[JPKab]

TIL that people own the neighborhoods they live in by virtue of being there first, without any form of payment, deed, title, or record of ownership.

I should point out that the arguments against gentrification are identical to the arguments white ethnic urban neighborhoods made against blacks moving into their neighborhoods in the mid 20th century.

"They are ruining the character of our city! We were here first!"

Losers.

[biocomputation]

Gentrification disproportionately affects communities of color. This is quite exactly what's happening in Seattle.

<< TIL that people own the neighborhoods they live in by virtue of being there first, without any form of payment, deed, title, or record of ownership.

I hear this argument a lot and it's really like saying "only people who own property should be allowed to vote". You're saying that only property owners belong in the community.

That's just sad and wrong - not to mention racist in the context of this discussion - and it truly exemplifies the attitude that myself and many other natives are pushing back against.

This attitude, which I see in so many tech workers, is why Amazon has gotten such a cold reception from many people in Seattle.

[JPKab]

No, I'm saying that nobody is entitled to anything. I love how you bring up the race card.

Please explain to me the system of who gets to suddenly stop a city from changing, and when? Your attitude is based on emotion and illogic. So if I'm talking about South Boston, where it is white Irish Americans being booted out by a much more racially diverse professional class, am I bigoted against whites?

Again, you have an emotional argument and nothing else. Take that same argument, apply it at a national level, and you are in anti immigration territory. If Trump ran for mayor of Seattle and said he'd build a wall to keep newcomers out, it would help your agenda.

[biocomputation]

People who have been in an area for a long time have every right to fight back against overwhelming changes that have incredibly serious long-term implications for their quality of life.

It's a sign of your argument's inherent weakness that you equate people's heartfelt sentiments about feeling overwhelmed by cost-of-living increases, and the resulting destruction of their communities, with Donald Trump's agenda.

[closeparen]

The reverse side of the incumbent and established having unlimited rights to protect their quality of life is that the young have none.

The young are also feeling overwhelmed by the cost of living, and are starting to question whether tenure really confers a special moral status that makes the most superficial elements of your quality of life (perception of crowding, architectural taste, ease of parking) more important than the fundamentals of ours (access to employment, housing cost burden, ability to start families).

Socioeconomic vulnerability justifies additional protection, sure, but any community against any change? Come on.

I know, I know, kids these days are entitled. It would be fine to arrange housing as a delayed-gratification, wait-your-turn sort of thing. But the economic cards are stacked in my favor about as well as they can be, and I don't see any such path. So excuse me, but I'm going to fight for a world in which my generation plausibly gets jobs and shelter at the same time.

[biocomputation]

This isn't about age, and I'm not sure why you're even framing it that way.

The crowding, costs, and congestion in Seattle have increased very significantly with Amazon. There have been very ugly social side effects as well.

Amazon's employees, most of whom are out-of-towners, don't need to live in Seattle as much as the people whom they're displacing. Basically, a lot of the Amazon transplants could work remotely or find jobs in other cities.

This was all entirely avoidable.

[closeparen]

The reasons this sort of thing happens are the reasons humans organize themselves into cities at all. Turning off the growth spigot while maintaining everything else in working order isn't a lever that policymakers have.

What they do have are ways of dealing with population growth that lead to drastically less displacement.

Sure, no out-of-towner needs to live in Seattle specifically. New entrants to the workforce do need to live in a city with job growth in their industries, and all of those (for software development) are having this conversation. Could change if remote work becomes more available.

[closeparen]

It’s a cycle. Tenants need more rights => the economics for landlords are less attractive => the supply of rental housing dwindles => tenants need more rights.

Rearranging the deck chairs can only get us so far in the face of scarcity. The experiment in a distributed and suburban country is over. The population is urbanizing, as it has throughout human history. Whether it wants to or not, that's where jobs are going. That presssure will always show up in some form or another unless the housing supply grows to meet it.

Whether it’s the market or the government, someone needed to be building on a massive scale, yesterday. That’s not incompatible with protecting long term renters, but when we make it less lucrative to build we must also give more of a push to build anyway.