Often City Council meetings can get really crowded and not everyone gets a chance to speak. And two minutes goes by really fast. So, I am posting what I plan to say at tonight’s Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability meeting on Incentive Zoning. Whether I get to say it or not, you get to read it here first.  

The reports you have commissioned to analyze the Incentive Zoning program as well as data we have presented confirm that Incentive Zoning is of very limited value and does not produce much affordable housing. In fact, incentive zoning isn’t an incentive at all; it’s a tax on a good we need more of, housing. Adding costs and risk by taxing additional Floor Area Ratio that would produce more housing and lower prices is a disincentive to build more. Why would you raise the fee?

Also, we’ve pointed out more than once, that the motivation for using this tax—the creation of so called workforce housing—is misguided since every analysis of housing need shows that housing priced so that people who earn 60 to 80 percent of Area Median Income (AMI) is not scarce at all in Seattle. Instead, housing accessible to people at lower levels of income, 30, 40, and 50 percent of AMI is what is in limited supply.

In spite of this, the Council is still mulling over an increase in the fee, and this in the complete absence of any plan to increase housing supply where it is needed most. And your consultants recommend you have a plan. It’s yet another example of how the Council is considering a change that won’t make the housing picture better for the 120,000 new residents moving to Seattle in the years ahead, but will, in fact, make things worse.

As you consider your options, please begin with developing a broad, thoughtful, and data driven plan that can guide both the private and public sector with incentives and appropriate regulation and subsidy to meeting housing demand in the years ahead. Simply raising the fees won’t do anything to affect prices broadly and it will, most assuredly, add costs and risks that will have the opposite effect.

We believe 2015 election will be a referendum on how this body addressed housing issues and prices in 2014. This is an opportunity to do the right thing, promote the creation of more housing of all kinds all over our city.