What a month! Back on May 2nd I arrived back in Seattle from Chicago. I went from the airport to my apartment, dropped off my stuff, and then took a Lyft up to a Ballard church where I saw something I’d seen before, angry neighbors. But this was a bit different. The assembled mob was hurling invective at the Councilmembers about a proposed tax on jobs. Over the next 10 days the debate heated up. I did my best to explain that the proposed tax would yield almost nothing to address the stated problem, 37,850 households with various levels of housing need. The Council lumbered through their debate, and sides were taken, and, in the end, the Council voted for a smaller tax on jobs proposed by the Mayor, after the press injected a crazy unvetted number into the discussion, $410 million a year to “solve” homelessness. And now there is a well funded opposition effort to repeal the tax, setting up a referendum not just on the tax, but, maybe, on all of Seattle City government.

What’s different about all this? It appears that maybe the average person in Seattle is finally fed up with the Mayor and the Council’s ceaseless efforts to appear progressive by proposing and passing policies that don’t work. All the dollar figures being kicked around when there as still tents in the park, under bridges, and on sidewalks may have finally caused the community to say enough is enough. Maybe.

What do these numbers mean?

I have been saying for years that the Council was becoming increasingly incoherent and was becoming a failed government. Simply put, the proposals they’ve offered for housing issues simply don’t align with reality. Two quick examples, Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ) and First In Time (FIT). In the case of MIZ, the stated problem was rising housing prices. Rather than do something to incentivize more housing, the Council is trying to mandate a regime of fees that is already sending uncertainty through the housing market, will slow production, and add costs that will result in, yes, higher housing prices. I’ve been the lone voice pointing this out.

In the case of FIT, the Council by fiat created a new protected class, people that show up first to rent an apartment. Here the stated problem was the false narrative the landlords were taking the 7th person to show up for the apartment because he is a white brogrammer with a lot of money; the first person in line, this narrative goes, is a woman of color working two jobs. This narrative is silly of course. In practice, landlords screen tenants for a number of things, and what they’re looking for is tenants that have enough income to pay the rent and a history of credit and tenancy that indicates good future performance as a tenant. And most landlords would be happy to rent to the woman if she met this criteria — and sometimes even if she doesn’t. Who’s most likely to show up first? A brogrammer. And the new rule, thrown out by a court, would mean a landlord couldn’t rent to the woman if she wanted to if she was second in line.

There are days, and weeks when I’ve wanted to give up. The Council’s intransigence, the local press’ unwillingness to challenge the numbers, some funders complaining that I’m too mean or strident in my approach to the problem of misgovernment by the Mayor and Council. I can take fire from the other side, but it is discouraging when people I’m fighting for want distance from me. Friendly fire is the hardest to take.

I’m tired of holding the line against all this on my own with very little support from other organizations. One big exception has been the Rental Housing Association, perhaps because developers and landlords now share the distinction of being the most reviled players in the housing world. Some people, I guess, still think that the Council can be convinced through talk and math to do the right thing. Some of us have tried that and know it simply won’t work unless it is part of legal action.

But that may be changing. The breathtaking overreach of the Council and Mayor on the tax on jobs has struck a nerve with both neighbors and business groups; the more money, more money, more money approach has yield little or no progress on housing. Local lefties and socialists and urbanists are mad because the tax was not enough. And local media swallowed a “report” from McKinsey and Company that had not been vetted and, as I’ll show later, never even existed. People seem to finally be seeing the folly I’ve been seeing and pushing back against for years best exemplified by Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez taking the unvetted McKinsey number of a $410 million annual need for “solving” homelessness, stating it as a fact, than pushing a tax that discourages job creation of $75 million. To satirically paraphrase Winston Churchill, never have so many done so little for so few.

Maybe.

If a repeal movement becomes a referendum on misgovernment, if neighbors and business, and developers, and even socialists come to agreement that the current group of people running the City have failed to do their jobs, if the vote to repeal is big, if these things happen, and if in translates into a slate of rational candidates for all seven Council seats in 2019, maybe, just maybe, we can turn this whole thing around. If. Maybe. If we can hang on till then, maybe we can constructively address housing issues in Seattle without punitive taxes, bogus landlord tenant legislation, and extortionary fees on the production of new housing. If. Maybe. Can we do it? Will we do it?