There was a lot said about the consultant report delivered to yesterday’s joint meeting of the Seattle City Council’s Housing and Planning, Land Use and Sustainability (PLUS) Committee. The consultants said that

• The City needs a plan;
• That if fees and rules become too onerous, housing won’t get built; and
• The solution to Seattle’s housing issues will largely be solved by the private sector through incentives.

Of course Councilmembers Licata and Sawant didn’t like that answer. Remember it is Licata that thinks we’re going to regulate our way to affordable housing. The truth is that we need more housing supply of all kinds and at various price levels.

Councilmember Sally Clark said more than once we should try to find ways to learn from “naturally occurring affordable housing,” or “affordable housing out in the wild.” What does she mean by that? It’s as if she thinks that affordable housing is like Big Foot or a unicorn, a mythical beast that nobody can capture or find. Does it even exist? How do we get it? But how we get better housing prices for people looking for housing isn’t a mystery or a mythical beast. It happens when we have more housing.

Someone joke that Councilmember Clark means supply; what she is naming is housing that is actually lower priced because there is more of it. This person joked, “but she can’t say that word, because it’s your word. Now she won’t say supply.”

Maybe. But if they won’t listen to me, economists, our members, and people in the environmental community, maybe the Council will sit down with Sal Kahn’s simple and elegant explanation of supply and demand using the apple market. One of my critics calls me Roger “Housing is Bananas” Valdez. Apples will do just fine. No matter what you call it, more housing supply will lead to lower prices.