The candidate opened his housing platform on Thursday by describing himself as a lifelong renter, and this newspaper, which believes in verification, decided to count.

He is twenty-seven. The lifetime, as advertised, is twenty-seven years. Eighteen of those were spent in his mother's house, which is a form of tenancy but not one that generates a lease. Four were spent in a dormitory, where the rent was called tuition and the landlord had a bell tower. Two more were spent in graduate housing, financed by an instrument that will be renting him for the next twenty years regardless of where he sleeps.

That leaves three years. This newspaper has no objection to three years. Three years is a real amount of time, and the man has plainly paid a security deposit, waited on its return, and understood something about the waiting.

But it is not a lifetime, and the distance between three and twenty-seven is where the whole campaign is parked.

We raise it only because the claim is being asked to do the work of a number. "Lifelong renter" is offered in the place where a figure should go. It is not evidence about the housing stock. It is evidence about the speaker, and even then it is evidence he has rounded generously in his own favor.

When we asked the campaign how many households his ordinance would move out of severe cost burden, we were told that the candidate has lived it. When we asked again, we were told that the candidate has lived it. On the third attempt we were told the candidate had to take another call, which we take to mean that the candidate has lived it.

The incumbent, for his part, has never rented anything in his adult life and does not claim to have. He counts units instead, which at least is counting.

We do not say this to be unkind. There is a version of the lifelong-renter claim that would be devastating, and it would go like this: I have rented for three years in this city, my rent went up thirty-one percent, here is the lease, here is the renewal, and here are the four thousand households the assessor's data says are in the same position. That is a man who has lived it and can prove what living it costs.

Instead we are given a biography where a number should be, and asked to accept the biography because it is sincere.

Sincerity is not a unit of measurement. Neither is a lifetime, when it turns out to be three years and a co-signed lease.

So Shell Lust writes about movements, organizing, and the people who front them. She has never owned property and considers this insufficient qualification for anything.