These comments were the closing remarks at the 2014 DSA Annual Meeting by Jack McCullough, Chair of the Downtown Seattle Association on June 4, 2014. I am posting them in full here because I think McCullough points out some uncomfortable but important realities about where we’re going as a city when it comes to growth. Pay special attention to what he says about protectionism, a fear based economic strategy to keep the status quo. When we build our regulatory walls to high to protect people already here, we’re going to drive up housing prices for everyone and make our city a more difficult place to live. 

We pride ourselves as a progressive city, but 14 years into this new century – in a period of unrelenting change for this city and nation – we risk losing the progress in our progressivism.

The world has discovered Seattle. Capital and businesses from around the globe are landing here to build our city, to create our jobs and housing. Every month, hundreds of new software engineers, medical professionals, artists — and those with no job but only a dream – land in Seattle, their new home.

This change has engulfed us, and it will magnify. It will not wait for us to preserve the progress in our politics. We need to do that now.

Captive Politics

Our urban issues are challenging enough to solve – we don’t need to overcomplicate the solutions. But we’ve let our streets Downtown become captive to politics. It is a game without winners.

Here in the center city, we have street issues all around us. We reach out to deal with them. But our politics dictates that we cannot address the symptoms we see, until we first cure the diseases.

The symptoms vary — they may be antisocial street behavior, personal or group encampments in city parks and alleys, drug use on city streets, defecation in alley ways. The catch, of course, is that we will spend decades working to cure these diseases, while we struggle to survive the symptoms.

The ideal cure requires universal treatment before dealing with street behavior, new housing for all before removing encampments, a network of public restrooms . . . well, you get the idea. We will never address the symptoms and we will never cure the disease.

After years of captive politics, the tolerance of our citizens decays, first into resignation, then into apathy. Our downtown streets and parks become a petri dish of all our unsolved social ills, and in that culture the really toxic things grow: the violent crime we see, the drug trade, the exploitation of children and the most vulnerable. This system makes us enablers of the problems around us.

There is important work being done by many in the center city, including the Center City Initiative and the MID Outreach team that we saw in the video

But if you’ve been to 2nd and Pike, or Occidental Park, or if you’ve walked Third Avenue on a Friday evening, you know our system is broken. We have lost control of these streets.

We have to stop being enablers. We can treat the symptoms and the disease at the same time. We support the delivery of services for all in need; but we cannot await that utopian dawn, before we begin dealing with our streets.

We are a compassionate city. We need also to be a safe one. We need to address the symptoms on our streets. We need to do it now.

Truth

Part of our Seattle DNA is what we call “Seattle nice.” This trait has been adopted by our progressivism. We avoid conflict in public in general, and we especially learn to avoid contradicting the prevailing progressive view. We learn to honor a certain political dogma, and this dogma rules our conversations and our policy, until the truth overtakes it. There are examples all around us:

• For years, the political canon was that there was no serious crime or street disorder problem downtown, until the events of the last 3 years – still continuing today – gave lie to that theory.

• The truism in trade was that if only the Ports of Tacoma and Seattle could cooperate, the future would be theirs; until the now-impending reality of global competition and consolidation has unraveled that story.

• SODO is revered as our best industrial enclave – until the reality of a drive on 1st and 4th Avenues South, through the thicket of fast-food restaurants, offices, spas, breweries and home improvement stores tells you otherwise.

• And only months ago we were assured that de-policing was not an issue downtown or in the City at large – open the paper today and the department’s own study proves otherwise.

We can see the truth with our own eyes. And despite the dogma, this truth will overtake us, if we try to ignore it.

This is a city of innovation and it should be a marketplace of ideas. But a marketplace only survives if it has buyers as well as sellers. I don’t worry in this city for the supply of new ideas; but I am concerned about whether we have buyers for them.

Housing

We look south to San Francisco with concern: it is the “ghost of Seattle future” – a city with too few children and too-expensive housing.

Housing affordability is ultimately a function of supply and demand. The good news is that our demand is increasing in the center city and in Seattle. Twenty-five years of Growth Management and billions of dollars in transit infrastructure investment are paying off.

But how do we address the imbalance? There’s an old saying: if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem is a nail. Since we can’t restrict the demand of housing, we regulate its supply. We use a hammer to impose costs and restrictions on the production of new market-rate housing, in the hope of generating a handful of publicly-regulated affordable units.

San Francisco made the same mistake and is now paying the price. It’s not possible to regulate our way out of this imbalance. We need more supply. But here’s the real problem: most of our land in Seattle is off limits. We carve out our single-family neighborhoods, our industrial lands, our parks and institutions, and we’re left with maybe 15% of our land supply. We’re trying to solve 100% of our housing problem for the fastest-growing major city in the United States – on 15% of our land. You don’t need to be a mathematician to know this equation won’t work. We need more tools than a hammer to solve this problem.

Newcomers

It is that time in the economic up-cycle when other hammers appear – in this case, the rebirth of the undead: the inevitable zombie taxes — head taxes, employee taxes, space taxes, impact fees, development fees. These are pages taken from an old playbook that reappear here every decade: new residents and new jobs appear in town, we blame the newcomers for our problems, single them out and then tax them as punishment. The superficial message here always plays to some applause, but here is the real message: many of these newcomers are from our own families, they are our own children.

As expensive as housing is, as difficult as jobs can be to find, why would we find political upside in taxing them?

And there is a worse message here: blaming newcomers, now mostly renters in this City, for the problems we have been unable to solve ourselves, just validates an unhealthy and growing prejudice against them. There is nothing progressive about this.

Protectionism

We are living in a crucible of change. Change creates opportunity: new people, new jobs, different kinds of housing. It should force us to look at the truth, to find new tools, to remake our city. But change also presents risk to established interests. And these established interests can ironically become conservatives, hiding in our progressivism, resisting change and new ideas.

A real test of our progressivism – of whether it can deliver progress in this time of change – is how it deals with these established interests
threatened by change. If we fail the test, our progressive hopes will devolve to protectionism – the opposite of progress. We should embrace this change, use new tools and help find a place for these established interests in the emerging city.

Closing

Our greatest achievements as a city in the last decades, the ones we look back on with enduring pride, were borne of a close partnership between those who are governing the City, and those who are building it and bringing it jobs. We look back at Metro, at Forward Thrust and the World’s Fair – more recently at our new plans for the Downtown and South Lake Union. It’s all the same model. It’s how we as a city put progress in our progressivism.

We at the DSA stand ready for that partnership, every day, every opportunity.

And we will bring to that partnership, as before, some simple rules, our rules of progress:

• If there’s a problem, own it.
• When you perform, raise the bar.
• If it’s broken, try to fix it.
• If they need help, reach out your hand.
• When you have a great idea, sell it.
• If you see a great idea, embrace it.
• If you touch it, make it better.
• When you see it, tell the truth.
• And last, as we build this new Seattle for our children, this city of progress and opportunity, don’t bring a hammer unless you have some other tools on your belt.

My friends, I have only the deepest appreciation for all your support and indulgence these last two years.

And I know you are in good hands with Mark and Kate and their team in the years ahead.

We’ll do this annual meeting again: June 10, 2015, here at the 5th Avenue.

It is the great thing about the DSA: our work endures.

So I will see you again.

But for now, the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Downtown Seattle Association is hereby adjourned.