By Ron Davis
Mayor Bruce Harrell just released a 20-year plan to give up on the housing crisis. With its proposed update to the city’s comprehensive plan, the administration plans a big slowdown in housing production, and over the course of 20 years, actually aims to make the housing deficit deeper.
This is a stunning surrender from someone who promised he would not play “small ball” and said he wants to embrace “Space Needle Thinking.” Unfortunately, the way state law and the process works, we will be stuck with this feeble framework for quite some time.
Right now, we are tens of thousands of housing units behind, and this plan will take twenty years to make it at least 12,000 units worse, and possibly much more so. It doesn’t improve the housing deficit, and it doesn’t even tread water.
It is literally a plan to fail.
What Is A Comprehensive Plan and Why Do We Have One?
State law requires cities and counties to release a 20-year “comprehensive plan” for how they are going to handle their growth. This includes how much growth, and where it goes. After this plan gets an extensive environmental review, it is much harder to challenge. This makes it expensive, time consuming, and sometimes legally risky to try to change course after the plan is approved. In other words, these plans are hard to unstick.
So the plan to fail will be with us for a while.
The Impact
Failing at housing means prices will climb higher and faster. So unless you have a few million to loan your kids before you die, or a very roomy basement, there is little chance they will be able to afford to live in Seattle. And unless you made around $400,000 a year in your twenties and thirties, people like you will not be able to start a career or raise a family in Seattle.
According to experts, higher housing prices also increase homelessness. This is because when people experience an economic or behavioral crisis in a city with affordable rent, they usually manage to stay housed. But expensive markets like Seattle’s are far less forgiving, so when someone gets into a bad situation, they are far more likely to end up without a roof over their head.
If this all sounds a bit like a certain city by the bay, that’s because it is. San Francisco’s refusal to keep up with housing demand has resulted in $3,200 median rents and people pooping on the sidewalk.
I don’t know about you, but I aspire for more in 2044.
The Numbers, if That’s Your Thing
For those who want to understand the numbers: The slowdown in housing growth relative to population growth over the last few decades created a massive housing debt. Most of the best figures are regional, and address the overall gaps in housing production, production relative to growth (page 20), gaps in affordable housing, even a growing mismatch in the number of jobs homes by one online commentator However you slice the data, the Seattle deficit is tens of thousands of homes, and the regional gap is much larger.
Harrell’s Bizarre Plan To Slow Down Construction
Because of high land prices, stringent zoning and other rules, our ability to add housing is dropping fast. We have built nearly 10,000 units per year in the last five years, but permitting is cratering. If we do nothing, housing production is going to fall off a cliff, to 4,000 units a year for the next 20 years. So the Harrell administration spent a year of staff time and millions of dollars and ignored the overwhelming documented supermajority of feedback they received, and only planned for a little life support to bring it just up to 5,000 units per year. That’s right—we’re going to reach for a sky that is half as high as where we are now.
This plan is likely to yield about 100,000 homes over 20 years, even though King County says Seattle needs 112,000 units just to keep up. The 112,000 unit number comes from the fact that an average rental household in Seattle has 1.85 people, including single family home rentals. Since most of this growth will be apartments, the number of people per unit will be just a bit lower (1.78), which leads to the need for 112,000 homes
In other words, we are planning to fall behind by at least 12,000 homes.
Lest you think no one has thought about sending folks to nearby cities–that’s already baked in. The plan suggests Seattle will add 159,000 jobs, which will support far more than 200,000 people. In other words, the 200,000 person growth target already assumes tens of thousands more commuters from out of town, choking our roads with traffic and paying property taxes somewhere else.
The city says that in the next 20 years, the Seattle population will grow by at least 200,000 people. But if we simply match the growth rates of 2000-2020, we’d grow by 240,000. If we grow at the rate of the 2010s, it will be 363,000 new people. So when they say, “at least” they really mean at least. Those higher rates would increase the housing hole by up an additional 22,000 to 91,000 units!
The plan manages to do all this in especially damaging and clumsy ways.
Racial Inequality
The plan shoehorns a lot of the growth into small areas of the city, an approach Seattle has long called the “urban village” strategy.
And yet the very office responsible for this document called the basic structure of their longstanding urban village strategy racist just a couple years ago. This plan pulls heavily from the same pernicious playbook.
Notably, the plan concentrates poverty, and pushes multifamily housing near large, dangerous, polluted roads. All the while, it shields Bruce Harrell’s neighborhood and other rich neighborhoods with water views, like Laurelhurst and Magnolia, from any real change. And the restricted growth everywhere means higher prices everywhere, which means more displacement for lower-income populations and people of color.
In other words, the city is planning to perpetuate much of the pattern of our openly racist housing history.
Sending Families Somewhere Else
The Harrell administration’s plan is hostile to families.
One of the reasons that family housing is so expensive is our housing deficit, but another is our infinitesimal growth in larger units. Harrell doubles down on this foolish approach, making it much less likely that family housing will be built. For some reason, Seattle seems determined to prevent people from raising kids here.
The state’s “missing middle housing” bill requires cities like Seattle to allow four to six units on normal residential lots. But the plan makes this functionally impossible, especially for family-sized units. If we followed the state’s model code, we could build four 2,000-square-foot homes or six 1,333 square foot homes on a standard lot.
But Seattle cut the square footage allowed by almost 40 percent. Forget decent-sized homes. And in fact, Seattle’s plan also ensures that many more projects won’t pencil out.
In other words, the design is deliberately set up so that that missing middle housing won’t get built at scale, and where it does, the units will be too small for families but still spread around the lot enough to require cutting down lots of trees.
If you think the schools can’t get enough enrollment to stay funded and open now, imagine a future where even fewer families can live here.
Transit, Affordable Housing
The Harrell plan treats taxpayer money with very little respect—notably generating a mere 2,700 units near two new light rail stations, frittering away a billion dollars in taxpayer investment in our regional transit system. It also ignores the overwhelming feedback favoring social housing, as well as the significant margin the social housing initiative passed with. Overall, it fails to tackle the even larger housing gap when it comes to affordable housing of all types.
It plans for less growth than much-smaller Bellevue, much weaker middle housing than Spokane and, and is so bad that state legislators are calling out the BS.
The legislator who led the effort to pass the missing middle housing bill noted that “it barely goes above what new housing production would have been if they did nothing.”
Harrell Gives Up
This is an absurd failure of leadership. Up until now, I’ve wanted to give the mayor the benefit of the doubt. He’s well meaning, and although we disagree about a great deal, he’s not a true conservative like Sara Nelson. He’s just afraid of big business.
But Bruce has lost his touch. Centrist leaders get this. President Joe Biden gets it. Governor Jay Inslee gets it. King County Executive Dow Constantine gets it. Thousands of Seattle residents get it.
Harrell does not.
This article is also available on Rondezvous, Ron Davis’s excellent free Substack newsletter, where you’ll also find details about how to weigh in on the proposed comp plan update.
Ron Davis is is an entrepreneur, policy wonk, and past candidate for Seattle City Council District 4. He lives in Northeast Seattle.
It would be nice if we had a decent transit system in Seattle so people wouldn’t have to spend so much time commuting. We are still suffering the consequences from not passing Forward Thrust. The Chamber of Commerce mayorship of Ed Murray and Scott Kubly got us building a stupid second tunnel in order to get Amazon a subway stop, even though they may not be here in 25 years. In the meantime East-West transit in this town stinks, and the most popular Ballard option that Sound Transit polled, Ballard to UW (with stops in Fremont and Wallingford), likely won’t be built until next century. Good job everyone! PS we need more housing (I bought before prices went insane), especially middle and low income housing.
Minimum wage in Seattle is $19.97. I don’t know where you got your 12% tax, but let’s go with it. Someone working full time is netting $3.046/month. You used 30%, I assume because a lot of the “budget gurus” say that you shouldn’t spend more than 30% of your pay on rent. I don’t disagree, but if people want to live in a popular and expensive metro area, sometimes they have to break the rules in order to do so. But, let’s go with 30%, which translates to about $914/month. If you do a search in the usual places, you will find that there are actually places for rent at that price. A better option is to find a 2 bedroom apartment and find a roommate. Following the 30% rule, a couple roommates could rent an apartment for $1,828/month in Seattle. It turns out there are literally hundreds of apartments for rent in that price range. Of course, there are plenty of jobs that pay over the minimum, and some people are actually willing to work an extra part time job to get ahead. That’s up to the individual.
Looks like you’re replying to me. Yes, Seattle MW is $19.97, I was using MW for Washington. I got the 12% from here: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-brackets
Assuming 2000 hours/year for a full time job, that’s $39,940 gross, $35,147 net (less, if we take out social security tax, etc); 30% of that is $879/month. There’s not much available for that rent; an apodment studio is $750.
It’s true you can have a roommate or partner, and then afford something better. As you say, there are hundreds of apartments for $1828, but the number of homeless folks is around 10,000 (maybe 7000 – 20,000 range). The fact that there are jobs over MW, may be true; so for a single individual, there are opportunities. But considering from the point of view of existing MW jobs, my argument is that there are thousands of such jobs, and someone in a job like that cannot afford any place to live, near that job, without sharing an apartment. The reason we have so many homeless folks is that the balance between wages and rent is too fragile. Tens of thousands of people are falling through the bottom of the economy, because they have one bad episode and there’s no safety net.
Mark, thanks for providing some detail to support your assumptions. I would use the Seattle minimum wage, not Washington, since the Harrell plan is really specific to Seattle. The 12% from the article is the marginal tax rate, not the effective tax rate. You also need to figure in the standard deduction, which is roughly $14,600 for 2024. Rather get hung up on these details, let’s use your $879/month available for rent.
I agree that there are not a lot of studios available for that much, but they definitely exist. And, yes, Apodiments are one of those options. It’s a roof over one’s head, a bathroom with hot running water, and a kitchen. If someone wants something better, they need to decide whether they are willing to work overtime, take a second job, or try to get something that pays more than minimum wage. Alternatively, some people decide to spend more than 30% of their take home on rent because their living space is more important to them than some other expenditure. What I’ve seen more people do is have a roommate and get a nice two bedroom apartment or even rent a house with 3+ roommates. I understand that this is not everyone’s preference, but that’s just how it is. In places like NYC, people get less and pay more, and I think most people understand that there’s a set of trade-offs for living in a desirable metro area.
The homeless situation has nothing to do with any of this. I’ve been directly involved with the homeless in Seattle and the overwhelming majority are not living in tents because housing was too expensive. Most are not working due to drug addiction, mental illness or both. It’s real and complex problem that needs to be addressed for what it is. I would estimate that 95% of these people could not or would not rent even if an apartment were $500/month.
This is just a self serving political rant. It is an attempt to stay relevant after losing to Maritza Rivera for the Seattle City Council district 4 seat, and not being selected in favor of Tanya Woo to temporarily fill the at large position vacated by Teresa Mosqueda.
There is nothing nuanced or subtle about his argument. It is outright disrespectful and plays to divisive, polarizing, primal political instincts. This has little to do with the Comprehensive Plan. It is just a vehicle for keeping his name out there as he gears up for a run for the at large position in November.
United We Stand, I think you are spot on. And I think Ron will lose again. At least for now, the voters have decided to be more pragmatic about city government. The prior regime made a lot of promises but delivered very little.
This city government does SUCH a good job at A.) moving swiftly, B.) understanding how the civil servant process works (just ask Ann Davison!) and C.) crushing any dissent even though it’s supposed to be so much more pragmatic and open minded.
I’m so tired of you jaggoffs “Seattle Centrist Liberal Democrats” who love to talk about your “In This House…” signs and yet call the cops at the first sight of a person of color or someone who looks “poor.”
The lack of empathy, compassion, logic, and reason is completely stunning. If you didn’t live in this idiot bubble that Seattle has become you’d realize you’re all just Republicans who happen to be liberal on things like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights but really not much else.
“resulted in $3,200 median rents and people pooping on the sidewalk. ”
This leap of logic is on an Olympic level. There’s nothing else other than median rents causing people to poop on the sidewalk?
Not much. Homelessness is a widely studied phenomenon and has been for decades. One thing founds is high housing prices is one the main, if the the main, cause of homelessness. The two are highly correlated.
So if you don’t like poop on the sidewalk, then seeking policies that reduce homelessness is warranted. Hiring more cops to do more sweeps is neither humane more helpful in alleviating the problem.
Of course, rich white Seattle “moderates” just want more cops and still higher property values, but those two things don’t remove poop from streets.
You can always whine about a shortage of housing [everywhere] or you can deal with the real problem, which a surplus of people that is getting worse by the day.
I knew he was blowing smoke up a whole lot of people’s behinds but this is the person yaw wanted in office,now he just going to make this housing crisis worse,he shouldn’t of never ran for mayor if he couldn’t handle the job,very disappointed.
Ok yeah lets deal with the “real problem”
Step One: stop people from moving here
Step Two: deport the surplus
???
how can you be this dumb?
Ok lets “deal with the real problem”:
Step one: stop people from moving here
Step two: deport the surplus
???
idiot
Maybe you are the surplus, 1978tartan37@gmail.com.
This should be designated as a “Guest Editorial,” it is far from NEWS.
I find Mayor Bruce Harrell’s 20-year plan for housing to be severely lacking and detrimental to our city’s future. This plan, which essentially amounts to giving up on the housing crisis, is not just a setback but a step in the wrong direction. It’s evident that Harrell’s administration has chosen a path of complacency rather than bold action, which is sorely needed to address our pressing housing needs.
One of the most concerning aspects of this plan is the proposed slowdown in housing production. With a deficit of tens of thousands of housing units already, this plan would deepen the crisis by at least 12,000 units over the next two decades. This will undoubtedly exacerbate the issue of rising housing prices, pushing many residents out of the city and making it unaffordable for future generations. Additionally, the impact on homelessness cannot be understated. Higher housing prices often lead to increased homelessness, as individuals and families struggle to keep up with the cost of living.
Furthermore, the plan’s approach to housing distribution is deeply flawed. By concentrating growth in small areas of the city, the plan perpetuates racial and economic inequality. It pushes multifamily housing into areas near dangerous and polluted roads, while affluent neighborhoods remain shielded from change. This perpetuates the historical patterns of housing segregation and discrimination that have plagued our city.
In terms of transit and affordable housing, the plan falls short once again. It squanders taxpayer money by generating a minimal number of units near new light rail stations, missing a crucial opportunity to leverage transit investments for housing solutions. Moreover, the plan disregards overwhelming feedback in favor of social housing and fails to address the critical gap in affordable housing options.
It’s clear that Mayor Harrell’s plan is a surrender to the status quo, rather than a bold vision for the future of Seattle. As someone who has dedicated their career to thoughtful and sustainable urban development, I urge the city to reconsider this plan. We need leadership that is willing to tackle the tough challenges head-on, not shy away from them. It’s time for a plan that prioritizes equitable housing, addresses homelessness, and creates a vibrant and inclusive city for all residents.
Have you driven through the University District, Capitol Hill, Ballard, Crown Hill, Greenwood, Phinney Ridge, Union and 23rd? Squire Park? Wallingford? None of these areas are low income or distressed, and with the exception of 15th Avenue West these are not areas with huge thoroughfares but with ordinary streets, often with many amenities like Ken’s grocery or Metropolitan Market, small restaurants and bars. Every one of these areas is close to being a 15 minute city with everything but a hospital within walking or biking distance. Please explain to me how putting Apartments and density in these areas is racist?
you just restated the op-ed…Seattle needs LESS growth. It’s too crowded already. Build housing in Tacoma where there’s more room
Because the jobs are here, people want to be here, and if you don’t like it maybe you should leave.
A plan is not an outcome. We are currently zoned for three housing units/SFH (ADU + subdividing a SFH) and that has not produced new housing. And affordability/ending homelessness is not something that can be zoned.
As of last year nearly 4X more ADUs were permitted than the last year before the changes, so they have produced new housing- and when new ADUs/DADUs shares a share a lot with a new SFH they sell as condos for on average half the price of the SFH.
I don’t know where to start, so I (mostly) won’t. This piece has so much exaggeration and contradiction that I must conclude that Ron Davis is either disingenuous or naive. While nothing is going to be perfect, what I’m seeing from City Hall these days is substantially better than anything we’ve seen for years. I’m finally feeling optimistic that Seattle can be saved from itself.
So let’s see, you have all the answers for the problem, and your answers are good for the city and good for people so obviously if you and others who agree with you ran for public office you would surely be elected and our housing crisis would be over. While you’re at it could you also solve the fentanyl, graffiti, traffic, car theft, and shooting problems….I’m sure they also have completely obvious solutions that the rest of us are just too dense to recognize.
Candidate loses election, quickly becomes gadfly criticizing everything the Mayor and Council are doing. Film at 11.
You limousine liberals will never have a clue.
The bottom line is that the comp plan is a design for the built environment and we should focus on building a city that we want to live in, that physically works for its residents. Let’s focus on utility and livability and let cooler heads prevail over CRISIS thinking. If wall to wall towers in every neighborhood works for you, then let’s go down that urbanist path. But if we think that the city should be more than housing, let’s consider how else zoning code should amplify our lifestyle. Will it be affordable, improve homelessness, equity, those are not things municipalities have control much over when private ownership is how we exist. I do find it curious that during a climate crisis we are in a hurry to bulldoze sf homes to replace them with smaller households who collectively consume more resources, than if shared.
Also seeking transparency on what proposed upzones mean for taxes, since we are laser focused on affordability.
The King county assessor has stated that yes, your property taxes will go up if the properties next to you are subdivided and are worth millions. we tax on versions of highest and best use. What point is it to build new expensive housing if you’re displacing all the people who spent 20 and 30 years, paying down their mortgages and actually have affordable housing?
So help me get this straight. If we build more housing, it will be more affordable? Just why would builders do this? I mean make more of product (housing) so it’s not worth as much? Work harder for less money?
Right now builders are starting fewer housing projects in Seattle. Why? because the real estate market and rental market aren’t having the sky high increases of the last 10 years. So the builder’s solution is to throttle back new housing starts a bit to keep demand (and prices!) high.
Mess with zoning all you like, it’s not going add any more “affordable” housing, because the construction industry has no reason to build “affordable” housing. There is a “demand vs. price” formula to keep prices high. Ron Davis and Erica Barnett must think builders and property management companies are run by fools.
Your comment confuses me, as you seem to be implying that developers will not build more housing so as to keep prices high, but there are plenty cities at home and abroad that have significantly lowered housing costs through zoning reform.
Ah, name one city in the USA that’s used zoning to lower housing prices on the Left Coast? Minneapolis changed zoning and housing prices dropped slightly, but the population (and housing demand) dropped at roughly the same rate, so I doubt zoning had much to do with it. The Seattle comps are Oregon and Washington. Not the Midwest and certainly not Europe.
Look, if I can build 6 apartments worth $250k each, for a total of $1.5 million…. why on earth would I build 8 for the same 1.5 million? Better yet, maybe some rich butthead will pay me 2 million for huge mansion instead? Much of the Seattle construction industry is already busy only working on high end projects, because that’s where the money is. There’s no reason to build affordable, market rate housing in Seattle because there are so many high income people willing to pay top dollar.
The whole idea that changing zoning will change the market isn’t true. For the record, I’m all for changing the zoning. But I also have decades of experience in the construction business and the fat wallet guys who build housing do not care about affordable housing. They really like the current market…. and they’re the gatekeepers here. There’s “X” number of rich Californians who will move to Seattle in the next ten years… and construction industry plans to cater to them. anybody with a modest income really isn’t part of the plan.
Housing is cheaper in the Midwest because there are way fewer rich buttheads who want to live there. It’s all supply and demand, not zoning.
True. It’s like saying milk producers will stop selling milk to keep prices high. If the price is high, it will draw others into the industry to sell milk at just a little lower price.
tacomee: “Housing is cheaper in the Midwest because there are way fewer rich buttheads who want to live there. It’s all supply and demand, not zoning.”
You are correct. It is all supply and demand. But it is BOTH supply and demand, not just demand. Supply is not fixed and unchangeable. Zoning can be changed to allow more building.
Last year Austin had the highest percentage growth in the country, built even more housing, and saw rents drop by 11%.
Here in Seattle, my rent has increased every year except 2018 and 2023 when exceptionally large numbers of new apartments opened.
Increase in supply stabilizes/brings down rents. But Seattle limits what can be built due to restrictive, exclusionary zoning.
Fewer housing projects are being started this year because of rising interest rates, not because of some secret developer cabal to keep prices high.
It’s not some “cabal,” it’s called making a profit, and one that is larger than last year’s. Price fixing is a huge problem. Funny you’d mention inflation as the Kansas City fed pegged price fixing as the major cause:
https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/economic-review/how-much-have-record-corporate-profits-contributed-to-recent-inflation/
I agree, real estate is not like “milk producers”, it is a fixed good. That’s not how this sector works. There is no more land once it is all bought up so no “land producer” can come in and make more to sell.
Besides, The hypothetical “milk producers” can and do form cartels to make prices go up. It happens all the time. Inflation was mentioned. Here’s the Kansas City Fed stating price fixing was the primary driver of our current bout of it:
https://www.kansascityfed.org/Economic%20Review/documents/9329/EconomicReviewV108N1GloverMustredelRiovonEndeBecker.pdf
And not to let the real estate sector off the hook: The District of Columbia AG and the AG of Arizona are suing the company RealPage for price fixing in their respective rental markets via algorithms:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/03/the-algorithm-told-me-to-do-it-more-price-fixing-in-us-rental-market.html
And The state of Colorado passed a bill to ban it:
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb24-1057#:~:text=The%20bill%20states%20that%20a,trained%20with%20nonpublic%20competitor%20data%20.
And it’s not some “cabal,” it’s called making a profit, and one that’s higher than the year before.
I agree.
Ron’s hit the nail on the head. This comp plan is a recipe for failure. There is no justification for not massively increasing the zoned capacity of our city. If we go too low? The housing affordability continues to worsen. If we go too high? Landlords and sellers are forced to reduce their prices as renters and buyers finally start to regain market power. The choice seems obvious.
Regarding Essex, their 10-K document specifically says that they strategically target areas with “constraints on new supply driven by: (i) low availability of developable land sites where competing housing could be economically built [and] (ii) political growth barriers, such as protected land, urban growth boundaries, and potential lengthy and expensive development permit processes.” Restricting development is exactly what they want! Regarding risk factors, they say “Income … may be further adversely affected by … changes in supply and cost of housing.” If you want to stick it to Essex, we need to build more!
10-K: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000920522/70f30eca-3d98-4014-ba54-52efd22f90e1.html#ESS-20231231_HTM_i119c2a136bff4fbda6afe58370b5ef66_19
I find it very curious that Ron and other critics of the quantity of housing provided in the Comp Plan don’t look at the existing capacity from 20 years of upzoning— which we have barely begun to maximize. Every lot in Seattle can already have three structures on it. Massively more capacity has been created for apartments, which are being built not just on Highway 99 and 15th West but in neighborhoods all over the city. Vacancy in 2024 is 14%! And this is a housing shortage—?
“ Multifamily buildings with more than 50 units saw a massive spike in vacancy in Q3. More precisely, vacancy was at 14% as 1,500 units were delivered in the quarter, equating to about 9% of supply. Then, as that influx of new supply has slowly been absorbed, rental rates have come under pressure in the area, ticking down 3% quarter-over-quarter to $1,867.”
https://kidder.com/trend-articles/2024-q1-seattle-puget-sound-apartment-market-dynamics/
One of the most useful things the comp plan could do would be to require/or incentivize the clustering of units on lots so that trees and green space is preserved.
Thank you for pulling together all of this information in one place and in an easily digestible format. It’s clear that the entire country is in a historic housing crisis and that we must embrace solutions. There is plenty of room in the suburbs for anyone who doesn’t like the coming changes. You simply are not guaranteed a spot in Seattle and you are not immune from a world that changes. I wish we had Ron’s’ leadership on the city council!
And please, at least have the decency to not complain about the increasing numbers of homeless people you are going to be seeing.
The plan completely satisfied the requirements for next twenty years! You are not counting all the building that’s going on now. Multifamily buildings are continuing to be built with new apartments opening all over Ballard, greenwood, cap hill, Roosevelt and around all transit stations in the city. Much of it includes affordable housing per AMI requirements. Townhomes continue to be built around urban villages like crown hill and more are quickly coming as the silver tsunami accelerates. Remember we had largely satisfied the Seattle 2023 requirements. Even in single family zones, almost every new home has a mother in law apt and backyard cottage. We will easily satisfy the housing needs. Just noticed that all the new apartments built years ago still have “NOW LEASING” signs on them!
This is all just incorrect.
Ah, the glibness I have come to expect from my former neighbors in NIMBY North. Let’s talk about that. Both over 70, we are being forced out of Seattle this year. On a fixed income and with an increasing physical inability to climb stairs, we are not only being priced out of the market, we are being built out of it as well. I feel for the next big cohort who are being forced into housing that will not age with them. Because under Harrell’s complete failure in leadership, they too will face having to move as they age.
Complain, complain, complain. First it’s density, build more, forget the size, make them as small as possible so there are more units. Get rid of parking onsite, build more of the small units. Then, make it into congregate housing, no more self contained units. Now it’s oh, we need family sized units, but get rid of the single family housing – bigger units but no yards, pack them in, more “family” sized units per lot – skip the yards – uh, something families would need. And what is this “need” for housing low income people and that if we don’t they will become homeless in Seattle? Real people actually move to a place where things are affordable, cost for housing is within their means. Like this is a since time immemorial thing. No one is promised a slot in Seattle just because this is where they want to live. Wishes are not obligations we owe to others. More complain, complain, not maxing out the TOD, because that would not capitalize on the billions of transpo dollars spent – oh well – that was a waste before track one was built – it always was a make work, make rich, sustain the bureaucracy effort. Good that Ron Davis wasn’t elected. Sounds like he’s the typical Dem doing the pork barrel politics, the pie-in-the-sky crap, and the whole density is good. Go engage in that ant colony living you think is so great Ron.
Like
Let me guess, you bought your home when an ordinary person could buy a home in Seattle. Now you don’t want anyone but rich people to live in Seattle.
I want anyone to live in Seattle cuz it’s a great place to live. But I think the changes government is making are making housing more expensive! Upzoning our entire state makes it super lucrative for developers. I get flyers in the mail showing old tear down houses perfect for a starter home sold to developers for over $1 milion!! Many are sitting off market for more than a year waiting until the builder decides it’s worth it. Individuals cannot compete with builders in bidding wars. Also – Walk Street corporations like Essex (which owns almost 50 multifam bldgs in Seattle area) contribute to the problem. Essex stock is over $230/share on NYSE and boasts of returning 14% interest to stockholders since inception. This has to equal more expensive rents! And investors are buying up single family homes too. This must be stopped!
I don’t think what Ballardite or I “want” really makes much of a difference about who lives in Seattle, or the cost of housing.
Seattle has become a playground for rich people. Personally, I don’t like it, but the thousands of tech bros and Cali refugees who moved here over last 20 years aren’t going anywhere. It’s a free country with free market housing after all.
Elizabeth sure likes to complain.
So here’s the problem: There are many minimum wage jobs in Seattle, as in any city. Where are those people supposed to live? Min wage is $16.28/hr, and (assuming 12% tax) 30% of that is $716/month. Where in Seattle can anyone find an apartment that cheap? The suburbs don’t really have cheaper housing than Seattle does, and if you go farther out, there isn’t the capacity or transportation into the city. We need to balance minimum wage with housing that such a worker can afford. It’s not a matter of where “they want to live”, it’s a matter of having a balance of wages and housing in a major city.