Seattle not as gentrified as you might think (Kent, Renton: 2014, apartment)

[Gardyloo]

Today's Seattle Times has an interesting article discussing the findings of a recent study that suggests that "gentrification" is overstated as an issue in Seattle (and in other cities studied.)

Granted, there may be some disagreement with definitions, but I thought the article and referred study were very interesting.

No gentrification in Seattle? A new study makes the case | FYI Guy | Seattle Times

Lost in Place | City Observatory

[Hemlock140]

Seems like the area they missed that I would consider gentrified is Columbia City, maybe they though it was too small to be significant?

[Gardyloo]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

Seems like the area they missed that I would consider gentrified is Columbia City, maybe they though it was too small to be significant?

My wife grew up in the Columbia City area and it was very mixed ethnically and economically then as now. A couple of trendy restaurants doth not make a place more or less prosperous, in my view.

[Ruth4Truth]

Gentrification in Seattle has been spotty. It's not something that's happened to the city as a whole. It's mainly parts of south Seattle, Belltown, and the Central District.

[perigee]

I'm guessing this has to do with my comment on the Renton vs Redmond

While there is no hard and fast rule on the meaning of gentrification, you have to admit that the suburbs of Seattle have seen a dramatic change, think how different Renton and Kent are, heck even Ballard has been losing it's Ballard'ness, which to be fair, I'm sure some people are in favor of (honestly I was a kid while Almost Live was on, I'm in no way connected to the show, but Cops: Ballard, The X-Files Ballard and the Ballard driving school are freak'in hilarious and are on youtube).

As for Seattle, I wonder if the lower income people are going to be pushed out as the demand for housing increases, I'm thinking of how Brooklyn and Hell's Kitchen have shifted over the years over in NYC.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by perigee

As for Seattle, I wonder if the lower income people are going to be pushed out as the demand for housing increases, I'm thinking of how Brooklyn and Hell's Kitchen have shifted over the years over in NYC.

They already have been pushed out. It began around the late 80's/early 90's, when a lot of people in the CD felt pressure to sell, and were offered good prices. They moved to south Seattle. More recently, people have been moving from south Seattle to Auburn and Tukwila.

[Ira500]

Both of those articles linked to are interesting. I never defined gentrification the way they do. The official line is you've gentrified if your neighborhood significantly reduces the percentage of the population living at or below the poverty line over a number of years, provided the percentage living in poverty starts out at 30% or more. Seattle didn't have any neighborhoods gentrifying from 1970-2010, according to that study. Because Seattle had no neighborhoods where such a large number of people live below the poverty line. The official poverty line is something like 22,000 dollars per year for a family of four. That's really poor. There are a whole lot more people who live above the official poverty line, but are still struggling to meet their basic needs. Those are the people who have been displaced. But it's not called gentrification. 35 years ago, you could hold an unskilled, low wage job and be able to rent an apartment in many Seattle neighborhoods including Capitol Hill. Now, maybe you could rent a place for the same percentage of your income, but it'll be 2/3rds smaller.
But, whatever you want to call it, some version of it has definitely happened in Seattle. And that also explains why there's an increase of census tracts that are high in poverty in the Seattle area: The study wasn't talking about the city alone, but the metropolitan area. As neighborhoods like the Central District saw less poor people, those poor people had to go someplace. They didn't all go to one place. They went to Skyway, Renton, Kent, etc. So census tracts in those places got labeled as higher poverty.
For me, I always thought of gentrification as when lower middle class/working class people got displaced by far wealthier professionals. That's a significant number in Seattle, no matter what it's called.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by Ira500

Both of those articles linked to are interesting. I never defined gentrification the way they do. The official line is you've gentrified if your neighborhood significantly reduces the percentage of the population living at or below the poverty line over a number of years, provided the percentage living in poverty starts out at 30% or more. Seattle didn't have any neighborhoods gentrifying from 1970-2010, according to that study. Because Seattle had no neighborhoods where such a large number of people live below the poverty line. The official poverty line is something like 22,000 dollars per year for a family of four. That's really poor. There are a whole lot more people who live above the official poverty line, but are still struggling to meet their basic needs. Those are the people who have been displaced. But it's not called gentrification. 35 years ago, you could hold an unskilled, low wage job and be able to rent an apartment in many Seattle neighborhoods including Capitol Hill. Now, maybe you could rent a place for the same percentage of your income, but it'll be 2/3rds smaller.
But, whatever you want to call it, some version of it has definitely happened in Seattle. And that also explains why there's an increase of census tracts that are high in poverty in the Seattle area: The study wasn't talking about the city alone, but the metropolitan area. As neighborhoods like the Central District saw less poor people, those poor people had to go someplace. They didn't all go to one place. They went to Skyway, Renton, Kent, etc. So census tracts in those places got labeled as higher poverty.
For me, I always thought of gentrification as when lower middle class/working class people got displaced by far wealthier professionals. That's a significant number in Seattle, no matter what it's called.

Yes. I had the impression the article chose a definition of "gentrification" specifically that would allow it to claim that such a thing hadn't happened in Seattle. It tailored its definition to fit its agenda, is how it came across.

[Ira500]

Originally Posted by perigee

I'm guessing this has to do with my comment on the Renton vs Redmond

While there is no hard and fast rule on the meaning of gentrification, you have to admit that the suburbs of Seattle have seen a dramatic change, think how different Renton and Kent are, heck even Ballard has been losing it's Ballard'ness, which to be fair, I'm sure some people are in favor of (honestly I was a kid while Almost Live was on, I'm in no way connected to the show, but Cops: Ballard, The X-Files Ballard and the Ballard driving school are freak'in hilarious and are on youtube).

As for Seattle, I wonder if the lower income people are going to be pushed out as the demand for housing increases, I'm thinking of how Brooklyn and Hell's Kitchen have shifted over the years over in NYC.

The Ballard Driving School piece on Almost Live still cracks me up. Also Cops on Mercer Island. That one still holds.
As Ruth said, a lot of the lower income people have already been pushed out. There are still poor people in the city of Seattle, but they've been pushed out to the edges of the city, or are living in much smaller living spaces.

[GatsbyGatz]

Seattle's densest neighborhoods (and suburban downtowns) have all experienced sharp rent spikes and heavy development. Therefore, I think it is incorrect to say that Seattle isn't gentrified / gentrifying.

As a renter myself in Capitol Hill, I can personally say that rent prices have been shooting up each year. As an anecdote, I was planning on moving into a bigger apartment from my present studio (ideally staying in the same neighborhood), but I noticed during my search for a new apartment that rent prices this year compared to last year are noticeably higher.