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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
The condensed version of all the presented negatives in the article boil down to just this one sentence:
How stupid do they have to be to even frame this in such a way, when Seattle's population climbs constantly and will not slow down anytime soon? Build now; it will catch up in 1-10 years for occupancy. Meanwhile this becomes a boom in good times and revenue for every single business up and down and around Market Street. There is no downside to this and will end up leaving the area around Ballard as dense as the areas off Broadway are today.
The only losers are the Lesser Seattle people and the present locals who may be opposed to growth. But are the desires of the person who lives in Ballard today worth more or less than the person who is just moving there now, and plans to live there going forward?
its an extreme example, yes, but not all effects or scenarios of a condo glut are dreamy, and not every forecast of unlimited population growth is real or guaranteed. bubble/burst cycles arent that great for most players in the economy, and not sure why you would cheerlead them blindly.
The Eastside will be the "slums of the future".
A) more business to serve those people
B) more transit in the long run
C) more city services--lights, sidewalks
D) more school spending concentrated in the neighborhood
E) A through D bring more culture and life, inevitably
F) my property value rises from demand in the area
I fail to see a downside from any logical or rational point of view. The only downside would be if I like the current sleepy nature of the neighborhood. I do. My block is the quietest block I've ever lived on in my entire life--ever. At night I can look up in the sky and see stars, being isolated and obstructed through hills and effective suburbs from both the city, Westwood, and White Center lights.
I'd trade it in a heartbeat though for A through F.
You either increase the supply of apartments to keep pace with growth or you'll have today's $1000 apartments costing $1800 adjusted for inflation in 20 years.
But you may be right, for a change.
my complaint is that developers and the building industry have too much power in this city and state, too much influence in poitics. and when things go bad, which they cyclically do, society picks up their tab. we pay for their externalities as well even in the good times.
so there's a lot of smart things we can do to encourage or mandate smart development, and we should invest in mass transit and make smart long term decisions, but it seemed this article was kinda mindless in its cheerleading
@18 is right. I don't live in Seattle, but I don't see effective provision of affordable housing anywhere I've been. Rampant condo development, if it displaces single-family housing near transit, is the next best thing, but it's far from ideal.
If I could have afforded a $500,000 to $750,000 house at the time I would have moved to (in order)
The neighborhoods east of Broadway, north of Pike/Pine, west of 23rd
Ballard/Market
Green Lake
Central Wallingford
West Seattle Junction
Admiral
Alki
But you take what you can get based on your income and spending ability.
Unfortunately there's a steady supply of "absolute ceiling" people and a metric shitload of people that will have to eat a lot of bread sandwiches to afford those "absolute ceiling" rents who will doubtless move out to Shoreline or Kent instead. Never mind their commutes will be absurd, etc etc. I guess if you want to live in an enclave that's solely comprised of wealthy people (or people up to their eyeballs in debt) that's fine. If you think just building more units will really address this problem I'd recommend a reality check.
Failure to build denser housing than we have now will make affordable housing scarcer in the future, regardless of rent control or other government policy. High prices for housing are the direct and predictable result of insufficient housing relative to the demand for housing. The reason is simple -- those with resources to do so bid up the price. You can throw mud and call me names for pointing that out, but it does not change the underlying patterns of economic behavior related to scarce goods (like housing in Seattle).
Rent control doesn't actually change this -- all it does is render the process opaque and shift the balance to favor resources other than money. In particular, it strongly favors those with the stability to remain in one place for a long time at the (typically ruinous) expense of younger people and new families. The temptation for corruption in such arrangements also becomes intense.
Incomes have not improved all that much from 1990 so I have no idea how young people are surviving. $2000 dollar a month one bedroom apartments are Manhattan rates. Ballard is not god damn Manhattan.
Of course I've benefited immensely from the insane explosion in the housing market as well as it's later contraction because we got lucky (and smart) and timed everything just right.
IOW: I am one of those people who got to buy a home on Capitol Hill cheaply that is now supposedly "worth" 600K. Supposedly.
Our initially luck in buying into real estate was only remotely possible because the rental market was accessible and we could save our money. What is happening here now is not sustainable. Most you kids out there are screwed. Unless this thing crashes again.
In fairness, that's not Manhattan rates either, unless maybe you're living in Washington Heights. These days, you can get a microstudio in Manhattan for $2k a month.
:(
The result is once you get a rent controlled apartment, you never move, no matter how much better sense it makes for work/love/life. The apartment is NEVER renovated by the landlord because it can not and never will make economic sense. I've seen rent controlled apartments that have not had a new cabinet or bathroom sink in 30+ years. Absolutely filthy. The longer you are there, the more the landlord's incentive to make you leave. If you're crafty, you live in the apartment for a few years, then sublet it out and make a killing each month... until the landlord catches you. In that case it's basically welfare for people who are willing to break the law-- which is to say, welfare for criminals. Etc etc etc. Zoning control? Yeah, that worked out for the West Village... Hm, does Jane Jacob's butcher still live on the same block as his butcher shop? No! All those affordable multifamily townhouses got turned into $8 million single family homes... instead of being torn down and turned into modest 300-unit apartment homes for a new generation of Manhattan workers. Not to mention that zoning/density control has made SROs or cohousing or microapartments illegal... these spaces used to be full of scalawag day-laborers but I can guarantee today they would be full of young, single workers who are in search of just enough affordable housing space instead of a mandated minimum amount well above their needs.
All this noise about "well obviously rampant building hasn't worked" is total horseshit-- because you haven't seen even half of the *volume* OR the *variety* of new building that's needed.
To make this work, we need (like between 20 and 40 years ago) a grade-separate regional transit system. We need this so the suburbs can share more equitably in the burden of density. Being a city, we had a higher density before it became fasionable.
Re @29's post, we need to place a legal limit on how long rental spaces can remain vacant. There is a retail space in Ballard which went vacant nearly 3 years ago, when the landlords, in the middle of a fucking recession, wanted to raise the rents on their long time tenant exorbinately. Guess what, nobody else has taken it, and it's been empty since.
I propose (anyone want to start an initiative?) that there be a limit on how long rental spaces can remain vacant, especially in areas where density makes sense. For retail spaces, after the limit is up, it becomes subject for auction among independant startups. For residential spaces, it becomes elligible for rent controlled spaces, to save on costs of building and maintaining new low-income structures. I have been thinking of this ever since I watched 2 apartments in my building sit vacant for over a year each. I knew what he was doing or hoping to do, but I also have observed enough in the current developments to know that my property is worth less without a neighboring property, which has been passed down through the family to the current owner/resident.