Kate Rich has seen what happens when people get priced out of the housing market. Two years ago, she was living in Seattle and working as an advocate for homeless people when, she told me, “All my clients were like, ‘Damn, I should have bought a home when I had a chance.’ I realized that if I didn’t do something, that was going to be me.”
Rich knew there was no way she was going to be able to afford to buy in Seattle, where the median home price, at the time, was approaching $800,000. Places farther out in the county were almost as unaffordable, so she joined the flood of Seattle residents who’ve been priced out of the city and relocated across Puget Sound to Bremerton, the largest city in Kitsap County.
For people like Rich, Bremerton—a working-class city just 15 miles from Seattle—can feel like an oasis: It’s scenic, with ample shoreline, city parks, green spaces, and a small but growing arts and food scene. But the big driver of relocation here is that it’s cheap—at least by comparison. As of fall 2019, the median home value in Seattle is $714,000, which is down significantly from the peak of $820,000 in 2018, but it still means purchasing a home (or renting one) is out of reach for working-class people. In Bremerton, by comparison, the median home price is currently $312,000.
