Each year, as part of my annual report to our board, funders, and allies, I write a kind of State of Smart Growth introduction. It’s also intended to be encouragement for our sometimes beaten down side  of the growth, housing, and density argument — and for me who is the guy that does this all day. My plan is a write a couple more reflective posts as we consider the end of one year and the beginning of the next.  

We began Smart Growth Seattle with a sense of optimism. Wewere an extraordinary alliance of small, medium, and large housing producers with commercial developers against a gathering storm of regulatory overreach by the City of Seattle. Today, our community is divided, with larger commercial and residential developers in Downtown and South Lake Union supporting a Grand Bargain that creates certainty for them, but uncertainty for us.

By mandating fees and performance, The Grand Bargain, when fully implemented, will cause some projects to become infeasible,raise housing prices (adding to inflation for consumers), and isillegal, violating State law’s clear limits on fees on new housing development.

In rental housing policy, we’ve seen a steady and slow effort to accomplish rent control piecemeal through passage of more and more limits on how private building owners rent and manager their own properties. A shift in State government could end the preemption on local governments imposing rent control, leadingto a rent control proposal in Seattle.

Where do we go from here? We can’t give up! We’ve been a prescient and principled voice of opposition to efforts that will make producing and operating housing in the city of Seattle more costly and expensive.

We can also become, with more resources, a more positive yetprincipled voice, explaining and showing how important our people are in creating housing that is accessible and affordable to a wide array of people with a diverse set of needs and incomes.

Compromising with bad housing policy isn’t an option; working with the City to find areas of agreement is what we should do. We must point out the deep flaws in the Grand Bargain and Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning, oppose efforts to achieve rent control in Seattle, and push the City to follow other recommendations made by the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Committee, especially expanding housing supply and reducing the time and cost of producing new housing.

I’ve typically made a reference to a classical figure in these annual summaries. This year, I turn to Cato the Younger who was one of few who stood up to the growing tyranny of Julius Caesar. Seen as morose and obdurate by many, he alone predicted and opposed the inevitable power grab the great general was making even while supported by the majority of Romans. “Now,” shouted Cato, “those things are come to pass which I foretold to you, and the man is at last resorting to open compulsion.”

The year ahead is not going to be an easy one, but it is an important one. We’ve been smarter than most in recognizing our limits but we haven’t given up making our points, even when it makes those in power uncomfortable. If we can maintain our effort through 2017, I believe we’ll have proven our value to our community both in good times and bad.