Not Enough Bullets………

To no one's surprise, this involves real estate developers, a scurvy lot who depend on the kindness of taxpayers while extolling the virtue of "free market heroes" like themselves.

Case in point, Seattle developers are suing because they think that the city is charging too much for them to break zoning laws:

A coalition of several developers filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court on January 15 that would make Seattle, already booming with construction cranes, more friendly for developers. Their issue? One of the city's affordable-housing programs.

Since 2006, the city has struck a deal with developers in the downtown core: In exchange for setting aside a few modestly affordable units or paying fees toward a city housing fund, developers get to build taller buildings. For example, developers could build a 400-foot tower where they'd otherwise have to keep it under 300 feet. The Seattle City Council raised those fees by about one-third in December 2013. In their lawsuit, which cites three Supreme Court decisions, the developers claim that fee hike is "an out-and-out extortion."

So they're asking a judge to invalidate that higher fee, making it cheaper and easier to build the tallest buildings allowed downtown—while throwing even fewer scraps to the city's growing affordable-housing needs.

"This just shows developers are not willing to do their fair share," says Rebecca Saldaña of Puget Sound Sage, an affordable-housing advocacy group. She says Seattle's taxpayers fund a housing levy, and politicians have eased other development requirements. This latest uptick in fees, Saldaña says, is "really just asking developers to come up to speed."

………

For example, Smith's Second and Pike project is a proposed 400-foot tower, with 290 residential units above retail and restaurant space. Normally, the height limit there is 290 feet. Under the new fee regulations, in exchange for that extra height, Smith would have to pay a one-time fee of around $2.5 million into the city's housing fund. The lawsuit says the city should revert to the former requirements, which require paying only $1.8 million. (In an odd twist, Smith will pay the $1.8 million either way, because he applied for a permit under the old rules.)

"My hope is that most people won't actually pay the fees," says O'Brien. "They'll just provide the housing" inside the new construction. In Smith's building, that would mean setting aside 20 or so moderately affordable units—around $1,300 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.

Clearly, even that isn't particularly affordable, and 20 apartments don't amount to much housing. And the city knows its program isn't good enough. Which is why housing advocates, developers, and lawmakers have been meeting since last summer to overhaul the program.

$1300/month.

If you figure that 25% of pre-tax income should go to housing, that translated to about $62K a year.

For a one bedroom apartment.

And this is too much for the developers to tolerate.

You know, when Mao came to power in China, he executed the landlords, basically the real estate developers of China of the time.

I've always found it hard to condemn this act.