Thank you Pat for shedding light on this issue. This is exactly what my neighbor Dan Leahy, may he rest in peace, argued for years. Why should the rest of us pay higher property taxes so that developers like Walker John can make more profits on market rate housing? The city council has based decisions to use this exemption on the simplistic, and factually incorrect, assumption that increasing the supply of market rate housing will somehow magically trickle down to increase the supply of more affordable housing. The lack of affordable housing can be traced back to policy choices to abandon public involvement in housing and financial markets in the 1980s, and it won't be fixed without a commitment to reel in the greed of the real estate industry. How about houses not bombs? This is a national issue requiring a national response, but Olympia could at least take a positive step in the right direction by rejecting further use of this tax subsidy to developers.
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