This shit is so serious we busted out a stock photo.

shutterstock_money_house.jpg

Everybody in this town kvetches about the ransom we pay for rent around here. Goddamn, do we love to complain about housing stuff. We have kittens when a landlord raises our rent, we shit entire shit-houses of bricks when someone builds an aPodment, we break out in hives on the first of the month.

And rightly so. Rent increased 5.5 percent last year, on top of hikes the years before. So the average one-bedroom now costs more than $1,200 a month—and close to downtown, where the jobs are, the average one-bedroom rents for $1,436. Let's be clear: That is fucking RIDICULOUS.

But when it's time to do the boring, practical shit actually required to make housing affordable to the workers who make this city tick—sexy stuff like negotiating construction incentives, examining bawdy pro formas, debating the merits of ass-fucking rent control? Everyone pops an Ambien. So this blog post features an attention-grabbing Buzzfeed-y headline and a preposterous stock photo. Because if the jacked-up rents in Seattle are going to get fixed, it's not gonna be by those typical neighborhood busybodies who hate density and attend every other community meeting; it'll be because average renters finally popped a NoDoz, embraced good development, and started paying some fucking attention.

SO HARK! The sex-tastic Seattle City Council is holding a blow-your-mind forum from noon to 8 p.m. today at City Hall about the "best ways to meet Seattle's affordable housing needs"! Don't fall asleep yet—wanna know the best part? They'll be releasing brand new reports, which they commissioned last year, about SPECIFIC WAYS WE CAN ACTUALLY HELP FIX THIS PROBLEM. Check it out:

  1. A comparison of Seattle's actual strata of income compared to Seattle's inadequte supply of housing.

  2. How we can tweak incentives to get more housing affordable to working-class denizens.

  3. A compendium of best practices for workforce housing used in other cities that we could use in Seattle.

Today's mindfuckinglyawesome forum features experts from around the country who will talk about what we can do here. But even if you don't go, there's plenty you can do. Read the reports. Write to the council. Learn about this shit if you care about this shit. New incentives, tax breaks, levy funding, pro forma studies, more microhousing, taller buildings, expanding zones for multi-family housing, and other policy ideas should all be on the table. Are the speakers today the final word? No. Are these studies the definitive answer? No. Is this incomplete? Absolutely. But it's a step in the right direction, so pop a NoDoz right now and jump into this discussion. Your ability to afford the basic need of shelter depends on it.