Agree! Here's a better data point, where the Seattle mayor says as much (while announcing $100 million investment in affordable housing because there is so little).
“Too many long-time residents are getting locked out and pushed out of Seattle,” Durkan said in a statement.
That's why it's not the best idea to use subsidies to lure one of the largest tech companies in the world to your town. Available housing declines, it takes far too long in the feedback cycle for new housing to be built, and you've made the city marginally worse for anyone who isn't a tech worker.
> That's why it's not the best idea to use subsidies to lure one of the largest tech companies in the world to your town. Available housing declines, it takes far too long in the feedback cycle for new housing to be built, and you've made the city marginally worse for anyone who isn't a tech worker.
On the other hand, your city gets a ton more wealthy and existing homeowners essentially win the lottery.
That's also a poor argument for turning away businesses. The problem appears to be not allowing more housing sooner, not that you're helping provide tens of thousands of new jobs. Plus, there's tons of affordable housing a very short drive from Seattle. You should really do more/better research.
In seattle there are tons of people living in vans. at the grocery store near my house on the east side, i see rvs in the parking lot of the grocery. they go somewhere in the night. in seattle, south of the stadiums there are rvs on side streets, just like this story. even in kirkland there was an rv on the street with a suspicious looking bucket behind it. I think living in your rv is more common than you might expect.
Yes, a lot of people live in vans or on the streets. The issue is saying that's the new middle class. That's the part that's not at all true. Most people living in a sketchy RV by the stadium are not 9-5 office workers who are priced out of the city.
Good point, I guess the article says basically because they were clean, acted nicely, paid their bill and got groceries via lyft/uber and got out into an rv, they were middle class. Middle class should not conflate with reasonable human being who functions in society should it? That is incredible classist, anti blue color and anti poor people. You could be living on welfare and behave that way of course.
Now that you raised my awareness, I think the article conflates 'middle class' with normal behavior in a developed country, and that feels offensive to me, because it seems to suggest that some poor people are not like that.
