List of Costs and Delays to Housing Production Keeps Growing

It’s been a task that I have been wanting to undertake for some time: putting all the snags and costs and incremental regulatory hang ups that, together, are making increasingly difficult to deliver housing to the market. I’m still working on the costs figures for each of these. It’s not easy always to estimate or […]

Crosscut Festival Panel: Amazon Didn’t Raise Your Rent, the City Council Did

Two weeks ago I was honored to be a on a panel at the first Crosscut Festival, a wide ranging two day event with panels covering an array of national, regional, and local issues. My panel was called, Growth and Gentrification in a Tech Boomtown. I’m not sure exactly what the term “gentrification” means qualitatively […]

JLARC: “Why is Housing So Expensive?”

Life is full of surprises. I was on a last minute trip to New Orleans when I found out that Governor Inslee had vetoed a budget proviso we had requested in the state budget. Senator Braun was our champion on this request. The proviso would have allocated $500,000 to study housing costs and compare non-profit […]