City Hall’s Norm B. Rice Room wasn’t particularly crowded this morning as Mayor Ed Murray announced a three-pronged strategy to address what he has identified as the next urgent problem that Seattle must confront: a housing crisis. Contrast that with the packed room last December when Murray took on the minimum wage, the first urgent problem he addressed.

As Murray pointed out this morning, affordable housing is a “complex” issue and there isn’t one simple and controversial rallying call like there was around the campaign for a $15-an-hour wage. Perhaps that accounts for the sparser turnout.

That’s not to say that there aren’t thorny issues. “There is going to be conflict—and that’s good,” Murray said. He was responding to a question about his central prong: a new 28-member advisory committee that will be tasked with drawing up a long-term “housing affordability and livability plan.” Not under the same kind of pressure that coalesced around the minimum wage, which included the threat of a ballot initiative if the mayor didn’t act fast, the mayor gave this advisory committee a little more time to draw up recommendations. Members have until May 30, 2015.

Murray didn’t go into detail about what specific questions the committee might take up. “The advisory committee will review every piece of the housing puzzle,” he asserted. When asked for examples of puzzle pieces, he said he wasn’t asking members to mull over “Ed Murray’s plan” but wanted them to come up with innovative ideas of their own.

But in a conversation yesterday, City Councilmember Sally Clark, who is also spearheading this push and will serve on a “steering committee” that will oversee the larger advisory committee’s work, gave some inkling of the hot-button questions likely to be addressed. “Who do we help?” is one.

Some affordable housing advocates argue that efforts should focus on those with the least money—as Clark defines it, those who earn less than 50 percent of the area’s median income. But others, including Clark, maintain that even those somewhat better off—earning 60 to 80 percent of the median—need help too as the city continues to rapidly gentrify.

Another big question, says Clark: “Who pays” for new affordable housing? Will developers be asked to chip in and how? Or will the city, which already funds affordable housing construction with a housing levy, take on even more of a role?

If the committee really wanted to take on controversy, it might mull the question of rent control. The mayor said the committee is welcome to do so, but indicated that he would consider such a conversation a “distraction” given that state law would need to be changed to allow such a policy and “the appetite in Olympia isn’t there.”

Tellingly, firebrand Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who has come out for rent control and who reportedly was a stormy presence on the minimum wage committee, is not a member of this committee. Neither is Roger Valdez, who as head of a developer-funded group called Smart Growth Seattle, has been a polarizing voice against any restrictions or fees thrown at the private sector.

Whereas the co-chairs of the minimum wage committee were people who represented opposing forces, labor and business, the two heads of this committee are more dispassionate and compatible players: David Wertheimer, who works on housing for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Faith Li Pettis, a partner in Pacific Law Group who serves on the state’s Housing Affordable Advisory Board.

Still, as Wertheimer pointed out after the press conference, committee members are a diverse group, including architect David Neiman, Tenants Union director Jonathan Grant, El Centro de la Raza executive director Estela Ortega and Downtown Seatle Association vice-president Jon Scholes. (See the full list.)

Yet to be named are members of a separate task force on homelessness that Murray announced he is convening at the same time. The sharply expanding homeless population can’t wait until May for the housing committee’s recommendation, the mayor said. And so this ““emergency” task force is charged with cominng up with recommendations by December 15.

“Nothing will be off the table, including the issue of how best to address homeless encampments in our city,” he said. The statement fell short of a ringing endorsement, although Sharon Lee, executive director of the Low Income Housing Institute and a supporter of Nickelsville, told me that during a meeting last Friday Murray expressed irritation that the press had portrayed him as opposed to encampments. “I’m supportive,” Lee says the mayor told her then.

Finally today, the mayor discussed the third prong of his housing strategy: an effort by Human Service Department Director John Okamoto to evaluate what the city is already doing on homelessness and how it could be more effective.