Man, this city is becoming a zoo! (Seattle, Vancouver: rent, hotel)

[KonaldDuth]

I'm hoping rents keep rising if that prices folks out of the city. I'd gladly pay 50% more in rent if it meant 50% fewer people. My life is standing on the bus (if it has enough room to let me on in the first place), standing in line at the grocery store, ..

[Hemlock140]

Relax, it's summer tourist season. Things will quiet down again in about 6 weeks. I take the 554 from 2nd and Stewart to Issaquah and it's loaded with people that are here visiting family and take the bus to Seattle for the day, and foreign tourists that have hotel rooms in Bellevue.
When there is a cruise ship in (or 3) many of those people are around town until they board in the afternoon.

[mhays25]

We definitely need more buses. Seattle (city of) passed a sizeable increase in bus service, and it's now being implemented, though they still lack drivers. The rest of King County didn't pass their vote, so they're worse off. Same with some of the other local systems.

For supermarkets, I'd say it's about staffing more than anything. I imagine most checkers make more (?) than minimum wage so it might not be the increased minimum for them directly, but the cost for baggers has probably gone up, which might mean checkers doing more bagging, and less staff overall.

Land prices have skyrocketed because developable sites aren't as plentiful, like Ballard, South Lake Union, or Columbia City. That's a big part of housing costs. The City of Seattle has also been adding fees that add quite a bit to housing costs, which translates pretty quickly to market rates for the whole inventory. The solution would be to upzone a bit more land, maybe even a few Vancouver-type highrise zones.

Building rail will help. Lots of cities want infill, like Federal Way, Lynnwood, and Issaquah. Give them rail and people will want to live near it.