If you’re reading this, there is a pretty good chance you have read the voter’s guide and asked yourself, “Who would oppose the housing levy?” It has taken a long chain of abuses and misgovernment for me to turn against Seattle’s housing levy, a measure I supported the last time it was on the ballot in 2016 and every other time I was able to vote for it. Since that time, the state, county, and Seattle government has taxed, cajoled, squeezed, and borrowed billions of dollars to address the “housing crisis.” Ask yourself this, have the problems you are most concerned about when it comes to housing gotten worse or better since 2016?

Let’s go back in time.

Where did all those suffering people, tents, and garbage come from?

Seattle has always had improvised housing, from the Great Depression until today. Back in 2016, I argued that we should work with people in encampments instead of sweeping them away. There are various reasons why people choose to live outside; and yes, in many cases, this is a choice; and this choice doesn’t deny people their entitlement to compassionate when and how they want and need it. Of course, people who are poor have fewer guard rails to break through and can find them selves just one mental or physical health crisis away from losing a job, income, and then housing. It is exceedingly rare for someone of means to find themselves homeless; they have enough money, insurance coverage, family, and institutional support to find themselves living under a bridge and shouting at cars.

But by 2016, we began to see the effects of lax law enforcement and more powerful and destructive drugs begin to take their toll. People who lived on the margins, in and out of housing but averse to congregate settings, sometimes found housing. Or they somehow used improvised housing to avoid other options. But when fentanyl hit the streets, the problem of people living outside became a destructive spiral; people using fentanyl are possessed by the cheap and powerful drug until it destroys them, usually in public at a park or in the right of way. For most people, this isn’t a choice anymore; people need help.

I am not suggesting we lock people up or sweep them. In fact, we must combine harm reduction strategies and interdiction of drugs to reduce their supply. People who are selling and trafficking the drug belong in prison. We’ll always have people in the margins of public space who end up living there, but this drug calls for a rescue operation. . But instead of mounting one, the City of Seattle hasn’t even made having or using the drug in public illegal. To the people who express outrage over sweeps, I agree, I’m against them. But what is your solution. This problem isn’t going to be solved by handing out apartment keys. This is not an economic problem, but a health crisis of greater depth and dimension that Covid ever was. Seattle isn’t doing anything but pushing the panic bottom and asking for more money. The answer to that should be, “No more money until you explain why the money you’ve spent already hasn’t worked.”

Choking off supply, watching prices rise, then declaring a crisis

Beginning in 2015, the City of Seattle,

• Prohibited small houses on small-lots in Seattle’s single-family zones,
• Abolished microhousing;
• Effectively downzoned the low-rise zones which provided what people called “gentle density,” apartments, townhomes, and a mix of retail;
• Imposed what amounts to a tax on every new square foot of development in the city; and
• Imposed a myriad of impositions of rules, regulations, fees, fines, and taxes increasing costs and risks for housing providers.

Taken together, these measures have incrementally made Seattle’s already complex zoning code even more complex, creating more limits to the creation of new housing. This has created limits to new supply, and when demand increases, that means higher prices. And this is the source of Seattle’s self imposed “housing crisis.”

Bloated Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) projects

The single biggest driver of housing inflation in the United States is LIHTC. Local governments like Seattle, indulge the worst tendencies of their citizens, especially enfranchised single-family homeowners and justice campaigners, imposing all sorts of limits and constraints on housing. When prices go up, the answer is always “We need more affordable housing,” rather than “We need more housing so that it is affordable.” There is a big difference.

For the people who run Seattle, and impose the rules that limit new housing in the first place, the big bailout comes with “affordable housing,” which, as I appointed out in the voter’s guide, isn’t affordable at all. Projects are ringing in with development costs in excess of $500,000 per unit in some cases. This is madness. But The City Council can blame developers and greedy landlords while they impose what amounts to embargo on new housing production because they can count on more, and more, and more, and more money.

We don’t need more money, we need more housing

Inflation is caused by too much money. In Seattle’s case, proposals like the levy subsidize really bad land use and housing policy, policy that manufactures scarcity with zoning and taxes. When prices go up, the City pours more money on the problem. Yes, some housing is built, but not even close to enough housing. When that solution, more money, fails, does government ask itself what it did wrong? Does the Seattle City Council reduce the land use code and taxes that price up housing production? Of course not. They ask for more money.

If you vote yes, you’re just pouring more cash on the problem, and the result won’t be an appreciable reduction in suffering on the streets or lower housing prices. Instead, the levy will fuel more extravagant “affordable” housing projects that dribble out units dozens at a time at great expense over 5 years or longer. It’s inefficient. And here’s the thing, efficiency is compassionate!

I might pay a price for it, but it must be pointed out that we’re spending more and more, and getting less and less value. I’m not against taxes, but I am against bad taxes, and this is an example of one. The levy will probably pass again, overwhelmingly. And you won’t even feel it. But you will continue to see people killing themselves on the streets and hearing complaints about how,”It’s too damn expensive here!” If you vote “Yes” the only person to blame will be looking at you in the mirror.