Once again Dori Monson gets it and then says something about it. And, as I wrote last week here and at Forbes, Governor Jay Inslee simply doesn’t get how housing works; or he does and he doesn’t want anyone to know about it. Every time I point out and criticize spendy subsidized projects, I get defenders of the system that produces them that say, “That’s not a fair comparison,” or “That isn’t the way to calculate unit costs (take project cost and divide by the number of units).” OK, I’m doing it wrong. Then how should we calculate unit cost if it isn’t taking the $92 million spent on 200 units and dividing and getting almost $500,000 per unit? Then there’s just crickets. One person offered a scheme by which all the money from non-housing sources would be subtracted then somehow the retail would be taken out, producing the laughable per unit price of $97,000. Right.

The fact is we simply don’t know how housing units compare across industries, across neighborhoods, cities, urban, suburban, and rural. There are many different nuances in how projects end up coming together. Wouldn’t it make sense to dig into those with some experts and get a really accurate accounting of costs? Then we could all work together to reduce those costs. Some of the things pushing up housing costs and slowing production might be regulatory, some might be related to labor, others might differ from place to place and time to time. We need to know if we’re going to figure out how to lower housing prices. We do know that just adding taxes, fees, and more process with Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning is not the answer. Let’s find out what the answer is to lower costs, increase production and thus, lower prices.

Here’s the segment.