I was listening to some really old recordings on my phone and I found one from a public meeting with Councilmember Mike O’Brien back on April 12th, 2011. That’s a long time, right. I mean back then we were still fighting against the tunnel, Mike McGinn was Mayor (his first go at the job), I was still on speaking terms with O’Brien, and most of the people that are now active in the land use issues surrounding zoning and land use weren’t around; and the ones that were are now occupied with other things. There are some exceptions to this, of course. But anyone paying attention back then and now will recognize the voice on this recording. I do. It’s mine. I didn’t include much from others that spoke out of respect. It was a public meeting, but it’s been so long I don’t know who the other voices are besides mine and Councilmember O’Brien. Here’s the clip of what I asked. The topic was the tunnel, and I changed the subject to land use.

Here’s a transcript if you can’t listen:

I wanted to ask you a land use question that ties back, I think, to this issue . . . You said you had a degree in economics, right? So, I’m a philosophy major so I really don’t understand economics, but one of the things I thought that was important about economics is the law of supply and demand. And so, when, I’m just playing Columbo here. So right now where we’re sitting is subject to, you’re going to be talking about rezones, the land use committee is going to be talking about rezones tomorrow, and one of the things that Council is pathologically talking about is housing affordability or affordable housing.

It seems to me that when you talk about affordability, you’re talking about price, and if you increase the demand for something, and decrease the supply for something you’re going to increase the price. So why does the Council continue to do things to reduce the supply of housing by limiting upzones, limiting the amount of development that can happen while whining about affordability; you know why aren’t you increasing the supply of housing by granting more upzones and letting the market kind of provide more housing supply, and if they oversupply the housing market, that’s great, that just means lower price. What am I missing?

So, right, so why is your incentive zoning policy sort of focused on trading, you know, making it harder to develop in exchange for creating a price point, why not just up the supply?

Someone jumps in right after this and asks, essentially, “Do you believe that?” To his credit, O’Brien said, “Yeah, I do. In part . . . when we have 75 percent of our land is zoned single-family.” The questioner goes on, and O’Brien starts to weasel and squirm, saying that he had been to Europe where cities are dense but buildings aren’t tall. Even then, one could see O’Brien’s tendency to wilt when faced with the brunt of bitter, angry, and entitled neighbors. He never stood a chance I guess. The topic changes again after this exchange.

I’m posting this mostly for the people who weren’t around back then and who might think I don’t know what I’m talking about or why. I’ve been at this a long time. And I think you’ll detect the same disdain for the City Council then that I have now; they simply aren’t functioning effectively nor are they really dealing with the issue we have: we need more housing!

Second, I also want to illustrate how little things have changed. The argument I was making could be one that I would make right this moment or tomorrow. At the time, the Council was about to consider upzones to Pioneer Square. They bungled this. I wrote a brutally long post about the upzones the day after this exchange praising, of all people, Councilmember Tim Burgess, who advocated for more density in Pioneer Square but lost the point at the final vote. The Council just couldn’t get its act together, even all the way back then. From that post (you’ll recognize another old timer as the first person who commented):

I was impressed with Councilmember Burgess today as he talked about making land use policy based on “what we want to happen” rather than fretting over “vague risks” that might or might not play out in the future. He characterized the psychology that often grips the Council with land use decisions. As he talked about staying on the low end of height proposed by the Department of Planning and Development (from a variable 100 feet to 120/150 feet depending on lot size) and the bigger heights suggested by the Downtown Seattle Association (180 feet) he quite astutely brought up the fact that preservationists casting doubt on the effect of the possible rezones on the historic designation of Pioneer Square could provide no certainty about their concerns.

Finally, things have really changed. Burgess, far from keeping this attitude has fallen into line with the real leader on the Council, Kshama Sawant. Today, Burgess is shuffling along toward retirement in a pantomime of progressive gestures mumbling about income taxes and socking it to landlords. That’s just bizarre. As I taunted some Jon Grant supporters the other day, even Tim Burgess and Sally Bagshaw are part of the “resistance” now. The degree to which the Council has been thoroughly cowed and humiliated by Sawant and her supporters is astonishing compared to their pro-tunnel stance back in 2011. Two years earlier, they airlifted the Governor Christine Gregoire to endorse Joe Mallahan (a person she’d never met before) because Mike McGinn opposed the tunnel. Back then, they were doing the bidding of the Downtown Seattle Association and the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce. Talk about blowing in the wind.

The question still rings, 6 years later: “Why not just up the supply?”

Image: Funky Stuff, From Wikipedia Commons by Antony Mayfield.