Slog Aug 18, 2017 10:56 AM

Seattle's Millennials Are Seriously Fucked: 41 Percent Are Rent-Burdened and Seattle Area Now Ranks 7th for the Most Million-Dollar ZIP Codes

by Charles Mudede

Comments

1
The rule of thumb has been 25% of income on housing is optimal, so 30% seems under the "seriously fucked" level.
raindrop on August 18, 2017 at 11:05 AM · Report this
2
And once they come to that realization they'll magically start voting.

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/news…
tmplknght on August 18, 2017 at 11:44 AM · Report this
3
one consolation for mudede is that the mega homes helping to drive up prices is developers out-muscling nimbys. they chopped down nimby trees to build those classed-up homes, which has got to make him smile.
pansack on August 18, 2017 at 12:44 PM · Report this
5
Well, Seattle's millenials do get all of the high-paying high-tech jobs, thanks to age discrimination on in incoming end and structural bias against anyone with children (or other strong external commitments) on the other.

And hey, that's even production/fixed capital work, not financial speculation!

So while some of our local younger-people are fucked, some have it pretty darned sweet, too.
robotslave on August 18, 2017 at 2:44 PM · Report this
6
Housing is a human right.
Ivy R. Nightscales on August 18, 2017 at 2:49 PM · Report this
7
@6 - Actually it isn't, that God. Otherwise the government would be forcing us where to live.
raindrop on August 18, 2017 at 4:14 PM · Report this
8
Just keep pretending it isn't a housing shortage caused by our own racist and classist zoning laws.
Matt the Engineer on August 18, 2017 at 4:20 PM · Report this
9
@8: Or just that they're outdated. After all, this used to be a smaller city.

Not everything can be extrapolated into racist narrative.
raindrop on August 18, 2017 at 5:13 PM · Report this
10
@8 - We have the zoning laws that we have. We can choose to change them whether or not you or anyone else sees them as racist (I think that they in fact are more classist than racist at this point, although there's no doubt that racism motivated a lot of what went on in the past) . It seems like it might be less controversial to just do what we need to do without injecting race into it. All that accomplishes is making people defensive and hardening their positions.

The current zoning (majority single-family) is certainly stopping a lot of housing being built and needs to be changed. The City Council has done some things lately that are going to make it a lot harder to get the neighborhoods to accept multifamily/rental housing and they need a course correction. But like someone else said, once people start actually voting their interests, we can change that.
dvs99 on August 18, 2017 at 6:43 PM · Report this
11
@6: "Housing is a human right."

No, it isn't.
hayduke on August 20, 2017 at 9:56 PM · Report this
12
@6: "Housing is a human right."

No, it isn't.
hayduke on August 20, 2017 at 10:30 PM · Report this