[ericmay]

> I'd rather the city become an even more desirable place in years to come.

This is the problem and partially (mostly maybe) why Seattle and other “cool” cities are in the position they are in now. If Seattle was undesirable like, idk, Gary, Indiana then you’d be able to get your friends there and a head chef can buy a house and such. But then it’s Gary. That’s the dichotomy that Seattle and other cities face. Can’t escape it. What you are asking for and wanting just isn’t realistic.

Imagine if I came up to you tomorrow and said I’d like to live with an ocean view in Santa Barbara in a walkable neighborhood with street cars and all my friends and family could afford to live there with a 3br house and the chef makes a lot of money and has this killer restaurant… you know that’s not going to happen. Seattle isn’t any different.

[lukeschlather]

I don't agree. We basically ban people from living in the city with zoning, and even to the extent that the problem isn't zoning we could treat housing more like we treat other public services (electricity) and just make sure that it's available. There's no natural law that things have to be this way, it's a choice that we make and I think it is reasonable to ask it to change.

Nobody bats an eye when we build substations to support the lights in the restaurant, but building homes for the workers is "not realistic."

[ericmay]

I know you don’t agree, but the results speak for themselves. I do agree that things don’t “have to be this way” but where I’d differ is that to solve the problem the vast majority of Americans or Seattle residents would disagree with how to solve that problem. You’d have to do something like tax people at 50-60% or their income to pay for the new housing and it just won’t work. Zoning slows down development sure but so do environmental review processes and such. Also even if new development was instantly approved it takes time to build and developers have to spend so much money on the land that they just build very expensive apartments or condos. But this doesn’t alleviate price pressure because the demand to live in Seattle is too high. The evidence is that like in the OP a chef at a top restaurant is living miserably in a 400sqft apartment just to be in Seattle instead of leaving to alleviate their own dissatisfaction.

I’d also personally avoid framing things as such “build homes for the workers” because it implies a very top-down industrial capitalist or communist viewpoint that I think many are resistant to.

Like water flows through the path of least resistance the easy solution here is people are just going to put up with it or move. If it’s a burden I recommend moving.

If you think there is hope with price pressure relief you only have to look to Manhattan, because that’s the future you are facing in my opinion.

-edit-

For the example I can’t think of any tier-1 city that has gotten less expensive over time (please do not cite Tokyo or Japan) except maybe Chicago and even then I doubt that it has really gotten cheaper versus just not as expensive as fast as peer cities.

[lukeschlather]

Chicago is a good example. I don't know if Seattle can actually get better, but it doesn't have to get worse as fast as it has been. And we should at least seriously look at options to try and make it better. (Not just throw up our hands and say that it's unrealistic to expect the city to ever get more affordable for lower income folks.)

[ericmay]

But even Chicago is only bad because they let crime seemingly get out of control and the weather sucks and it is still expensive in the areas you’d want to live in.

I definitely think people should try I just think that the expectations need to be set better. Making $100,000/year and living on Capitol Hill in a 2+ bedroom home is just not going to be realistic without giving up something.

One thing Seattle and similar cities can do to help alleviate this though is to continue to or start to dramatically end the usage of personal auto travel and transit. For example I-90, I-5, and I-405 should all be shut down as they traverse through the area. Probably also tearing down and revitalizing areas where there are more than a couple of lanes in each direction. That’ll give more space throughout the greater Seattle area for people to live and fewer cars means more local shops and more money to spend on them too.