4 ms·

The people are moving there whether you like it or not. Seattle has had 20 years of almost continuous growth, with little housing expansion, and almost no affo

by Aloha 7y ago

The people are moving there whether you like it or not. Seattle has had 20 years of almost continuous growth, with little housing expansion, and almost no affordable units (compared to growth. Yet, it has this idea, that if we ignore the problem it'll just go away. Realistically, every city needs to accept that it is not an ocean liner, and cannot pull up the gangplanks and go "oh, sorry, we're full now, maybe you should try Portland? best of luck to you!"

quotemstr 7y ago
> Seattle has had 20 years of almost continuous growth, with little housing expansion False. "Seattle not only has more cranes than any other major city in the country, it’s by a landslide—the city with the next-highest crane count is Chicago, with 40." https://seattle.curbed.com/2018/7/24/17608278/seattle-construction-crane-count-report https://seattle.curbed.com/2018/7/24/17608278/seattle-constr... > almost no affordable units Rents have actually declined over the past few years, and housing outside the urban core is affordable. Not everyone needs to live in SLU. > if we ignore the problem it'll just go away. If you just stop interfering with the market, the market will fix your problem for you.
- Aloha 7y ago
  Regionally, we've had a couple thousand high end luxury units built, but no great growth, to keep up with growth we need an order of magnitude more housing then that. There has been almost no growth of rental housing outside the downtown core. My rent more than doubled from 2012, to 2015, and then went up 10% a year thereafter - you are mostly correct, for one year in there my rent didn't go up - then the northward climb began again in earnest. I was living for most of that in what most would call affordable housing. The market probably would do its job and solve the issue, provided we didn't make it so dang hard to actually build anything in the City of Seattle.
  - quotemstr 7y ago
    > The market probably would do its job and solve the issue, provided we didn't make it so dang hard to actually build anything in the City of Seattle. With you there. But compared to the Bay Area, Seattle is practically permissive.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    > Regionally, we've had a couple thousand high end luxury units built People conflate "luxury" and "expensive". Any housing you build in an acute housing shortage will be expensive. This is because there is so much unmet demand, not because it's "luxury". So it's impossible to build cheap housing in a housing crisis, and if you demand that only cheap housing be built, you're actually demanding no new housing! For existing home owners and landlords, that is a profitable strategy to weed out competition for their assets. For anyone else: Don't get fooled!
    - Aloha 7y ago
      The high rise units downtown are undisputedly luxury though

by Aloha 7y ago

quotemstr 7y ago

> Seattle has had 20 years of almost continuous growth, with little housing expansion False. "Seattle not only has more cranes than any other major city in the country, it’s by a landslide—the city with the next-highest crane count is Chicago, with 40." https://seattle.curbed.com/2018/7/24/17608278/seattle-construction-crane-count-report https://seattle.curbed.com/2018/7/24/17608278/seattle-constr... > almost no affordable units Rents have actually declined over the past few years, and housing outside the urban core is affordable. Not everyone needs to live in SLU. > if we ignore the problem it'll just go away. If you just stop interfering with the market, the market will fix your problem for you.

Aloha 7y ago
Regionally, we've had a couple thousand high end luxury units built, but no great growth, to keep up with growth we need an order of magnitude more housing then that. There has been almost no growth of rental housing outside the downtown core. My rent more than doubled from 2012, to 2015, and then went up 10% a year thereafter - you are mostly correct, for one year in there my rent didn't go up - then the northward climb began again in earnest. I was living for most of that in what most would call affordable housing. The market probably would do its job and solve the issue, provided we didn't make it so dang hard to actually build anything in the City of Seattle.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  > The market probably would do its job and solve the issue, provided we didn't make it so dang hard to actually build anything in the City of Seattle. With you there. But compared to the Bay Area, Seattle is practically permissive.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  > Regionally, we've had a couple thousand high end luxury units built People conflate "luxury" and "expensive". Any housing you build in an acute housing shortage will be expensive. This is because there is so much unmet demand, not because it's "luxury". So it's impossible to build cheap housing in a housing crisis, and if you demand that only cheap housing be built, you're actually demanding no new housing! For existing home owners and landlords, that is a profitable strategy to weed out competition for their assets. For anyone else: Don't get fooled!
  - Aloha 7y ago
    The high rise units downtown are undisputedly luxury though