Episode 1466
Unconstitutional Building Permit fees & the CRAZY things at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Seattle, like many cities, is experiencing a housing shortage—or what some city leaders call a “crisis.” But in an attempt to address it, Seattle has only made matters worse. In 2019, the city created the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) Program, which places unique burdens on anyone building in certain zones throughout the city. In so doing, the city’s attempt to make housing more affordable has done just the opposite: it has made it more expensive to build affordable housing. We sit down with Bill Maurer from the Institute for Justice and how they have filed suit againt the city to stop this coercion of money from homeowners. We dive into what the case is all about.
You can find more about them and the court papers: https://ij.org/case/seattle-housing-affordability/
We then dive into the coolest and STRANGEST stuff at the Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas!
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Transcript
[00:00:05] Bill Maurer: the house, I believe, a 2200 square foot addition to their property in a historically African American neighborhood in Seattle, so that her kids and her, another one of her relatives can live there in. Afford to live in Seattle and not have to way out into the suburbs, and the city was saying either to, to build housing units, which she, she can't afford to do or pay the city $77,000 Just to be able to get the permit to be able to construct the additional housing, which when you add that money onto the cost of building in Seattle, makes the entire project uneconomic.
[:[00:01:17] Eric Goranson: Bill Maer on from the Seattle office cuz he's got an amazing case here. Welcome back to the show, brother.
[:[00:01:27] Eric Goranson: This is great. This is great. And man, this Adams versus Seattle case. I tell you what, this is stuff, if you're not living in the Pacific Northwest, these are things that pop up and I live in the Portland area.
[:[00:01:50] Bill Maurer: Yeah, that, that's exactly right. Like a lot of cities, Seattle has seen increasing housing prices and they've been driving out [00:02:00] a lot of middle class homeowners and property builders and generally leaving the city or threatening to leave the city is being comprised of entirely the very rich or the very poor the way.
[:[00:02:45] Bill Maurer: But instead of creating incentives for people to build housing, relaxing zoning rules to allow people to, uh, to have more people in their homes, for instance, what Seattle has done is restricted the [00:03:00] housing market using regulation, but at the same time, mandate. That if any developer, and that can be anything from a multinational corporation based on in the Middle East, building a huge power block.
[:[00:03:44] Bill Maurer: Amount of that they're charging. People can go anywhere, can be up to 35 or $39 per square foot. And or the alternative is you construct housing you are not going to use that you don't want. [00:04:00] Uh, and for single family residence, this is particularly difficult or single family property owners is particularly difficult because you're essentially turning your house into a, into a, an apartment.
[:[00:04:38] Bill Maurer: Owners are forced to construct when they add a housing unit. And what this has done is it squeezed a lot of middle class people out of being able to add housing, basically any units to their homes or to their property. And it's a condition of your building [00:05:00] permit. You have to pay, you either have to pay this a fee, or you have to build this additional housing, or you don't get your bird building permit.
[:[00:05:32] Bill Maurer: And the city was saying either you, you need to, to build housing units, which she's, she can't afford to do or pay the city $77,000 just to be able to get the permit. Yeah. To be able to construct the additional. Which when you add that money onto the cost of building in Seattle makes the entire project.
[:[00:06:00] Eric Goranson: to do it. Sad. Cause this isn't something that's just happening in Seattle. This is something that's happening around everywhere in Portland, Oregon, here where I live, just south of you guys. If somebody has a house fire and their house burns down and the insurance has to come in, the city can charge them $60,000 in development fees just to get the building permit to put the house back.
[:[00:06:31] Bill Maurer: really, it's creating the circumstances where people are either disincentivized to build or they're prohibited from building what at all. And that makes the supply of housing less, which makes the cost of housing.
[:[00:07:10] Bill Maurer: It's also constitu. Um, because the government can do things like if you're building, say you own a lot, undeveloped lot, you build a house there. Because of that, the government has to extend a sewer line there or a water line or additional utilities. The government c can charge you the amount of money that your construction is costing it.
[:[00:08:06] Bill Maurer: And that is un fashioned constitutional. Yeah. It's co It's that it, it is a shakedown and it's unconstitutional. And it's, and we're, we believe that the federal courts will strike this down because it's, it is not consistent with the holdings of US Supreme Court cases dating back decades.
[:[00:08:35] Eric Goranson: And sorry for City of Seattle people, you're listening on the radio right now, but man, they are not good with housing and constitutional rights these days with this, with the development office over there because it seems that they just keep stepping on their own toes every turn they make a new policy.
[:[00:08:55] Bill Maurer: Yeah, it, it all goes back to my first point, which [00:09:00] is that what makes housing affordable is that there's plenty of. And certainly violating someone's constitutional rights does not make housing affordable. Yeah. And conditioning a building permit on a, essentially take holding a building permit hostage in a, in response or in expectation of a payment that doesn't make housing affordable.
[:[00:09:50] Eric Goranson: Don't go anywhere around the house will be right back.[00:10:00]
[:[00:10:15] Bill Maurer: Justice. Yeah. And conditioning a building permit on a, essentially take holding a building permit hostage in a, in response or an expectation of a payment that doesn't make housing affordable.
[:[00:10:55] Bill Maurer: It puts us stop sign in front of any [00:11:00] small development. And you would think that the city would want. The largest amount of people developing properties and would want small developers to develop properties, and so that you have a, a greater diversity and a closeness between the people building the homes and the people buying them.
[:[00:11:30] Eric Goranson: for any middle class homeowner to turn around and get a loan, which most people will do, to do an addition or a new A D U or whatever to the property, and then to tell the bank that, oh yeah, by the way, we have to pay $77,000 in fees on top of this, that the bank is going well.
[:[00:12:04] Bill Maurer: Ms. Adams husband already works two jobs and his basic response to this was, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna work three jobs so that I can pay the city of Seattle this money to get a building.
[:[00:12:25] Bill Maurer: Yeah, it is. Her children are college graduates. They wanna live near their family. They're, the current house is too small to, for the entire family to live in comfortably.
[:[00:13:16] Bill Maurer: Climate conscious way to do that. And it also, what's inconsistent with the city's stated desires for density, I was just gonna say that
[:[00:13:42] Eric Goranson: Oh, by the way, we're gonna make it financially nearly impossible for you to.
[:[00:14:02] Bill Maurer: I don't see how that can work. . But even if it, it does in some instances, which it doesn't, um, it still has to be tied to the actual impact that a particular or specific construction is making to the costs. Yeah. And there's no way that Ms. Adams building a small. For her family members on her property is causing $77,000 worth of harm to housing.
[:[00:14:35] Eric Goranson: city of Common Sense says if the city of Seattle wanted to promote density and people building, they'd be giving her a $77,000 credit on her taxes to build in here and be more dense versus charge her for that because that just makes no sense to me. And you're right. That's crazy.
[:[00:15:30] Eric Goranson: Yeah, and it is a great example here too, is if the city wants to go out and pay for affordable housing for people, at least in my situation down here in Portland, I watched them spend some of their money to build affordable housing. There is not a more expensive way to build affordable housing in a town, is to have your city do it for you versus a private developer, cuz they did that.
[:[00:16:05] Bill Maurer: Yeah. The housing units that they've been constructing, using these, using the fees, have I.
[:[00:16:24] Eric Goranson: Ah, I just, it just blows my mind again that, uh, that they're trying to do this. So I really appreciate, man, with what you guys are doing at Institute Justice for this, cuz these people here take it on a city like you guys do and help people like, Is really important cuz it, not only does it change her situation, it changes all across the country when you start to get this kind of case law out there.
[:[00:17:04] Bill Maurer: Well, thank you. And that's the idea is. We wanna create precedent so that other people who are being abused by other municipalities elsewhere in the country, I can point to that and say, look, you can't do what Seattle did.
[:[00:17:49] Bill Maurer: And that's unique and we don't wanna see that spreading to other cities because the end result is going to be both, is going to be a less. [00:18:00] More expensive housing. Sure. And more violations of people's constitutional rights. That's the big part
[:[00:18:13] Eric Goranson: Correct?
[:[00:18:22] Eric Goranson: we come back we'll wrap this conversation up quickly and then we'll jump into my craziest things that were at the Consumer Electronics Show last week.
[:[00:18:59] Eric Goranson: [00:19:00] Welcome back. The House show. Now let's get back to our discussion and wrap this up quickly with Bill Maher from the Institute for Justice. And then we're gonna talk here about the craziest things and some of the cool things that were at the Consumer Electronics Show this last week. It was pretty wild.
[:[00:19:17] Bill Maurer: And that's unique and we don't wanna see that spreading to other cities because the end result is going to be both, is going to be a less. More expensive housing. Sure. And more violations of people's constitutional rights.
[:[00:19:39] Eric Goranson: People can find out more information on this case over@ij.org, correct? Yes.
[:[00:19:55] Eric Goranson: And there's one important thing on this page up there that I want you to take a look at as our [00:20:00] listening audience that I can give a request for.
[:[00:20:18] Eric Goranson: And you guys just keep up the work. You guys worked with me 15, 18 years ago when we were trying to stop interior design legislation here in Washington State when I was a resident there, and you guys helped us through that and that was a huge battle that we won and that was really nice to do that. Hats off to you guys and thank you for doing the good.
[:[00:20:46] Eric Goranson: for coming on today, brother. Well, let's get over to talking about the consumer electronic show. Now, this is down in Las Vegas every year, and this is kind of the first really big live event.
[:[00:21:22] Eric Goranson: I sat through a lot of the online presence of these big rollouts, you know, for Samsung and all these different people, lg, they had their different rollouts that were online that I could take a look at. And of course I had people on the field down there taking a look for me as well. Cuz quite frankly, I'm getting ready for my TV show right now.
[:[00:21:58] Eric Goranson: They were well behind the game [00:22:00] cuz Ford came out with their lightning and Chevy GMC came out with theirs. Dodge Ram decided to bring out, and I guess it's Ram now, decided to bring out their truck. They reimagined. This electric truck, and I like it when a company and I, I've probably owned one dodge in my life.
[:[00:22:38] Eric Goranson: Well, if you don't have an engine up front and then you've got, uh, you know, electric motors, you don't need that firewall. So what they did is they created a tunnel pass through from the front bumper all the way to the back. So you could literally put in 16 foot lumber. Inside the cab, underneath the, uh, to cover in the back and keep it dry and haul it cuz it goes under [00:23:00] the driver's console there between the front, the front seats thought that was pretty trick.
[:[00:23:20] Eric Goranson: This is the same kind of thing with these automotive seats that are in this truck, but you can adjust them so they slide on the rails, and that means you can also remove them. So if you're a contractor and it's just you running around, but you want to have maybe the dog in the back or the dog in the front, or you want to have your toolboxes in the back cuz the floor is now flat because you don't have that hump in the middle for the drive.
[:[00:23:57] Eric Goranson: And of course there was lots of, uh, different [00:24:00] companies that had infotainment systems and all the different stuff and all the different smart car, you know, concepts that are out there. That are all electric. So something to think about coming forward. But that's not really what we were there for to take a look at.
[:[00:24:33] Eric Goranson: About 40% most of the time. It was the first 40% of the time they talked about their sustainability practices and what they were doing to remove, like post-consumer waste and all those different things. They started out probably the first 20, 25 minutes on almost every one of these talking about their platform and what they're going to do to be more efficient.
[:[00:25:14] Eric Goranson: Um, what I liked is there's a lot of more, a lot of the robot vacuum series. I love Robot Vac. I have one of the, uh, smart things, Samsungs at my house, uh, for my dogs. It is great cause I have hardwood floors and it goes around and picks up hair. I can set it to go. The house, you know, once or twice a day, charges back up does a pretty substantial job of getting all that stuff off the ground.
[:[00:26:04] Eric Goranson: But it's really cool. So now they have warm. Mop drying, so it'll dry the mop as well. So now you can have it mop and clean the floor and vacuum all at once. So I thought that was really trick. That was a really cool thing. And it's not too bad. I mean, these things are expensive, so don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay that at all, but we're, you could spend over a thousand dollars for the Samsung one.
[:[00:26:50] Eric Goranson: Haven't had any problems with 'em. But this is crazy. This is a very flashy fridge because it's got color changing l e d door panels. So Samsung came out [00:27:00] with their bespoke line that has the kind of multicolor panels you can swap out. LG pretty much said, okay guys, and those two are uber competitive.
[:[00:27:30] Eric Goranson: The panel color just by using your app. So if you want it to be bright orange or blue or, or red or pink or whatever, you can change that. Uh, that'll come out here later on this year. But you can actually change it with your phone on that LG uh, think Q Mobile app. So that's gonna be pretty crazy. I thought that was pretty wild as well.
[:[00:28:05] Eric Goranson: But man, it is gonna give you all the alerts you'll ever need to, uh, make sure that, uh, baby's moving right. Temperatures are right. Everything else. It is literally sitting over the crib looking down, and it is giving you all the information and warning you. When things don't go right. All right everybody, we'll be right back after these important messages.
[:[00:28:56] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to The Round The House Show. This is where we helped you get the most outta [00:29:00] your home for information and education. All while we're having fun. Thanks for joining us today. Well, before we get to the Consumer Electronics Show, Steph, that we found out from this last week. Let's talk about how you can get ahold of us.
[:[00:29:27] Eric Goranson: You work in a safe space that we patrol and make sure that, um, you know, the trolls get kicked. . So it's a really good place. And if you want more information about us outside of Social Media, head over to around the house online.com and you can find us over there. And then on the podcast we've got, wow, almost a thousand episodes up.
[:[00:30:05] Eric Goranson: That's where the original is, where we've got all those different episodes. Now let's talk about some of the cool stuff that, uh, that I saw. The Consumer Electronics Show, if you like. You know those hummingbird feeders and bird feeders? They have a cool one. It's the bird buddy camera. It is an embedded bird feeder.
[:[00:30:47] Eric Goranson: So you can store the information in the database for. Reference. So I thought that was kind of trick. That was pretty cool for all you bird lovers out there. Now here's another one that was kind of funky that I'm uh, [00:31:00] I wanna get your opinion on it, so make sure you comment over on, around the house and see what you think about this one here.
[:[00:31:25] Eric Goranson: So it's, it's, it's nice but it's not where it's going to be. And who likes to call across the, the grass and, and pull out your weeds? And, and I don't like to go do a bunch of weed killer all over the lawn either cuz it's not good for the environment, nor are my pets or anything else. So Dandy came up with this weed killing robot.
[:[00:32:09] Eric Goranson: So it's something that you could do without having too much stuff out there. But that's an interesting one. So you can actually send that out and it'll go out and, uh, kill the weeds in your lawn. You don't have to worry about it. So for all you that, uh, don't want to have to worry about that, that's an interesting.
[:[00:32:46] Eric Goranson: And if you wanna really have, uh, you know, Comfort of having a air cleaner strapped to your nose and your mouth that goes around to the headphones that are big book blocky headphones. This is gonna be for you. [00:33:00] Um, it is not attractive. It looks weird and yeah, it's like a modern bane from DC comics, so that one to me wouldn't catch me dead in one of those.
[:[00:33:33] Eric Goranson: So it is a full smart door that way. And then moan came out with some sprinkler controllers. Uh, they came out with one, uh, with some soil sensors. I've been using the ratio. R a c h i o one for years. But, uh, Moen decided to come out with one, which is cool. And uh, they can do that. So that was, again, pretty impressive.
[:[00:34:11] Eric Goranson: And it will record what's going on both inside the cabin and in front of the car Will the vehicle's in motion and you can say, Alexa, and then the record and the camera will capture what's going on, even when the car is still. So that kind of seems creepy and, uh, It could be easy reassuring if you're, you know, you maybe get pulled over an fender bender or something like that.
[:[00:34:50] Eric Goranson: So, uh, it will give a lot more information than it's going to do. So that's an interesting one right there. And TVs were huge as we were talking about at the end of the day. [00:35:00] Now, here's the one that I thought was, this one, I think jumped the shark, and I get what they're trying to do here. But there's, if you're eating breakfast or you're having lunch, I'm sorry, this is not maybe the, the most.
[:[00:35:41] Eric Goranson: And uh, here's the weird part. This is where it jumps the shark. It can even test a, you know, basically tell the difference between various users and the family. Yes. And they call it the stream ID feature. Yeah. Yeah. We can't, I'm just not even gonna go there. That one, uh, [00:36:00] is interesting and, uh, yeah, it seems like outta some weird.
[:[00:36:29] Eric Goranson: You know, your, um, geez, your, all your monitoring on that so you can get all the different, uh, uh, blood pressure and all that different stuff out of it. So pretty cool way to have a cuff less blood pressure monitor for you. So that's not a bad way to go either. Uh, as far as the healthy stuff, I like that.
[:[00:37:02] Eric Goranson: You know, my Keen Boots, Columbia Sportswear, all these different sportswear companies are, have either offices here or like Nike, where they've got about half the state here. I think, you know, it's, it's the shoe central right here. LG decided to jump into this, which I thought this was kind of interesting.
[:[00:37:46] Eric Goranson: Uh, these are little, for instance, it's a little clear box that, uh, has a turntable on the inside and you, it's lit and you can basically stack these cubes up as display [00:38:00] cabinets. Yes, display cabinets for your shoes. And, um, then they've got their, uh, version of. Shoe Styler there, basically, which means that will steam them and deodorize.
[:[00:38:34] Eric Goranson: And then you can hook that into. You know, your app and things like that. There's no pricing out there yet for the Styler shoe or shoe care. But, uh, more information you can hit over to LG and find it over there. Uh, I've got the LG Styler, which is the clothes cleaner, and uh, it's basically is a steamer for your clothes.
[:[00:39:10] Eric Goranson: We've got so much more coming up in the next hour of around the house, and as always, thanks for listening to Around the House.
