As Seattle has grown we’ve seen a lot of new jobs and the growth that comes with it. One of the areas of growth in the new economy is the aggrievement industry, the business of cataloging and stirring up the concerns, worries, and anxieties people feel about the changes created by economic growth and opportunity. Change by definition means things won’t be like they were yesterday, and it also means that some people will feel as though they are worse off after the change or because of the change. We can respond it two ways, either reassuring people that overall change will be better and coming up ways to make growth easier for everyone, or we can stoke those worries and feed off the anger and resentment.

I think to get a sense of why things keep going this way it would help to read some of the responses published by the Seattle Times recently in a article headlined, “Seattle Doesn’t Know How to Handle the Boom.” I love the headline because, for once, it is subtle. I agree, people in Seattle are having a melt down about growth and it’s getting ridiculous. Here’s one of the complaints:

I have experienced much more competition for jobs, of which I now have three to try to get by. My friends and I all live in constant terror of losing our places to live. My landlord is selling at the end of my lease & the rent on a 2 bedroom apartment is more than the mortgage for a half a million dollar home. You have to make $7,500 a month to qualify for either. It’s pricing normal people that are from Seattle out.

Forget about the numbers and consider the frustration and worry. It is real. People are facing challenges as the city changes. But the Seattle Times offers no solutions nor does it when it puts together stories ever focus on the source of the problem or even defining it. For the Times, it’s enough to say that prices are “skyrocketing” and then dump anecdotes about people complaining about the prices. Who needs to report on causes or solutions?

And when the press does identify the cause, it is most often some external existential threat. In the case of Charles Mudede at The Stranger, the cause of this person’s angst and struggle is what has called the “dark energy” of capitalism expressed in the form of international speculation in real estate. The story goes that Chinese billionaires are buying up all the land and housing in Seattle and leaving it empty, rendering it impossible to create new housing for real people. His latest lament takes over all average prices downtown, about $2400 for new apartments, and suggests that these “luxury apartments” are all that exists in the market.

Another group is fomenting anger toward landlords for high prices with a campaign to “make landlords pay for economic evictions” (see the featured image above). First of all, so-called economic evictions simply aren’t clearly defined or tracked. What does the term even mean? These people would say that it’s when people are pushed out of their apartment for a renter that will pay higher rent. That simply isn’t good business. And nobody collects that kind of data, only anecdotes to stir up anger at landlords and pack the Council chambers with angry mobs.

When rents do go up dramatically, it’s usually when buildings have been purchased and get upgraded, making up for years of deferred maintenance which is why the rent was low. And the price of course is determined by demand and relative supply. It wouldn’t make sense to buy an old building, spend millions on it, and rent out the renovated units unless prices covered those costs because so many people need housing and are having to pay more an more for it because it is scarce.

But who wants to organize people to expand programs that we know work like the Multifamily Tax Exemption (MFTE) that creates a 20 percent rate of inclusion for rent restricted units so that it can be applied to existing buildings? Nobody gets punished with MFTE. There is no blame. There is no outrage. It’s too wonky. Organizing requires a villain and a victim. Programs like MFTE have been a workhorse for saving real people money, but the aggrievement industry can’t stoke anxiety by proposing a solution that doesn’t involve punishment for the villain, in this case landlords.

And politicians follow along. It wouldn’t makes sense, I guess, to run a campaign for office that pointed out that we need more housing, of all kinds, in all parts of the city, for all levels of income. That campaign doesn’t have a villain and doesn’t have a victim, just a solution that would offer more of a good thing to more people. Instead, the raft of people running for office in 2017 all have their own suitcase of implements of destruction for greedy developers and landlords like impact fees, rent control, and higher rates of inclusion in Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ).

The press loves to stoke aggrievement, groups and individuals love to play off it and to use it to gain power, and politicians are frightened by the aggrievement and fear and pander to it, promising to find the culprit and make them pay “their fair share.” And all those “solutions” are like bloodletting and leeches; they just makes things worse, which makes the press happy, gets more power through blame for those people, and builds political careers. And the wheel keeps turning.