[pboutros]

Amazon isn't solely responsible for Seattle's poor city planning (rather, Seattle, Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond, Tacoma, etc.), but they're certainly responsible for ~50% of the influx of high-paid workers, which has increased housing demand, and that has certainly impacted Seattle.

[robbrit]

I'm often skeptical of these claims. In the SF Bay Area I can understand why this might be the case, since there are a lot more big tech companies shelling out huge salaries, but the Seattle area only really has two big ones: Amazon and Microsoft.

A little back of the napkin math: I'm going to guess that the number of engineers Amazon has in Seattle will be roughly equal to what they were advertising for their second HQ, around 50k. According to Wikipedia the population of the Seattle metro area is about 3.8 million, so the Amazon engineers represent just 1.3% of that - and those engineers haven't come in a huge wave, they've been trickling in over the near 25 years that Amazon has been in business. A major metro area should be able to handle that kind of shock.

There's something more at play than just well-paid tech workers pushing up the housing prices. A combination of low interest rates and restrictive housing rules would have a much bigger impact.

[pboutros]

I agree with the back of the napkin math -- but remember, it isn't 1.3% added to the city's population, it's 1.3% added to the part of the city's population that is looking to move, mostly in the past decade, with a focus (in Amazon's case) on living near downtown. It's proportionally much larger, and they're coming in at the higher end of the income strata.

Add that again, but for Microsoft, and then the ecosystem of SIs / ISVs / startups around it, and suddenly you have Seattle's housing crisis.

[lenticular]

Those are all positive things on their own though. They have only become negatives due to the city's resistance to allowing new housing to be built. The key issue is rent-seeking single-family-home owners using their political power to distort the market.

[mandeepj]

you are saying they should not have created this many jobs?

[hkt]

There is probably an ideal amount of high paid jobs in a particular area. Too many will push up local property price inflation.

[stochastic_monk]

I lived in Seattle for a couple years during the boom. Housing costs now are more than double what they were. I’d blame Amazon for the massive influx of workers and traffic actually becoming a nightmare.