Vote Mike McAuley for mayor of Bellingham

The primary election for mayor here in Bellingham, Washington is only one week away. Here’s why I’m supporting the campaign of Mike McAuley to be our next mayor.

This is a pivotal election for the future of our city, with a rapidly worsening housing crisis that directly or indirectly contributes to nearly every other problem we face. Rising homelessness, environmentally-destructive sprawl, negative impacts on physical and mental health, decreasing economic and demographic diversity, worsening crime rates, so many problems in our community are exacerbated by extreme housing costs. We have to solve the housing problem before we can solve anything else.

We have several fine candidates for mayor in this primary election, and all of them list housing as one of their top priorities, but few of them have plans that match the magnitude of the problem. Certainly, we need to increase renter protections and speed up the permitting for new construction and build the maximum amount of affordable housing we can through federally supported framework of Bellingham Housing Authority. But these are incremental changes that any mayor can and should be doing. We need bigger ideas.

Only Mike McAuley has ambitious enough plans that will make a difference, and he has the depth of expertise and knowledge of urban planning to make them happen. I am especially excited by Mike’s plan to use the city’s borrowing capacity to massively invest in the construction of new city-owned housing at a rate far beyond what we’ve been doing so far.

A few years ago, I was lucky to be part of a group who hosted an exhibition in Bellingham about affordable housing called The Vienna Model (and I should add that my friend Paul Schissler, who happens to be running for city council, was instrumental in bringing that exhibit to Bellingham). When we look at cities outside the US like Vienna, Austria that have solved the housing problem, we see that a sizable public investment in housing is essential for a healthy civic community; it can’t be an afterthought. Place like Zürich and Vienna manage to remain affordable, while still topping the list of global best places to live, precisely because of public investment in the housing market to keep costs under control.

Here in the US, investment in affordable housing is always too little too late. The most impacted local jurisdictions like ours are usually stuck following the lead of state and federal initiatives, unable to make truly transformative changes. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Our city government needs to start building housing, and lots of it, and Mike has a realistic plan for how to make that happen, now. Bellingham can be a model for other cities, keeping costs down and keeping our community together, instead of becoming yet another example of a once thriving town that soon becomes nothing more than a playground only for the rich.

That’s why I’m excited to support Mike McAuley for mayor, and I hope you will too. Don’t forget to mail your ballots before Tuesday, August 1st!

UPDATE:

After I wrote this post, the next day the FairVote Washington candidate guide came out, and Mike McAuley is the only candidate for mayor to get an “A” rating. If I hadn’t already written a whole blog post supporting McAuley for his position on housing, I would definitely have written one praising him for his position on Ranked Choice Voting!

These are very powerful long-term reforms that will also pay off immediately. He’s got the serious deep thinking and the progressive credentials that will make a big difference for Bellingham! Support Mike!