In Midst of a Tech Boom, Seattle Tries To Keep Its Soul

HughPickens.com writes: Nick Wingfield has an interesting article in the NYT about how Seattle, Austin, Boulder, Portland, and other tech hubs around the country are seeking not to emulate San Francisco where wealth has created a widely envied economy, but housing costs have skyrocketed, and the region's economic divisions have deepened with rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco at more than $3,500 a month, the highest in the country. "Seattle has wanted to be San Francisco for so long," says Knute Berger. "Now it's figuring out maybe that it isn't what we want to be." The core of the debate is over affordable housing and the worry that San Francisco is losing artists, teachers and its once-vibrant counterculture. "It's not that we don't want to be a thriving tech center — we do," says Alan Durning. "It's that the San Francisco and Silicon Valley communities have gotten themselves into a trap where preservationists and local politics have basically guaranteed buying a house will cost at least $1 million. Already in Seattle, it costs half-a-million, so we're well on our way."

Seattle mayor Ed Murray says he wants to keep the working-class roots of Seattle, a city with a major port, fishing fleet and even a steel mill. After taking office last year, Murray made the minimum-wage increase a priority, reassured representatives of the city's manufacturing and maritime industries that Seattle needed them., and has set a goal of creating 50,000 homes — 40 percent of them affordable for low-income residents — over the next decade. "We can hopefully create enough affordable housing so we don't find ourselves as skewed by who lives in the city as San Francisco is," says Murray. "We're at a crossroads," says Roger Valdez. "One path leads to San Francisco, where you have an incredibly regulated and stagnant housing economy that can't keep up with demand. The other path is something different, the Seattle way."

Comments

What they really need

[alvinrod]

What Seattle really needs is better mass transit. The bus system is decent as far as U.S. cities go, but the traffic is some of the worst in the nation. If they're going to continue growing the metro area, they need some kind of mass transit that makes it possible to get around without adding even more cars to the highway.

Re:What they really need

[dave562]

To offer a single counter point, when I was living in Long Beach, CA and commuting into downtown Los Angeles, I opted to take the blue line instead. It took a little bit longer, but it was worth it for me because my employer subsidized the cost of the ticket as part of a county initiative to reduce traffic congestion.

My options were sit in bumper to bumper traffic for an hour every morning, or kick back on the train and read for about an hour and fifteen minutes. To me, the extra 30 minutes I spent on the train every day was worth not having to sit in traffic and pay for gasoline.

Just an opinion here, but I think that a person has to be a certain kind of sick in the head to actually prefer the "freedom" of sitting in their own car in traffic if given the opportunity take mass transit instead.

I also had co-workers who took Amtrak trains into work from 50+ miles away. Another co-worker of mine rode the bus in.

It has been my experience that in most cases, the challenge of getting people to take mass transit is cultural and based in classicism. I met people who had trouble getting their brains wrapped around the fact that I was making a six figure a year salary, and riding the train through south central Los Angeles. "You have a car, why would you want to subject yourself to that?" was a question that someone once asked me.

Re:What they really need

[bob_super]

You're supposed to factor in the money saved in traffic jams, road repairs, accidents, road plowing, pollution, stress, old-people-off-the-road, parking...
The point is NEVER for the public transit system to "break even". It's a quality of life investment which as lots of hard-to-quantify returns.

Re:Don't worry, rasing the minimum wage will kill

[Coren22]

Perhaps rather than making up a conservative position that doesn't exist, you should try actually understanding the conservative position.

$15/hr minimum wage means McDonalds can afford that burger robot to replace half their employees.

Don't cry for me Seattle

[Kohath]

How many whines about too many tech jobs ruining Seattle for the workin' man do we need to see?

Every town without a tech boom wishes they had your problems.