David Bloom back in the day.

The seventh in a series of Q&As with the candidates for city council.  (Previously on PubliQ&A: Position 6 candidate Martin Kaplan , Position 4 candidate Sally Bagshaw , Position 2 incumbent Richard Conlin and challenger David Ginsberg , and Position 8 candidates David Miller and Jordan Royer .)

Former Seattle Church Council deputy director and Seattle Displacement Coalition co-founder David Bloom is an unlikely candidate for public office. (He's running for City Council Position 4, Jan Drago's open seat.) Reticent, nerdy, and a bit disheveled, Bloom seems less like a politician than an in-the-trenches activist—which he has been, on behalf of causes ranging from racial justice to homelessness to gay and lesbian rights, for more than 30 years.

Bloom's campaign trail rhetoric will sound familiar to folks who followed Seattle politics  in the late '90s: "Working people" vs. "big downtown developers"—which translates into issues like living-wage jobs and housing for all. However, for all the candidates who boast about their "outsider" status and "real-world experience," Bloom actually is an outsider, and he actually does have real-world experience—from working (with now-King County Council member Larry Gossett) against redlining in the '70s to leading the fight for Seattle's first housing levy in the '80s, to his longtime leadership role on the activist-oriented Greater Church Council of Seattle.

We sat down at Cherry Street Coffee in Belltown on Tuesday morning.

PubliCola : A lot of your key issues— housing displacement, affordability, the developers vs. the neighborhoods—are things that were huge issues in Seattle ten or fifteen years ago.  Are those issues still relevant today? And how do you make them resonate in 2009?

David Bloom : Just because an issue was an issue in the '90s doesn't mean it's not still an issue today. Do we have enough affordable housing? No. Are we growing in a way that's good for our neighborhoods? No. Do we have a comprehensive transportation system that makes sense? No. Until we resolve those questions, those are going to remain issues. I'm perfectly content dealing with issues that have been around for a while if they're important. I've been working on homelessness since the 70s. It's still an issue. It's worse.

PubliCola : How do think the council is failing to address homelessness, and how would you handle that issue differently?

Bloom : There was a period where we were losing between 3000 and 4000 units [of housing] a year... Even when you're adding production, often you have a net loss. The Ten-Year Plan community hasn't really been willing to look at that sufficiently. They talk about 9,500 new units over a ten year period [produced by a renewal of the housing levy, on the ballot this year], but if that's all they do, when a ten-year period is up, we'll be static or in negative territory in terms of production.

The city has been too [reluctant] to challenge some of the legal restrictions [on local housing law] at the state level. I would push the city attorney's office harder, particularly if Peter [Holmes] gets elected, to support changing those restrictions. What I don't see the council doing is asking the questions: Here's this impediment, how do we get around it? How do we create a demolition control ordinance that satisfies those issues?

PubliCola : I associate you with [Seattle Displacement Coalition head] John Fox [a doctrinaire opponent of density and gentrification]—in fact, I know you through John and his work. If you're elected to the council, how will your political tactics and positions differ from his?

Bloom : John and I are longtime friends and colleagues, but we don't think exactly alike. For one thing, I've addressed a much broader array of issues over my years at the Church Council, besides just housing and land use [Fox's main issues]. I align with him on those issues, but I've worked on mental health issues, race issues, gay and lesbian rights. ... My main opponent [Sally Bagshaw] tries to say I have a narrow experience. She doesn't have the broad array of supporters and issues that I've worked with over the years.

PubliCola : You've talked about producing 5,000 units of affordable housing above and beyond the housing levy. How do you propose to do that?

Bloom : Number one is simply to start talking about it. The housing production goals of the ten year plan are important. The housing levy is great. I've always supported it. But it's not enough. Let's start setting some benchmarks--not just passing the housing levy but setting benchmarks for increasing the supply of housing that's affordable to low-income people and looking at mechanisms that could accomplish that.

PubliCola : But where are you going to come up with the money in the city's budget to do that? A lot of people talk about not doing the [$200 million] Mercer project, but that money isn't fungible—the budget doesn't work like that.

Bloom : The city has said that building a new jail  will cost $200 million. So it's not that there's not money out there. The city can find money for big capital projects if it chooses to.

PubliCola : But the city can argue that big capital projects are economic development projects. Building housing for poor people isn't economic development.

Bloom : True—but nonetheless, it's still taxpayer money. Let's step back and talk about where our priorities are. Suppose we don't build a jail. Suppose we divert $100 million of that into housing production. That would be almost as much as the rental portion of the housing levy.

One of the things I want the city to look at is an inclusionary zoning law, which they have in other cities like San Francisco. Inclusionary zoning would say that in all projects over a certain size—say, six to eight units—[developers] must include a certain level of units at a certain level of affordability. Each city degfines its own levels. In Boston, you have to build 15 percent of units affordable to people making 60 to 85 percent [of the area median income]. In Boulder, it's 70 percent. They even have an inclusionary zoning law in Redmond.

The city of Seattle has been reluctant to place requirements on developers historically. That has been the common theme of city government as long as I have been an activist. Members of the city government have tended to be too cozy with the development community. They don't like to make life difficult for their friends.

PubliCola : If you do get elected, you'll have an ideological ally in Nick Licata. But you need five votes [for a council majority]. I only count you and Nick.

Bloom : Well, then it's me and Nick. And we have the unknown person in that other race [for Position 8, the spot being vacated by Richard McIver. If you've got three, then you have a majority of the majority you need.

PubliCola : Spoken like a true activist.

Bloom : It's basic community organizing. You start with what you have. I also think I have decent working relationships with all the current members of the city council. The ability to reach consensus comes partly out of relationships.

PubliCola : Can you give an example where you've reached a consensus through compromise, even if you started out strongly on one side of the issue?

Bloom : I go back to the Convention Center fight, which was very contentious, but we also got a lot out of it. [Bloom led efforts to preserve affordable housing in and around downtown while the convention center was getting built].

There was also initiative [71, which would have created 400 new shelter beds and a hygiene center for the homeless]. We got enough signatures to put it on the ballot, then we sat down with the city and worked out a deal whereby we would agree not to put it on the ballot, and the city would agree to spend so much money on shelter beds and a hygiene center. In either case, did we get everything we wanted? No. Did we get more than we would have gotten if we had gone to the wall? Yes. I have never been a person who is not willing to sit down and negotiate and see what kind of agreement we can work out.

PubliCola : Obviously, you have serious problems with developers. But people are going to move here, and they're going to have to live somewhere—adding apartments at transit stops will only go so far. Is the 70 percent of Seattle's that's zoned single-family sacred, or are you willing to compromise and allow some density in the neighborhoods?

Bloom : There is a certain quality in a city like Seattle, with its single-family neighborhoods, that's attractive to people. It's important to preserve that quality. Well, what is that? It's streets and trees and houses and families. That's the way this city has grown. I think we have to respect that. There's a certain kind of stability in those kinds of neighborhoods that is worth preserving. On the other hand, we now have one of the lowest person-per-household numbers of any city in America. Historically, those have been neighborhoods full of families.

[On the other hand,] the neighborhoods are already absorbing an enormous amount of density. We are already exceeding our growth goals. ... This desire for more density seems to be running hand in glove with development interests. That makes me wary. ... All we've seen when development occurs and density increases is a loss of affordable housing. I am not ipso facto opposed to density, but I am opposed to allowing growth that results in the loss of low-income housing. I don't want to see density increase if it comes at the expense if green space and trees and an increase in impervious surfaces and more runoff into Puget Sound. That's not a green solution. The kind of absurd result of that kind of thinking is Soviet-style blocks of apartments that completely overwhelm the streetscape. It's not a matter of density or no density, it's how we do it.