I&#x27;ve only lived in Seattle for about 6 years, but have seen &#x2F; felt a rise in rents over that time. When we moved here, lots of rentals were offering one or two months free rent as a move in special. Now, not so much.<p>Because he was sick of friends moving away, a friend of mine made his rookie run for the city council this past year. He didn&#x27;t survive the primary, but he had some good ideas about housing that have in part been taken up by other candidates going forward.<p>The first was a mandatory inclusionary zoning policy, which would give developers building incentives, such as allowing additional height, in exchange for a fixed percentage of units being affordable. Affordability here was defined in terms of HUD&#x27;s guidelines for percentage of income spent on housing (in this case assuming someone earning Seattle&#x27;s decidedly not-livable minimum wage).<p>Some form of that first idea seems to have survived my friend&#x27;s candidacy to live on in other proposals &#x2F; candidate platforms. Another that I thought was clever, but hasn&#x27;t seen much uptake, tried addressing the problem from the demand side. Here the idea is that Seattle would run its own voucher program to subsidize rents for low-income people. This one was a little more ambitious and would require new revenues, but is a nice alternative to supply side options.<p>And of course a purely supply side solution doesn&#x27;t entirely solve the problem. New units tend to command higher rents in general. Also, a glut of condos might not reduce prices so much as encourage speculation from non-resident owners. Certainly more units need to built, but new construction doesn&#x27;t entirely solve affordability in the near term.