Would You Vote for Any of These Economic Policies?

Dave:
Over 50% of Americans say inflation and the economy are of major importance as they decide who to vote for this November. And in recent shows, we’ve covered some of what economists think of each presidential candidate’s economic proposals and housing proposals. But in the spirit of this week’s presidential debate, we’re asking what other economic policies might make a difference in the larger economy and in the housing market. So today, myself and our panelists are going to duke it out on the economy. Welcome to the 2024 on the market debate. Hey everyone, it’s Dave you’re listening to On The Market, and today I am joined by my esteem panelist and political candidates for the day, I guess Kathy Ecky, James Dayer, Henry Washington. I know you guys are super eager to talk politics in this election cycle, especially publicly where it’s going on YouTube, social media and everywhere. This is very exciting.

Kathy:
Can’t

Dave:
Wait. Well, Kathy, you apparently have a political science degree, is that right?

Kathy:
I have a minor in political science and that was a really long time ago and politics were very different then.

Dave:
Yeah, actually, I have to admit, my undergraduate degree is in political science and have not used that one day in my entire life and quickly went back to school for data analytics. A much more practical, much more practical job. But alas, we are here today. We’re going to talk about economic policies that we each think makes sense. So this really isn’t connected to the presidential debate. These are not policies that any specific candidates have necessarily endorsed or believe in. We’re just talking about things that in our regular life as investors, as Americans we think would make sense for the areas of the economy that makes sense to us. So that’s either just growing the general economy or the housing market or affordable housing. So that’s what we’re going to get into today. So basically the format is kind of a debate, but basically each person’s going to go around and share the policy that they like. We’ll beat ’em up a little bit. We’ll ask questions. Hopefully everyone will agree that my policies are the best and then we’ll move on to someone else. Well, in the spirit of the debates that are usually televised, we’re going to start by having you each go through and tell me your campaign slogan.
Kathy, what’s your slogan?

Kathy:
Scaling Smart because today is the day of our book launch of Scaling Smart, so it makes a lot of sense. That is my campaign.

Henry:
How political of you to pick a topic in your own? This is,

Kathy:
I think if I win we can all win.

Dave:
Well, congratulations, Kathy. I’m still not voting for you, but congratulations on launching your new book. Very exciting. I do have it. I started reading it. I’m very eager to get to the end. So everyone check out Kathy and Rich’s new book. We’re actually going to be talking more about scaling Smart in the future episode, so make sure to check that out for sure. James, what’s your campaign slogan?

James:
It’s Path to Progress. Okay. Have a campaign that’s going to bring progress to all communities, developers, affordable housing, everybody, all Americans.

Dave:
I like it. Okay, Henry, what’s your campaign slogan?

Henry:
Make housing Affordable again. Okay.

Dave:
I am seeing a theme develop here because I also have a affordable housing theme slogan, which is Supply is the only answer.

Henry:
My policy is the best policy. Your policies are silly. We all know that I have the best policies.

Dave:
I think we’ll hear about them soon, Henry, but they’re probably all very similar, but now you have to go first. Ed, why are your policies so better? What is your policy, first of all, and why is it better than all of ours?

Kathy:
And why are you not wearing a red tie?

Henry:
I know how unpolitical of me. Yeah, so I picked affordable housing obviously, and that is because there have been three shows, at least one of which was probably one of my favorite shows that we’ve ever done where we talk about how we can solve affordable housing or how affordable housing could be solved. And many times I’ve said, if this is going to happen, it’s going to take multiple parties working together. It has to be builders and developers partnering with local investors, partnering with city governments, partnering with federal government in order for this to actually make sense. And so in this policy it is more around how can we have a coordinated effort to increase affordable housing through providing tax breaks and incentives to builders and investors and incentives to local city governments in order to create spaces where investors would like to build affordable housing and where it’s not going to financially impact everyone negatively in a way so much so that it won’t happen.
So in other words, this policy would allow tax breaks for city and local governments to create opportunity zones within their cities and municipalities. And in these opportunity zones builders and investors would get tax credits and or benefits for. So in other words, builders who would build single or multifamily and affordable housing in these opportunity zones could receive tax credits. And an example would be a tax credit equal to 20 to 30% of the total construction costs that would allow them to be able to afford to build affordable housing in these opportunity zones. And then I believe all of us are going to touch on this, but waiving fees and permit costs and expediting that process to allow them to get these things done faster and more efficiently. And then for the small investors, so now we’re talking the mom and pop investors kind of like myself who were just carrying rental properties, we would allow them to be able to purchase properties in these areas and give them access to low interest rate or a hundred percent financing through programs.
Think of programs like the 2 0 3 K loan program. So we have this low interest rehabilitation loan program where investors would be able to finance their property, finance the renovation, not have to put much of their own money into the project, and then they would have to build a product and not exceed a price per square foot that’s set by the local government so that the home would truly be affordable to those that want to buy it for those who qualify for the program or if they keep the property as a rental property, then there would be some rent control. They wouldn’t be able to have rent above a maximum for whatever bedroom, bathroom, square footage limitations that that city or local government decides so that the rent is truly affordable in that market. And for doing that, they would be able to either have a hundred percent bonus depreciation, so be able to offset their taxes by keeping that property and maximizing the bonus depreciation or they would be able to defer the capital gains or forego having to pay capital gains taxes on those properties.
So those are some of the thoughts that I had. And then allowing the cities to choose the opportunity zones gives cities the opportunity to pick maybe areas of the city where they’re not bringing in much tax dollars right now, where they want to have more development and they’re losing money and then now they can revitalize these areas by having people come in and build affordable housing. And it helps cut down on the nimby, the not in my backyard people, because if these areas are already predetermined by the city and local governments, then you can’t have people coming in and saying, well, I don’t want this in my backyard.

Dave:
Oh yeah, they can. I don’t think that’s going to stop them,

Henry:
But it might not stop anything.

Dave:
Alright, candidate Washington, very presidential name. This all sounds great, but how are you going to pay for it, Henry?

Henry:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I have no idea.

Kathy:
At least he’s honest. At least he’s honest, right? I vote for him for honesty,

Henry:
I

Kathy:
Have

Henry:
No idea, but I was more focused on what the policy would actually be that would be beneficial to all parties.

Dave:
I mean, this is true political speak, you just promise things that don’t actually have a logistical way of paying for it or

Henry:
It seems to have been working for generations. I don’t know why this has to be any

Dave:
Different, but I will say I do think that one of the benefits of some of the proposals Henry stated, which are tax credits is that you’re not spending money on these things, you’re just foregoing future revenue. And the assumption is, and this is not an area of economics and really know much about, but the assumption is that the development, the economic activity and the affordable housing that is created by these tax credits will create enough growth and tax revenue in other ways that it more than makes up for the tax credit being provided to the developers. So Kathy, I am curious what you think about this because you, I know in the past have attempted building affordable housing with mixed results and some negative ones recently. So do you think this is a feasible policy?

Kathy:
I do think that what I’ve seen is that oftentimes the developer does take on the burden of providing affordable housing, which in some cases is fine. If you’ve got a developer who stands to make millions and millions of dollars on their project, generally a third of that housing project is slated to be affordable. But in times like we’ve had recently when things are out of our control covid where your project is shut down and you can’t build those homes and you can’t move your project forward, but you still take that burden, that’s unfair. So a policy that would just balance that out a little where not all of the burden falls on the developer because the more the burden falls on the developer, which we see a lot here in California, the less they want to do business here. So opportunity zones are already in place. It’s already an opportunity for a lot of investors. A lot of the prices have already gone up, so it’s been a little bit less enticing, but anytime that you can incentivize business in an area, you’ll get more business. So I think we’d have to figure out next step how to pay for it,

Henry:
How to pay for it, and then how to sustain it across multiple investors. If you think you’re an investor who builds a rental property, even if you bonus depreciate that property, you could still end up in a position where you need to sell it and then what happens when you sell it? Do you have to pass on the rent control and is that going to be feasible for the next buyer? I’m not saying there’s no loopholes in this policy, I’m just saying it’s a start.

James:
And Henry, we can find your money fairly easily. They spend 67 billion a year on affordable housing already. We can just grab a couple billion, move it over because they’re spending this much money and what’s the results? We have no housing. There’s a homeless crisis and it’s not working.

Henry:
Oh, so James is my VP candidate. He finds the funding. Oh, we’re getting

Dave:
An alliance

Henry:
Here. I

James:
Cosign this

Henry:
Bill.

James:
I

Dave:
Fully cosign this bill. I like this. I like this kind of political drama that we have going on. All right, well James, are you accepting Henry’s offer to be his vice president?

James:
I fully accept Henry’s offer. We are on one ticket and we’re going to get things done because right now nothing’s getting done. Homeless crisis at all time, high affordable housing. It’s this constant struggle with Americans and we spent a lot of money on it and we’re burning money because if we’re spending 60 to 70 billion a year, that’s 1% of our total federal outlay for funding and we cannot make progress then we’re doing it wrong. So I fully endorse Henry and it’s time for things to change Henry for president.

Dave:
Alright, so we’ve heard Henry’s policy and next up is I guess his vice presidential candidate, James Dard. Stay tuned for his path of progress proposal right after the break. Hey everyone, welcome back to On the Market. Okay, well if you guys are going on the ticket, we need to know where his vice president stands on these issues. So what is your policy?

James:
This is why I’m a good vp. It’s a lot more tactical. Okay, it compliments my running mate Henry, but it’s a lot more tactical. This has been something I have been passionate about for years, but then I talk about it but no one listens. So now I finally have a platform.

Henry:
I am here to listen James

James:
Because the biggest issue is federal waste and spending. We spend this money, we get developers get taxed, we pay these fees and the money goes nowhere. And so I am proposing a new plan to get the money to the small people, get the money to the people who need it. My policy is all about permits for progress. How can we create progress with tactical little tangible steps? I think one of the issues in politics is politicians talk too much. All they do is yap and they don’t do any of the work. And so this is a very tactical bill and it might be more for me running for mayor than it would be president, but I believe one of the issues like Henry touched on affordable housing is a huge issue and we have yet to figure out how to tackle it. So it is time to incentivize small jurisdictions and cities to expedite that permit process. So I’m proposing a bill where we can have federal funding that will help local jurisdictions and state jurisdictions to help staff up in the building department to fast track permits and create more revenue, not for the state but for the neighborhoods of where the development’s going on.
Because all we hear is that big bad developers come into these cities and they gentrify the cities, they change the whole cities because people can’t keep up with costs. So let’s help them with costs with actual solutions. What I’m proposing is that federal government can fund these cities to help staff them up. By them staffing up, they can then turn around permit timelines a lot faster, and then the developers can opt or not opt to pay double the fees to streamline your permits. It will make a huge difference across the community because then the money we’re talking about, which is an average permit cost of around 10,000 to 20,000 per permit for development then goes into a community fund for low income housing that they can apply for to get the repairs done to their homes needed. Because most of the times when people have to sell, it’s not because they’re in a bad financial situation per se, it’s because they can’t afford the cost of housing and the keep up.
The reason developers buy them and tear them down is because they’re in poor conditions because they weren’t able to take care of this maintenance. And so I’m proposing that we create a tax that actually gets into people’s hands where they can use it. They can stay in their homes for the next a hundred years like they’ve had in their family and it creates more affordable housing too because these people who are selling the properties now can stay there for the long time and keep up with these expenses that they can’t. If we did 500 permits at $10,000 a pop, which would be kind of low, that would create 5 million in a neighborhood revenue that they could tap into to take care of their property.

Dave:
Wait, help me explain how this would work, James.

James:
So let’s talk through the dollars. I’m glad you asked that, Dave, because we need to see how the impact is going to affect these neighborhoods.

Kathy:
We have another candidate here who has no idea how to pay for this.

James:
Oh, this is going to pay for it, Kathy, because that’s beautiful thing about this bill. It has tangibles behind it. So let’s say Kathy lives in UE Washington and Kathy makes 45 grand a year and she’s owned her home for 50 years and during that time things like roof, windows, electrical, plumbing, those are key mechanical items that make a house breakdown. Kathy then is now in the choice of where she can either sell the property because she can’t afford the repairs for great money. She’s going to get paid a lot of money to her family that then they can reallocate later, but then they have to move into a different area. What this bill will do is allow someone like Kathy to stay. So when I go in and apply for my permits in the city of Bellevue, typically it’s going to take me six to 12 months if not longer to get those permits.
Those permits are going to cost me 10 to $20,000, more around $20,000. I can pay an expedited fee to get those permits in 30 to 60 days and pay an additional $20,000, but then it’s not going to federal waste. It goes into a community fund inside that zip code that we applied for permits for and then Kathy then can apply showing that her income is lower and that she needs these repairs and she can apply for that and there’s a community fund to replace her windows in her roof. So now she doesn’t have to worry about moving into a different area because she can’t keep up with the expenses. In the meantime, the new buyers coming into the market because developers now can streamline their permits and get them done faster. It allows for fluid inventory to where units can be brought to market in a very fluid pace. They’re not waiting for 12 months incurring massive amounts of debt that they have to now compensate through selling for more and everybody wins. There’s more housing units on a steady flow for less because the developer has less costs. The homeowners that do not want to leave the neighborhood that cannot afford to move into another part of the neighborhood can now stay in. Sellers can sell when they want to sell, not when they have to sell,
And this kind of dollars will help everyone and get the money where it needs to go, which is the people’s hands that need it.

Henry:
And this sounds like it would take neighborhoods out of gentrification and more into revitalization, so keeping people in neighborhoods they’re currently in.

Dave:
Okay, you too are showing off a little bit. James has a policy that pays for itself. Henry’s coming up with catchy slogans that kind of rhyme. I might vote for you guys. I don’t think I’m even going to present my idea.

Henry:
Revitalization, not gentrification. Say it with me now. Read my lips. No more permit problems.

Dave:
No more permit problems. Okay, well I like this idea. Kathy, what are your thoughts?

Kathy:
Well, I think you should vote for me. I love the idea of communities being more involved in their communities and one of the property teams that we worked with in Pittsburgh, we were going in those areas and fixing up homes together and hiring locally, bringing in people that didn’t know how to do different trades, training them so that they were very much involved improving their neighborhoods and then they could be hired to help manage those properties and keep the neighborhoods safe. So just more investment in people loving and caring for their neighborhoods and it was a super successful program. I loved the idea of bringing training the locals on local trades so that they could be working in their neighborhoods. So from that aspect, yeah, absolutely. It’s all about the community.

Henry:
One thing I would ask is in this scenario, James, when the builders apply for the expedited permits, what would be in place to help them build more affordable housing and not just expedite their permits to build more a class properties that would essentially gentrifying neighborhood? Good point.

James:
Well, that’s what we’re using your policy for. Mine’s a little bit more local. Yours is a little bit more federal affordable. I think sometimes tax credits aren’t even the answer though. We do need tax revenue to pay for how we run our country, and as long as it’s done correctly, it supports itself. I think access to debt, what do we know is the most brutal expense on developers? It’s debt. It’s not construction costs because you perform of those out. You might have a little bit of creep, it could be five to 10%, but when your debt goes twice as long, it’s detrimental.
And so access to debt for maybe at 1% lines or 2% lines so you can this product keep your cost down and then sell it to a more affordable. If you provide this affordable housing, you get that break to build it out. I mean the government now is participating by accessing different costs of capital and if for me, it allows the tax dollars to still come in, it’s not just a shelter for tax dollars or people are doing it just to get the write off, they’re getting a usable tool to develop and create the right product.

Dave:
Love it. Okay. All right. Wow,

Henry:
Stamp the ticket.

Dave:
The Washington Dater ticket is coming out hot right now, but I want to hear Kathy’s policy. Not everyone around here has a minor in political science, so let’s hear from like

Kathy:
40 years ago. Yeah,

Dave:
Let’s hear how you’re applying that to your

Henry:
Campaign. I think that makes you more qualified than most candidates still probably.

Kathy:
Well, that would be the first rule. Is anyone applying for politics, any political position at all would need to take an economics class and pass a test. So that would be the first thing I would require. But in our book, scaling Smart, which I am not promoting at all, I’m just simply giving the education. I’m scaling smart,

Henry:
Simply speaking fact,

Kathy:
Yes, the difference between growing and scaling with a country that’s growing, which ours is oftentimes that’s also the expenses, the debt, everything grows together, and then in the case of a company, that company can eventually implode because the debt can continue to grow, the costs grow, but the actual profits start to just sort of flatten out. So scaling’s the opposite. It is growing while reducing expenses. So this would be my platform. It doesn’t have so much to do with housing, but more to do with how do we, first chapter is being unified. How does our country come back to being unified? Just really just on anything. Maybe it’s just our love for this country. I’m young enough to remember when that was pretty common when we loved America and we’re proud of this country and what would that look like? What would be the values that we hold together where we’re not divided as we are today?
There was a time, and again I remember it sitting around a dinner table where we could have debates that we’re healthy and discuss, so this is the America I would want to bring back and that would be having this common goal of who are we? How do we define who we are as a country? And then from there, looking at how do we make sure that’s equitable? There’s three pillars to what I would do on my platform. It is fostering growth, more growth in this country, but reducing costs. So I would present that across the board. We all reduce our expenses, so starting there and bringing in community to help with that, that we get to be a part of that. How do we do that together? Then fostering growth. This is where how do we still grow but grow with less expenses? And one of the ways to do that is to really encourage small business.
A lot of people don’t realize how important small business is in America, but we are the melting pot. We are the innovators. That’s who we are. Let’s remember that our values together. If we could reduce regulatory burdens and provide tax incentives for small businesses, which are the backbone of job creation, that’s defined as companies with fewer than 500 employees and accounts for 46% of the total private workforce in the us, how can we encourage small business and again, giving tax incentives and reducing the regulation. Again, maybe it’s simplified tax filing processes, grants for innovation and easier access to low interest loans like you guys were talking about. Not handouts, but loans, low interest loans. Those loans have to be paid back, but you are contributing to the economy and then how do you help people start businesses? You invest in our young people. I lived in Switzerland as an exchange student and they have trade schools after high school. If college isn’t for you, you go into a trade school and you learn a trade so that in two years you can provide for your family and give to the country. And we have a problem with trades. We don’t have enough workers for the jobs that we have out there.

Henry:
That’s very true.

Kathy:
And then the next thing is how do women and young families do that when they’ve got kids? It’s really hard. Daycare is extremely expensive, so making sure that our most vulnerable, the little children of America are also provided that healthcare, so they’re not sitting at home watching TV all day while their parents are trying to get their careers off the ground. We would provide childcare for these babies up to five years old because if you are half building a family, that’s a good 10 years. If you’re going to have three children, let’s say that’s 10 years that you’ve got little ones running around. So again, the premise being cutting costs across the board, we all take that pain together and then together lift each other up to create more, to grow more.

Dave:
I mean that minor in political science, Kathy went a very long way. That was a pretty good policy. I feel like you hired a speech writer for that. That was very impressive.

Kathy:
It’s in the book. It’s in the book. How do you increase output while reducing costs?

Dave:
All right, well, I’m waiting for the Washington Danner ticket to fight back here.

Henry:
Hey, it is easy to have peaceful debates around a dinner table when everyone can afford a home to have a dinner table in. Look, this is why we need to vote Washington so that we can make housing more affordable again for everybody.

James:
We’re about brick and mortar, Washington Danner, brick and mortar 2024 tangible things that will get things done. I do like what Kathy’s talking about creating more tangibles. It’s a good concept in theory, but how we also have to get people to change their minds because is you can go out and get trade school training right now and make a good living and your return for college on trade school is going to 10 x what you’re going to go at these universities. The universities now are expensive. It’s hard to get education, but you can go to trade school for a fraction of the cost and do really well and as things like chat, GBT come along, these trades are going to be important. So how do we get these people to do it? Because it is out there. That’s why Washington Dard, we’re giving the tangibles because we’re going to deliver the product that people need without having to do the work. They need affordable housing, we’re going to get it to ’em. They’re not going to take the trade school. We’re just doing what we need to do. This is the

Kathy:
Problem, James, is the problem is we can say it’s easy to go to a trade school, but it’s about 20 to $30,000 and in some cases $80,000. It’s easy for us to say, yeah, just go to trade school, but what if you can’t afford that?

Henry:
Yeah, I think having policies or programs that would allow trade school to be more affordable is great. I still think what James is saying is correct is we have to find a way to make trade school cool again because a lot of the youth doesn’t want to go put in the work and be a tradesman because of the labor intensive parts of those jobs. There’s less people doing it, not because they can’t make money. I think a lot of youth understand they can go make 100, 200, $300,000 a year if they go and become a master plumber or a master electrician, but then they have to go be a master plumber or a master electrician and that’s just not sexy when you can sit behind a desk somewhere and make a similar salary. So we have to do something to make those things seem cool. Again, I think what’s cool about social media is there are a lot of accounts of people who are tradesmen who make it look cool by showing the work that they’re doing every day. So we’ve got to, we’ve got to not just provide the education for people, but how do we make the youth understand that not only is this needed, but it’s cool and you should want to do it

Dave:
Living in Europe. I do think that it’s a really important cultural distinction like here in the Netherlands, it’s similar to the Switzerland where a lot of people go to a trade school because not only is it more affordable, but it’s just a valued part of society. People here value someone who’s a plumber, an electrician, as much as someone who has an office job and some people in the United States see it that way. But I think for a long time our whole culture, whole country was saying everyone has to go to college. You have to go to college, and I do think it takes some time to unwind that because I know for me that was pounded into my head my entire
Childhood and we have to sort of unlearn that even if the dollars and cents and ROI of trade school are so obvious, it has to be a cultural shift on top of just an economic one. Alright, time for one last quick break, but stick around. We’ll get to our last economic platform, which some say is our best economic platform because it’s mine obviously when we return and while we’re away, if you’ve been tuning out from politics but happen to like this spirited debate, take a quick moment and send this episode to a friend or maybe someone you just enjoy arguing with. It helps us grow the show and it means a lot to us. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to the 2024 on the market debate. Alright, any last campaign slogans to throw in there? Candidate feki.

Henry:
Look, I know she’s charismatic folks. She’s pretty, she’s charismatic. You hear her voice and you just want to do what she says. It’s such a soothing voice, but you have to look past the soothing words and see is what she’s saying actually feasible. Washington Dana 20. I love this

Dave:
Style over substance.

Kathy:
I like your new slogan. Make trade sexy again. That’s a great slogan. Or maybe that’s mine. I don’t know. Maybe we can work together guys. Wow, let’s do that. Let’s run together In Switzerland, bringing them back. They don’t vote for one president and I don’t know how it is. When I was there, you had six presidents and they would trade off every year.

Speaker 5:
Is that true?

Kathy:
It was then, and I could be completely wrong, but they would trade off each year, so it was every six years. You wouldn’t have to go through this drama every four years and each year one of those people trades off. Now if that’s not true, let’s make it true. We three run, all four of us run and each year we get to be president for four years.

James:
I like that rotating seat. You only got to commit for one. Then you get to go back to work and then you come. I’m good with that schedule.

Kathy:
Well, you’re still on the board. You’re still on the board. Everybody’s on the board for that time period, but somebody gets to be leader.

Henry:
We are revamping the entire political system in this show for the betterment of society.

Kathy:
Absolutely.

James:
Returning congress into a board.

Dave:
Wow, this isn’t just a debate, it’s a political revolution.

Kathy:
Don’t you think it’s time?

Dave:
Okay, well let’s move on to the final policy here. You guys stole some of mine, I’ll be honest, but I’m, so I’m going to change my policy nickname a little bit to CITE site and it stands for construction is too Expensive. That is my policy and I like Henry and James want to encourage more building and more supply because ultimately there are all these political people coming out and saying that they want to reduce housing costs. That’s great, but they’re focused on short-term solutions that aren’t actually addressing the root cause of expensive housing, which is that there is not enough supply and it is too difficult to build new housing. So I agree with Henry and James, I’m going to just take a slightly different approach to how you would go about that. And for the record, I do think that you guys have good proposals, but I want to go one step further and talk about two different policies that I think would actually make a lot of sense.
One is on the municipal and local level, make it easier for developers and home builders to use modular and prefab housing. Construction for the majority of the world is so old school, it’s insane. People in the 17 hundreds got up on ladders and hammered nails. We’re still getting up on ladders and hammering nails. How do we get construction into a modern era? Well, a lot of companies are doing a really good job creating prefab houses and creating modular houses, but as a developer, you still have to apply for permits in the exact same way that you would for a custom built house. So how do we create a system where a company goes in and gets pre-approved for all of their buildings like X, Y, Z modular home company goes to the city of Seattle or the city of Fayetteville and says, here are our plans, here are the products that we have. Can you review all of them and so that anyone who wants to build can fast track their permits process. So James, I’d be willing to maybe do some deals and maybe get in on your ticket a little bit on this one before I go to my second one. What do you think of that one, James?

James:
I think that’s great. It’s efficient. We have that right now in Seattle there is pre-approved DADU plans.

Dave:
Amazing.

James:
They’re detached accessory dwelling units. Those permits are typically issued in two to three months as long as it’s a pre-approved plan by the city rather than nine to 12 months, and so it is, I like the concept. It works. I think one of the issues being if it’s still going through capitalism, the units are selling for a lot and so it’s not producing actually the intent, which is affordable housing. These units are selling for nearly a thousand bucks a foot in Seattle, which is not affordable, and so I think there needs to be some other additional layers added in if we really want to bring affordable housing to the units. Well, how can we streamline that?

Henry:
Oh, you mean the layers that I outlined in my policy?

James:
Exactly. That’s where I was leading to going back to Henry’s policy, creating more different types of funding. I have an amendment to propose to your bill as well.

Dave:
Okay.

James:
I think that affordable housing should be privatized completely because the government I was looking at California, they spend an average of six to $700,000 per unit for affordable housing. They should be fired.

Dave:
Yeah. I mean that’s ridiculous. It’s insane, but I don’t know how that worked. That’s sort of another conversation, but they hire private contractors for that. Is that a public private thing? It’s not like government employees were going out there and swinging hammers,

Speaker 5:
But

James:
They should be fired. If I hired a contractor to build out my development site and I go, Hey, I’m hiring you. Just build it for what it costs and then come bring me the bill and I’m going to sell it later. When I hire a company, I know what my costs are. There’s a fixed bid, there’s a proposal. You manage that. If there’s a change, they have to show why there’s a change with the change order. They just write an open checkbook and they burn the money, and so that’s why I think it should be more privatized and every one of them should be fired off that they’re doing a terrible job. There’s no impact. The

Dave:
Cost, I don’t disagree with you, James, but your candidate, you’re over your allotted time. You are over your allotted time. It is my time. You’ll be fired, Dave. You hear that? Speak right now. I don’t disagree with you, but I don’t want to go into a whole diatribe about that one program, even though it is ridiculous what happened there. Okay, so my second one is a new policy here that we have not talked about, which is a federal level investment into construction technology, and there is precedent for this and it has worked in the past. If you look at recent examples, there have been bipartisan, it does exist, support for things like the CHIPS Act where we incentivize private investment into American manufacturing of semiconductors and computer chips or during the pandemic, the government worked together for operation warp speed, which put a ton of federal money into developing vaccines for covid.
If affordable housing is a national crisis, which I think most people believe it is, why aren’t we coming up and putting money on a federal level not to giving it out to individual developers? I think that stuff works, but it has to work at a local level, sort of like what James was saying. That can’t be done at a federal level. What the federal government can do is try and invent technologies so we stop getting people climbing up with ladders at hammering nails and we actually have robots or something that could actually build homes much more efficiently. Let’s use the considerable resources of the US government to make construction actually efficient and easy for us to build new homes. That’s my platform.

James:
This is why people are voting Washington Dard Meyer 2024 is all about killing jobs. If you have technology do this all, there will be no jobs. Kathy built is dead. I’m

Dave:
Fine with that. Do you know how there is so many labor shortages? We could reallocate those people to higher paid jobs, we could put them in trade school so that they learn how to do maintenance on this construction. I think you have a very limiting mindset here, James, and we’re going to, as Kathy said, grow our way out of this. If we can better support and get people out of construction, we can get ’em to even higher paid jobs, less dangerous jobs.

Kathy:
Every time we’ve had a new technology, people freak out that jobs are going to be lost, but even a whole bunch of new jobs come online.

Henry:
Oh man. I watched clips recently about how people felt about the internet when it came out and it sounds exactly how they sound now with AI coming out and people are still working.

Dave:
Oh, totally. I read an article from, it was 1930s about how all these people were protesting that telephone switchboard operators were going to be put out of business and it was going destroy the economy. Come on. The whole entire economy is based on innovating and having new, better jobs come up.

Henry:
Look, here it is. I think Washington Dard obviously it’s still the best choice here,

Dave:
But let’s get back to brass tacks. Just I would

Henry:
Like to bring on Dave Meyer as a cabinet consultant because I think his policies are good.

Dave:
Yes. Okay. I don’t want to be the public facing, I want to be like the nerd in the background. I’ll just be the bureaucrat. Alright, well thank you. I accept that way we know that we won and we could just all not vote for Kathy. Thanks guys.

Kathy:
Today was my book launch. I was looking for a little more support

Dave:
Actually. I don’t know. I think we need Kathy as our front person, as our front woman. She is very articulate. She was nailing all the buzzwords. She was talking about reconciliation, which I think we can all get behind. So maybe it’s just an on the market ticket.

Henry:
Yeah, give money to the babies. Let’s treat the kids good. Yeah, she hit all the buzzwords for sure.

Kathy:
I don’t know. I don’t know guys. I don’t know if we need a woman as a president here in the US I mean after 250 years we’ve got this far. Just kidding. Yeah, it’s time.

Dave:
Alright, well this was a lot of fun. This was a great debate. I did not know which way this show is going to go and I had a great time, so hopefully you all had a great time as well. Again, this show has nothing to do with the actual debate that went on this week. We are recording it before the debate actually happened, so we don’t know what the implications are, but we just thought it’d be fun to introduce some ideas, maybe some you’ve heard of some that you haven’t into the political consciousness as we go into this election season. So Kathy, Henry, James, thank you all so much for putting so much thought into this. It really was a lot of fun and thank you all so much for listening. We appreciate you and we’ll see you for the next episode of On The Market. Very Soon. On The Market was created by me, Dave Meyer and Kaylin Bennett. The show is produced by Kaylin Bennett, with editing by Exodus Media. Copywriting is by Calico content and we want to extend a big thank you to everyone at BiggerPockets for making this show possible.