@jessicapancakes @stan_okl Oh, Seattle has been one of the tech hubs for decades and has bent over backwards for Amazon and Microsoft for decades. It feels like there’s more to it than that.
@jessicapancakes @stan_okl Interestingly, $750 1BR in 2011 is less than I paid in 2006 in northern Colorado. My admittedly under-researched theory is that the 2008 crash dried up capital for new investment in housing and the industry was too slow to recover to meet demand
@jessicapancakes @stan_okl Seattle has been outrageously expensive for decades, FWIW - this is far from a new problem.’Developers’ aren’t the problem, the city government and planning commission is.
@jessicapancakes @stan_okl Increasing supply (in the instance of our 78 unit building) decreases per-unit demand which leads to competition on price. If you don’t build housing to keep up with demand the owners of existing housing stock monopolize the existing units. I’m 43 - how old are you?
@jessicapancakes @stan_okl Failure to allow cities to be dynamic and re-develop has been a disaster for affordability. If your memories - like mine - are of decrepit downtown areas that have gotten outrageously expensive I think you see the problem.
@jessicapancakes @stan_okl I promise you those places still exist in the world - with the exception of affordable housing, because people made the choice to fight new development as ‘gentrification’ when it rips down a dive bar to build a 78 unit apartment building. How old are you, btw?