In the Elusive Search for Affordable Housing, Clues Emerge (Seattle: section 8, rental)

[CrazyDonkey]

Originally Posted by Tim Randal Walker

We have finally started to play catch up, by building denser housing.

Note that Vancouver BC has close to twice the density of Seattle, but does not have appreciably lower rents. San Francisco has well over twice the density of Seattle and much higher rents. There is no guarantee that simply increasing density, by itself, will stem excessive rent inflation.

[mhays25]

It's not density itself. It's supply staying ahead of demand. Those cities are terribly undersupplied. Density is simply the route to having enough units.

Though rents apparently aren't bad in Vancouver, just sale prices.

[CrazyDonkey]

Originally Posted by mhays25

It's not density itself. It's supply staying ahead of demand. Those cities are terribly undersupplied. Density is simply the route to having enough units.

Though rents apparently aren't bad in Vancouver, just sale prices.

I'd argue it is the wrong supply. What the City/County need to be doing is building "work-force" housing outside the central core neighborhoods, paid for by fees on developers of upper-scale central-core housing, with sufficient investment in transit to support it, provided by the public.

BC actually has policies that incentivize the preservation and development of work-force housing, which has helped to hold down average rents, with public investment in Sky Train to support it.

New Westminster's incentives encourage affordable rental housing, says mayor - British Columbia - CBC News

Seattle and King County are doing very little to protect and build workforce housing. Piling almost all new density in the form of high-rent ("luxury") apartments into already high land-cost and rent-inflated central-core neighborhoods, often displacing previously affordable older lower-rise apartments, starving outlying areas of housing investments, only results in the non-tech workforce being driven out, with rents being driven higher and higher throughout the region due to an artificial scarcity of affordable units. Demand that can't afford escalating rents is pressed outward into outlying areas where new housing supply is not being developed because it would offer lower rates of return.

[mhays25]

Even high-end housing is part of the equation. If too much is built, even those units get a little cheaper, making them affordable to a few more people. So those people move up, leaving room for some people in the next rung.

Seattle's growth has displaced very few. I think Sightline did a study on that a while back. It was something like 6% displacement vs. the number of new units. This growth helped the low-end residents...it's handled the influx without making every single market-rate unit hit San Francisco prices.

[CrazyDonkey]

Originally Posted by mhays25

Even high-end housing is part of the equation. If too much is built, even those units get a little cheaper, making them affordable to a few more people. So those people move up, leaving room for some people in the next rung.

Seattle's growth has displaced very few. I think Sightline did a study on that a while back. It was something like 6% displacement vs. the number of new units. This growth helped the low-end residents...it's handled the influx without making every single market-rate unit hit San Francisco prices.

That's because they are hanging on by their finger tips, through paying more (with higher wages helping), downsizing, moving to a cheaper neighborhood (from Ballard to Greenwood, for instance), switching housing modes (to roomshares, in with family, etc.), or finding subsidized housing. Note that moving out to Lynnwood or Federal Way is not without costs, for first/last, deposits, fees, etc., plus might require additional expense for a car, insurance, fuel, maintenance/repairs, etc. Other people end up sleeping on couches, in their vehicles, shelters, or greenbelts, or under bridges or on the street, because they can't afford to stay or move.

What you are disregarding here are working families who are being forced out, since other options are less suitable for them.

I'm not opposed to adding density to the core central neighborhoods, but we've let developers off way too easy, by trading higher heights for token low-income set-asides. What isn't getting preserved (in the most dense inner areas) or built (in lower land-cost outer areas) is work-force housing, which, as I showed in the Vancouver article I linked, can actually help moderate rent inflation.

[DutchessCottonPuff]

Originally Posted by CrazyDonkey

That's because they are hanging on by their finger tips, through paying more (with higher wages helping), downsizing, moving to a cheaper neighborhood (from Ballard to Greenwood, for instance), switching housing modes (to roomshares, in with family, etc.), or finding subsidized housing. Note that moving out to Lynnwood or Federal Way is not without costs, for first/last, deposits, fees, etc., plus might require additional expense for a car, insurance, fuel, maintenance/repairs, etc. Other people end up sleeping on couches, in their vehicles, shelters, or greenbelts, or under bridges or on the street, because they can't afford to stay or move.

What you are disregarding here are working families who are being forced out, since other options are less suitable for them.

I'm not opposed to adding density to the core central neighborhoods, but we've let developers off way too easy, by trading higher heights for token low-income set-asides. What isn't getting preserved (in the most dense inner areas) or built (in lower land-cost outer areas) is work-force housing, which, as I showed in the Vancouver article I linked, can actually help moderate rent inflation.

All of this is true out in the real world for a ton of us. I could find 6% on this street alone that had to come from somewhere else in the area.

TOTALLY agree with the saving to leave , that is just infuriating . We don't want to go , but HAVE to go yet have to SAVE to go
Do you know that is what I miss the most about that fire . Not my things that I loved which would be normal, but that it really messed up our leaving here and going forward with other things in life . ( and yes we had enough renters ins- it's actually normally required nowdays . Some smarty always brings that up ) We've pretty much had to start over saving again to get out of the region by summer.

I thought about Olympia but husbands commute would be too much and Rotse is right about the homeless there . I have a long time close friend who's mentally disabled cousin was actually murdered by three all at once .

[mhays25]

Originally Posted by CrazyDonkey

That's because they are hanging on by their finger tips, through paying more (with higher wages helping), downsizing, moving to a cheaper neighborhood (from Ballard to Greenwood, for instance), switching housing modes (to roomshares, in with family, etc.), or finding subsidized housing. Note that moving out to Lynnwood or Federal Way is not without costs, for first/last, deposits, fees, etc., plus might require additional expense for a car, insurance, fuel, maintenance/repairs, etc. Other people end up sleeping on couches, in their vehicles, shelters, or greenbelts, or under bridges or on the street, because they can't afford to stay or move.

What you are disregarding here are working families who are being forced out, since other options are less suitable for them.

I'm not opposed to adding density to the core central neighborhoods, but we've let developers off way too easy, by trading higher heights for token low-income set-asides. What isn't getting preserved (in the most dense inner areas) or built (in lower land-cost outer areas) is work-force housing, which, as I showed in the Vancouver article I linked, can actually help moderate rent inflation.

No, everything I said should be helpful at the mid-low end too. More supply at any level should help keep prices from rising. Obviously we have a million cases of falling or stable rents around the country, both in 2008 and today, when supply gets ahead of demand.

Not "letting developers get off too easy" usually means everyone has to pay higher rents, except the chosen few.

Reporters and academics love to write about the effect of one policy or another. But it's absurd...there's only one reality, and there's no "control" group. So they make false or even moronic leaps of logic all the time.

[CrazyDonkey]

Doesn't help middle-income earners to add upper-income rentals (>$2K/mo) that they can't afford or low-income rentals they can't qualify for. That's a formula for becoming like SF - all high- and low-, but no middle-income residents.

Even if developers were meeting demand for upper-income units, which they aren't, and weren't cannibalizing middle-income units, which they are, they still wouldn't necessarily cause rents to fall in other segments of the market, as long as those segments remain under-supplied.

It can be argued that focusing development on upper-income units within the core-urban areas is actually stimulating, not slaking, demand for those units.

[CrazyDonkey]

https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/sea...zed-apartments

Seattle’s elected officials want developers to build more family-sized apartments — the two- and three-bedroom units that could offer parents and children an alternative to expensive single-family home rentals. In recent years, less than 20 percent of new apartment construction has been multi-bedroom and the majority of that has been two-bedroom. The city has proposed a new policy that would require residential developers in some low-rise zones to build a two-bedroom or larger unit for every four studios or one-bedrooms they build.

It’s true that the market is not building many family-sized apartments. Curbed Seattle reports that between 2012 and mid-2017, 52 percent of the new apartments constructed have been one-bedrooms and 29 percent have been studios. Only 17.5 percent were two-bedrooms and a mere 1.3 percent were three-bedrooms.

However:

David Neiman, a Seattle developer who sat on the HALA committee...thinks the regulation would lead to fewer apartment buildings built in LR1. Those that do get built would skirt the regulation by building 401-square-foot or larger units (just above the regulations 400 square foot threshold, therefore not having to build the family-sized units.

[mhays25]

Originally Posted by CrazyDonkey

Doesn't help middle-income earners to add upper-income rentals (>$2K/mo) that they can't afford or low-income rentals they can't qualify for. That's a formula for becoming like SF - all high- and low-, but no middle-income residents.

Even if developers were meeting demand for upper-income units, which they aren't, and weren't cannibalizing middle-income units, which they are, they still wouldn't necessarily cause rents to fall in other segments of the market, as long as those segments remain under-supplied.

It can be argued that focusing development on upper-income units within the core-urban areas is actually stimulating, not slaking, demand for those units.

I guess this must seem like logic to you.