Oh. Christ. This is always true. Everywhere.

So much so that laboring again and again to tell everybody how much worse someone else had it is an empty pointless aphorism. It’s like your grandpa belaboring his uphill 10 mile march in the snow to school with nothing to eat but and old potato. Yeah? So what, grandpa.

Prosperity always comes at a cost to someone or something (or some time) else. We only care when WE NOW are effected.

The native Americans here before black people got fucked. And they fucked another group. And they fucked someone or something else.

We may learn from the past but we can actually not deal with now. We can only change now.

So this constant grievance lament of gentrification in days past will fall on deaf ears.

Would you please just fucking move and find somewhere else to complain about. You are so goddamn BORING.

Watch out Charles, you're gonna trigger some white Russian trolls and they're gonna have to tell you how you should feel about being black in 'Murica....because.

Charles on the same beat as always. And more "whataboutism"

The walls are closing in on you. The world all around you sees nothing more than a victim to be used. Carry your cross and STFU.

GeekWire needs a "five-block radius" tag.

Ah, c'mon Charles, retire that frowny-face. Get outside and get some fresh air, take a forest-bath, come home and smoke a bowl, pour yourself a glass of Madeira, put on some Amelia Rodrigues... even suffering has a sweet side.

@3 I’m not telling Charles how to feel. We all already knew how he “feels.” Every one knows how he feels.

Feelings don’t change shit. Feelings won’t make the world better.

The fact is Seattle was more affordable for more people before. That’s a fact. Today Seattle is not affordable. This is today’s problem.

Yes. Back in the salad days of Seattle most those people were white. So the fuck what? Most people living here were white.

At least it was better for more people.

Now it’s shitty from more whites AND non-whites. And that makes it okay? That erases the fact that was more economic mobility before?

No.

This backwards looking grievance shit is what got Trump elected.

When society indulges in grievance politics it’s never the most justly aggrieved that win. It’s the majority population that can field the loudest grievance. And that was white people in 2016. It’s irrelevant if they were justified or not.

Giving power to past perceived grievance as a mechanism for justice just loses sight in f today’s problems.

And when you constantly fight over the past you you get revanchism. And you can’t move a society forward based getting revenge for past grievances. It doesn’t work.

For society to progress you take up the gauntlet of the problems of NOW and fix those.

Wow @8, a profound comment on Slog. Well done

@4: I don't think you're using that word correctly.

Blah, blah, blah, white liberals, blah, blah, blah white liberals fault, blah, blah, blah, Winston Churchill’s white penis, blah, blah, blah, I’m a victim and I know all, blah, blah, blah, I’m Seattle’s Alan Greenspan “Macroeconomics” blah, blah, blah, look at me in Jeff Bezos balls, blah, blah, blah....

#10 Developers are a major problem to why ordinary people can no longer afford to live here Or anywhere else they (developers) entrench themselves,

Might as well call Seattle Allantown. He’s sure messing up the Central Area for example. By the way do you work for him or are you a developer yourself? Sounds like it.

In a nutshell, America sucks for people of color. Noted. Again.

Seattlites had the opportunity to turn a wide swath of South Lake Union into a public park, largely at Paul Allen’s expense. They rejected that, whining that it would lead to the development of expensive condominiums. Well done, Seattle.

@14: Vulcan, Paul Allen’s development firm, has https://www.seattlehousing.org/about-us/…">partnered with Seattle Housing Authority to redevelop Yesler Terrace. All of the existing low-income housing will be replaced, with current residents having first bids on the new low-income units.

It’s easy to sit back and blame developers, isn’t it? But they have a role to play in building more homes in Seattle.

(In case the link does not work : https://www.seattlehousing.org/about-us/… )

I dunno, some black people in Seattle own homes in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods and have highly sought-after jobs in local media.

Looks to me like things are pretty good for folks like that, but I guess it's never enough, eh? This is the quintessentially American way of seeing the world: no matter how good you have it, it is never enough.

@8 thanks for not disappointing.

Wright Bros for life. I owe my life to that place.

What do you know about it? you're just another racist transplant. You didn't live here back in the day.

Now now. I don't think there's any call to be this hateful to Our Dear Charles. He is his own special creation and we are lucky to have him.

What I do take exception with is his insistence on completely ignoring Seattle history when creating these little essays. He refuses to accept that the utopian Seattle of the 70's-90's was the result of a massive Boeing layoff that created a huge amount of suffering for middle-and-lower class people in Seattle. It was something that really sucked for some people and something that was a great opportunity for others.

And let's talk about the CD and south Seattle for a moment: Despite the popular storyline of the unmitigated misery of gentrification, there has been a huge economic benefit to thousands of Black and Asian families who bought houses for 20k in 1980 and sold them for several hundred thousand or even more than a million dollars in the last decade. That creates instant generational wealth for those families. While gentrification has sucked for renters, it sure hasn't sucked for property owners. It's all about the timing.

Sure and the bankers are innocent of stealing homes by fraud too in 2008. That must be true
because they got bailed out by the federal government on the tax payers dime. But the people who lost their homes - what happened to them?

Homelessness is on the increase and people are leaving the city because they can’t afford to live here. The people who can afford to live here have to be well off. Many Senior citizens in Seattle who live on fixed incomes are struggling too and don’t want to have to give up their homes to the banks or the government.

Its pretty disgusting when Paul Allen is defended and the people suffering in the cold and on the streets are ignored. Allen and the billionaires et al should not have that kind of power.
The city government etc, allows him to call the shots. The people should be calling the shots.
When corporations rule we all lose. One way or another.

@27,
Agree. Spot on. One must know recent Seattle history. I, too wonder what those CD property owners did with well, their... property! I do believe they sold it.

I'm not necessarily a fan of gentrification but it did benefit some minorities in Seattle.

@28 homelessness is on the increase in Seattle because we are the poster child for junkie town USA. Sure some of the peeps under the bridges might have been priced out but there is a direct correlation from the increase in opium addiction to people under the bridges. Been here all my life (40) and the tech boom has been great for this city. People we're bitching and crying when they couldn't afford rent on the hill 5 years ago but Skyway, Des Moines, Tukwilla, Renton, was a bargain but too black. Hey you could have moved to Shoreline & Lynwood but your too cool to take a bus 15 miles to the city? Now they are getting priced out of these places, and still bitching. YOU DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT TO LIVE IN SEATTLE IF YOU CANT AFFORD IT MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE UNTIL YOU CAN. The notion of entitlement to live where you want is absurd and juvenile.

Very nice piece, Mudede.

@3 With you, bro.

Do the critics here just circle Slog, waiting for Mudede to write another Slog piece? Is he that influential that Mudede needs to be vigorously countered whenever he puts pen to paper? Is their paper of record, The Seattle Times, now so weak that the intellectual and moral decency of the citizenry is at risk of succumbing to Mudede Thought?

Republicans are gonna smash the democratic gov at winning. Shame on corrupt democratic gov. Bleeding people dry taxes. Oh latest democratic article read; democrats need to copy republicans most of the way to win. Hahahaha. Nice try isn't happening!

@28: “Its pretty disgusting when Paul Allen is defended...”

If you want to tell us why Vulcan’s partnership with Seattle Housing Authority to redevelop Yesler Terrace is a bad thing, then please go right ahead.

Otherwise, it’s pretty tiresome to get lectures from someone who has no facts and won’t listen to any.

"White liberals" may have it great and lots of "white people problems" but the media seems to just gloss over the fact that the working class of all hues has NEVER had the luxury of whining about the "good old days". This country has serious CLASS issues that are worse than the racial divide but the powers that be keep the little people distracted by race sniping instead of working for economic justice.

#34 the point is Allen is the one with the power to do that while a government controlled by the people is not.

So, your point is either the Seattle Housing Authority is not part of “a government controlled by the people,” or just that you can’t read?

The money and power needed to redevelop yesler terrace should not be controlled by a single billionaire.

It’s not; what part of “partnership” do you not understand?

And my point, since you missed it completely, is that Paul Allen is actually doing something to increase the number of homes, both at and below market rates, whilst Ivy merely sits and complains about other, unspecified things she claims he’s doing to make things worse. The latter won’t put a roof over anyone’s head, nor will it keep people from moving here — which is the root cause of our rental increases, not whatever developers are doing to profit from it.

I would like to have a time travel bus, and take everyone who thinks the old SHA/KCHA projects were ideal communities to go live in them for a few weeks.

I worked in every single one of them, including Yesler Terrace, and they were worse than subpar housing. Most of them were built to house Boeing workers during WWII and any improvements after that time were done by political cronies, or by the very lowest bidder.

The old projects might have met some sort of aesthetic, to a certain crowd, for how housing for poors should look, but they were really a disgrace.