It is supposed to be summer and slow. Not at City Hall. The Council is hard at work thinking up new ways to make housing more expensive while blaming people who build housing for “skyrocketing” prices.

Today, the Council will start the process for imposing impact fees after announcing their intentions in an op ed in the Seattle Times. After I saw the op ed last week I called the editor and asked for equal time. Read my response to the Council here:

Also tomorrow, August 1st, is an election for Mayor. I wrote a post at Forbes hoping we get at least one candidate that will step back from the brink of the San Francisco Death Spiral.

There are also two Council seats up for grabs, and the Council will consider legislation to, hopefully, make dealing with vacant buildings easier. Thanks to the folks at Weld for showing the Council that we not only care about the community but builders and developers also have lots of really good ideas about housing. After all, you build it for a living.

I’ll make it quick: take a moment to send a very quick message to the Council that impact fees won’t make housing prices better, they would make prices worse.

Kshama.Sawant@Seattle.gov
Rob.Johnson@Seattle.gov
Debora.Juarez@Seattle.gov
Tim.Burgess@Seattle.gov
Lorena.Gonzalez@Seattle.gov

You can put “No Impact Fees!” in the subject line and just send them this simple message with the link:

It’s summer. The temperature is going to hit triple digits. I’d keep it simple.