If you’ve been paying attention, even a little bit of attention, you’ll know I don’t have much patience for most arguments made by neighbors about growth and new housing. In fact, I usually consider their arguments red herrings, mostly bluff and bluster about whatever they can come up with to create doubt, throw up process barriers and ultimately reduce density and, if they can, kill projects all together. What may be surprising, then, is that I spent Saturday morning with some of the most dedicated neighborhood opponents, or at least skeptics of growth, the Seattle Neighborhood Coalition. This isn’t the first time we’ve met and spoken to the group and I hope it won’t be the last. As much as I disagree with what the coalition represents, I still think we have to dialogue and discuss. My purpose on Saturday was to find common ground with neighbors on the Grand Bargain.

Most neighborhood activists these days don’t want more housing in their neighborhoods. Some will wave their hands at this characterization and say, “we just want density done right!” I don’t think there is such a thing, density is people, and whether they live in a beautiful building everyone loves or something neighbors hate, we need to welcome the people. Buildings really don’t matter all that much as long as they can get as many people efficiently housed as possible.

But we and the neighbors agree, the Grand Bargain didn’t include most builders or neighborhoods that we build in all over Seattle. The push for Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ) has gotten process resistant. Our own efforts to get information about the methodology and math of the MIZ scheme have been ignored. Signers of the document like Faith Pettis and City staff like Geoff Wendtland have asked for me to be removed from panels we were supposed to be on and specifically excluded me from meetings or refused to participate in discussions if I was in the room. Why? I guess they don’t want to be embarrassed by the answers or maybe the lack of answers. I have no idea. But neighbors are feeling a similar cold shoulder. At meetings the City is hosting to discuss the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Committee recommendations neighbors are being divided up, and some complain that if they’ve been outspoken about land use issues in the past, they are being excluded.

Most important, neighbor activists aren’t getting clear information about the significant upzones that the Mayor says will happen in 2017. It’s all part of the Grand Bargain that was negotiated by people downtown but without significant contribution from neighbors. Well, the same is true for the builders who make most of the housing in the city outside Downtown and South Lake Union. So I figured we have something to talk with about neighbors, even though this is how Bill Bradburd in a really fair and well written post describes me:

Valdez is a vocal proponent of “free market” solutions to housing, and largely frames the issue as simply supply and demand – with the problem being simply not enough supply.  He once said that housing was like bananas: if we produce more, prices will come down.  He suggests that impact fees and inclusionary zoning amount to a tax on development, and feels “we should be taxing what we don’t want” which includes further taxing low density Single Family zoning.  And Seattle’s intention to use Linkage Fees to further subsidize affordable units, he says, is flat out illegal.

He may be the iconic neo-liberal housing advocate, and in many ways he may appear an enigma with some of his apparently lefty leanings.

He supports using the City’s bonding capacity to produce deeply affordable units.  And he acknowledges that the affordable housing need is greatest at levels below that produced by HALA’s Grand Bargain (60% AMI) putting him in league with hard left advocates like John Fox.

The Fox reference is important. I consider Fox to be one of the few principled voices on housing in Seattle — the wrong principles in my view — but still, Fox isn’t afraid to align even with a devil like me if he feels we both agree that the City is making a mistake. We both get criticized by our supporters for our occasional and unusual agreements. But we’re both practical about our activism: do what works for the people we care about the most.

Do I think that we’ll reach some Grand Bargain between neighbors and builders outside Downtown and South Lake Union and neighbors? Maybe. If that’s what it takes to slow down the Grand Bargain and get answers I think it’s a discussion and collaboration worth making. And who knows, some of the other things we agree on –the City and Mayor aren’t doing enough to position the City as facilitator about discussion about growth, not picking winners and losers– might make the City take a different approach to other problematic issues as well, like the absence of neighborhood planning that was so successful in the 1990’s. As I pointed out, City policy is being made in reaction to and through conflict rather than solid data and measurable goals we can use to hold everyone accountable.

In the end, the neighbors and I will likely be at odds. But from my experience in the last decade, from Roosevelt upzones only going to a measly 65 feet, to the murder of microhousing, to scandalously bad low-rise legislation, and new rules that punish builders with design review based on building on an adjacent lot, the neighbors get listened to down at City Hall.

A neighbor earnestly approached me after the meeting and asked what he could do to stop an apartment development down the street that would shadow his house. I said, “I can’t help you with that.” And he wondered about his roses. I said, “Well maybe it’s time to pull them up and plant something that grows better in the shade.” But as much as I disagree with them, neighbors weren’t included in the Grand Bargain details. Neither were the people who build the majority of housing in this city in those neighborhoods. Activism isn’t always a bed of roses, but it’s important to go where the principles of more housing, everywhere, of all types, in all parts of the city, and for all levels of income leads us. And last Saturday it lead me back to the neighbors. We’ll see where it takes us next.