HN Gopher Feed (2017-07-07) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Will Seattle figure out how to deal with its new wealth?
17 points by wallflower
http://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/money-changes-ev...hanges-everything-will-seattle-figure-out-how-to-deal-with-its-new-wealth/___________________________________________________________________
balls187 - 10 minutes ago
Foreign investors buying up single family dwellings and turning
them into managed AirBNB rentals is also a problem.
balls187 - 6 minutes ago
And with all this new wealth in Seattle, Seattle Public Schools
are still garbage.At least with Redmond, Bellevue, Issaquah, and
Sammamish, they invested in their public schools.
ksenzee - 4 minutes ago
Do you have data showing that the schools are worse than
similar schools elsewhere with the same demographics? The
districts you list have been full of rich white people since
forever.
notyourwork - moments ago
Anyone with that wealth would probably send them to private
school so I doubt they are concerned about the public school
system.
vesrah - 8 minutes ago
This article reads like trashy bragging to me. I must be getting
old.
jseliger - 27 minutes ago
The real question isn't about "its new wealth;" it's about whether
the city will build enough housing to keep housing costs somewhat
reasonable by building more housing, and whether it can accelerate
its subway / light rail schedule: http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24
/do-millennials-have-a-futu... . The housing issue is key, as
California's failure to build enough housing has led to seemingly
relentlessly increasing housing costs:
https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing .
sbaoufbasfub - 23 minutes ago
I wonder if maybe there's a downside to making the housing
affordable by building out. If you build out during the boom
years, what happens when the boom subsides? You'll end up with a
city full of run down infrastructure that the city can't support
on a smaller tax base. It makes sense to me to expand housing,
I'm just not sure how much.
DenisM - 7 minutes ago
I'm all for build-out, but you have an interesting point here.
We need some sort of elastic build-out scheme, so that if/when
people move out it doesn't turn into another
Detroit.Realistically I don't think it will happen in Seattle,
I don't see a lot of people moving out. Even if there is a
technology bust, where would those engineers go? I doubt there
will be better jobs for them anywhere else...
kgc - moments ago
Amazon should look into on-demand scalable housing solutions
that you can pay for on a usage basis.
Analemma_ - 20 minutes ago
I don't have enough context to know if it's enough or how much
better we could be doing, but there actually are a lot of new
housing projects in progress, and new ones getting started all
the time. So we're doing better than the Bay at least.But mostly
they're coming from lots that were previously either parking lots
or low-earning commercial property (for example, the McDonalds on
Madison and Minor just got torn down a few weeks ago for a new
apartment complex). Eventually those will run out and the only
thing left will be to cannibalize Seattle's large and very
unhelpful supply of low-density single-family housing. That's
when the real problems and political fights are going to start,
if the real estate market hasn't cooled off by then.
Analemma_ - 23 minutes ago
This guy bugs me:> ?It?s concerning that we?re ripping down part of
our heritage and building glass boxes,?You can't complain about
rising rents with one side of your mouth and say crap with this
with the other. Rents in Seattle are still rising fast (even after
the Bay Area is starting to cool off a bit), and the only reason
it's not significantly worse is because there actually are a crap-
ton of new dense housing developments in progress, even if it's not
enough.
idlewords - 13 minutes ago
A lot of the heritage buildings are not designed to survive the
kind of earthquakes that Seattle is prone to. So you can either
tear them down now for development, or let the Big One do it
later, with great loss of life.
PhasmaFelis - 6 minutes ago
I can understand his practical concerns ("Those glass boxes won?t
have a Dan?s Belltown Grocery, a little pizza joint; you?ll miss
out on the divey bars, the dress sellers"), and I agree, but
people need affordable housing first. Charming neighborhood
businesses are awesome and I hope there's a way to preserve them,
but if only the rich can afford to live near those businesses,
it's just another kind of elitism.
btym - 19 minutes ago
Yeah, what exactly are developers supposed to do if not this?
Seattle is not built in the best place for growth, we're
surrounded by water. It's either denser housing or hour-plus
commutes.
influx - 16 minutes ago
I've seen a bunch of single family homes that were zoned in
multifamily areas turned into townhomes. Seattle is becoming more
dense, and not just in downtown. We're not San Francisco, thank
god.