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Everyone has the legal right in the USA to live anywhere else in the USA, we don’t have a residency or hukou system. But without some other limiter, like price via supply and demand, this legal right alone is unworkable. Seattle is a destination not just for rich techies, but also for the unhoused. Spend any amount of time at the greyhound bus station and this will be obvious, or take a greyhound across country, people get on at prisons with an open bus ticket, if they have no where else to go, they will head toward one of the west coast cities to survive, and who can blame them? So we have a net influx of professionals with money who want to live in a popular city, and unhoused people who want to live in a city with more generous social services and mild weather so living outside won’t kill them. On top of that, you have the residents that were already there, feeling like they are being attacked on both sides: rich young professionals pricing them out of the housing market, and poor unhoused neighbors stealing their Amazon packages and pooping on the sidewalk. So how does building more housing alone get us out of this cycle? The rich professionals will gobble up the new housing, and tell their friends in the Midwest to come move to where the fun is. The unhoused neighbors couldn’t afford that house anyways, but they might be lucky and eventually score a free apartment or tiny home from the various social services in the area. So they move from their camping spot, but someone else has just arrived on a greyhound to take their spot over. |
I only think that there's usually a balance to things that sometimes require a lot of time to pass in order to correct.
Anyway, I appreciate all of your responses and your perspective.