We nicknamed our video “they’re making it worse” for a reason. When Seattle City Council fails to do the right thing, good people move to….Oklahoma! The City has already lost a basketball team to the Sooner State, but now we’re losing real people who can’t find a place to live. Here’s a passage from a recent story in the Seattle Times about someone who had to leave Seattle because he couldn’t find a place to live:

“Everything is here; everything is coming here,” said Aasim Saleh, 30, who moved from Seattle to coach kayaking in the Boathouse District, where construction of a new whitewater center is planned for this fall.

Saleh moved because he had an opportunity to make about $60,000 a year while avoiding a desk job. The low cost of living was a major sweetener, he said, enabling him to become something he thought would not be possible: a homeowner.

“I would say that, 100 percent, I had given up on the idea of homeownership in Seattle,” he said. “Which is a really big deal.”

Remember Councilmember Tim Burgess’s dismissive tone about how the loss of 250 new buildable lots in Seattle wasn’t “meaningful?” And how about Councilmember Tom Rasmussen’s amendment to downzone single-family home building by lowering heights and complicating the code? Then there is Councilmember Sally Bagshaw’s comments about wanting notice and appeal for every new single-family home in Seattle, a recipe for scarcity and increased costs. Don’t forget Representative Gerry Pollet and his colleague Gael Tarleton who were trying to change state law on behalf of angry neighbors opposed to new single-family homes. Ask people trying to buy a single-family home in Seattle what they think about the efforts of these Councilmembers and legislators to pander to the status quo crowd.

In another Seattle Times story from over the weekend, you can read about the bidding wars erupting in Seattle because of the scarcity of single-family homes.

In Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood, a renovated home on a large lot offered at $549,500 drew about 20 bids and sold in May for $687,000, or 25 percent over the list price. While that’s an extreme case, about two-thirds of Ravenna homes sold this spring went for above list price.

And how does Seattle compare to other large cities?

In the second quarter, the Seattle metro’s housing market ranked sixth nationally for the share of homes sold above list, behind only five metros in and around the San Francisco Bay Area, according to data from Seattle-based real-estate brokerage Redfin.

Expensive, right? Well it’s no wonder when the Council seems to be doing everything it can to eliminate single-family options because, ironically, they think single-family is expensive and not affordable housing. But many, many people want to own a home. If supply is constrained with more rules, prices will go up and stay up, making a fortune for the people behind One Home Per Lot, the lobbying group that wants to sue and appeal every new single-family home in Seattle. All of the new rules and limits are great if you own a house now; your asset increases in value and price. Meanwhile people like Saleh leave town, or are forced into bidding wars over scarce single family homes.

The worst move the Council made was voting against the 100 percent rule, a compromise that would have allowed 250 new, scaled, and right sized homes in the city. The number of additional lots seem small, but as I pointed out would make a big impact on the economy of the city. It may not meaningful to Burgess and the Council, but to people packing their bags for other places, like Oklahoma, additional homes on the market would have meant more choice and a chance to own.

I would hope the City Council would fight just as hard when it comes to losing people to Oklahoma as they did to keep a basketball team.