a nonsensical requirement that was all about Sawant appearing to lead an effort that would smash the corporate monster and help the little guy. It does neither, adding more hassle for land lords and renters and virtually assuring that the brogrammer who Sawant and her friends think are snatching apartments, is likely to win since he’s sure to get to an apartment first since he has a smart phone, a car, and software. The single mom who teaches preschool who shows up second? Too bad!

Now, the no and slow growth crowd is growing impatient with Sawant because she has seemed to all at once embrace protection of single-family zoning but also supported the real corporate rip off, MIZ.

Sawant and SA have avoided challenging the Mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA). While calling for an increase in the mandatory housing requirement–the number of units developers must set aside as ‘affordable’–she’s nevertheless praised HALA’s city-wide upzones even though areas slated for the greatest increased density also contain the city’s highest number of minorities and low-income people.

Fox also complains that when she could have opposed the upzones, “Sawant purposely did not show up for committee discussions” and points out that her “new renter effort sidesteps these critical structural issues that get at the heart of inequality in Seattle, and thus diverts attention from necessarily addressing them.” He goes on to suggest that her theatrical efforts like first in time, “then arguably she and her movement are making the problem worse.”

Now, Fox is wrong about growth and confused about builders and developers. We had a long talk after our radio appearance and I explained most builders and developers in town are not demanding more zoning or more FAR. What they want is certainty and to be able to build what they are already legally permitted to. Just look back at Gary Cobb’s heartfelt cry about being slowly permitted out of business. Cobb doesn’t want goofy increments in height that cost more and come with a fee attached. He simply wants to be able to build what the code says he can, but he’s being blocked by rules and neighbor inspired hang ups in process that make even that impossible. Forget about upzones.

But what Fox gets right about Sawant is this:

Ironically, Sawant is catering to development interests she rhetorically disavows. It’s hypocritical and hurts most low-income and working people and especially communities of color.

True. The MIZ scheme will do nothing but cause market rate housing to climb in price, putting out of reach of more and more people and that squeeze is worst for people with less money who are disproportionately people of color.

And I think he also gets right why: The Stranger. Fox points out that The Stranger has swallowed the Grand Bargain whole and gone back for seconds, a fact I pointed out in their Regrets issue.

I regret The Stranger abandoned its usual skepticism for back-room deals in its reporting of the “Grand Bargain,” a scheme in which large downtown developers pay a fee but provide no on-site affordable housing. (Meanwhile, small-scale builders elsewhere have to produce 6,000 units with extra construction costs and rent restrictions that are not offset by the value of the Grand Bargain’s proposed upzones.)

I’d note that I have received zero calls from The Stranger’s news department to comment on the issue since that was published. I think I may have hurt their feelings. Sad!

But, over time, it’s becoming clear that Sawant is not a typical politician, not because she is a socialist, but because she doesn’t have a lot of interest in the nitty gritty details of policy. Neither do her colleagues when it comes down to it, but at least they make an effort to try and understand what they’re doing, even when specifically told that it won’t have the effect they think it will. Sawant, like Donald Trump, doesn’t make policy she gives performances. Once the rallies and speeches are done, the votes are taken, and she can hilariously call her colleagues corporate stooges (after they ALL vote for her legislation) then the episode is over, credits roll, and she moves on.

I can’t really explain The Stranger’s embrace of the deal struck between a few big time attorney’s and lobbyists for Vulcan, the Mayor, and the non-profit housing industry. Is it lack of curiosity? It’s hard to know. But The Stranger has a tremendous influence over a significant chuck of voters. As I pointed out, that influence caused, I think, Jenny Durkan to offer to pay for everyone’s college for two years. But when you put together Sawant’s general lack of interest in the details and her big time reliance on The Stranger to motivate votes, I think Fox more or less has spotted the signs and the symptoms and part of the cause.

Apparently, Sawant made a tactical decision not to tick off the well-heeled corporate-backed urbanists or the zealously pro-density Stranger and its readership, for fear of undercutting her reelection chances in her 3rd District. Doing so makes her look more like a typical Seattle politician than her actively cultivated persona as a principled advocate for racial and economic justice.

Yep. And oddly enough, what Vulcan and the Chamber of Commerce failed to do by throwing money at Sawant’s opponent in 2015, they have accomplished by getting The Stranger’s buy in to the Grand Bargain. Talk about strange bedfellows.