I know this will sound very NIMBY, but while I believe Eastside cities should contribute municipal funds to alleviate the affordable housing shortage that is truly a regional problem, I don't know why they need to build those in the Eastside area. The Eastside has, to my knowledge, basically never been a cheap place to live. It was a middle class suburban area that transformed into a very wealthy suburban area with denser parts that are also very wealthy. Maybe some small pockets of people were gentrified out, but what you're talking about seems to basically be just moving the people gentrified out of Seattle into an even wealthier area for some reason. It's also very car centric and spread out, which isn't so great for poor people that don't own cars. Sure the Eastside rail is getting built but that will only cover a limited part of the region.
But of course, like I said, they should still help solve the problem monetarily.
You said it yourself. Why should the Eastside get to avoid having homeless and subsided housing in their backyard? Certainly the employers of Eastside residents have contributed to the rise in Seattle home prices.
That doesn’t seem like a valid reason to me. Nothing is in a vacuum - so what?
Eastside cities’ residents want a certain degree of density, safety, cleanliness, etc. They also want to avoid losing the ability to have fast point-to-point on-demand transportation (i.e. driving private cars on roads that aren’t overcrowded), which enables them to live better lives by being able to quickly zip between work/schools/activities at a moment’s notice without dealing with the waiting times and schedules of mass transit.
That’s the lifestyle they have now and the lifestyle they want to sustain. I don’t think that should be demonized - people have different wants and needs, especially if they are raising children.
They also aren’t obligated to make their locale affordable to those who want to move there. After all, we are talking about one of the most desirable places to live, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that it is expensive as a result. Why should that necessitate a slide towards heavy urbanization? I realize some people prefer that denser life and might benefit from it (particularly if they are new transplants) but it’s not for everyone and I don’t think a community is obligated to make accommodations just because others now want to live in a particular location at a price point that makes sense for them. America has many places to live, and jobs are more available than they have ever been historically.
Lastly, cities surrounding Seattle also aren’t obligated to absorb the large homeless population Seattle has, which let’s face it, is enabled by lax enforcement of laws. A lot has been written (and is plainly observable) about the permanently homeless in Seattle who refuse all services and drug dealers operating out of roving RVs. For example take the recently swept Northgate homeless camp - an article I read stated that just one of that massive cluster of campers accepted services from the Seattle navigation team. And recently a lady was pricked by a needle at Northgate mall, not far from this camp. Is it really surprising that people in the Eastside don’t want to welcome the same squalor into their neighborhoods?
Your comment does one thing that has always bothered me during these kinds of discussions: you seem to assume that there is nothing at all between "bucolic suburb with frolicking children and wide, empty roads" and "dystopian hellscape of methheads in RVs terrorizing everyone in a Mad Max wonderland."
I'll also get this out of the way: yes, lots of us in Seattle are well and truly tired of the unsanctioned camps at places like Northgate and the RVs parked everywhere. What we're NOT willing to do, at least not yet, is to slam those people with more arrests and more trips through the criminal enforcement system prior to having services in place that will cover a high percentage of needs. (No, our existing shelter system, whether within Seattle or without in the suburbs, does not meet this requirement.) That's mostly humanity but also because the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit says that it is unconstitutional to run someone off from a place to sleep if there are no alternatives and "you must be stone-cold sober in order to enter this shelter" doesn't work for people who are addicted. (That's one reason why the region needs places like needle exchanges and substance abuse centers. Why shouldn't we concentrate them all in Pioneer Square? Well, for one, because the "junkie homeless" are already in places like Bellevue, sleeping out of their cars and scrounging for food, but they camouflage it better.)
Now, as to my original rebuttal. There's a huge need for missing-middle housing in this region. You know, for the people that serve your coffee, deliver your groceries, educate your kids, clean your parks, and paint the lines on those untrammeled roads. The people making well under six figures who shouldn't have to drive for two hours or live beyond the reach of public transit just to get to a job where someone making five times their salary can look down on them for not living in a "good place." That's the kind of housing Microsoft proposes to kick into gear here.
We need all kinds of these services because it's humane and it's fiscally and economically prudent to not sprawl all the way from Bremerton to the Tri-Cities.
> What we're NOT willing to do, at least not yet, is to slam those people with more arrests and more trips through the criminal enforcement system prior to having services in place that will cover a high percentage of needs.
Frankly, you just sound uninformed here.
Look at the Northgate encampment — 100% were offered services, 90% rejected them to remain dangerous vagrants spreading disease.
Until you accept that a component here is willful vagrancy and criminality, the problem will get worse.
No amount of money can fix your denial of the problem, and your position isn’t one of compassion — it’s an abdication of any responsibility: in blindly throwing money while abandoning the rule of law, you’re not helping the vagrants, you’re not helping the non-vagrant homeless the vagrants prey on, and you’re not helping the regular citizens that are getting assaulted or stuck with needles (such as that lady at a Northgate).
You’re the problem.
I want you to answer me honestly: when I was homeless, did I deserve to be assaulted by other homeless people while the police refused to do anything because you personally feel bad a vagrant might get arrested?
You left out the part where y'all scream and cry nonstop about the 520 tolls, toss massive amounts of cash at fighting the potential I-90 tolls, hold up and stall mass transit (mostly via the massive stacks of cash mentioned previously) that could _potentially_ travel over these routes and bring "bad" people to your utopias, oh – and also want to host an NBA team.
You don't get both. The eastside wants all of the perks of being a large(r) city, with none of the less desirable components. Meanwhile, you travel over the bridges you attempt to regulate so heavily, into our city, to collect your paychecks and claim the name 'Seattle' (because nobody knows the name of your city) and then spend your evenings writing nonsense like this.
If the suburbs don't build their fair share of housing, then workers who work in the suburbs gravitate to the cities, gentrifying them and driving out longtime residents.
Legal or not (and it is becoming less legal in places like California), it's a shitty thing to do.
By areas with high density and good transit. So, mostly Seattle and the Western/Central part of Renton, also Downtown Bellevue and Downtown Redmond. Last time I drove around Georgetown I noticed lots of unused space, maybe there's a reason a lot of affordable housing hasn't been built there, but it seems underutilized if it's not actively being developed for affordable housing
I'm not in principle against low income people living on the Eastside. In fact, I think most of Bellevue, Kirkland, and the area surrounding the Bel-Red corridor should be upzoned and get more infrastructure - then low income people could actually live there
I don't think we'll see them in downtown Bellevue anytime soon. Too many "Homeless Shelter Yes, Eastside No" signs next to the roads on the way in. I'm just a transplant and won't be here forever (10 years so far though), so I have little stake in the matter, but it seems clear most people on the Eastside want it to keep being "nice" even if that unfairly prices people out. I like things "nice" too and appreciate the car culture here. Of course I might be mistaken and the Seattlefication will continue. I have a friend who thinks Bellevue's about 10 years behind Seattle in things, Redmond another 10 years behind Bellevue, maybe we'll see Issaquah become the new Redmond.
There are homeless in downtown Bellevue. Yes, nothing compared to Seattle but I see dozens of homeless each day. I've gotten to know some and they take the 550 to get away from the camps in Seattle.
Only renewing and building up economically depressed places is a huge issue of gentrification and inequity. Why should it be so that only the poor should be radically impacted by necessary city changes? A really prime example of this is NYC construction post-war where robert moses demolished many homes of people of color to build various highways or in the bay area where the construction of above ground bart majorly impacted the overwhelmingly black section of west oakland. I'm not saying that we shouldn't build transit, or new construction but to only build it in economically depressed areas - which are often ghettoized places for ethnic minorities - seems fairly wrong.
This seems to be a major part about why many people who are advocates for the poor have an issue with new construction - because it results in displacement of people who can't afford it
But of course, like I said, they should still help solve the problem monetarily.