The Herons Come Home To Roost

One of our Real Change vendors once told me how she loves selling the paper in Magnolia. "All of the people are beautiful," she said. I asked what she meant and she gave me poetry. "All the men have pink skin and white hair and the most beautiful shoes you can imagine."

And, apparently, they don't want homeless people around. They might scare away the Blue Heron.

The eruption in Magnolia reported in last Saturday's Post-Intelligencer by Sanjay Bhatt isn't a surprise to us. Real Change's Cyd Gillis reported on the first of four neighborhood planning meetings concerning proposals for homeless housing at Fort Lawton three weeks prior, and the reaction wasn't much different then.

Along with neighborhood concerns over housing for Native elders and families who had experienced domestic violence coming out of transitional housing — could Girl Scouts, they asked, be assured safety while selling cookies door to door— Gillis reported that the various proposals on the table were moving past the selection process toward finalization.

United All Tribes ambitiously proposed a mixed-income housing development that includes a Native American College and 169 units of permanent housing for homeless seniors, families and single adults. DESC's proposal would have put 75 units of housing there for chronically homeless people. The watered down mix the City seems to now favor would work with United All Tribes and the YWCA to create a range of affordable housing that includes at least 66 units of housing for homeless elders and families who are leaving transitional housing.

The choice of 66 is interesting in itself. This is the number of Capehart Housing units that will revert to Discovery Park green space sometime after the last military family moves out in 2009. Councilmembers Peter Steinbrueck and Sally Clark strengthened some wimpy language in the final Capehart acquisition deal last September to ensure one-to-one replacement of the doomed housing.

Bhatt's article had numerous lovely details.

At one community meeting, some residents wondered whether homeless housing at the fort would attract wife-beaters, sex offenders and crack addicts. They rolled their eyes when city officials asserted that such housing increases property values. They worried about the impact on schools and scoffed at the idea of homeless people shopping at the closest grocery — which sells pheasant-and-rosemary pâté for $9.99 and ground coffee for up to $18 a pound.

"We're the ones who live here, and we want to have a nice, safe neighborhood to live in," Donald Raz, a King County deputy prosecutor and Magnolia resident, said later.

Like most affluent neighborhoods in Seattle, Magnolia doesn't have any housing for homeless people mainly because land is too expensive for social-service agencies to buy.

The quotes from Block and Quinn were especially interesting.

"What is it that makes homeless people different enough that they don't 'fit' in that neighborhood?" asks Bill Block, project director of the Committee to End Homelessness in King County, a coalition of agencies, businesses and churches. "Affluent people become homeless."

I suppose they ocassionally do. But mostly, in this economy, they become more affluent. I'm guessing that Bill's attempt to sell formerly homeless people as being just like the exfoliated folk of Magnolia went over about like a dead baby joke at a baptism. Is economic diversity so threatening we need to pretend it doesn't exist?

But the Buried Treasure Quote of the Week Award goes to Quinn.

"Fundamentally they [federal officials] understand that with homeless housing, you can't have so much out there that you can't sell the fair-market value housing," said Adrienne Quinn, director of Seattle's Office of Housing. "We're trying to achieve that balance," she said.

Did she really just say that? Did someone dose her Dasani with sodium pentathol? I mean, this is extraordinary.

Perhaps what she meant was that federal officials would not knowingly undermine property values by overly imposing homeless housing on any one community. But this is also a refreshingly honest take on the laws of supply and demand. If you provide too much housing for poor people, it undermines the market scarcity that drives up cost (or viewed from the other side, profit). It seems odd that anyone could believe we're anywhere near that point, but I guess one can never be too careful..

Is anyone surprised that Magnolia, which has fewer poor people and lower rates of charitable giving than most any neighborhood in the city, is afraid of the homeless? Given the City's recent media litany regarding homeless criminality on City public lands, we should expect reactions like theirs everywhere.

You can't stigmatize homeless people as drug addicted vectors of disease and moral decay on one day, and on the next say they're just like the top income-quintile folk of Magnolia. The cognitive dissonance will make people's heads explode.

The recent City propaganda campaign around homeless camping exploits fear that is there for the taking. Homeless people, in much of the middle-class imagination, symbolize much more than an implied absence of housing affordability. Peter Marcuse's landmark Neutralizing Homelessness essay dwells on this point. "The homeless are alienation incarnate," he says, and disturb our sense of the appropriately public and private.

Timothy Gibson, in Securing the Spectacular City, expands upon Marcuse's observation.

The spectacle of homeless citizens attending to themselves in public is disturbing in its own right. In other words, when the homeless are forced to attend to their private needs in parks, alleys, and sidewalks, public spaces begin to take on aspects of "home:" they now become places to sleep, to drink, to make love, to use the toilet, and so on. In modern bourgeois societies, this is activity "out of place." This activity inverts the distinction between public and private spaces that is fundamental to middle-class notions of citizenship and propriety. Such activities can therefore signal to urban residents the "order of things" has been unraveled—that is this place at least, things are falling apart. ...

For many urban residents, the homeless have thus become something of an urban "indicator species" for social disorder, "diagnostic of the presumed ill-health" of urban life and the need to gain control and rationalize urban public space.

The City didn't invent fear of homeless people as Other. In their quest to turn downtown Seattle into a squeaky clean vision of urban living — something akin to an upscale suburban mall but with better food and more atmosphere — they just used the tools at hand. When Magnolia gives in to irrational fear regarding potential strangers in their midst, it's a case of the Blue Herons coming home to roost.

The Straw Man Gets a Workout

I remember a great story I heard a number of years ago from an activist with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. Apparently, there was a very pro-environment candidate for office who wasn't so hot on the whole human needs thing. He was dogged during his campaign by Tree Man.

A guy in a tree suit showed up everywhere the candidate did holding his sign. "Would you care for me if I was a tree?"

City Council voted to finalize the Capehart Housing acquisition in Discovery Park on Monday, which was a surprise to approximately nobody. It was good to see political leadership from Sally Clark and Peter Steinbrueck that upgraded the one-to-one housing replacement language and made it non-contingent on the Fort Lawton deal going through.

I was surprised to see Tom Rassmussen quoted in the Post-Intelligencer describing the inappropriateness of the park for "people in transition."

An editorial in the PI makes the same point.

We did have some concerns, however, about access to shops and transportation.

For example, the nearest bus stop we could find was close to a mile away and basic drugstore supplies required a trip of more than two miles. It appears that the Seattle City Council agreed, and voted to knock down the homes.

Have these people ever been to a ghetto? But even this is beside the point. Perhaps some people have argued for use of the housing for homeless people, but most folks I know feel that the housing should be maintained as workforce housing until its useful life is exhausted. Tom is arguing against a position nobody supports.

Most people who know about housing — and I count Rassmussen in this category — know that there is a relationship between availability of workforce housing and housing for the very poor. As available options become scarce, those on the bottom rungs of the market start getting knocked off. We all get this.

This is why the Capehart housing should be preserved for however long this is possible.

We've seen portrayals, most notably by Tim Ceis, of this housing as some sort of rotting from within, asbestos-laden, lead paint hazard that any sane person would pretty much tear down on sight, but this is belied by the fact that the families who will live there into 2009 find it perfectly habitable. In fact, everyone who sees it tends to describe it with the same word. "Nice."

There has been a false dichotomization of this issue along the lines of park and green space supporters versus homeless advocates. I don't see it that way. No one I know is making the argument that housing, once built, should never come down. And certainly no one is arguing that housing should be rebuilt on the Capehart site.

Contrary to the Post-Intelligencer's editorial yesterday, there isn't anything in Monday's decision to move ahead with purchase that necessarily commits the City to immediate demolition of the Capehart housing.

The question is whether this housing gets bulldozed in 2009, when the last family moves out, or whether another decade or so of use can be squeezed from this resource at a time when housing affordability in Seattle is at a crisis point.

In the end, no matter what, nature wins. The housing comes down and the park space expands. What needs to be considered is whether this can be a win for people as well as the trees.

From what I understand, there are some potential issues here having to do with the City's authority to provide housing that is above the low-income level, but one would think that this could somehow be worked out. Times like these call for creative solutions. It seems that some sort of compromise can still be achieved, if the will is there.

From the Department of Dead Horses

The City Council Hearing to finalize the Discovery Park Deal is this Monday, September 24, at 2 pm in Council Chambers. Having heard a good deal of testimony, read the past four years of press clips, and talked it around a good deal with others, I'm still a long way from being satisfied that the City Council, with their insulting show of offering a "one-to-one replacement" amendment this week, gets why this is such an issue for people. Let me try to explain in a few different ways to see if I can be more clear.

Story Problem.
Assume Seattle loses 4,500 low-income housing units over 2005-2007 to demolition, condo conversion, and speculative sales, but adds 1,500 newly constructed subsidized units. Assuming no more housing is lost, how many new units must be built to reach the point of one-to-one replacement? Bonus question: Explain how tearing down functional housing helps the city reach that goal.

Bumpersticker
"I'd rather drive two miles for groceries than twenty-five miles to work."

Short Story in 281 Words
It was March 3rd, 2009, and Evelyn locked the front door for the last time. The sturdy triplex that had been built in 1963 as military housing had reached the end of its useful life. She stopped for a moment and listened. Birds. Rustling branches. A scolding squirrel. The whoosh-whoosh of a lycra-clad roller-blader from Magnolia out for his exercise. Months before, Evelyn would have heard kids, and maybe a few cars as her neighbors returned from work, but not today. Hers was the last family to leave Capehart. The UHaul was packed and ready to go. It was time. She turned the key, and the stiff deadbolt worked its way into place. Suddenly, the rain gutter came loose from above and fell at an angle, narrowly missing her shoulder. "Evelyn! Get in the truck," shouted her husband Rick. They had been warned about this. There was an explosion from inside the house. She looked through the window and could see water pouring across the floor from the bathroom. "Damn," thought Evelyn. "The plumbing finally went." A great creaking groan drew her attention to the house across the street as it collapsed like a row of dominoes. The Millers had just gotten out last week. Not a moment too soon. The Capehart homes had been built on slab concrete. Everyone knew it would one day end like this. The sounds of drywall violently breaking in half echoed across the water toward the Cascades as the Capehart homes collectively reached the end of their useful lives. Rick leaned on the tinny UHaul horn. "Evelyn! Run!" That's when the slow gas leak in the kitchen ignited. Rick and Evelyn had waited too long.

Sample Amendment
Council will explore the feasibility of amending funding agreements to allow for the gradual demolition of Capehart Housing over the next 15 years as the cost of repair is no longer justified by the use value of the housing.

Favorite Letter

Dear Council members,

I have been, and continue to be an advocate of ultimately returning the Capehart Housing units in Discovery Park to a use of much needed open space.

However, given our failure in the last decade to stop the demolition and otherwise removal of work force and low income housing within the city of Seattle and it surrounding communities, I believe it is a mistake to destroy the 66 units of housing at Fort Lawton. We should wait until we have a better plan on the creation of needed housing.

We have been doing such a poor job of saving our existing affordable housing.

We have lost over a thousand units of dedicated low income housing in the Seattle Housing Authority's Hope VI projects at Holly Park, Rainier Vista, High Point and Roxbury Village.

We were promised downtown work force housing at the Alaska Building,…. but someone forgot to get it in writing?

We have lost many units of housing in South Lake Union. Yesler Terrace is being threatened.

Would it not be a fair proposition to secure an agreement for the development of affordable housing in the Magnolia neighborhood before we tear down the housing we have there and give Magnolia the benefits of the needed open space?

Again, I have been an advocate of the Discovery Park aquisition plan from the start. Please reconsider tearing down the housing that is there before a replacement plan can be developed.

Please slow down on the decisions to tear down needed housing.

Thank you

Brian Ramey

Slow Down and Reconsider on Capehart Housing

If you're still wondering how the city could decide to buy 66 units of housing for $11 million and tear them down for green space without housing or homeless activists knowing anything about it, you might look to the media. And the Mayor's office.

Prior to the Post-Intelligencer article that came out earlier this month on the day of the hearing, there has been exactly one article on the subject in the last two years. This was the two paragraphs in the Seattle Times' local news round up on July 13, 2007.

City seeks 24 acres in Discovery Park

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has proposed buying 24 acres in Discovery Park from the Navy for $11 million. The Capehart property is in the middle of the 534-acre park, and the city wants to tear down the barracks and two buildings to create open space.

Military personnel would be moved closer to the naval base in Everett. Twenty-six officer homes would be preserved by the Navy with a development partner and eventually sold. The purchase, which requires City Council approval, would be paid for with state and county grants, as well as proceeds from selling surplus city property.

If you're anything like me, you might wonder how 66 units of family housing comes to be described as a "barracks." Here's how Merriam-Webster defines the word:

Main Entry: ¹bar·rack
Pronunciation: 'ber-&k, -ik; 'ba-r&k, -rik
Function: noun
Etymology: French baraque hut, from Catalan barraca
1 : a building or set of buildings used especially for lodging soldiers in garrison
2 a : a structure resembling a shed or barn that provides temporary housing b : housing characterized by extreme plainness or dreary uniformity -- usually used in plural in all senses

This, then, is a strange word choice. One perhaps meant to deceive. As a guy who was once in the military, I know the difference between family housing and a barracks. A barracks is a big ugly building where fifty guys sleep in a big room on iron bed frames and keep all their stuff in lockers. Family housing is where everyone gets a tiny lawn and kids ride their bikes in the street. There's a big difference.

But the word choice didn't come from the Seattle Times. It came from the Mayor's press office. This from their their July 11th press release:

The Navy decided to sell the property and relocate its military personnel closer to their Everett base. Over the next several years, the barracks and two other buildings on the Capehart property will be removed and converted to park space, consistent with the 1986 Discovery Park Master Plan.

Perhaps if the Seattle Times had done more with the press release than simply edit it down to a few paragraphs and call it "news," they too would have discerned the difference.

So here's how it happened. The Mayors office works quietly for several years with Friends of Discovery Park and their allies in the Magnolia neighborhood, and, when the deal is about to be closed, it gets passed off to council for approval. A press release is issued describing this as "a great day for anyone who loves this park" and minimizing the loss of housing. There is a hearing in the dead doldrums of summer when no one is around, and the deal heads for swift completion in a few weeks before anyone has a chance to think it through, much less know what's going on.

If this is all so on the up and up, then what's the huge hurry?

Council members' replies to critics have been thin and evasive. These are:

It's been the plan since at least 1986.
Well, so what? We didn't have an affordable housing crisis in 1986. Plans can change.

The housing is past its useful life.
It's occupied. It's only 40 years old. People will continue to live there until 2009. Condemning this property as unfit for habitation seems premature.

You can't put homeless people in such an isolated area.
Well, people are living there now, and nobody is saying this housing should be for homeless people. Affordable housing is for people of moderate incomes who are finding it harder and harder to pay Seattle rents. These people have cars, or at least bikes. They'll be OK.

No one is being displaced.
Yes, the personnel there will be moved elsewhere before the houses are torn down. But affordable housing is lost in Seattle to market forces every day. To pretend that this has nothing to do with that is to be willfully ignorant.

Housing is inappropriate to the land. It should be a park.
I'd say its inappropriate to tear down usable housing when we have an affordability crisis and people literally on the streets. Solve that, and you can have your green space. Until then, the housing should be used so long as it's usable.

Happily, the Seattle Post Intelligencer editorial board agrees, and ran this on September 11, 2007.

Capehart Homes: Worth rethinking

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

While the details of the $11.1 million deal between Seattle and the Navy are being figured out, there's lots of talk about what should become of 66 homes now used as military housing.

The plan is to demolish them, adding more green space to Magnolia's Discovery Park, which thrills some while others want the housing to be used for veterans. Readers have also written in, wondering why, given King County's fight to save the affordable Lora Lake units in Burien, can't the homes in Magnolia be preserved and used as low-income housing? Great question.

While the Lora Lake units already were being used as low-income housing, the military housing in Magnolia was not. Replacement homes are currently being built in Marysville for those military families, so no one is being tragically displaced.

Also, there's the issue of access to the basics.

The units in Discovery Park are nice, although the nearest bus stop is maybe three-quarters of a mile away. True, Lora Lake is hardly centrally located, but it's far less isolated. The closest drug store we could find to the Capehart homes was about 2.5 miles away, in Magnolia Village. That said, the leasing office was still open for business, the homes themselves, while dated, appeared to be in nice shape. So why not consider keeping them, at least for a while, perhaps as housing for low-income seniors, for example, who are more likely to have goods delivered to them?

These homes seem like a resource we shouldn't squander.

It's a sad day for low-income people when it seems the Seattle P-I's editorial board is taking a tougher stand for affordable housing than are their own advocates. By the overwhelming silence on this, you'd think the housing was already gone.

It's not.

The Parks Committee will hear this again on Wednesday, September 19th, at 2 pm. Then, more than likely, it will head like a speeding freight train to the full council for approval on Monday, September 24, at 6 pm. We should be turning out at both meetings in force with one message: slow down, reconsider, use this resource while we can.

DOWNLOAD THE FLIER.

Of Bitter Ash and Burning Light

Despite this being my personal blog where I write as me and not so much in my more professional ED persona, the difference seems to be narrowing. Really, about all it boils down to at this point is that when I'm being an ED I try not to say "fuck" in public. The relationship between the worlds has become more porous. I mostly refrain from blogging while at work. That's more of a 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. kind of thing. But the passions feed each other.

Two recent examples. Today's Real Change offers a cleaned up and obsessed over version of "Housing? What Housing? An Odyssey," which, if I do say so myself, winds up being one of the better pieces of writing I've ever produced. Conversely, today's Director's Corner, a 250-word challenge to pith and clarity that is better some weeks than others, offers some thoughts on the relationship of justice to charity that derives from the writing I've done here. I could not have been this concise without first subjecting you all to more rambling versions here.

I’ve made some people angry lately by saying that charity and volunteerism have fooled us into thinking that we have done enough. As we give and give and give while things mostly stay the same, it’s easy to think that the poor themselves must somehow be to blame.

Superficial evidence of progress is regularly trumped by the growing chasm between rich and poor. While federal McKinney-Vento funding for programs serving the homeless grew by $70 million between 2002 and 2006, between 2004 and 2006, HUD funding decreased by $3.3 billion. Further cuts are likely this year.

It’s hard to see, really, how things could be otherwise.

Given the increasingly lopsided distribution of wealth and power in this country, the math of poverty and homelessness becomes inevitable. Tax breaks, war, and legislative pork come at a price paid by the powerless.

We have come to the point that, unless these issues are addressed, government simply does not have the capacity to adequately care for the poor.

Over the decades, we have lost our sense of responsibility to each other as a community. We have forgotten that to be human is to deserve dignity, and that we owe that to each other.

Charity is a necessary act of mercy in response to an unacceptable now. But acts of charity divorced from work for justice eventually turn to bitter ash. When we burn for justice, we generate a light that makes our way clear.

And today, this will be a committee of one ..."

The Seattle Channel video of Wednesday's Parks, Education, Libraries and Labor Committee Hearing is on line, and it's amusing on numerous levels. Dave Della opens the hearing by noting that none of the other committee members are present. Then Irene Wall testifies on the irony of the city destroying housing to create more Green Space in Discovery Park while destroying green space in Phinny Ridge by ramming a big parking parking garage through at The Zoo over neighborhood objection, and then another speaker highlights the city's bogus manufacturing of consent for the project. Looks like natural allies to me.

Then, at 12:20 into the video, the hearing briefly turns to the matter of bringing on a new board member at Seattle Center, and Bill Block eloquently testifies to the suitability of said appointment before getting the hell out of there while Twin B and I play patty-cake just behind his head.

At 21:00, I lumber to the microphone while holding her hand, and deliver a speech that differs slightly from the one I posted from memory in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Mike Ruby then addresses the import of this "rather momentous moment," and is followed by Discovery Park Advisory Council's Heidi Carpi, who describes the years of fending off "good causes" who have vied for this space. Then Patricia Stambor addresses my comments, by saying that while she "appreciates most" of my work, the city should keep the complete unsuitability of this property for homeless habitation in mind "when dealing with his opinions."

This is a remarkable rhetorical feat, in that it is a deft dual deployment of the "Seattle Straw Man" tactic. By "most of my work," she's probably referring to the Kate Elston PI article of a few weeks previous, in which I'm portrayed as having a "support your local crack trade" position on panhandling that I don't actually hold. Then she goes on to offer a vision of homeless people being dropped into Discovery Park — shopping carts and all — to forage for berries along with the raccoons.

I never said this housing should be set aside for homeless people. I said affordable and workforce housing. I know that Magnolia doesn't want homeless people as neighbors, but do they freak out at the prospect of teachers, cops, and firefighters living among them as well, drinking their Francesca wine out of cartons and slaughtering the adverbial form every chance they get?

See? I can use that tactic too. It's easy and it's fun. Anyway, watch the video. The testimony and presentation that follows is a good quick tutorial on the issue.

Housing? What Housing? An Odyssey.

Over the past several months, activists in Seattle have moved heaven and earth to prevent Burien from demolishing 162 units of affordable family housing at Lora Lake. But what if the City of Seattle spent $11 million to buy 24 acres of property with 66 units of functioning affordable family housing, only to tear it all down for green space? And then no one seemed to notice or care?

This is the question I set out to answer when Wednesday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that a City Council Parks Committee hearing was scheduled that afternoon to approve a move to do just that.

I was doing about ten things when I got this email from Bob Young at the Seattle Times. "I can't help but wonder: an impressive campaign is mounted to preserve affordable housing near a runway, why not preserve affordable housing in a large city park, with peace, quiet, lots of greenery and clean air? Am I missing something?"

Good question. I read the article, and then I read it again, and again.

The deal would remove 66 "Capehart" duplexes and homes in a small Navy development that has housed military families in Seattle for nearly 50 years. Military families live in them today.

The proposal, which comes after 2 1/2 years of negotiating between Seattle and the Navy, raises mixed emotions. Park advocates are thrilled at the prospect of more green space, but others say the small homes could be better used as housing for displaced veterans.

But it is a separate plan -- to sell 26 elegant, historic houses that military families also are living in -- that is getting the most attention.

The Navy wants to sell those homes, and the city isn't interested in buying them. They could go to private owners.

How could something like this come out of nowhere and be heading for a City Council Hearing that same afternoon without so much as a peep from anyone?

I spoke to Sharon Chan at the Seattle Times.

Yes, the idea of the city paying $11 million to tear down 66 units of family housing to create more greenspace in Magnolia's Discovery Park is incomprehensible, and, no, I hadn't heard anything before this morning, and no, it didn't seem to be on anyone's radar.

What the fuck?

I drove home at noon. Nobody was on the road. It was like a post Labor Day neutron bomb had gone off. My four year-old was home sick, and I'd gone into work at seven so my wife Carolyn could go in the afternoon. Downtown to Shoreline in twenty minutes. It was a new record. Mica had been to the Doctor this morning. He thought it might be pneumonia and prescribed antibiotics.

She was sitting on the couch getting nebulized with Albuterol when Carolyn and I switched off. I nuked half an omelet and some hash browns from yesterday's breakfast and started calling people who might know something. Mica and I shared the leftovers while I Googled around on my laptop and found this from a little over a year ago ...

Prime property to be available -- with great view

After 40 years in Magnolia, the Fort Lawton Army Reserve Center is being closed, putting a rolling swath of land, several buildings and one of the best views in Seattle up for grabs by interested agencies and organizations.

The rare opportunity has sparked interest from groups that help the homeless, which will be given priority in acquiring the property. But the land offering also has been noticed by fans of Discovery Park, who see it as a chance to expand the park's open area, and by neighbors who worry that future uses could bring more traffic."

People who live in this area will be very interested in what happens to that property," said Heidi Carpine, who lives across the street from the reserve center. "All the owners have put in a lot of money into upgrading their houses; it has become a beautiful, safe neighborhood. I know everyone is going to be very alert to what is decided for that property.

The phone rang. It was John Fox at the Seattle Displacement Coalition getting back. He'd talked to Sharon at the Times too. He didn't know much more than I did. He remembered something about LIHI putting in a proposal, but for some reason it went nowhere. He couldn't go to the hearing. Yep. It was fucked. Seattle. What can you do?

I looked at the Council website. The Parks Committee is chaired by Dave Della and has Richard Conlin, Sally Clark, and Jan Drago. Not exactly our list of champions. I tried calling to see if there would be public testimony but no one at City Hall was picking up phones today.

I looked at Mica, who was happily taking bits of omelet off my fork as I fed her like she was a one-year-old. A sick kid is a good excuse to relive the baby years. "Do you want to go somewhere with daddy," I said? She nodded. She was looking pretty good. No fever. No coughing. I asked her again. She looked genuinely excited at the prospect.

I-5 was dead. We took it to James, parked in the Municipal Building garage, and were at City Council Chambers by five minutes of two. There were maybe twenty people there, and most of them for something else. Only three other people signed up to speak about Discovery Park, and one of them meant to sign a different sheet. Dave Della was the only Council member there.

Mica and I sat down next to a nice lady who had seen the article in the paper and was there out of curiosity. "Are you teaching her about civics?" she asked, smiling at Mica. "Yes," I said. "I think it's important for her to feel betrayed by democracy before she gets to be seven."

It was a conversation-stopper.

I was beginning to feel like the kid who showed to school on a snow day. Where the hell was everybody? I looked up to see Bill Block, the head of the Coalition to End Homelessness in King County.

We chatted as Mica sat on my lap, happy as a clam. He was there on a minor matter in his role as a Board member of Seattle Center. Bill didn't know anything about Discovery Park. "Haven't researched it," he said. He did his thing and was gone. It was soon my turn to speak. Mica walked up to the mike with me, holding my hand.

Dave Della stared.

"I can't believe this," I said. "We have an affordable housing problem in this city. We have a workforce housing problem in this city. And we're talking about spending $11 million to tear down 66 units of perfectly good housing, and nobody is here to testify. No one even seems to know. And you're the only council member here."

Della stared.

"And we're tearing it down to create more green space? In Discovery Park? Like more green space is our most pressing problem? And 26 units of officers housing, sitting in Discovery Park overlooking the Sound is going to a private developer for $16 million? Who do you have to know to get that deal? And the City says they're not interested? Why not? Maybe no one's here now, but you'll hear about this," I said.

"You'll hear about this?" I felt ridiculous before I even sat back down for having said something so completely cliché and, for all I know, untrue. Mica crawled into my lap. I didn't even use my whole two minutes.

Michael Ruby from Friends of Discovery Park rose and gave a gracious two minutes on how this was absolutely the right decision and the culmination of a wonderful process, and then asked to see me outside. Mica and I went. She was looking positively chipper about the whole thing.

Michael and I sat next to each other on a small bench in the foyer as he told me that he had been following this issue since 1954. He looked as though that may be true. He explained that the Friends of Discovery Park had once felt "exactly as I do now," but they'd examined the housing and found it to be on the verge of collapse. They'd sadly come to accept that reverting the land to green space was the best option for all. He hoped we'd get to talk again sometime.

I bought Mica a chocolate donut at the Muni building Starbucks, ate half of it myself, and wondered if I had slipped into some sort of bizarro-world, where affordable housing gets torn down for green space and no one notices or cares.

We drove home. I got hold of Sharon Lee at LIHI and asked her what the fuck? She said they'd put in a proposal to build housing on decommissioned Fort Lawton land in a partnership with United Tribes and Archdiocesan Housing Authority, and that the City was basically not returning her calls. After a confusing few minutes, we realized she was talking about administrative buildings on the east side of the park. I was talking about family housing out on the western tip. She didn't know anything about that.

"How can this be," I asked. "How can housing get torn down without anyone knowing. Without anyone getting a chance to preserve it. What the fuck?"

"I don't know," she said. "I have to go."

I called Sharon Chan to see what she'd figured out and ranted for awhile as her fingers clicked on the other end.

"How can this be," I asked.

"I have to go," she said.

Mica and I left to retrieve her twin sister from a first day at the new preschool a few blocks away. When I got back, I sat glued to my laptop while the girls performed water volume experiments on the kitchen floor which involved some cups and the refrigerator's filtered water spigot. It's their favorite appliance.

I found the 35-year Discovery Park Master Plan, last updated in 1986, which contained this paragraph.

It is essential that Capehart Housing site eventually become part of Discovery Park. This area is far within and very central to the interior of the Park. The housing is totally incompatible with the Park philosophy and the Long Range Development Plan. It is proposed that the housing ultimately be removed and the site converted to a meadow open space interspersed with thickets and coniferous forest.

Capehart housing is the 66 units, built in the early 60s, in which military families are now living. They will continue to live there until 2009, when American Eagle Communities — the ginormously-huge company that has the contract, among many, many others, to manage all decommissioned military properties in Washington State — will tear down the housing and deliver an empty lot in exchange for Seattle's $11 million.

That's part of the deal. American Eagle does the tear down while the ownership is in their hands. Clever.

It was basically a done deal more than three years ago. The officers housing, also handled by American Eagle, is being sold to a private company who is getting a sweet deal on fine turn of the century homes with a sweeping view of the Cascades and the Sound. One of these appears at the top of this post. There are thirteen of these, and thirteen senior NCO houses made of brick.

The whole lot of 26 has been appraised for $16 million. Historic Seattle, according to my new friend Michael Ruby, is interested, but can't come within spitting range of that price. The private company can.

The city says they're completely uninterested in the property. Someone's going to make a shit load of money. No one cares. They're too busy beating up on Burien to notice when right here, under our noses, an upscale neighborhood gets an enhanced amenity and private capital makes a killing, while housing — yet more housing — disappears off the map.