After several months of tangling with advocates of price controls on housing and those who argue that more housing means higher housing prices, I had to watch this video from a PBS series called Commanding Heights. Commanding Heights is a series worth watching. You can’t watch this segment or any other part of the series without thinking, “why do we regulate, fee, and limit what we want more of, housing.”

Yes, this is about the airlines, but it’s hard not to see the late, great Jim Potter and Dan Duffus as the Freddie Lakers of housing; always making the case for more affordable, customer friendly product. I recommend making some time to watch this video. If you deal with the good people at the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) you’ll find an analog to the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB); an agency in need of innovation. Pay attention to the way the CAB regulated sandwiches; it will remind you about the way the DPD regulates housing.

The analogies are obvious. The number of routes is the number of houses, the size of sandwiches is the size of microhousing units, and Pan Am is entrenched, single-family homeowners. You’ll get the point when you watch.

When you’re done watching the video, and you’re inspired, you may want to attend the City Builders event at Black Bottle this evening at 5:30. The speaker will be innovation chief Robert Feldstein who is leading the charge on innovation for Mayor Ed Murray. Will he do for DPD what Fred Khan did for the CAB?

Here’s the details:

City Builders
Thursday at 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Black Bottle
2600 1st Ave, Seattle, Washington 98121