When I was growing up and we went to Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) book giveaways I was always sure to find a Mad Lib book, the books of short stories with blanks that the reader with friends fill out to make an amusing story. While they weren’t usually on my selection list other kids did like them, and when used creatively or collectively one Mad Lib could be funnier than another. It seems as though the Seattle Times is continuing is Mad Lib reporting of rental data released from various sources rather than giving us any insight into the actual issues and challenges associated with rent increases. Their stories continue to be “The latest report from _________ (real estate data source) found that rents in Seattle are __________(a word for going up really fast) at a _________(adverb) rate. Over the last ________(period of time) rents have (a word for going up really fast) _______(number) percent or$ _______(dollar figure) per month. This doesn’t help the discussion in Seattle; it makes it worse.

Let’s take a closer look at Mike Rosenberg’s latest rent story. After citing his source, Zillow, Rosenberg  sums up the latest data drop:

How do wages compare? What has happened to wages over the same period? Is the new $15 minimum wage helping? We don’t know. Rosenberg doesn’t bother to put data under what must be an assumption about wages. He doesn’t even cite a source for what he writes about wages. Like most of the story we’re supposed to fill in the blanks with the popular conception about wages.

Rosenberg goes on:

For one bedrooms? Studios? Rental houses? Houses? The article never says. As real estate guru

and expert Mike Scott always points out, rental data is always “skewed by the new;” new construction is more pricey than existing buildings. This matters and it matters a lot. When not adjusted for unit size or age, broad rental price data is almost meaningless from a policy perspective. If new a couple earning $100,000 are paying $2500 for a two bedroom apartment but an elderly pensioner has been paying $900 without increases in an older building then what kind of problem do we have? Do we even have one? The question is not just about rent increases but what accounts for the increases and who is paying for those.

Rosneberg keeps going:

So 1.1 percent is soaring? Again, in the world of Mad Libs you don’t have to define your term. I don’t know the “soaring” threshold. What if the monthly (Is the italics supposed to add to the shock?) was 3 percent? 5 percent?What Remember that the 1.1 percent is an average, so some rents up, some didn’t change, and some went down. Not all rents went up month to month. If I’m paying 1000 a month, my rent, if I was average would have gone up $11 last month. I’m not discounting that for some people in our city that is significant, but soaring? Compared to what? If the price of an Americano at my coffees shop goes from $4.00 to $4.25 a more than 6 percent increase is that price soaring? And again, Rosenberg doesn’t bother to  account for the effects of new construction on overall rents.

Reporters love to talk to “real people” rather than people who build housing or who advise people who build housing. So how about an anecdote, an example of someone who has seen their rent go up, say 10 percent or more in the last year? Rosenberg picks a real shocker.

Wow. She pays 74 percent of her income on housing. I feel for Hicks paying so much of her income for rent. But again Rosenberg gives us nothing but the shocking percentage. We get no insight into how Hicks survives or how she’s going to deal with such an apparently unsustainable situation. Is she making a sacrifice now but expecting her wages will go up at some point? We have no idea because there is almost no reference to the increase or how her situation relates to the data. Just the sticker shock. And here’s the thing, Rosenberg’s story is about rates of increase. Did her rent go up to $1695 a month from $1000 a year ago? We don’t know. The story doesn’t tell us. And the price she is paying is well below the average of $2000 cited in the Zillow data. She’s actually paying less than the “soaring” average Rosenberg cites.

So rents are “soaring” on average and Seattle has seen the biggest increases. Why? Here Rosenberg has buried the actual story and gets part of it completely wrong, again, mostly just because of incuriosity.

First, more and more people are coming here as Seattle’s job base expands, and newbies are likely to rent.

Second, the extreme competition and lack of homes to buy mean more people are flooding the rental market, while rising home prices mean landlords can raise the rent without as much worry that tenants will buy.

So the actual news headline should be, “Housing Supply Lags in Seattle, Prices on the Rise.” Rosenberg like his predecessor at the Seattle Times writes about housing prices as if they were the weather. “Wow! Did you hear that rain last night? We got ____ (number) inches in ______ (time period)! That’s the most rain Seattle has gotten in _____ (time period). The news is not the increase or, really, how it compares to other cities. The news is that because supply is lagging prices go up. Who’s working on increasing supply.

Then Rosenberg does a 180 after citing demand and supply in order, correctly. It isn’t because there are lots of jobs and not enough units, the prices are going up because they are “luxury units.” What is a luxury unit? Rosenberg, after failing to mention anywhere I could find, what kind of units are soaring repeats a claim that is unclearly attributed to his Zillow expert. What makes a luxury unit? Gold faucets? A 1000 square feet sounds pretty luxurious to me, but it’s price would be different depending on where it’s located. In Yakima, it’s likely to be very cheap while in Seattle it would be expensive. There is no such thing as a luxury unit, only scarcity that drives up price.

Rosenberg completely avoids talking to anyone who knows anything about building housing. I don’t know why. But he does talk to an activist with the Washington Community Action Network collecting sad stories about rising rents door to door. Rosenberg then seals the Mad Lib with the final anecdotal, data free “displacement narrative.” Renters suffering from the soaring rents are moving to

What Rosenberg and his colleagues do when they write such incurious, standard issue stories is simply affirm what people already believe about rents. They are soaring because “landlords can raise the rent without as much worry.” Everyone in town is suffering from huge rent increases or is being faced with having to pay for a luxury unit (I wonder if Hicks’ apartment is a luxury unit) or move to a low cost area.

I would guess most people don’t even bother to read these stories any more, but likely just look at the graph, shake their head and feel confirmed in their assessment of the problem and the solution. When it comes to housing everyone is an expert and the stories sort of write and read themselves now, reinforcing received wisdom and folkenomics about housing prices. The Seattle Times and other media don’t seem to want to get any better about reporting housing price data and don’t shed much light on what the problem is or how we solve the problem.