Comments

1
You got some of the Bad News wrong. Every new "luxury" apartment added keeps one household from outbidding you on your next apartment.

Anyway, this is excellent news. Good job Sound Transit.
2
@1: No it doesn't, luxury apartments are built where "affordable" apartments used to be, and then they tend to raise rents across the city.

Stop believing everything (anything) the CATO institute says.
4
Sound Transit agreeing to plans to build workforce housing near light rail stations--that's a win-win-win, for the future renters, for local business, for consumers. Yes, good news.

But, like Matt the Engineer @1, I have trouble seeing "luxury condos going up" as bad news. I don't want to pick the fight Matt is picking about the simple elasticity of the housing market; I don't need to anyway. Provided these units get filled, every household that moves in is a contributor to our local economy; it's a household helping pay taxes for city services; it's a household that is embracing a dense, walkable lifestyle as opposed to a sprawling, car-centric lifestyle; it's a household that is likely to vote on the side of Team Urbanism. And the way I think of it (even though I realize this is an exaggeration), every affluent household that moves into in-city multi-family housing is an affluent household that isn't moving into a single-family home in the 'burbs where the only option to get around is driving. With most cities in America, we progressives could only dream of such "problems."

Of course, this is the sort of petulance and lack of perspective that The Stranger has never been immune to but seems particular susceptible to lately. It's hard to call yourself a progressive when you stake out the regressive position. But hey, this is Seattle where everybody calls themselves a progressive, even the nimbyist of NIMBYs.
5
Two other pushbacks on "luxury condos" being bad news.

These aren't typically "luxury" units; they're "market-rate" units. Now, if all you can afford is affordable housing, they might as well be luxury units, and you still might have to pay an arm and a leg for them. And this gets to my one other complaint, and this is where I'm inclined to say this is not unmitigated good news.

Most of these units aren't condos; they're rental apartments, which means that not only are the occupants probably paying an arm and a leg; they're not building any equity in the process. Right now, the multi-family housing market in Seattle seems to be skewing too much towards rental over sellable units.
6
Also, one block from the Mt. Baker station, a 7-story building that will have 95 units for low-income and currently homeless persons or families is replacing a car wash. Mostly funded by Paul Allen with $5m from the city.

http://www.king5.com/news/local/site-sel…
7
@5 here's why they're apartments not condos:
"In contract actions the applicable contract statute of limitations expires, regardless of discovery, six years after substantial completion of construction" http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?c…
No one wants to be sued by hundreds of condo owners, but those apartments are being built to condo standards so that they can be flipped after the statute of limitations expires.
8
But why did they give them the land for free? Every property owner and car owner is paying tons of money to Sound Transit to build trains - it's disrespectful to tax payers to then turn around and give the land away for free. The builders of this housing will be collecting rents and get tax discounts on the property for years to come. They should pay some money for the land or for the rights to build on it! It's just another example of Sound Transit's lack of accountability. They should be trying to get the most for our money but they are not!
9
@2, how about the California Legislative Affairs Office? http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finan…

How about Berkeley Economist Enrico Moretti? http://kuow.org/post/economist-explains-…

How about literally any expert on the matter? There's just no disagreement besides in the most left wing (like Sydney, Heidi, the author of this piece apparently) and the most right wing of people. Both groups hate new housing for reasons other than affordability, (both on broadly cultural reasons) and work backwards to argue against new housing. It's incredibly destructive to their own goals too, which is sad.
10
@ 8,

Perhaps you missed the part about how getting the land at zero cost rather than adding in the massive cost of land acquisition is what will allow these units to be affordable in the first place.
11
@1, @4, @5, @9:

Trickle-down bullshit, the lot of it.
12
@2 We track the number of units built and the number of units demolished, and in recent years every unit demolished (affordable or otherwise) has been replaced with more than 10 new units.

Where would those other 9 families live if this didn't happen? Your home, while you packed your bags and headed out of the city. If you think it's the well-off that would be instead of you, I think you're dreaming.

@11 Nothing is trickle-down about it. There are literally a certain number of homes in Seattle. Every new home allows someone else to live here without displacing someone else. Stop building new homes and it certainly won't be the rich that are displaced.
13
@12:

People ARE being displaced, your free-market unicorn fantasy notwithstanding.
14
@10 Property owner and car owner here who is perfectly fine with this bit of re-distribution. Pretty sure if you own a car and property in Seattle you can well afford it.

15
Gripe, did you read any of the studies mentioned? Why would the California LAO promote bad policy? What about their study was flawed?

And what does 'trickle down' even mean in this context? Trickle down taxing theory says that tax cuts for the top leads to wage increases to the bottom. No one is asking for a... housing cut? Idk what that would even look like.
16
@13 Absolutely! We've been adding jobs at a rate of about 2x the rate we've added housing. Housing demand is roughly equal to the number of jobs (not perfectly, but it's close). Because of our *suburban* style zoning throughout most of the city, housing hasn't had any chance of keeping up with demand caused by all of these new jobs. Blaming new housing for increased prices is like blaming new food production for increasing hunger when populations are growing. You have causation backward!
17
My sense is that gripe here just likes to, well, gripe. Or that gripe is operating on gut instinct where gut instinct says that anything benefiting the upper-middle class is, by definition, sticking it to the working class. And vice versa.

The thing is, no one else here is arguing that market-rate housing by itself is adequate. But just because it's not enough to build more market-rate housing doesn't mean it makes sense to build less market-rate housing.
18
@15: "Trickle down" can roughly stand in for "filtration" - the idea that rich people will tire of their old obscenely expensive homes and sell them in order to get brand new obscenely expensive homes. Theoretically, this will let us poors get our hands on those vacated $600,000 condos because they've trickled down to us. That is, unless wealthy people from out of state purchase those places as a vacation homes in a nice location, an investment, or decide to use them as a short term rentals (like Airbnb), keeping them away from Seattle residents. Those who actually need homes won't get them via market urbanism.

As a side note, it's absurd to see "market rate" housing referred to as if it's affordable in any way, or as if it will keep people from being displaced. An older apartment building was torn down a few blocks away from my apartment and is now being replaced by a new building which will rent a one bedroom starting around $2,400. The old building topped out at $1,800 for a one bedroom. This city is being built for people making over $90,000 a year.
19
I want to see more and more and more of this! Good job Sound Transit.
20
@8 - State law says they have to consider these options first, so take it up with your legislators, not ST.

Just another example of someone who is gonna hate ST no matter what they do, doesn't keep themselves informed, but somehow thinks they're an arbiter of "accountability."
21
@18 - And in 30 years, that's gonna be the old building with low rents.
22
@18, so is your answer to prevent the old apartment building from being torn down entirely? Sorry, but you don't have the right to keep this city frozen in amber and keep the undesirables out, your undesirables being the people making over $90K. And you're not going to keep them out anyway. For anyone who thinks we can roll back the clock to a "lesser Seattle" Seattle, I suggest you take a look at how those policies, or lack of policies, are working out in the Bay Area.

Oh, and Chareth, I do recognize your name. I remember you as one of Nikkita Oliver's substance-free supporters. What was Nikkita's solution to our housing problems? Basically, the same as Jon Grant's, to the extent that she had any at all. I think she realized she had to come up with a housing policy once she realized she deserved to be Seattle's next mayor, and then she went with her gut instinct like gripe here.
23
@21: Indeed, 30 years after people making less than 90K have been pushed out of the city where they work.
24
yo @18, even the most nimby of the nimbys in the left camp (like Jon Grant, e.g.) cite the following study in support of affordable housing decreasing displacement: http://www.urbandisplacement.org/sites/d…

the same study also finds that increasing market rate housing decreases displacement. "At the regional level, both market-rate and subsidized housing reduce displacement pressure". and of course it does, because demand doesn't go away when housing isn't built, the demand just drives the price up which drives up displacement. and building housing does the opposite. we know that for sure.

idk why you mention "$600,000 condos" because almost no condos are built in seattle. you know that, right? if you're just using the word condo dirisively, i doubt your sincerity in trying to figure out the best housing policy for the city, and are exactly the person I described in my first post: you're against housing on cultural grounds, and are looking for a PC reason to oppose it.
25
@18, @21 Most people describe "filtering" as some vague future benefit. It is that. But it's also a benefit today, the moment a unit is built. Imagine each family that lives in Seattle or wants to live in Seattle standing in a big line in order of income. Next to them is another line of For Sale or For Rent signs organized by price, spaced such that each family is standing next to a sign. Of course the line of signs isn't close to as long as the line of families.

Now, imagine adding a thousand signs *anywhere* in that line of signs. Isn't it obvious that you have immediately housed an extra thousand families and dropped the lowest rents? This happens immediately, as soon as the property is built. Not just in 30 years.

All of @18's concerns are beside the point. If some family has a vacation house and takes up 2 signs - well, that's going to happen whether or not you add an extra sign somewhere. If an investor buys up a dozen signs and sits on them - again, that doesn't change the effect of adding more signs. AirBnB owners that only rent out some homes and steal more signs? Well, refusing to add signs won't house the people they've displaced.
26
@22: I have no problem tearing down old buildings and putting up new ones, as long as the new buildings have a decent amount of affordable housing (18%-25%). I have no problem with the city itself constructing public housing, either. I have no problem with increasing density, and see it as entirely necessary. I would certainly welcome a loophole-free rent control policy as well.

However, I do have a problem with people pushing a savior narrative while explicitly harming those they portend to save. The working poor can't wait for the market to decide they're worthy of living inside the city.

If you're curious about Oliver's housing platform, it's here. While we're remembering things, I do remember you as one of Oliver's racist detractors. Have you been able to differentiate BLM protests and KKK rallies as of late?
27
Chareth @26, I think you've just ably provided a microcosm of Nikkita Oliver's campaign:
1. She fails to do her homework.
2. She throws together some half-baked policy positions.
3. She plays the "race card."

Oh, and the only people I've seen pushing a savior narrative are Nikkita and Kshama Sawant. But if the best you can do is accuse people of (A) racism and (B) a savior complex, then I'll take that as an acceptance that you don't have much of an answer to the notion that "luxury condos going up" are "bad news."

P.S. I can just imagine what a conniption all you Peoples Party people must be having now seeing the competent, consensus-building technocrats in the Durkan administration getting to work.
28
@26: Whoops, that's supposed to be "pretend to save."

@24: I've skimmed the study you linked, and it seems to back my argument. From your link:

- At the regional level, both market-rate and subsidized housing reduce displacement pressures, but subsidized housing has over double the impact of market-rate units.

- Market-rate production is associated with higher housing cost burden for low-income households, but lower median rents in subsequent decades.


I'm not sure what your point is. I'm not against all new construction; I'm opposed to new construction which only benefits the upper middle class and above. As for the mention of $600,000 condos, go take a look at Redfin. I moved to this city from London, so I have no issue with density or city living.

@25:
Isn't it obvious that you have immediately housed an extra thousand families and dropped the lowest rents?


No, not at all, especially if those new developments aren't being filled because they function as investments. As a general example, take the vacancy rates of New York's luxury apartments/condos/co-ops:

Onto the numbers: census data from 2012 shows that "from East 56th Street to East 59th Street, between Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue, 57 percent, or 285 of 496 apartments, including co-ops and condos, are vacant at least 10 months a year." A swath that's a bit north of that, from East 59th to East 63rd, shows that "628 of 1,261 homes, or almost 50 percent" are pied-a-terres. All those dark windows? Not your imagination.


Or, for a more applicable local example:

Apartments in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood saw the biggest increase in rents. The average asking rent was 12.3 percent higher over the quarter, rising to $1,628.

But Ballard also had a vacancy rate of 8.6 percent, the highest in Seattle. And when new apartments that just opened are included, the vacancy rate shoots up to 18 percent.

The apartment boom in Ballard has led to a doubling of the inventory over the past six years, said Tom Cain, head of Apartment Insights Washington. When the units now being built are complete, Ballard’s inventory will have quadrupled.

New units rent for a premium, and they’re part of what’s driving up market rents, Cain said

Across King and Snohomish counties, the average apartment rent in a property built since 2010 was $1,754, while the average rent in a property built in the 1970s was $1,019.

As some tenants trade up for newer apartments, landlords of older properties may be able to raise rents, too.


That article was written in 2014, yet the same seems to be holding true for 2017. Rents are still rising while the overall vacancy rate has increased from 3.9% to 4.2%. Ballard, Belltown, and Capitol Hill - places were many of these new developments are located - have all seen a 10% increase in rent.
29
@28, you wrote "As a side note, it's absurd to see "market rate" housing referred to as if it's affordable in any way, or as if it will keep people from being displaced", which is not true. Even the nimbyist of the nimbys don't think that, and they always cite the study i cited. your point was wrong.

and yes, there are so few new condo construction in seattle. if you don't know that, then you have a ton of homework to do. stop listening to the NIMBYs in the Seattle People's Party and read academic papers.
30
@27: Sawant and Oliver attempting to blunt the cruelty of the market is not a savior narrative, it's an attempt to salvage something. As far as doing "homework," condescending to me minus evidence does not count. Prove your point.

I'm not playing the race card. You did say this:

Nikkita Oliver is representative of a toxic, anti-American, racist element to much of the Black Lives Matter movement, and it's time that we progressives who want to live in a place that isn't dominated by zero-sum ethnic politics stood up to it, even at the risk of being called racist ourselves


You and Donald might get along. "Both sides!," am I right?

I mean, obviously, I'm not stoked about Durkan, but I'm not discouraged or flustered. The DSA had some nice wins across the country that the Seattle chapter can learn from. The People's Party is just getting started. Giving up now would be silly.

31
Chareth @30, thanks for reminding me what I wrote. I think I put that pretty well. And as I also wrote in that thread, if Nikkita Oliver and her zero-sum identity politics aren't going away, I'm not going away either. I prefer to speak up on issues like transportation, but we've had one Donald Trump too many, and I'm not going to shut up just because it's outside my comfort zone. But hey, feel free to twist that into:
While we're remembering things, I do remember you as one of Oliver's racist detractors. Have you been able to differentiate BLM protests and KKK rallies as of late?

BTW, Oliver and Sawant aren't "attempting to blunt the cruelty of the market." That's what pragmatic folks like Sound Transit and the likes of Plymouth Housing Group are trying to do. Oliver and Sawant consider themselves too good for something so tainted as "the market."
32
Chareth @30, thanks for reminding me what I wrote. I think I put that pretty well. And as I also wrote in that thread, if Nikkita Oliver and her zero-sum identity politics aren't going away, I'm not going away either. I prefer to speak up on issues like transportation, but we've had one Donald Trump too many, and I'm not going to shut up just because it's outside my comfort zone. But hey, feel free to twist that into:
While we're remembering things, I do remember you as one of Oliver's racist detractors. Have you been able to differentiate BLM protests and KKK rallies as of late?

BTW, Oliver and Sawant aren't "attempting to blunt the cruelty of the market." That's what pragmatic folks like Sound Transit and the likes of Plymouth Housing Group are trying to do. Oliver and Sawant consider themselves too good for something so tainted as "the market."
33
It's really not that complicated. To get lower housing prices, we need to:

1) Build a lot more market rate units.

2) Provide for lower income residents, who can't afford market rate units, and never will be able to afford market rate units, even when prices are low.

Kudos for Sound Transit for chipping in a little bit on the latter. Likewise the city did the same with the last housing levy. We probably need a lot more of that.

But we also need a lot more of the former. The two go together, of course. If market rate housing is expensive, then the money allocated in a levy doesn't as far.

So, the question, is, how do you create a lot more market rate housing? The simple answer is, you legalize it. Sightline wrote an excellent series covering the subject. But it isn't too hard to think of other ways in which the system works to make housing more expensive. Here are some examples:

In my neighborhood -- Pinehurst -- there are a lot of really big, old lots. The area used to contain a lot of farms, and the lots are still set up that way. Here is an example. That lot is about 25,000 square feet, and contains one good house and a couple of sheds (from the looks of it). In any event, when the owner sells it, the new owner will likely tear down the structures and build new ones. They have several choices:

1) Build 3 houses, on lots that are a bit over 7200 square feet (normal lot size for that neighborhood).

2) Build 5 houses, each on 5,000 square foot lots (the same lot size as much of the city).

3) Build 8 houses, each on 4,000 square foot lots (the same size lots as parts of the city that were build before they standardized lot sizes).

4) Build a dozen row houses, and use the left over space for a central court yard.

5) Put up a two story apartment building with 20 large units.

Guess which one will happen? That's right, the first one, because it is the only one that is legal. They will tear down those structures, and put up three very large houses, each selling for close to a million dollars. They could actually make more money by building row houses (and selling them for 300 grand) or apartments (each worth 200 grand) but unfortunately, that is illegal.

That isn't the only place where the rules actually discourage affordable housing. To begin with, they only allow apartments in a small sliver of the city, which explains why developers would even consider tearing down an apartment building to build a new apartment building. Even the cheapest apartment building makes more than a house, but in most of the city, you can't replace a house with an apartment building.

Then when you do build an apartment building, there is a limit to how many people can live there, or how many units they can build. Then they actually require parking based on the number of units. In other words, build a huge, luxury apartment, and you only need provide one parking spot. Build two small units, and you need two parking spots. Oh, and there is no limit to how much parking you can provide, which again provides an incentive to build fewer, more expensive places.

34
@14 Just because someone owns a house in Seattle does not mean they can "afford" all the extra taxes that continue being added. Some of those on fixed budgets are getting taxed out of homes owned for many years.

I want to know how Sound Transit acquired the land. Was it part of the eminent domain grab of private property they took for staging construction? If so, what a slap in the face to the people whose property they took, to just give it away to private developers.
35
@28 "especially if those new developments aren't being filled because they function as investments"

I addressed this above, but you're providing a false choice: build investment properties, or don't build. If there are investment properties intentionally left empty (a claim there isn't the slightest evidence for in Seattle), then your choices are to either build to reduce displacement, or let them buy existing units to sit empty and displace more families.

But let's step away from the world of hysterical conspiracy theories: Do you agree that the majority, or even the vast majority, of homes are being built for real people to live in?
36
Yes, adding subsidized units (Section 8?), for which there are massive waiting lists, is good news. What's not such good news is that we're not only not adding, but losing, affordable non-subsidized "workforce" housing, as rents are continuing to skyrocket region-wide.
37
ICYMI, the two-minute cartoon explanation of why, in a housing short city like Seattle, building new homes helps people on the low end of the economic spectrum:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQGQU0T6…

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