The Seattle Displacement Coalition's John Fox has a thing or two to say about a Stranger article that last week characterized him as a loser for fighting a state bill that would encourage housing density within a half-mile radius of light rail stations, including creating affordable housing set-asides in specified transit zones.
In a March 16 open letter responding to reporter Erica Barnett, Fox, who had worked to remove 50-unit-per-acre requirements from the bill and mandates requiring developers to replace any low-income housing they tear down in the zones, wrote that Barnett doesn't really get gentrification.
"Every time in the last 30 years that our city has gone through a spurt of growth, it's been accompanied by the loss of thousands of low-income units, a precipitous rise in homelessness, and longer waiting lists for public housing," Fox writes. "Ms. Barnett's Reaganesque argument that low-income units will trickle down with more housing density may pass muster in Econ 101 but not in real-world Seattle."