No Problem

What gets you re-elected and what solves problems are sometimes like oil and water. And solving problems makes people mad. Nobody wants to make anybody mad because that's not how you get re-elected. But were going to have to do that if were going to fix this.

Senator Claire McCaskill. February 2011.

I was reminded of this statement from Senator McCaskill while I was on my way to drop off a ballot yesterday. While driving, I came across this campaign sign:

I don't live in Bothell at this point (although I used to), so I hadn't really been following the city council race there. But Bothell has been the site for a good amount of apartment construction. After all, it's how one creates housing for a number of people in a relatively small footprint. Given that even a relatively small single family residence can run more than $800,000 in the vicinity, for many people, apartments are going to be their only way into to living in the area.

The greater Seattle area has a homelessness problem in large part to the relative dearth of a apartment, and other multiple-family, homes in the area, which has resulted in very high housing costs. But for the people who own the housing stock, that's not their problem. The lowering of their valuations that would result from increases in housing availability is their problem. And that's where people like Mr. Swanson come into the picture.

The "apartment explosion" is barely making a dent in the local supply of housing, given the number of people who want to live in the area. And so while I won't solve the lack of housing that's driving the high homelessness numbers, it can at least reduce the upward pressure on prices. Really solving the problem would require a lot more apartments, condominiums and townhouses than are currently under construction. But for local homeowners, at least when I've been present for the conversations, the answer to homelessness is basically to force people who live on local streets to live on distant streets, so that they'll be in someone else's cities and neighborhoods.

Fixing the housing supply in the Puget Sound area is going to make people mad. An adequate supply of housing, will, more or less by definition, lower housing prices locally. And people don't like solutions to problems that come with costs for them. Especially not when there's always someone who will run for office on a platform that says that it's only other people who should pay costs.