Oh, Flying Spaghetti Monster for all his pasta goodness, I wish we could stop this trope. San Franciscans, Californians in general, and "transplants" writ larg

Oh, Flying Spaghetti Monster for all his pasta goodness, I wish we could stop this trope. San Franciscans, Californians in general, and "transplants" writ large did not cause this problem. We did it to ourselves with quite a few different inputs. Ultimately what people who live here--in Seattle, I mean--is that we cannot stop new arrivals from, well, arriving. Freedom of movement is a right in the United States so they're coming, whether we like it or not. And that means we have to scoot over a bit, make a little room, and say hi to our new neighbors. That we've not done that is a huge reason why our arts, our humanities, and our not-white-collar-professional jobs are all decamping to the next cheap place. However, it's not just housing. Seattle is a city having to go it almost alone trying to fix all of the region's ills, from traffic to mental health to substance abuse to tents on WSDOT's medians. It's not something Seattle can do alone and it's not a burden Seattle taxpayers should bear all by ourselves. But it's also not the fault of the new arrival from San Francisco. She has a reasons to suspect we'd have our act together, and we've failed her just as much as we've failed the person who winds up in a tent next to the onramp to highway 520.