A great post at The Stranger’s Slog has been making the rounds on Facebook and social media. The post, To the Sad Owner of a Capitol Hill Town House, by Dan Savage challenges one of the most maudlin displays at a hearing about low-rise legislation a few weeks ago. 

You’ll remember I mentioned the emotional display when I wrote about the hearing. I mentioned the crying lady and some people took me to task over it. But Savage takes down the whole display with even greater detail and thorough way than I could have ever hoped. 

Was your town house built after 2008? Then you live in a town house that some of your neighbors—people who in 2008 could say, “It shouldn’t always be about the people who are coming! What about the people who are here?!?”—didn’t want to see built. But no one is breaking the windows of town houses today. All those new town houses all over Capitol Hill eventually came to be accepted as just another type of neighborhood housing stock. They’ve blended in and the controversy over town houses has been nearly forgotten.

And the new apartments you went to City Hall to complain about? They’ll eventually blend into the neighborhood, too. Maybe you’ll still be living on Harvard when that day comes, Sad Town House Lady, and maybe you won’t. But growth and density are here to stay. You, on the other hand, are free to go.

Yes, you are free to go. And the crying lady isn’t a poor, victim of circumstance. Her neighbors spent $85,000 to sue a microhousing developer. The subsequent decision resulted in lots of extra costs and higher rents because builders had to move sinks into the bathrooms of new microhousing units. 

Here’s what her neighbors have to say about new people moving to their neighborhood:

These unnecessary, atrocious properties are moving forward without a design review and environmental impact study all over Capitol Hill is shameless. Are you spending time in the community to witness the increases in height allowances are disproportionate to the look and feel of entire blocks. Our lovely community is losing the appeal, charm and attraction for steady income, responsible, professional homeowners all for the ugly box and transient renter. Has there been a study to satisfy we have reached density capacity already? What are your facts and when do you define enough already? Why would you diminish the value the current homeowner and idea revenue infused in the community over the transient renters?

I am one of the victims of support for a five story building on Harvard Avenue East and I am going to continue to be extremely vocal until my neighbors and I are fully heard. The fact that we continue to be ignored and the council fails to conduct an official review of building height and environmental study for the planned Harvard Avenue East is unconscionable. The amount of garbage that will accumulate, the contribution to the drug use already thriving on Capitol Hill.

So please don’t feel sorry for the town house lady and her sad act. It’s an act. Feel sorry for our city that such theatrics are taken seriously enough to make life harder for new people wanting to live in Seattle.