A big part of politics is story telling. Actually, I’d argue a good story wins over facts and data every single time. In some ways I think this is a bad thing. On the other hand, it’s just a fact that our world is just a bunch of stuff until we assign some meaning to it, and that meaning matters and is even more real that the stuff itself. Two recent examples of story telling about cities that have come across my computer screen and I can’t help but put them side by side because they are so good and so opposite. Those of us who want more growth in our city are losing the narrative war and it matters.

The other night I watched Ronald Reagan’s farewell speech. It’s absolutely fantastic as an example of why Reagan captured the imagination of the county and it’s a sharp contrast to the kind of rhetoric we see on the campaign trail today. Reagan was warm, reassuring, and his words and delivery inspired confidence. Here’s the key passage:

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind, it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind swept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace – a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

That’s how I saw it, and see it still. How Stands the City?

And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that: after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm.

And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the Pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

We’ve done our part. And as I “walk off into the city streets,” a final word to the men and women of the Reagan Revolution – the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back:

My friends, we did it. We weren’t just marking time, we made a difference. We made the city stronger – we made the city freer – and we left her in good hands.

Back in 1980, just three years after the Seattle Displacement Coalition was formed, there was no such thing as “homelessness”.

At that time, Seattle’s downtown had about 10,000 low-cost housing units–nearly all unsubsidized–inhabited by a diverse multi-racial mix of low income men, and some women, many on Social Security or getting disability payments.

Those wanting work could walk a few blocks to the day labor office and likely pick up part-time work on the docks or waterfront warehouses. If you were retired, there were bars, pool halls, hotel lobbies, and long-time restaurants like the Turf, where you could just hang out, see friends and get a cheap, filling meal.

Yes, there were an estimated 300 or so “skid road” denizens, mostly men, some with alcohol and addiction issues, who called the streets of downtown and Pioneer Square home. The missions helped these people and there was little need for subsidized housing or a multi-million dollar social service delivery system. Folks had built-in support systems intrinsic to the community.

But something dramatically changed. In Seattle as in cities across the country, in a little over half a decade, office and commercial development exploded. Spurred in part by lucrative tax breaks and supply side monetary policies during the Reagan administration, capitalists rediscovered the downtown core of major cities, including Seattle. The economy moved from blue collar to white. Real wages for many fell, the day labor offices closed, dock and warehouse jobs evaporated.

Local politicians actively abetted the trend, shoveling our tax dollars downtown and upzoning for another 20 million square feet of office space. From 1980 to 1985 over 4000 units were demolished or abandoned awaiting redevelopment. The hotels, the pool halls, the working class bars and restaurants were nearly all wiped out as well. Nationally, a million and a half downtown low-income units were lost during this period.

Two completely different stories about the same time period, one brimming with optimism the other tinged with a kind of dystopian despair. But both stories are very well told. Could they both be true?

In a way, Reagan is articulating what many of us hope for the city of Seattle, a prosperous place with diversity and fulfilling the highest ideals of openness and innovation. But Fox sees the same thriving city and sees the destruction of the past to make way for a future that isn’t inclusive at all.

One could find lots of facts to support each story. And most people around here hate Ronald Reagan. But if you set aside for a moment the story tellers and just think about the story, you’ll see why making housing policy in Seattle has been such a challenge. For those of us who see the shining city on a hill the hope and plan is for a prosperous and thriving city of innovation and inclusion for everyone. Those who see growth as a steamroller wiping out the pool halls and dive bars the past is better than the present and maybe even the future. Too often it’s Fox’s story that is told and believed; it’s a quaint vision of the past we lost rather than an ideal for what we could build together.