Why are Seattle residents anti-growth? (Tacoma, Everett: middle-class, rental, townhouses)

[RustinginSeattle]

Originally Posted by 60sagain

Where can you go......all the blue states are taken and too expensive.

Maybe on the West Coast, but those aren't the only blue states.... Besides, the red states need some liberals to move in and sway the vote a bit more.

[Walch1007]

Originally Posted by RustinginSeattle

We don't have the roads or the transportation to hold everyone and their cars. And the cost of living is going through the roof.

Basically, it's just a different city now. For those who grew up here, this change is being forced on us. For those who are arriving, it is a choice they are making, so they're more likely to think it's a great idea. I totally understand that for some 20 year olds, this seems like good fun, but for some families and many seniors it's a lot harder. Try to think outside of your own box once in awhile.

After 3 generations of living here, my family is packing up and moving away. We don't enjoy the overcrowding.

Tends to happen when you have the foresight to pick a good place to live. Eventually, everyone else discovers it.

[margaretBartle]

I'd like to answer the original post, plus respond to some of the posts I've seen here.

What I don't like about the new way Seattle is, is that the new housing wasn't built by building up the areas of town that needed new density, but rather, but tearing down existing, reasonably-priced housing, and replacing it with new, very high-priced housing. The high cost of housing is not just becuase of over-crowding, or a higher demand, it's becuase the average goes up when the low-cost housing disappears, as it has done by thousands of units.

What this means is that for those of us who have lived here for decades, we've seen our favorite businesses go belly-up becuase they can't afford the new rents, or they were forced to move becuase their building was torn down. There are still a few favorites, but I don't know how long they will last.

Many people blame Amazon for the loss of used book stores. You newbies probably don't know that there used to be 20 or 30 used book stores in Seattle. Rent was cheap. You have to sell a lot of books to pay $3000 a month for rent. The old quirky businesses are being replaced with overpriced restaurants and nail salons. (I can't believe there are that many women in Seattle getting their nails done - those places must be money-laundering fronts, or something).

The loss of low-cost housing also means we have more desperate people on the streets, and we have lost a lot of the cultural benefits of creative people who have time on their hands.

To address some of the posts others have made, some of the problems, especially parking and traffic consgestion, is for sure due to increased population, but part of it is Agenda 21. Agenda 21 came out of the Rio summit 25 years ago, and has been replaced with Sustainable 2030 goals. The goals haven't really changed, but they've become more fixed, and more restrictive.

The US, as a whole, is moving into a post-industrial economy. Forty years ago, I was reading articles in the academic and trade press about the need for American workers to lower their standard of living, and what they were mostly talkign about was freedom of travel, and big houses.

The average US worker, say, a teacher, pharmacist, nurse, electrician, lives way too well, and the decision was made decaes ago that Americans should have a standard of living more in line with Italy or Singapore or Mexico.

Getting rid of cars and getting people crowded into smaller living units is part of the plan, and it still has a long ways to go before it's reached bottom.

I remember reading a story, back in the 80s, about how unfair Americans were to complain about the trade imbalance with Japan. An example - the Japanese slept on futons in the kitchen. They didn't have a special room just for sleeping, they unrolled their futons at night from the closet, and spread them out in the living room and kitchen. But American refrigerators made too much noise. So it was an example of how poorly Americans were at understanding international markets that explained the large trade imbalance between the US and Japan.

I wasn't impressed by the rationalization, knowing that the trade imbalance was poltiics, not marketing, but I was struck by how I always considered Japan to be a First World country, and by how little the avereage Japanese had compared to the US.

People will continue to pay $800 a month rent, but instead of renting a little studio for that, you're sharing a room in a two-bedroom apartment with three other people. And traveling for two hours day on over-crowded, unreliable public transit.

Welcome to the New World Order.

[perigee]

Oooookay Margaret, here is a roll of Reynolds wrap for your tin foil hat.

Putting Agenda 21 aside, the problem with congestion is that there is no easy solution to it. Unlike other cities we have the Sound, Lake Washington, hills and all sorts of issues to contend with, short of spending billions of dollars to use eminent domain or billions of more dollars to keep tunneling, both options being extremely unpopular, we're kind of stuck with increased commutes.

[pete98146]

We've touched on this in the past, one of the biggest reasons they are anti growth is many folks are being priced out of their neighborhoods!!! For those unlucky enough to purchase homes years ago, they simply can't afford the spike in rental rates. I know several friends that can't afford to pay $2000 for a small rental home in West Seattle anymore so it's "hello Auburn."

[mhays25]

West Seattle has many rental homes for less than that. Even the average apartment is far less. (Unless by "home" you mean "house" but apartments are homes too)

It's odd that many nimby's don't want new housing for the exact opposite reason...it might reduce their property values.

As for nail salons, those often don't pay full rent. It's a no-barrier, low-cost business with nearly zero overhead. The whole staff might be two co-owners who soldier on while earning next to nothing. They often find space when the landlord has given up on finding a market-rate renter. This is related to the City of Seattle requiring retail space on streets where it's not really merited. Apartment rents are unnecessarily high to subsidize this.

[IcomeInPeaceDolphLundgren]

Maybe because they don't like traffic.

[cmswazey]

It generally costs over 2k to rent a house. I'm fixing one up now -a small one- and expect to be getting that much when it's done.

I've been tracking apartment rentals. It's hard to find one that's under 1500.00 or so.

[cmswazey]

Margaret, some of what you say seems possibly correct. But I don't think kitchens and refrigerator noises are the reasons for there being separate bedrooms. Those existed years and years before kitchens had electric appliances.

For every new world order type politician or leader, there's probably at least two who don't want that.

[pnwguy2]

I think the "anti-growth" attitude has diminished over the years. There was a period when Seattle seemed to be overwhelmed by many Californians in the 80's and even into the 90's. I don't think it exists anymore to any great extent, as many who had this attitude have either A) moved out, or B) rode their home values to new hiigh's.