Primary Election 2015: Better Than Expected?
I’ll admit that I’ve been pretty cynical about this year’s election. I didn’t even vote for a candidate for City Council because they are all so bad on our issues. But candidates who ran on explicitly NIMBY and anti HALA (Housing Affordabily and Livabiliy Agenda) Committee platforms (Grant, Bradburd, and Provine) got a thumping. Their backward, negative, and fear fueled agenda didn’t take off last night. Does that mean we won? Hardly. But the angry neighbors were handed some scalding defeats. Perhaps those left over will heed this lesson and start listening to basic economics and reason instead of capitulating to an angry mob of we-showed-ups.
Let’s walk through last nights very preliminary results.
District 1 — West Seattle and South Park
Shannon Braddock and Lisa Herbold emerged here as the winners. Braddock is favored by the business community and Herbold, Nick Licata’s long time aide (she’s much more than that; I call her “Licata’s brain”) is a champion of a myriad of bad housing policies, including rent control. Herbold is one of the most dedicated and smart people I know in City government. She’s qualified for the job but if elected would do serious damage to efforts to expand housing supply and choice. Is Braddock better? We’ll have to wait and see. I don’t know her well enough.
District 2 — South East Seattle
Tammy Morales and current Councilmember Brice Harrell will run here in the general. Harrell has voted for the linkage tax and while he makes serious efforts to cultivate support from builders and developers, his record is mixed. Morales is an unknown to me. This race will need a close review before the general.
District 3 — Capitol Hill
Councilmemeber Kshama Sawant, the Councilmember many people love to hate, emerged with 49 percent of the vote while leading challenger Pam Banks got 35 percent. I’m highly sceptical of Banks’ knowledge of our issues. She’s made little effort to reach out to builders and she’s been confused on linkage taxes. My instinct has told me that trying to replace Sawant is a waste of our community’s resources; she’s probably going to win. Wouldn’t we better off putting dollars into other candidates that could counter Sawant?
District 4 — Roosevelt, Green Lake, Ravenna, and U-District
Good news here. Tony Provine and Councilmember Jeanne Godden, both fought hard for the NIMBY vote, but both are losing. Provine played the NIMBY card hard suggesting that HALA Committee proposals would lead to bulldozers from City Hall flattening single-family neighborhoods. This bombastic appeal to fear clearly failed. The two candidates emerging from field, Michael Maddux and Rob Johnson, are both better candidates than the rest of the field. Johnson has said he’s against linkage taxes. We need to put this race under a close watch. Maddux, oddly, chose to join an anti HALA press conference. He has some explaining to do.
District 5 — North Seattle
This was the biggest surprise of the night. Debora Juarez emerges as the clear favorite here with 38 percent of the vote beating former favorite Sandy Brown who only garnered 20 percent of the vote. Brown supports impact fees. Juarez has a rather general statement about housing that doesn’t commit her to much other than expanding DADUs, something we support. I am really hopeful that Juarez, a former judge, might emerge as a sympathetic voice or at least ear for housing supply and the builder community. This will be an exciting race to watch; Juarez is a smart experienced leader that emerged late in the election.
District 6 — Ballard and Greenwood
Current Councilmember Mike O’Brien coasted easily through the primary. His opponent has lots of NIMBY supporters that think O’Brien isn’t harsh enough. This district, like 3, is what American soliders in World War II would have called a FIDO; we’re better off trying to blunt O’Brien’s famously bad ideas and approach to land use and housing policy by electing better Councilmembers in other districts. O’Brien seems determined to go down in history as a champion of social justice, but his short sited approach to land use guarantees he’ll be remembered, along with former Councilmember Clark and outgoing Councilmember Tom Rasmussen as an amanuensis for angry neighbors.
District 7 — Downtown, Belltown, and Magnolia
Current Councilmember Sally Bagshaw took most of the vote here. Bagshaw is a genuine, smart, and even, sometimes bluntly honest Councilmember. But she likes her job, and she’s made bad decisions about microhousing, supporting O’Brien’s destructive legislation. As an attorney, she should be dead set against grandstanding efforts by State Representsive Gerry Pollett to force notification on Lot Boundary Adjustments (LBAs) when the City has zero discretion on granting them. City bureaucrats are horrified at the prospect of having to defend swarms of lawsuits by Pollets wealthy neighbors against land use decisions that are, essentially, inviolate. Why did Bagsahaw play to the mob? And why did she say she supported linkage taxes in an interview with The Stranger after voting against the tax earlier? We’re going to have to find out. Maybe with such a big win, she’ll become a bit more consistent.
District 8 — At Large
There is no great outcome to be had here. Current Councilmember Tim Burgess has been impervious to facts when it comes to land use decisions, voting with O’Brien in committee 100 percent of the time and, sometimes, voting with Rasmussen’s strange crusade to turn Seattle into a giant gated community. But Burgess has held the line against rent control. I attribute this almost entirely to his and his fellow Councilmember’s desire to deny Councilmember Sawnant a win. Not exactly a profile in courage, but we’ll take it. And Burgess was likely, as Council President, the one who asked the Mayor to back down on HALA recommendations to increase housing supply in single-family. Sounds like it’s time to call security and have Burgess clean out his desk and be walked to the parking lot, right? However, his opponent in the general is rent control advocate Jon Grant, former head of the Tenant’s Union. I don’t recommend supporting Burgess unless he can explain his views more than just “it’s not a lot of housing being lost,” or he gets a grasp of housing economics and policy.
District 9 — At Large
I made Lorena Gonzalez, the big winner last night with 60 plus percent of the vote, very uncomfortable when I pressed her to explain her support of linkage taxes. As a lawyer, it seems like she’d be far more skeptical. Instead she committed herself to supporting them through a law suit from our community to test what the courts would say. That is, she said she’d be willing to bog the City down in litigation for years to defend a really, really bad idea. I hope she’s evolved her views on this issue. In any event, it’s worth celebrating her electoral beat down of NIMBY standard barer Bill Bradburd, who has drawn his sense of personal value from using City process and Councilmembers O’Brien and Clark to trash microhousing. He had a pretty good schtick going, but the voters repudiated it decisively. I’m glad he made it through the primary so Gonzalez can dole out another, hopefully, brutal and lopsided defeat.
So that’s my highly biased rundown on what happened last night. It’s unlikely there will be much change, but we’ll keep our eye on it.
What the HALA Do We Do Now?
Lots of people are annoyed by the Mayor’s climb down on expanding housing supply in single-family neighborhoods, a key recommendation from his own Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Committee. I am. But what should we do? Some have said we need to move on and put energy into preserving other elements of the HALA Committee recommendations. Some suggest that there might be grass roots efforts to help do this. Maybe, they argue, by appealing to values everyone shares people will rally around the rest of the HALA report. I’m skeptical. Here’s why.
Come with me down memory lane. In the first quarter of 2014 I started out my full time job as Director of Smart Growth Seattle with what could be called a diplomatic gesture: a tour of small-lot and microhousing with Councilmember Mike O’Brien. After that tour, O’Brien seemed to get that small-lot housing really did fit in with surrounding houses and that, often, existing older houses were preserved along side new housing. And he seemed to get that microhousing was working too.
In spite of rational discussion and looking at what was working, both small-lot infill and microhousing took major hits, with significant losses of housing capacity. In fact, microhousing as we knew it is no longer feasible. Why did this happen? The same reason the Mayor and Council backed off changes suggested by the HALA Committee: angry neighbors.
And what about the Grand Bargain, the deal made between growth supporters and non-profit housing advocates that would grant more density in exchange for mandatory inclusionary zoning? That requires significant upzone to create the inclusion of affordable units. Why won’t the same neighbors and politicians create the same outcome, a front lash followed by a climb down on the essential ingredient of the bargains, upzones.
Remember, Councilmember O’Brien supported bizarre requirements last month to building in the low-rise zones like a 16 foot setback on top floors simply so neighbors would not see that floor from the street. That’s right, loss of housing so that a neighbor walking a dog wouldn’t see that awful top story!
Nobody has explained to me why that dog walking neighbor will not only support an end to the set back requirement but a whole new, additional floor on top. Would that neighbor and the dog change their minds because of the new affordable units that would be mandated? That seems doubtful, even with a grass roots campaign.
So what do we do to stop the slide? I’m afraid we can’t do much about the politics. Practically, I think bringing back neighborhood development managers would be a hugely positive step to help in the longer run. But today, what we’re seeing with the HALA recommendations is a repeat, on a larger scale, of what happened to small-lot development, microhousing, and capacity in the low-rise zones, a discussion among rational people, followed by a sensible proposal, followed by outrage by angry single-family neighbors, then a reduction in housing capacity.
This year’s election is only making his worse. I’ve been saying for years that we need a strong voice representing the pro-growth perspective at City Hall. I think we’ve got that with Smart Growth Seattle. What we don’t have is leadership from elected leadership. This is our challenge.
Seattlites by nature don’t like conflict. We get very uncomfortable when the volume goes up and people get upset. Neighbors use this well. They get very emotional and Councilmembers respond to that emotion, partially because they don’t want to lose their jobs but also because they want the emotions to stop. All that agitation makes them nervous; responding seems to appease it.
It sounds weird, but we need to do the same thing in the coming weeks and months. Too often people who are pro growth and development are either too busy building or smart enough to want be persuasive, not confrontational. Half our people are either trying to get a permit or financing and the other half are sharpening their citations in Facebook posts. But telling a Councilmember that he or she is wrong? That’s uncomfortable. We’d rather be agreeable.
I’ll quote my hero Emmeline Pankhurst, an early leader in efforts to get women the right to vote:
You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under, if you are really going to get your reform realized.
Are we prepared to tell Councilmembers they’d be wrong to pull back on the Grand Bargain in the face of an angry mob? Are we willing to run our own pro growth candidates and lose again and again until we’ve moved people across the city to rethink their views on growth? I get criticized as much from our own allies (“urbanists” mostly) for being too aggressive in my criticism of Councilmembers for doing we mostly agree are the wrong things when it comes to housing policy. Maybe in watching the slow unraveling of the HALA bargain more people will join me in making more noise and calling what’s going on at City Hall what it is: a profound lack of vision and leadership.
Emmeline Pankhurst Gets Arrested
Council Candidates Desperate for “Likes,” Lack Leadership; I’m Voting “Present”
Tomorrow voting ends in the most important election that Seattle has ever had, and I can’t make up my mind what to do. This year all nine council seats are up for grabs and there are 47 candidates running for those nine spots. When it comes to land use and housing issues, the ones that matter the most to me, the candidates fall along a continuum of knowledge about and positions on key issues. The problem almost every single candidate has said they support some kind of fee or tax on housing. For the first time in my 27 years of voting I am contemplating leaving the Council positions blank on my ballot or marking “present.” I’ll explain why.
The Voters Don’t Get It
A recent poll we commissioned found that voters both agree that increased demand for housing, not greedy landlords and developers, largely determines housing price. However, many voters also said that they support rent control. Voters say that growth is happening too fast, we haven’t planned for it, and they’d rather see growth go in multifamily neighborhoods not single-family zones. They those that think growth is happening too fast keep saying, “slow it down.”
Voters also believe builders are large corporations not family owned business, which I see as a huge educational opportunity. Most builders are small operators and even huge projects use smaller contractors to do work. But voters (and sometimes Councilmembers) think and act like they are Shell oil.
Voters aren’t just misinformed but they are mostly single-family homeowners and they worry about what growth might do to their investment. They’d rather tax new housing to pay for subsidies for others struggling with housing costs than do what we know will help overall housing prices: build more housing to keep up with demand.
All this means that the electorate tends to favor ideas that add more regulations and rules and thus costs to new housing. The voters don’t understand how the housing economy or the housing market works. They see their world changing and they want someone to blame. They want what they see as the growth rollercoaster to stop.
Politicians are Pleasers
As a recovering politician myself (I ran for the State Legislature back in 1992), I know the feeling of walking into a room wanting to leave it with everyone liking me. There is something about winning an election that draws people to politics, and winning means that voters have to not just agree with a candidate’s stated positions but like that person. I call it the Sally Field Effect. Or, as Lewis Namier a scholar of 18th century politics said of men who ran for Parliament,
Men went there ‘to make a figure,’ and no more dreamt of a seat in the House in order to benefit humanity than a child dreams of birthday cake that others may eat it.
From The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III*
This reality means that candidates have to appeal and make promises to an electorate that is tilted against expanding the housing market and making it easier to build. On the contrary, candidates must talk about how they are going to “fix” the housing price problem with taxes, fees, programs, and rules rather than the most obvious option: allow lots more housing everywhere, a view which would not get a lot of “likes” from Seattle voters. But this is how our democratic system currently functions, rewarding candidates who appeal to the sensibilities of who shows up not the best policies or even being most qualified for the challenges of making decisions that balance the importance of the past, people here now, and needs of future generations.
And the Mayor, who isn’t even up for election this year, backed away from his own Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Committees recommendation to consider expanding housing supply in single-family neighborhoods. It only took two weeks for the Mayor to abandon almost a year’s worth of process in the face of the voters who will decide this year’s election. Erica Barnett correctly called this what it was, giving in to bullying from single-family neighbors. Some of us have seen this backing away as craven on the part of Mayor and Councilmembers.
Voting “Present”
So this year I will mark my ballot, “present” for the three Council races where I have a vote. I will participate as part of what I consider to be a liturgical civic duty of voting. But I take as my guide parliamentary tradition in which a member of the body could vote both “no” and “yes” on an issue as a way of participating but also not contributing to the outcome of the vote. This was usually done to ensure the body had a quorum present so the vote could go forward.
This is a personal issue for me. I have always voted and often voted for the “least best” candidate because I agreed with conventional wisdom that, cumulatively, my vote mattered. But there are times when one deals with the real human impacts and effects of terrible housing policy. I know builders whose projects were thrown into disarray because of poor decisions and thoughtlessness by Councilmembers who were more concerned about angry neighbors in their face today, rather than jobs and housing for people coming to our city. I’d rather know, that no matter how good a Councilmember is on other issues, that if they make bad decisions that impact people, I didn’t give my assent.
* From a review by Professor Peter Thomas University of Aberystwyth linked above:
“Namier, instead of viewing political history as the deeds of great men, concerned himself with the behaviour of ordinary MPs, revealing a political system of infinite subtlety, with the great majority of MPs simultaneously seeking favours from government and professing their independence, varying permutations of these two attitudes constituting political reality.”
How to HALA? Bring Back the Neighborhood Development Managers!
I wrote this e-mail to Councilmember Mike O’Brien back in March of 2014. The idea of bringing back the Neighborhood Development Manager (NDM) function has come up again and again in my conversation with neighbors I disagree with. Not just once, but many times. Neighbors are frustrated with what they often see as runaway growth.
When I worked at the Department of Neighborhoods our view was that we could all work together, City, neighbors, and developers, to realize the goals of neighborhood planning. In polls we’ve commissioned we’ve seen that people in the city feel growth is too fast and unplanned. They didn’t feel that way in the 90s because we had plans, 37 of them, and City staff assigned and empowered to fulfill them.
Can we go back? No. But we can bring back the idea that to grow together, we should collaborate on how we grow. We can do it. My plea to restore the NDM function has gone unheard. Perhaps now, with the HALA recommendations, we can get everyone to agree it’s time to bring it back to help sort through and implement the HALA recommendations and neighborhood plans.
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Hello Councilmember O’Brien,
Thanks for being at our breakfast. We obviously will have lots to talk about on the specific legislative issues coming up. However, the discussion has taken me back a few years.
When [Mike] McGinn was first elected I advocated for the restoration of a Neighborhood Development Manager (NDM) function at the Department of Neighborhoods. He didn’t follow through with that whole train of thought.
I think we could get behind a similar City role. Many of our people run into City process that is frustrating and bewildering. As we both know, that isn’t because people at the City are bad, it’s that they don’t have a reference point outside of their silo. Their job is water hook ups, for example, they can’t solve a broader issue that involves other departments or even other property owners.
When Phil Fuji, Sally Clark, and I were NDMs we were empowered to bring departments together along with private developers andneighborhood groups to tackle problems or find mutually beneficial solutions. I think we did a pretty good job.
But it only lasted a couple of years, then [Mayor Greg] Nickels shut it down.
I think a similar role reconstituted somewhere in the City would go a long way toward addressing the points you raised about people worried about change. Builders and developers and neighborhoods might benefit from a problem solver being paid by the City at a wage to try and serve the public good by bringing people together rather than paid advocates or people pushing one side or another.
We were never arbitrators; nor did we have supervisory authority over other department staff. Departments sought us out to do the difficult work of bridging between departments, developers, private businesses, and neighborhoods. The Departments also new they had a charge from Mayor and Council to cooperate with us to get to a solution.
Will this make [the conflict] go away? Probably not. But it sure would be nice to have someone at the City who could play this role again. Frankly, our people don’t have time to romance the neighborhood people and that’s not their skill. And neighborhoods sometimes need someone to talk to that will help them figure out what their options are before they call an attorney or start a petition.
I remember a tussle with the school district in West Seattle that led to a hearing examiner challenge of a school field renovation. It was really ugly. But everyone was talking and I was able to keep that going because sometimes they’d gripe at me rather than at or about each other. I’m no diplomat; it was the role I played that mattered, and I think we came away with both sides able to work with each other even after an annoying appeal process.
Let me know if you want to talk more about this idea. You know that my patience has run out with the petition signing and litigious gangs of neighbors out their trying to stymie growth (my bias, of course). But you could really fill the leadership void left by Jim Diers if you figured out a way to divert a lot of the angst and frustration into something positive — not a lot of process, but solutions. Maybe we could get back to “how do we grow” rather than “whether we grow” conversations.
Thanks again for doing the challenging job you’ve got to do!
MIZU: The Same Effect as Rent Control?
One wonders what government would do without acronyms. Perhaps government programs would end up with catchy brand names like pharmaceuticals or cars. The Multifamily Tax Exemption (MFTE) Program might be called simply Multaxa or Exemptor. The Mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Committee has a whole glossary of acronyms at the end of it’s report. How did we manage to writhe out of the noose of linkage taxes? By agreeing to something not in the glossary but called Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning Upzones or MIZUs, incremental upzones across the city for more housing but a mandatory inclusionary requirement that forces a percentage of the project to lock down rents in a mandated percentage of units. This is a compromise, but it will do the opposite of what it’s supposed to do, create affordability.
Although the program is legally and economically distinct from rent control, law-and-economics scholars who have analyzed the issue have argued that price controls on a percentage of new housing will have many of the same negative effects as rent control. In one classic article, The Irony of “Inclusionary” Zoning, Yale Law Professor Robert Ellickson argues that inclusionary zoning actually decreases development and makes housing less affordable; thus, it should be called exclusionary rather than inclusionary. The widely accepted view within the law-and-economics literature has been that price controls through inclusionary zoning will have negative, unintended consequences on the housing market.
- Is more efficient–O’Brien’s scheme would have taxed new growth and essentially laundered the money through a vast bureaucracy to try to build very pricey units. The dollar he took from the rich to give to the poor would have turned into .50 fast. This way, the private sector delivers units that don’t require expensive transaction charges or prevailing wage labor.
- Trades value for value–If the math works out right, additional capacity will benefit renters and builders who will be able to deliver more product to meet demand in the market.
- Pushes the Council–No rezones, no cookie. If the Council listens to its NIMBY constituents they get no new affordable housing.
- Breaks the “social justice” frame–NIMBYs have long used poverty and affordability as noblisse oblige at best and a shield at worst to demand the status quo. Now non-profit housing advocates will stand shoulder to shoulder with us pushing for rezones.
