A missing element, a regional/national problem can’t be solved by one city. If Seattle builds on all its available land but the suburbs don’t do their part there will be barely a dent. If the Seattle Metro builds but other job destination areas don’t, we will likely just experience a larger influx to take up any slack. As a country we have systematically disinvested in affordable housing since Reagan, it will take years to bridge the gap left by decades of neglect.

But I was told by the Fear Mongers on TV that Sweeps is the answer, not actually using metrics and economics to study Supply and Demand!

How dare they not do what everyone else who is failing to provide housing in BC AK WA OR ID MT CA NV NM are doing!

Next thing you know we'll have to undo the Racist Zoning that we imposed on all those cities back in the 1930s and start rezoning for 65 foot multi family housing and actually build that housing, as we always should have!

/s

No developer is ever going to build anything without a profit. I think answer is to have municipalities build tiered public housing up through median income level, based on population and demand. The city can finance the mortgages.

I really don't think any of this is going to work. We're headed for one of those dystopian nightmare worlds where everyone works for a MegaCorp and we all have 12' razor wire fences around our property.

We just really hate the poor in the USA. We really, really hate them. And kids, too, we really hate them as well. Also, brown people really are not well-liked in the USA either. Until we, the USA, get over that none of this is going to change because it will always be OK to feed one of those hated groups to the bear.

"passing policy to incentivize more market-rate housing construction and to build more affordable housing – lots and lots and lots of it."

What does that mean? Pay developers enough that any project becomes sufficiently lucrative to them?

@3: Not only that, a lot of people really really hate rich people too.

"And after doing that for years now, we’ve come to blame our more vulnerable partners for forcing us to watch bears eat them all the time."

well it's THEIR
FAULT for not
being Faster.

Cripes! EVERY-
one knows this.

think You'll
ever Slow
Down?

un-Likely.
yeah till
ya DO.

In previous generations we built by spreading out. Now we are no longer allowed to do that. First it was because of environmental regulations and now its because the Urbanists believe we all should live in 10x10 cubes in the city and walk everywhere. That's great for Charles and Matt but most people don't want to live like caged chickens (ironically now we have laws that provide chickens more room but people are supposed to be crammed together). The solution has to look at both supply and demand. Sure build more townhomes or apartments for those who want to live in the city but at the same time expand where people can live by either relocating industry and/or allowing for remote work. We are mostly a service based economy now so the ability of companies to relocate is much easier than the old manufacturing hubs of before. There is so much room in this country to build and expand housing choices if we stop with this insane Urbanist vision of everyone living in the city. The only thing that has accomplished is increasing misery as people fight for limited resources.

@8 -- In previous generations we built by growing up. Euclidean Zoning is less than 100 years old. Redlining started a decade after that.

As far as industries moving to the suburbs, that has been happening for a long time now. It became really big in the 1980s, in part because of zoning restrictions in the city. It became less popular because basically it sucked. You work in one suburb, and your partner works in another -- where the fuck are you supposed to live? Transit has trouble serving these places, since there just isn't enough population or employment density. Try commuting to Factoria from the north end of Seattle (it sucked). The transit options sucks, and driving sucks (so much for a "reverse commute"). Now you think office parks in Mill Creek and Covington is the answer? Fuck that.

Tokyo is the biggest city in the world. It is more affordable than Seattle. That is crazy, really, but it is because they have built a shitload of housing -- adding about 100,000 people every year for the last two decades. As a result, inner suburbs (places akin to Northgate) a lot more affordable. You can buy a nice new townhouse for around 300 to 400K (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w). Apartments are also cheaper. They do it by allowing new construction in the fucking city just about everywhere. This makes public housing a lot cheaper to build as well (and they build a lot of that). They also build great transit (which is a shitload easier if you have density).

It is a pretty easy formula, and you don't need to sprawl to achieve it. Just change the fucking zoning laws.

" the Urbanists believe we all should live in 10x10 cubes in the city and walk everywhere. That's great for Charles and Matt but most people don't want to live like caged chickens"

Holy shit, what a fucking ridiculous argument. If people don't want to live in an apartment in the city, why the fuck do they make it so hard for them to do that?

@9/10 you’ll never solve this by focusing on supply no matter how much you up zone and build and there are a great many people who don’t want to packed in and will fight to maintain their current space. That’s not racist that’s human. As for the commute those days are gone. You don’t have to do that 5 days a week anymore for many jobs so you can now live elsewhere and come in a couple days/wk or not at all. I won’t deny you that it makes sense to build up strategically so I don’t know why you won’t acknowledge it also makes sense to disperse demand strategically. Why does it have to be all or nothing?

@8:

It's only in this country that we "built by spreading out" for the very obvious reason that - we could. Hell, even in Canada, which has far more geographic territory than the U.S. - it's the second largest country in the world, after all - and yet more than 90% of it's population lives within 150 miles of the U.S. border. Granted, most of the land in the northern part of the country is essentially permafrost (although not for long, the way things are headed), but but it's not a given that people have to spread out over the largest amount of acreage possible; that's just a particular brand of bullshit Frontierland mythos we've been selling ourselves since people started itching to get out of the big cities of New York, Boston & Philadelphia back in the mid-1700's.

@12 cmon, there are small towns and villages in every country you go too. I’m not talking about clearing Rainier to build housing. Many of these communities are underutilized because the industries that sustained them have left or become obsolete. The notion everyone should live and work in Seattle and by default give the city all that tax revenue is elitist and untenable.

"Having enough homes for everyone who wants to live in the city"
Just because you want to live somewhere, that doesn't mean you should.
Like, I'm not about to head to Malibu and set-up on the beach and be like, "OK I'm here, build me a house now because I want to live that beach lyfe!"
What?

Er... this whole thing seems a little silly. Other than the NIMBY argument of "oh, higher density? There goes the neighborhood" there's no reason to prevent multi-family housing from being built wherever it's reasonable to build it... though let's please not have duplex condos (duplexes where one family owns and the other rents are fine, condo "associations" of just two families are too easily contentious). We're having some huge debate about what is ultimately just classism, since opening up zoning, whether it helps or not, certainly won't actually hurt. And while we are at it, I don't understand why we don't make everything mixed commercial/residential. I understand wanting to keep actual heavy industry out of living spaces, but if someone wants go legally sell jewelry out of a storefront on their property, so what?

I think the Seattle homeless problem is first a "drug problem". Start there.

Putting dipso and druggies in a hotel room or "social housing"...whatever the hell that means, is simply giving them a more comfortable and vastly more expensive venue to do drugs.

What drug addict wouldn't like that, paired with free food, trips to the ER when you OD and its party time! Its also...so much easier to sells drugs (dealing on a grand scale) because your clients are now all together on the same floor or standing outside the main door..... you don't even have to get your feet wet...could it get any easier?

You can't have a viable "housing stock" filled with unemployed.. worse yet "unemployable" drug addicts. Golly its not rocket science.

Save the stock of "low income housing" for non drug addicts... say moms with kids, trying to actually better themselves.

Actually developers are more than willing to overbuild & cause rents to fall. They don't talk to each other in some kind of Illuminati-style conspiracy. It's just that it will take a shit ton of new apartments to actually make rents fall here because we are so far behind.

Also, a lot of people are confusing the actual street campers (what used to be known, in less politically correct times, as "Skid Row bums") with the bulk of people who can't find a place to live. The former are a minority of the homeless or effectively homeless, and there are different solutions to the two problems.

No, building a ton of apartments, even cheap ones, is not gong to get all of the mentally ill off the street. But it will help the greater number of people who are doubling up, couch surfing, or moving from one unstable situation to another.

As to the Skid Row crowd, we made the mistake of demolishing Skid Row. They have responded by decentralizing it and locating outposts in all the parks and sidewalks. Perhaps it would be better to return to the old days of allowing SROs, which were crappy but at least provided some sort of shelter.

How about offering solutions to drug addiction instead of criminalizing them? Seems to have worked or is working in more progressive countries?? There is drug addiction behind closed doors as well you know. But the people in the streets are more noticeable by being poor and some do not like looking at them. The state or certain politicians got rid of a very successful public treatment program Cedar Hills and never replaced it. Also, politicians got rid of Detox Centers which adds to the crisis. The mentally ill are also left to die in the streets now. Having a heart is apparently not in their bucket list.

Rents are too high and affordable housing is largely unavailable. This causes homelessness.
Because forty five years ago in this very city homelessness was temporary and rare. Because cheap places to live were prolific. Low incomes cannot pay expensive rents that international corporate landlords like Black Rock/Stone have created after they buy homes and will not sell them but only rent them as their plan to own all the real estate. Its greed baby - its capitalism.

19 No - more working class people had to leave Seattle because they could not afford to live here. It is not a choice.
My friend with two kids is facing homelessness because she cannot come up with the rent money. She does not have the dollars to move anywhere including Detroit. It is very expensive to move anywhere. Make it real.

19 This is no dream sweetheart but a horrible nightmare for many of us.

16 Not bums but human beings sadly out of luck. Too bad you lost your humanity in this dog eat dog system.

Seattle housing supply has grown by about 25% within the last 10 years.

A quarter of the city in just 10 years. Yet prices are growing.

How much more do you want? 10x the current size? Still won't help, Manhattan is more expensive than Seattle.

STOP PUSHING URBAN SLUMS AS THE SOLUTION!

Hmmm... I guess when I try and retire on maybe 2K from SS and 300 bucks pension, I will have a place to live.. Nice...