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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."
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."
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.
Look at Houston for guidance. 25% of our workforce is oil and gas, many of whom are engineers. There's 18000 people at the Space Center. Then there's all the other stuff downtown.
Housing here is quite affordable despite the abundance of high paying jobs. Driving is a necessity (and traffic kinda sucks and things are really spread out), but $3500 would lease you a 5000+ sq ft house here in a really nice area within a reasonable drive to work.
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.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
iirc Seattle has the highest male to female ratio in the country. Maybe some single women will move there once they realise how heavily the economics lean in their favour, until then I think I'll give it a miss, thanks.
Seattle: Huge problems with traffic. Amazingly, amazingly, Seattle residents often mention that there are areas with poor internet service!
Portland: Unlivable. The traffic is 10 times worse than 2 years ago. The slowly, slowly moving cars make the pollution far worse. The Portland city government has been allowing the construction of huge apartment buildings with no parking. The parking problem lowers the value of all the buildings in the area.
There are many other areas of corruption. Here is just one: The Portland law against plastic bags favors a nearby company that makes paper bags. Paper bags are far worse for the environment because someone has to cut trees, trucks then bring the trees to a plant where they are processed with chemicals that also cause pollution. The paper bags cost grocery stores 10 times more than plastic bags and are so weak they often cannot be fully packed. Paper bags become weak when wet in the frequent rain. People who don't want the problems shop outside of Portland; Portland is a small city of 609,456 people (2013).
Often humans are not good at taking care of themselves.
Clean the office buildings at night
Work at shops and restaurants
Take care of your child
Police your city
This list can go on and on. People above can't afford to live the same city they work because of housing prices. I once asked a night janitor, who had his two sons with him at work that day, where he lived. He told me he lived more than an hour out of the city. I don't have any solutions but this isn't a good thing. Think about something catastrophic accident happening in the city and more than half the emergency services personnel are stuck in the massive traffic jam trying to enter the city.
...because of multiple government regulations that have choked off supply, namely:
* Rent Control
* Excessive environmental regulations
* Excessive land use regulations
* An institutional hostility to landlords (so bad that many landlords simply refuse to rent at all since renters could tie them up in court for years when they tried to sell the property).
* California's general hostility to development.
And now San Francisco has said they'll try to limit price increases by restricting supply. Looks like someone failed Economics 101.
Bonus: Did you know that the Rev. Jim Jones (yes, that one) once served on San Francisco's Housing Authority?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
If you say you're going to make houses for the lower income people but then they get bid up and bought out by people who'd rather not have to pay 500k for a house when they don't have to.
Assume that tech money will come and go. Use the money coming in now to invest in future Seattle. Build subways, railways, etc. Beef-up the infrastructure of public transport with the money you have now. Whether or not tech stays, people will want to live in place where they can get around fast and will not need a car. Logistics and housing are the answers.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
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.
Hipsters who don't want to commute more than 30 minutes from San Francisco. Recruiters are offering higher pay rates for hipsters to work in Silicon Valley that's 45- to 90-minutes away.
Mine went from $180 a month $7,500 deductible Major Medical plan to a $950 a month $12,500 deductible Bronze Major Medical plan. I was told that I had crap insurance before and that is why it went up, but it was with the same company and the only change was that they raised the deductible and raised the premium.
After this new premium kicked in with no notice and after my bank started sending me overdraft notices due to the insurance company taking out an unapproved amount from my checking account (a process commonly known as "theft"), I immediately went searching for other insurance and got the plan down to only slightly over double what it used to be for 60% higher deductible.
A few years later, I was let go from my job and redid my application for insurance, hoping for some assistance with the premiums, but unlike the commercials for Obamacare which state "most qualify for assistance", I did NOT qualify for assistance, and did not qualify even for tax rebates. Still paying 100% of the premium, which is infinity percent of my salary. Before Obamacare, insurance was 2.5% of my salary, then it went up to 14% overnight, and now it is up to infinity percent. Still Hoping for Change.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
After living in Seattle for 40+ years, I can tell you that this place lost its "soul" a long time ago.
There are still remnants here and there but they're being cleaned up as quickly as possible.
And as bad as it is in many ways, it's still one of the better places to live on the west coast.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Sure, gentrification is an option. But only to a point. Gentrifying every neighborhood leaves you with San Francisco level housing costs, which is what they're trying to avoid.
This is the problem with allocation of scarce resources. Demand goes up without a corresponding increase in supply and price goes up. Getting a bunch of tech companies to relocate to Seattle along with all of the workers and you're going to get higher prices because land is in finite supply. There's no way around it except to stack everyone on top of each other.
Yeah, there's always a fight between the NIMBY types and the corporations who can buy their way in. The poor get trapped between them because they have no one fighting on their behalf and they lose out every time.
The problem is that there is no winning move. There is basically no more land to expand to so the only way to deal with the influx of people and businesses is to stack people up on the land that's already there. And that changes the character of the city. Everyone loses but that doesn't stop the city big wigs from trying to get more businesses (and their corresponding employees) to move there.
The only way to keep the city the way it is, along with keeping housing costs in check, would be to keep businesses and people from moving into the area. Trouble is, you don't get reelected to city/county leadership if you're the type to turn away jobs.
On the plus side, I got a new car two weeks ago.
You're doing something wrong. If you don't have any income, you should qualify for Medicaid. ObamaCare is for people who actually have an income.
The irony is that many of the products under development are expected to be used in every corner of the world.
But somehow they can only be developed by bringing people all together in one place.
????
The hippies, gays, artists and black people have been replaced by 23-year-old white male Amazon workers who roam the streets in packs, swilling Jagermeister and assaulting any drag queens they spot.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Why would you imagine a corporation "hoards" money? Corporations mostly spend any money they get on growth growth growth GROWTH AT ANY COST. During downturns the smarter companies may keep a little back to help survive, and buy up the ones who don't, but that beats random hire-then-layoff.
Minimum-wage employees almost always work in low-margin businesses, so when wages go up either prices go up, the business goes under, or the business automates. When prices go up, that's usually a very regressive tax, given shopping habits of the rich and poor, but that obviously looks like "economic growth" since, hey, prices went up.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You can't really get a decent place for $500k in Seattle.
Now if only we would permit Tiny Houses in the driveways of retired SFH zoned properties, so they could keep their house, and rent/lease the land, people could easily buy a Tiny House for $30k and have equity in the actual house. This would double population but allow people to keep their older giant houses with unused garages that they no longer use.
Most of use use transit, bike, or walk to work here. Car driving is something the suburbanites do.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
No, Medicaid does not automatically apply if you're poor. Source.
Note: "There is currently no federal requirement that states provide health coverage to adults without dependent children. These adults qualify for Medicaid coverage only if they have a disability or are age 65 or older. However, about half of states provide some coverage through federal waivers or state-funded programs for non-disabled adults who have limited incomes but do not otherwise qualify for Medicaid."
What is wrong with leaving the city? Why should a magical line drawn on a map make a difference? Why do people want to make cities into insular bubbles that don't interact with the rest of the region? But commercial buildings in the suburbs, and residential buildings in the suburbs, and then people will live in the suburbs and have a higher quality of life than living in the city.
Or just stop teaching people that they must have a job in the city and no where else, get rid of parochialism. That's a major problem in so many cities. People want to be in the city limits even though it cames with more drawbacks than advantages, the demand makes the housing prices skyrocket, it drives out the middle class, it drives out people with families, it destroys the public schools, and the only reason for it is that some people care about having a desirable zip code.
In most places, that has already happened, then the new real estate "out of the city" becomes desirable, because the highly paid workers that work at the company that located outside the city want to live close to work. For example, Microsoft isn't located in Seattle itself, it is in Redmond. So Redmond real estate becomes pricier because all the borg drones want to live near the MS campus. All the tech companies aren't located in San Francisco, they are located in Silicon Valley so more housing is built there and so it becomes a massive nightmare of urban sprawl rather than the higher-density housing you get when the company locates within the city center. Amazon is a bit of an exception as it is located in Seattle proper, but many companies that are moving into a given area locate in the existing suburbs for many reasons (taxes, local workforce, cheaper real estate, etc.). In many (most?) cities the problem isn't gentrification driving lower income people out, it is all the well-off people (and many of the companies) moving to the outlying areas leaving mostly poorer people living in the city centers.
Enigma
I didn't say that, I place the blame on his state's government.
I do wonder which state this is though. Because I'd like to make sure I avoid ever moving there.
Sounds to me like Seattle is following in San Francisco's footsteps, with "preservationists and local politics" doing pretty much the same things they did in San Francisco.
I just wish they'd stop blaming the "tech boom" or software developers for their failed policies.
Actually it is simple.
1. The majority of the tech press is in SF. The best product on the web or the app store does not always win. It is the one that people know about. You come up with a cool app in Twin Falls, ID and you will be hard pressed get any buzz.
2. A lot of the venture capital people are in SF.
3. If your startup in SF goes belly up you can walk down the street and find a new job.
4. SF, Seattle, and Austin are seen as being cool tech centers.
Frankly it is probably the reason that Slashdot never became huge like Engadget dispite the fact that at one time it was the tech site on web for techies.
I live and work in South Florida. The PC was created in Boca Raton Florida. We used to have a ton of tech companies in South Florida and we have an extremely diverse population but very little in the way of start ups. I think a large part is the lack of colleges with strong tech programs in South Florida. The schools with the best tech programs are FSU, UF, and UCF which are all located central and north Florida.
Florida is still loaded with tech companies like Harris, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and there is a lot of talent, cheap housing, good beaches, clean air, and sunshine but venture capital? Thriving start-up scene?
Nope not at all.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.