
A group of techies is using data skills to alter Seattle's housing affordability - clebio
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/04/26/seattle-housing-what-works-next-218058
======
OliverJones
The YIMBY movement (Yes, in my back yard!) is starting to be visible. And
about time. (And, I'm a boomer, fwiw.)

Check out this article. [https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/04/where-yimbys-
can-win/...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/04/where-yimbys-can-
win/559001/)

The idea that the "tech industry" created this problem is just plain nonsense.
Sure, the tech industry attracts young folks to creative urban centers and
pays them a bit of money. But their parents (my generation) gave them birth
and gave them expectations of prosperity.It's selfish to then blame them for
wanting to live where the good jobs are.

This problem was created by restrictive zoning. And it will be solved by
changing zoning laws.

And the restrictive zoning laws come from people who say, "Oh no, those people
moving into new apartments will crowd our schools and our streets. We can't
have that!" Whose schools are they? Whose streets are they?

The phrase "affordable housing" has come to mean "cheap housing for poor
people." That's stupid. Affordable housing is good for everybody. The basic
law of supply and demand teaches us that increasing the supply of housing will
lower the price. To address homelessness, build homes.

Government (who exist to serve people) can start to approach this problem by
partly assessing property based on nominal beds per square foot. Higher taxes
on lower density housing will give an economic incentive to build more housing
on existing land.

Powerful companies should unapologetically press politicians, hard, for
changes to these NIMBY zoning rules.

~~~
sokoloff
"Affordable housing" is not good for everyone. If it was, we'd probably
already have it.

Existing real property owners have a serious financial incentive to oppose
policies that might decrease the value of their property by 25-40% (or more),
especially when a plurality of their net worth is tied up in that property.

~~~
089723645897236
Yeah but "us" aka normal people who are not capitalists don't care. Every
single person who is not a land owning capitalist wants affordable housing. If
you can handle post-Marxist thought, a great manifesto called the Housing
Monster addresses this.
[http://prole.info/thm.html](http://prole.info/thm.html)

~~~
mistermann
Please don't disparage capitalism, it has no opinion on affordable housing,
only people do. I'm a self-proclaimed capitalist, and affordable housing for
~all should be one of the highest priorities of a functioning society,
capitalist or not.

------
DoreenMichele
_Since the end of the financial crisis, Lubarsky says, Seattle has added
roughly 100,000 jobs, but barely 32,000 new homes and apartment units. “We’ve
underbuilt every year since 2010,”_

Interesting how that lines up so nicely with this headline/factoid:

 _For every 100 families living in poverty on the West Coast, there are no
more than 30 affordable homes_

[https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-
pove...](https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-poverty-west-
coast-no-30-affordable-homes/)

Also, no doubt purely coincidentally:

 _(The Seattle area, the nation’s 22nd largest by population, has the third
most homeless people, behind only Los Angeles and New York City.)_

I sarcastically say _purely coincidentally_ because of how often I get told
that (a large portion of) homeless people are drug addicts, mentally ill etc,
so lack of affordable housing is not why people are out on the street.

~~~
fiter
Are the people telling you that many homeless are drug addicts or mentally ill
professionals on the subject? It's well regarded that both types of people are
over-represented in the homeless population.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_and_mental_heal...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_and_mental_health)

[https://www.va.gov/homeless/nchav/research/population-
based-...](https://www.va.gov/homeless/nchav/research/population-based-
research/mental-illness.asp)

~~~
DoreenMichele
I don't believe they are. I've had a college class on Homelessness and Public
Policy. I spent 5.7 years homeless and got myself off the street a few months
ago. I am author of the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide. Because of that
site, I've been interviewed by reporters a few times. So I'm something of a
SME on the topic of homelessness.

In a nutshell, there are housed people who drink heavily or have mental health
issues. Simply having a substance abuse problem or a mental health issue does
not per se _cause_ homelessness.

Homelessness occurs when an individual has too many problems and too few
resources or options. The difference between a homeless person and a housed
person can be one more problem or one less resource.

There is a longstanding and dire shortage of affordable housing in the US.
Dismissing that as a contributing root cause of the homeless problem in this
country sounds like crazy talk to me. It sounds to me like someone really
reaching to wash their hands of the problem and chalk it up to personal
failure rather than acknowledging the systemic issues that are causing
enormous stress for a great many Americans of all kinds of income levels and
demographics.

Saying that mental illness and substance abuse are _the_ cause of
homelessness, so much so that we can totally ignore the issue of housing
affordability whole cloth and dismiss it entirely as not pertinent to the
subject of homelessness looks ludicrous on the face of it to me. But I keep
hearing it over and over and over. The best guess I have is that it is a
narrative that serves a desire to wash one's hands of the problem and pretend
that well known systemic issues are not relevant as homeless people are "just
a few losers with unsolvable personal problems and they would be homeless even
if our country didn't have a dire shortage of affordable housing."

~~~
ravitation
It doesn't help to downplay substance abuse and mental illness' roles in
homelessness (especially chronic homelessness)... He linked two different
sources, but there are countless others, that point to both substance abuse
and mental illness being noticeably more common in the homeless population...

That isn't to say that this is an excuse for America's lacking response to the
homelessness crisis. But, to say the scale of Seattle's homeless population
isn't an indictment of America's substance abuse policy and the state of its
(mental) healthcare system, just as it's an indictment of dysfunctional urban
bureaucracy and housing policies strikes me as a disingenuous assignment of
blame.

~~~
DoreenMichele
If Seattle's high rate of homelessness is due much more to substance abuse and
mental health issues and is largely unrelated to the high cost of housing
locally, I would be interested in knowing what about Seattle is either causing
people to be crazy or addicted or drawing inordinate numbers of such people
there. If the high levels of local homelessness are an indictment of America's
mental health and substance abuse issues, why isn't it equally bad elsewhere?

I'm aware there are many factors that contribute to homelessness and nowhere
have I said that personal problems aren't a factor. But I fail to comprehend
why there is such strong push back against the idea that lack of affordable
housing is a factor at all, why every time this cones up, multiple people feel
some need to say "Nuh uh, homeless people are just crazies and addicts and the
cost of housing has no bearing" in essence, granted in slightly more PC
language.

~~~
fiter
For what it's worth, my parents work in providing either free or below market
rate housing. People provided eith such housing can have trouble keeping it
due to their various personal problems.

I agree with you that there is a housing cost gradient which will cause people
with moderate addiction or mental health issues to become homeless.

It's hard to keep any housing if you can't keep a job and your entitlements
don't cover everything.

------
castlecrasher2
I've recently wondered why cities don't tend to spring up on their own
anymore. Either that's true or I just haven't heard about it. Has anyone
looked into this?

I was going to bring this up as an anecdote but looking at this
([http://www.businessinsider.com/federal-government-land-
map-o...](http://www.businessinsider.com/federal-government-land-map-oregon-
militia-2016-1)) it seems to be true; a relative of mine lives in a small city
in Utah and says he wants a couple acres but the land surrounding the city is
federally owned, limiting his options. How was this land released to citizens
previously and how has that changed since? Was it really just doling it out to
farmers who have since sold it?

~~~
aphextron
>Was it really just doling it out to farmers who have since sold it?

Yes. For much of America's history, you could literally get in a wagon, head
out west somewhere, plant a flag, and the land was yours. This was true all
the way to 1976.

"In all, more than 270 million acres of public land, or nearly 10% of the
total area of the U.S., was given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders; most
of the homesteads were west of the Mississippi River."

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts)

But that's not the whole story. Another 10% of the entire US land mass
(~200,000,000 acres) was granted free of charge to various railroad
companies[0], many of which are still the largest private landowners in their
respective states.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts)

~~~
zapita
> _For much of America 's history, you could literally get in a wagon, head
> out west somewhere, plant a flag, and the land was yours._

You also had to band together with your fellow settlers into armed militias to
kill the people whose land you were squatting.

Those are the same militias which are protected in the second amendment. Their
original purpose was "killing indians". The secondary purpose was to catch
escaped slaves.

It's always fun to remember where our real estate industry comes from. It's
also interesting to see the hidden connections between America's passion for
home ownership, its obsession with guns, and its racism.

~~~
stcredzero
_Those are the same militias which are protected in the second amendment.
Their original purpose was "killing indians"._

False. The original purpose, predating even the government and the
constitution, was to fight off armed oppression in the form of Hessian
mercenaries and British soldiers.

 _It 's also interesting to see the hidden connections between America's
passion for home ownership, its obsession with guns, and its racism._

Gun Control was partly started by racist southern politicians who were
horrified by the thought that black citizens would have the right to own
firearms.

[https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/10/gun-
contr...](https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/10/gun-control-
racist-present-171006135904199.html)

~~~
zapita
> _False. The original purpose, predating even the government and the
> constitution, was to fight off armed oppression in the form of Hessian
> mercenaries and British soldiers._

You do realize that colonial militias existed for over a century before the
war for independence with the British Empire? What "armed oppression" were
they fighting exactly?

~~~
aaron-lebo
You do realize that multiple native groups obtained their land through war and
what at times could be called extermination?

The Comanche are but one example. There are very few groups in history that
ended up where they were peacefully. That's unfortunate, but depicting the
European settlers as land-hungry thieving murderers should take into account
that's what everyone did.

Here's an account of the Fort Parker massacre, which wasn't uncommon on the
frontier:

 _Benjamin Parker was killed, and before the fort 's gates could be closed,
the raiders rushed inside. Silas Parker, who was outside with his brother, was
killed before he was able to get back inside the gate. Samuel Frost and his
son Robert were killed inside the gate, as they attempted to flee. John
Parker's genitals were cut off and he was then scalped. His wife came out of
the woods when she saw his torture and was captured.[5] Lucy Parker and her
youngest two children were initially captured but were rescued by Luther
Plummer as he ran up to the fort from the fields. Her two oldest children,
however, along with Luther's wife (Rachel) and son, and Elizabeth Kellogg were
successfully kidnapped._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Parker_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Parker_massacre)

Did those settlers deserve that? You can argue it, but this is a complex
topic. Maybe some of those militias existed for good reasons, like if they
didn't, people would get murdered by raiding parties, as they have in every
locale in history.

~~~
zapita
Is there a point that you're trying to make? As a reminder you're responding
to a message about the historical connection between gun ownership, home
ownership and racism in the USA. I don't see anything in your message that's
relevant to that, except maybe to confirm that colonial militias were created
to "kill indians", and that the settlers were squatting on indigenous land.

~~~
aaron-lebo
What I'm trying to say is you have a very one-sided view of history. You've
already decided that the purpose of militias was to "kill Indians". You didn't
back that up at all.

Militias had offensive/defensive use against other colonial powers, but they
also could have (but didn't always have) purely defensive use against native
raids, which were not uncommon (nor were they the other way around).

You've also decided that that all land was "indigenous" when nobody has ever
owned land, it's always been what group takes it. The natives often took the
land from each other. You've decided that's different from European settlers
doing it purely based on race. You're making a racial distinction without
admitting this is just what people do. The plains weren't Apache land in 1500,
why was it their land 200 years later after they'd kicked out other natives?
Why was Mexico City Aztec land when they killed off the groups which
originally owned it? Much land was loosely populated anyway, both groups could
have coexisted but they did not. Killing "squatters" is just justifying the
same militarism you despise.

Do you see what I'm trying to say? I don't deny atrocities against the
natives, those are well-documented, but if you're you're going to talk about
history, talk about how it was, not about how a 21st century view of
race/society sees it. It's dishonest to those people and who they were.

~~~
zapita
> _What I 'm trying to say is you have a very one-sided view of history._

What do you mean by "one-sided"? What are the "sides" involved here?

> _You 've already decided that the purpose of militias was to "kill Indians".
> You didn't back that up at all._

Why would I have to back it up? It's a very basic fact which nobody is
disputing, not even you. You feel that the killing of natives by militias was
justified at least in part in self-defense, you have inferred from my choice
of words that I disagree with you, and you're unhappy about that.

But you haven't proposed an alternative explanation to whom the militias were
meant to kill (if not native americans, who? Other settlers? Bears?) or why
(if not because the settlers were squatting on indigenous land, then why?
Family feud? Religion? The color of their hats?) If you do have an alternative
explanation for the existence of militias, now would be a good time to make
your case.

------
wiredfool
20 years ago, Craftsman houses in Seattle were already unaffordable unless
they were totally trashed, far north, or in a 'bad' neighborhood. They were,
size for size, the most expensive form of housing on the market. Generally
1000sf, 2 bedroom, and 1 bath, I don't think I saw one under 225k. I wound up
buying a skinny for 20% less money and 20% more space. (Observations from
1998-9, when I bought a house a mile or so from there).

Since then, prices have doubled at least twice. I could never afford to move
back to my old neighborhood.

~~~
tjr225
Moved out here last year. I actually commute from down south...I want so badly
to feel comfortable planting roots here but staring down the barrel of this
housing market makes me feel like a tourist simply enjoying the high pay and
natural beauty until I decide I want to buy a home back east. I am glad I am
here but there is definitely an internal conflict I have to tolerate to do so.

------
debatem1
So, I live in Wallingford (the community mentioned here). In one of those
Craftsman houses, no less.

Here's the thing: Wallingford will be valuable and therefore expensive no
matter what kind of housing you build here. Literally anything. There are some
crappy midcentury studio apartments that go for 2k a month not 10 blocks from
here, because the location is great _even if you don 't have a house_.

That means that basically everybody who doesn't develop property
professionally is misdiagnosing the situation.

The NIMBYs say that rezoning will cause property values to crash. That's just
not in line with available evidence from Ballard and similar, and flies in the
face of reason besides. When your lot can be a beloved home to another family
or a pile of income to a developer, math says the developer will eventually
win the bidding war.

Most of the YIMBYs are wrong because housing prices just aren't going to come
down that much here, and much of what comes in will be rentals. Those rentals
will be luxury units because they can be, and will therefore be 2500+ a month.
That's within a few hundred dollars of an existing mortgage (on one of the
cheaper houses-- not the million dollar 3000+ sqft thing down the road) but
without the potential upside.

~~~
chrischen
Housing prices not coming down from increased unit implies some sort of
market-resistant magical mumbo jumbo in that area. That doesn't sound
plausible. Everything reacts to changing supply and demand, and increasing
supply will always drop prices, somewhere. Increasing luxury units will mean a
vacating of those non-luxury units currently occupied by luxury dwellers.

~~~
iamcasen
I think what you and others don't understand is that, there is SO MUCH demand,
and SO MUCH money that no matter how much you build, the prices simply won't
go down.

From a developer's perspective, building a brand new apartment building is
ludicrously expensive, you simply MUST charge very high rent, or your whole
project is not feasible.

~~~
zanny
So for one there is no such thing as "infinite demand". We can talk about
Seattle having an unmeetable housing demand when the whole city is hundred
story condo buildings and the population density is twice that of Tokyo.

Of course in the short term, wherever you lift the crippling shroud of insane
zoning policy, new housing will still be very expensive. It is _pent up_
demand. But by building density you exhaust said demand. And on top of that,
the denser and larger you build, the most scale you apply, the cheaper it gets
per unit to house people. Economies of scale plus a bunch of other scaling
effects on construction.

One thing the first bastions of reasonable zoning policy will probably fail to
do, though, is remove some fairly insane mandatory minimum square footage
requirements, which puts a kink in any reasonable approach to housing -
developers need profit, and the smaller you can make units the larger your
market can be because you can fit more people into the same building footprint
and thus afford to charge less per unit, and thus enabling poorer people to
live there.

Without that you do just end up with the luxury 2000 sqft condos that are only
better than the status quo because they reduce pollution and traffic. They
also dramatically help the local economy by enabling high income earners to
live there in greater numbers. But to actually help the poor, you need to
unrestrict not just the outside building size but the inside as well.

~~~
iamcasen
Yeah spot on. I think the square footage thing, and the various zoning laws
and requirements for permits are probably one of the biggest reasons housing
is not affordable.

As it is now, if you build more housing, more wealthy people will move in to
fill that housing, and more and more, and on and on until you hit a plateau.
That plateau will never be affordable for a blue collar worker unfortunately.

My point is that building more houses is not the answer all by itself. Drastic
changes to our understanding of property rights and landlording are required
as well.

~~~
zanny
My whole point is that the plateau is only for the luxury first-wave large
family condo type housing (at the highest denstiy, at least - if you aren't
_there_ yet, you need more density until you get there, then you move on to
phase 2) and that if you let builders build housing smaller you can avoid such
plateaus because after exhausting the rich you build smaller and more
affordable but still net only slightly less revenue per square foot.

------
bit_logic
There is one argument, perhaps the most powerful one, from NIMBY that I agree
with and it's about traffic. The way we handle roads and transit simply can't
absorb the increase from high density. Serious transit investment must follow
density when density reaches a certain point. The progression should be

\- Suburb: Just roads are fine.

\- Midpoint: Give a lane and make it dedicated for BRT. That's the only way
people will take the bus seriously. When they see that bus zoom by while they
are stuck in traffic, many will take the bus.

\- City: Build rail and subway.

But high density development keeps happening without any of this. This just
makes the NIMBY arguments stronger.

EDIT: Just thought of another possible solution for Midpoint: shutdown the bus
system and use the funds to give everyone $X per month for Uber Pool/Lyft
Line. Make using Pool/Line a requirement for using the money, since those
provide the most benefit for increasing road capacity. Bus reputation is so
bad in the US, something like this might be the only way.

~~~
Kalium
> The way we handle roads and transit simply can't absorb the increase from
> high density. Serious transit investment must follow density when density
> reaches a certain point.

You're absolutely correct. This _must_ happen.

Realistically, it happens when the residents of a newly dense neighborhood
push for it to happen. It's rarely politically workable to build transit
first.

~~~
chrischen
It's possible to build transit first, if the transit company can also buy the
real estate at the terminus, and if the transit company is a private company
(not sure if it's feasible in the US).

But for government owned transit, it's not possible to speculate or prospect
transit lines, so it has to come after density is developed first.

~~~
Kalium
In the US, transit lines are almost always government-owned.

~~~
chrischen
There are private transportation vectors like the Ambassador bridge in
Windsor/Detroit. I'm not sure why in our instances we end up with them trying
lobby to block competing bridges from being put up while in Japan most of the
transit lines are private and work spectacularly well. But the US has probably
the biggest private Subway franchise in the world, if you count Subway
restaurants ;).

It's probably something to do with the black and white view of free-market vs
government regulation we have in the US. Everyone's gunning for all one or the
other.

------
saeranv
I'm glad they're doing this, and I think there are more ways to use data to
make this political argument for increasing housing supply. Specifically, I
think one potential application of data to break up zoning limitations &
NIMBY-ism is the use of energy and environmental simulation to argue against
right-to-light/solar access rights get used to protect low-density housing.

I've worked to develop urban planning guidelines in my previous job, and in my
experience environmental regulations like shading studies are heavily, heavily
relied on as a quantitative way to post-rationalize NIMBY-ism's desire to stop
construction. Why? Simply because there aren't a lot of other quantitative
metrics to justify low-density development, and so the only real data-backed
analysis that justifies building shorter buildings tends to be solar rights.

My current job is as a building energy researcher, and as I've gone about my
job - which involves a lot of programming & calculating metrics for building
energy (obviously), indoor/outdoor human comfort, daylighting thresholds -
it's obvious that the urban argument that is made is a one-sided one that
could be potentially undermined by demonstrating metrics that favor
<i>less</i> solar access. Or, since the sun moves around the sky - metrics
that give you equal solar access at different times, which can allow higher
density. i.e what is the urban heat island consequence of exposed urban
surfaces to sun, what is the comfort benefit of shade, the harm caused by
direct UV, what is the building energy benefit of blocking direct solar gain
etc.

This is not meant to (reductively) claim that less sun is a good thing -
simply that there is more ambiguity then is captured by current zoning
regulations or design standards, and as a result we are over-emphasizing solar
access when in certain places it isn't benefiting us. At the very least, we
shouldn't take the solar-access argument at face-value.

And I don't the planning officials and design professionals who are
implementing this for the current state of environmental regulations. In my
experience, given the impact their work has on the city, it's astonishing how
little resources are expended to actually quantitatively study the effect of
different typologies on the city, and as a result they tend to rely on
community (NIMBY) feedback, and existing precedent for structuring cities.
Better data-based tools could help them a lot make a progressive argument for
higher-density.

------
gregimba
The closer I get to purchasing a house the more I find myself pushing against
measures like this. NIMBY exists to protect most people's largest financial
asset.

~~~
Cau5tik
That's one of the main issues here. Houses should be about having a place to
live, not your largest financial asset. The selfish protectionism that comes
from treating housing as an investment is why so many cities are so broken.

~~~
gaius
How is it selfish?

People have got to save for retirement somehow. Company final salary pensions
are a thing of the past. Investments in shares can go down as well as up. The
government can’t or won’t help. What do you expect people to do? Sacrifice
their own wellbeing for your unearned benefit?

~~~
azernik
> Investments in shares can go down as well as up.

So instead, homeowners vote for policies that make sure that they somehow get
an asset that _is_ guaranteed to go up. _That 's_ an unearned benefit, it's
one that comes at _our_ expense, and it's an expense that _they_ sure as hell
didn't have to deal with when _they_ were getting established in the world.

~~~
gaius
_they sure as hell didn 't have to deal with when they were getting
established in the world_

No. Those people built the communities you find so desirable to live in,
sometimes from scratch, sometimes by regenerating a dilapidated area. The
value you crave would not even exist if not for them. And now that the hard
work is done, you expect to waltz in and have it for the taking?

Millennials think they are the first generation ever to live through hard
times. While raking in fortunes their parents and grandparents could only
dream of, working for tech unicorns.

~~~
chao-
Most Millennials do not work for tech unicorns. Most Millennials do not even
live in urban centers, most are living a very conventional suburban lifestyle.

Everyone else wants to think of Millennials as the first generation that is
uniquely self-absorbed or whiney.

------
kthejoker2
It never fails to boggle my mind that we have cities all over the Rust Belt
with ample real estate, state investment funding, and all the incentives in
the world to attract people away from Seattle, SF, SJ, etc. - and instead the
response is "let's ruin Seattle."

Why not just ... move?

~~~
WorldMaker
Same reason Y Combinator doesn't have a bigger presence in the "Rust Belt"?
Network effects.

If all the people are already on the West Coast what incentive is there to
encourage relocation away from the West Coast as opposed to the continual
brain drain from the rest of the country out to the West Coast?

~~~
rhapsodic
_> If all the people are already on the West Coast what incentive is there to
encourage relocation away from the West Coast as opposed to the continual
brain drain from the rest of the country out to the West Coast?_

Well, it's not true that "all the people are already on the West Coast", but
even if it were, YC might awaken to the obvious truth that rapid population
growth in west coast cities is not sustainable for much longer. Then, as a
forward-looking, long-term thinking company, they might see fit to establish
footprints in some of the less crowded, less expensive inland cities before
someone else beats them to it.

Personally, I don't understand why people who have skills that are marketable
in virtually any city in the first world choose to live with roommates in
crappy century-old homes or tiny apartments in a handful of coastal cities. To
each their own, I guess.

~~~
amarkov
For career driven people, it's not enough that just some company will hire
them for something. And there are very few cities where it's easy to find a
job matching the skills and expertise of e.g. a Microsoft tech lead.

~~~
WorldMaker
Much less cities where you have the opportunity at multiple such large
companies. Seattle has Amazon's HQ as well as Microsoft's, and presences from
Facebook and Google.

You can be a Microsoft tech lead in Raleigh-Durham, too, but you aren't going
to have as many opportunities with Amazon/Facebook/Google/etc there.

------
stcredzero
I met this young man from Stanford who was part of a project where people
would buy a shipping container home, plant it in their backyard as a "Mother
in Law Unit" and rent it out. That would be a way to show in action that you
think, "Yes, in my Back Yard!"

------
dmoy
Seemingly missing from this entire discussion,

\- why do we spend like 60-70%+ of federal housing dollars on high income
earners / rich people?

\- why is section 8 gutted to all hell?

I don't see why it's so shocking that there's no affordable housing, when some
of the big old programs aimed at reducing that are a shadow of their former
selves, and we spend most of our effort in housing just throwing cash at
people who already make a lot of it.

Or maybe people like Zach mentioned in the article do think this stuff, but
they're taking baby steps because the political capital necessary to actually
stop the above points is probably huge.

------
minikites
>When homeowners say they’re fighting to protect neighborhood character,
Lubarsky says, “it really feels to me like they just don’t want young people
in their neighborhood.”

This is also almost always coded language for not wanting to live near racial
minorities. This whole article is yet another example of baby boomers pulling
up the ladder behind them. The millennials I know are angry and there's going
to be a reckoning in the near future as it comes to a head.

~~~
JBReefer
I think people are going to get rid of Social Security at some point. I own my
apartment in Manhattan, but my family is _very_ lucky in that we had an
extremely motivated seller in a very underappreciated area, and that I have a
good job. The traditional paths to adulthood have been broken by NIMBYs and a
complete lack of investment in infrastructure after it was good enough for the
Boomers.

Something is going to happen - you can't pull the ladder behind you, keep
everyone you don't like out of your neighborhood, and reduce mobility to
protect your assets without serious backlash.

~~~
dominotw
extremely motivated seller = unfortunate person backed into a corner
financially ?

~~~
JBReefer
He was a very wealthy person who worked for Microsoft, but thanks for
assuming.

------
notadoc
The irony is all the people piling into the west coast complaining about the
problem are causing the problem they then are complaining about.

Instead they should all move to the midwest, south, or NE, where cost of
living is a small fraction of the west coast. They can pay off a very nice
house in full for less than the cost of a downpayment in any trendy west coast
city, and they can easily afford to live a stereotypical middle class
lifestyle - house, cars, kids, vacations, a stay at home parent - on a
reasonable income, something which is now increasingly difficult on the west
coast where cost of living is extraordinarily high.

I sincerely hope that various companies start aggressively opening offices in
middle America, the south, upstate NY, etc. Maybe someone should produce a few
goofy TV shows about how 'quirky' and 'cool' and 'hip' those destinations are,
turn them into the new cultural mecca for all the flighty trend chasers, and
let the west coast housing mess take care of itself.

~~~
rustybelt
Six figures in the rust belt is the life. I live in a beautiful historic home
for a tenth of the cost of the ones shown in the article. I can afford to have
my wife stay home while our kids are small. I'm dumping close to a quarter of
my income into retirement savings despite still having significant student
debt. I'm close to family members to help with the kids (a problem for my
childhood friends who fled to the coasts after college.) People talk about
amenities being better on the coasts, but I'm an hour from downtown Chicago,
which is easily the second-most spectacular urban center in North America.
Plus I'm close to great weekend destinations like St. Louis, Cincinnati,
Louisville, and Nashville. As for outdoor amenities, I'll put the great lakes
up against any other region of the country when it comes to natural beauty.
Western Michigan has some of the nicest beaches in the country. It's one of
the many hidden-gems of the flyover states. Yeah the winters suck in the upper
midwest, but they also end and the summers are spectacular.

~~~
refurb
You don't even have to make six figures to have a good life in the mid-west.
My first job was in a mid-sized Michigan town. Starter homes were 150% of my
annual pre-tax salary. Schools were very good. Of course the town couldn't
offer what a big city could, but it had enough.

My boss was making under $200,000/yr and he was living a similar life to
someone making over $1M on the coasts.

------
ilamont
I would like to see the bosses of these techies consider basing their
headquarters and satellite offices not smack-dab in the middle of the hottest
tech towns but rather in cities where there is lots of housing and room for
commercial development, which are often former industrial areas.

In New England, it boggles the mind that startups and giants like GE throw
millions into building offices in Kendall and Seaport when they could build
elsewhere in the region for much cheaper (Worcester, southern New Hampshire,
Rhode Island/Fall River/New Bedford) and allow many of their employers to get
reasonably priced homes. Many are served by commuter rail or bus systems, have
nearby universities, and are within reasonable driving distance of
Boston/Cambridge.

And then there's telecommuting. Automattic, Zapier and a few others have
embraced it but they are the exception.

~~~
slothario
Actually, I started to type "I don't know why a company is willing to pay
twice as much for an engineer in Silicon Valley than for one in Houston," but
as I was typing that I had an epiphany.

What they're REALLY paying for is knowledge from other companies. A person who
has worked at Google and other innovative shops has (hopefully) learned a
bunch of great processes, and will (hopefully) implement them at their new
workplace.

So an area like the Bay Area is filled with _collective knowledge_ because
there are great companies there, and all that talent is jostling around.

------
0x4f3759df
Fourplex upzoning also proposed in Minneapolis

[https://streets.mn/2018/03/14/fourplexes-everywhere-bold-
ref...](https://streets.mn/2018/03/14/fourplexes-everywhere-bold-reform-
proposed-in-minneapolis/)

------
slededit
Seattle was a dying city 30 years ago. Comparing historical housing prices
would be highly misleading.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
More like 47 years ago when Boring busts were still a thing. Real estate
hasn’t busted like that since then, with only a down tick in the 90s along
with the rest of the west coast.

------
crdoconnor
Somebody from his generation _is_ going to have that one day. They'll be rich
too.

It's striking how much the media is attempting to foment intergenerational
strife over issues that are fundamentally about wealth inequality.

------
rdlecler1
The kicker is that the baby boomers also want the younger generation (who
can’t afford homes) to pay for their entitlements. It’s like going to dinner
with your rich uncle and he stiffs you on the bill. Housing is the biggest
problem of this generation. Exorbitant rent seeking sucks up all marginal
resources, leading to greater inequality and less of a means to fund
entitlements. The irony.

------
kerng
>>The Seattle area, the nation’s 22nd largest by population, has the third
most homeless people, behind only Los Angeles and New York City.

I knew it was bad, but didn't realize it's that bad. One Seattlite once told
me there are a lot of homeless people because they refer to it as Freeattle,
as they get lot of things for free - not sure if that is true. Anyone who is
from Seattle know more?

~~~
lazyasciiart
For all useful purposes, it's false. A detailed in-person survey of homeless
people in King County found that 10% of them said that homeless services were
part of the reason they moved to Seattle, and it's more likely that they moved
from other parts of Washington than from far away.

Homelessness rates in Seattle track rising (and falling! lol) rents very
closely, which is a difficult-to-explain coincidence for anyone who really
believes that the cause is actually random people from all over America
catching a bus to Seattle to get into a shelter.

summary piece for reading \- [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
news/homeless/king-coun...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
news/homeless/king-countys-former-homeless-czar-on-homelessness-the-causes-
are-far-more-complex-than-i-even-knew/)

the survey mentioned \- [https://thecisforcrank.com/tag/applied-survey-
research/](https://thecisforcrank.com/tag/applied-survey-research/) \-
[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3480319-City-of-
Seat...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3480319-City-of-Seattle-
Homeless-Needs-Assessment-March.html)

~~~
kerng
Thanks for the informative response. Appreciate the insights.

------
YorkianTones
I think the demand side for single family housing will increase in Seattle
over the near future. There has been a recent boom in tech company positions
and equity (especially Amazon and Microsoft, but others as well such as
Tableau, Facebook, etc.). There is a relatively (compared to SF) nascent
startup and VC scene developing, and more tech companies are opening or
expanding branch offices here as they observe the talent pool that's now well
above critical mass. And many employees of these companies are young (in their
20s), recent transplants from around the country, or on temporary work visas
and in the process of getting green cards / citizenship. Seattle is also a
place people tend to want to plant roots (for the great career options, the
natural beauty, and the culture).

As the young recent transplants build their savings and seek to plant roots
and start families when they get into their 30s, they'll look at single family
housing. But the natural beauty includes water on two sides of the city and
there is basically no undeveloped land to add more single family houses.
Combining these employment, demographic and geographic factors, I expect
demand to continue surging forward and supply to remain constrained. Building
up and new apartments coming online is starting to reduce pressure on soaring
condo/apartment rent costs, and building up to increase supply is a valve that
can continue to reduce rent pressure for those without families. But I don't
see a way forward to increase single family housing inside the city limits -
in fact supply will go down as more townhomes and apartment buildings go up.

It seems, as the article hints at but doesn't much explore, that American
Millenial coastal urban dwellers will need to develop a new conception of
family housing (that is not single family housing with a private yard). I
think there are options here, and the conception of the American dream replete
with single family housing around an urban core seems like a relatively recent
post-war phenomenon. What does family housing in Tokyo look like? In dense
European cities? Historically before the 20th century? What new forms could it
take, especially as we build up and think about modern amenities? With new
transportation options (ride sharing, better bike infra, soon self driving
cars) garages are less necessary, with new meal delivery options kitchens are
less necessary, and with the sharing economy we can cut down on storage space.
I'd like to see some new creative approaches to modern US family housing.

------
munificent
One thing I never see come up in these discussions is the overall increasingly
wealth disparity in the US.

In most of these discussions there is an implied moral stance that people have
some level of "rights" about where they can live. I think all but the most
stringent anarchists agree you don't have a moral right to live in a sprawling
mansion on the coast, regardless of your contributions to society. And most
agree that it's not right if someone working 40 hours a week can't afford a
home anywhere in the United States.

But, between those two extremes is an interesting continuum. My belief is that
most of us grew up in a culture that placed the "right" point on that
continuum right between the city and neighborhood level of scale. Most people
should have the right to live in the city of their choosing, regardless of
your income level. But you don't have the right to pick your neighborhood. If
you want to live in the most desireable neighborhood, then it's fair for you
to have to pay for the luxury.

I think that's been a stable cultural point for a lot of cities in the US for
many decades. New York is a good example of a city that supported people from
the righest elites down to poverty-level working class.

But economic disparity has gotten so bad now that the affordability point on
the continuum no longer aligns with our rightful point. If you are working
class, there are no cities where the entire commutable region surrounding it
is outside of your price point. San Francisco is one and Seattle is well on
its way.

I think much of the anger we feel comes from those two points being out of
alignment. We feel that people _should_ be able to live in the metro area of
their choosing, but the economic reality is that for some cities now, they
can't.

I don't believe any simple supply and demand model of housing will fix this.
Seattle is a highly desireable area and the demand is elastic. I think you'd
see:

    
    
        Increase housing supply ->
        Prices go down ->
        City becomes more appealing for businesses ->
        Business grow and need more employees ->
        Demand goes up ->
        Prices return
    

You'll end up with just as many $800k houses (or apartments), but now with
comparatively worse infrastructure because it wasn't designed for higher
density. There are plenty enough high paid tech employees in the US and the
world at large to absorb any additional housing Seattle has to offer.

I think the fundamental problem is that when you combine increasing wealth
disparity, high mobility, and people sorting themselves economically, you
naturally end up with large regions of the country that are only affordable by
certain economic levels. And that spatial fact conflicts with our moral belief
that no large region of the US should be effectively off limits to someone
based on their wealth.

------
kthejoker2
Quote:

___

And woe to the millennial who dares dream of starting a family, warns Myra
Lara, a 30-year-old architect and affordability advocate. Of her Seattle
friends who have become parents, all but one has been exiled to the suburbs.
“It sucks—I never see them,” says Lara. “But that’s what they have to do.”

__

Lol "woe" indeed. This is probably the ultimate first-world problem.

~~~
mfringel
There are a couple of things mentioned in that sentence. Can you say which one
you think is the "ultimate first-world problem?"

~~~
ummonk
I mean, we would love to have affordable suburban houses within easy commuting
distance of tech jobs in the Bay Area. So it certainly seems like a rather
enviable "problem" that families in Seattle are able to move from the urban
core to the suburbs...

------
csense
> a housing market so expensive it’s throttling one of America’s biggest urban
> success stories. Decades ago, these tidy homes were cheap enough for
> schoolteachers and firefighters. Today, most cost at least a million
> dollars, and what was once a proudly middle-class neighborhood has morphed
> into a financially gated community

If you want a house like that, and you're not super wealthy, find a remote gig
and move outside the big tech-boom cities. Here in the Rust Belt, houses like
that are very affordably priced.

If enough people with tech-generated wealth start living and spending money
here, it'll make progress solving the regional inequalities that are driving
support for Donald Trump.

~~~
phillipcarter
But I don't like that area. A house like that is not worth giving up the
incredible outdoors lifestyle that the Seattle region offers.

I'm happy to live in a well-built, quiet condo that I pay a bit more for than
"standard" condos or whatever. Don't really need a house. But even these are
nearly impossible to come by. There's practically zero inventory.

~~~
realbarack
FWIW if "incredible outdoors lifestyle" is what you seek and remote work is an
option there are a number of better, cheaper places to live than Seattle.

~~~
phillipcarter
What examples? I don’t actually live in Seattle proper, as it’s far too
expensive. But the surrounding areas are also absurd in price.

~~~
realbarack
It really depends what you are looking for but a short list of western cities
which are superior outdoor destinations to Seattle at least in some ways (and
are much cheaper) is Bozeman, Missoula, Salt Lake City, Rapid City, Reno,
Boise, St George. If a city is not a requirement, the list is a lot longer.

Your mileage may vary depending on much or little you value things like
remoteness, lack of traffic, mountains vs desert vs forest. Yes, if you're a
hardcore mountaineer it might be tough to beat the north Cascades but for the
rest of us there are a lot of good options.

------
gaius
“We can’t have it so you can’t either”

------
quantumofmalice
The solution to expensive neighborhoods isn't destroying those neighborhoods
with high density housing. Most humans don't want to live in hives.

The problem to solve is distributing economic viability more widely across the
country and then building more cities and towns in the density that supports
family formation and doesn't dehumanize the occupants: single family homes on
5-12k square foot lots surrounding walkable commercial districts.

Allowing our population to naturally stabilize by restricting immigration
would help too.

~~~
dredmorbius
How do you propose distributing that opportunity?

~~~
quantumofmalice
Things like this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit)

~~~
dredmorbius
Several of those refer to redistribution of wealth. A Georgian LVT applies to
high-cost, high-employment metropolises which have underprovisioned housing
and exacerbated sprawl, but not really to low-cost, underperforming failed
cities such as Detroit or Pittsburg.

Clarifying my question: how do you propose to create economic opportunities
where housing is cheap but prospects are few, particularly as economic
activity seems to want to concentrate.

~~~
quantumofmalice
I would distribute sovereignty more broadly, allow the smaller units of
sovereignty to practice mercantilism to protect internal industries (i.e.
productive capacity) and remove usury as the basis of the money supply to
avoid wealth concentration in money centers.

Wealth redistribution is inevitable at this point, ideally in the form of debt
jubilee but, given the political power of the banking class, more likely via
something more chaotic.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'd prefer dropping wealth distribution from the discussion and focus _not_
because I disagree with it, but because 1. I'm already sold, 2. it's trivially
implemented (technically if not politically), and 3. it tends, as evidenced
here in another thread, to generate predictable and unproductive discussion.

Actually, I'll go a step or two further and suggest that a mix of rentier
taxes (land _and other_ monopolistic elements) _and_ income supports (UBI,
living minimum wage, additional targeted support as needed), workplace and
labour protections, collective bargaining, are almost certainly required.

UBI without LVT merely pumps wages to landlords. Similar further arguments
extend to otther elements above.

But that leaves us with the fundamental issue remaining: natural clustering
tendencies of many economic activitties, particularly dematerialised ones
("informattion work") tend toward clusteering (where skills are scarce) or
outsourcing to the lowest-wage centre (where skill is automated away). All
other areas are effectively dead zones.

(In-person services, repair, and construction remain, but these are poorly-
scaling, low-profit sectors.)

That's the dynamic I see as needing addressing. And UBI + LVT don't get you
there, that I see.

Any insights there?

~~~
mmirate
How could any of this work without post-scarcity? (which is at best a pipe-
dream)

