I understand that Seattle is still allowing housing construction though?

I believe rent here was stable in January 2018, the first time since 2008. Supply seems to slowly be catching demand. There's still some serious concerns about space to build higher density but the city has not totally locked down new construction or density increases. My neighborhood is largely single-family and there are a number of places that have been demolished recently in favor of town homes and small apartment complexes.

Rents are always stable for a little bit in the winter. To get an accurate picture you have to compare year-over-year, otherwise you're just looking at noise.

https://www.apartmentlist.com/wa/seattle

Yet the median house price increased by $50k last MONTH. They have a lot of new apartments on the market from the midrise and highrise construction, but almost nothing to own.

More than SF, but not necessarily a lot. I've been looking at the assessor data to evaluate how much development is going on, and it's interesting how the past 5 years have seen a lot of new units going online but they are very small so not a huge amount of new square footage, especially relative to 2003-2008 when a lot of large single-family homes were being built.

https://github.com/lukeschlather/load-king-county-assessor-d...

To some degree yes but there's still neighborhoods that will reject proposals. There's all sorts of debate on this (just yesterday saw windshield flyers against upzones) - to summarize in a fun way see https://twitter.com/YIMBYwiki/status/951255440481857536

I have family in West Seattle and can sympathize with the increased traffic that increased density has brought. Compared to 10 years ago, it is much more built up but no road infrastructure was upgraded so it has turned into quite a mess.

Yeah, I've thankfully avoided most of the seattle traffic over the years by working remote but have gotten disgruntled with some of the public transit issues (bus bunching problems / stop closures / etc.). On the plus side the density's attracted more services - we have three 'grab n' go' car-rental services (zipcar/car2go/reachnow) and three dockless bicycle rental services (spin/limebike/ofo) which is seemingly more than any city I can think of in the world.

Most folks working at local medium-large businesses seem to get price-reduced orca cards for their daily commute.

They are, but the zoning rules and tight geographic constraints hurt it a lot. There is also a WA law that greatly increases Condo liability - nearly every new building in the city in a midrise or above density building area is built for apartments, not condos. Go look on Zillow - the number of units and houses on the market are EXTREMELY low and have been for a very long time.

This is one of the more frustrating things I see with Seattle and makes me consider moving out - there's more apartment buildings getting built instead of condos. And from what I heard developers (particularly in Portland) are shying away from new projects due to newer city requirements to build more some portion of low-income units within a new building.

When did you move to Seattle? 2011 for me. The city has certainly changed but I'm still unclear on this nebulous culture shift that has supposedly "ruined" Seattle. What was more interesting about Seattle when you moved here vs today?

2004, while I agree it's "not completed ruined", it feels like we're slowly pushing out much of the middle class, and with it, artists and other culturally important folk. Give it 10 years and the only people that will be able to afford the city is one specific income bracket.

I think if you moved to the city post 2010, you probably don't realize what "old Seattle" was like.

There's an art gallery across the street from me. Many coffee shops and restaurants have locally created art for sale. There are all kinds of quirky performances on the street and in local businesses. I can't even begin to find time to attend all the live music shows I would like.

Who are these other "culturally important folk" and why are they so important? Not denying they exist, I just don't know who you are talking about.

I still see a lot of opportunity for middle (or possibly upper-middle) class families to live in Seattle although it is not easy. It seems a lot easier than SFO and entirely within reach to me. Something should be done to make sure this stays within reach but we have to be realistic about how that looks. A single family home on a 1/4 acre isn't gonna fly. You're probably going to be sharing at least one wall with someone.

You are echoing the concern I hear often and I have no doubt that you feel what you are describing but I'm just not convinced that it reflects reality.

I lived in Seattle for the summer of 2009 and while I didn't explore a lot of it back then I don't think it has changed much culturally. I hear the "it's an old Seattle thing you wouldn't understand" cliche a lot too. I'm just surprised nobody can articulate what was different then.

Seattle in the early/mid 90s had a grittier grungier feel. Before that, I remember when the Alaskan ferry docks were still downtown (today they are in Bellevue), it was much more of a lumber jack/plaid/fishing boat feel back then (early 80s and late 70s). Of course, my dad and mom’s impression of Seattle was quite different from mine own, as well.

Change is just constant I guess.

The Seattle of Harry and the Hendersons!

I visited with my girlfriend in 2015 and stayed in the suburbs where her girlfriend's guy was working for MS. The burbs seemed pretty peaceful and green (older suburb—but I don't know the city). Maybe they were in Redmond proper.

It was a beautiful area, and I could definitely live with that. It's too bad it's pricing people out like that.

We were there only too briefly so we just hit some touristy options like the market and some hipster arcade bar, the Army/Navy, etc.

We live in Toronto and it felt pretty similar overall (though I'd give major points to Seattle for scenery). The same thing is ultimately happening here, too, though. Rents are skyrocketing but wages aren't.

With a lot of the political commotion and the desire for more outdoors activity, I haven't seen much of Canada mentioned in this thread and I'm curious if its landed on the map for anybody. And where?

Canada? Isn't Vancouver just a more expensive Seattle with better/cheaper food?

If other countries are up for comparison, I would really love to move to Brisbane someday.

Contrary to popular opinion I actually enjoy living in Seattle so I’m not interested in moving anywhere. The only Canadian cities that appeal to me are cities like Seattle so a move wouldn’t make much sense.

If I left Seattle (and the US) it would be for something completely different like Taipei.

I’m also a bit too patriotic to move out of the US while I can still build a life here.

>Seattle in the early/mid 90s had a grittier grungier feel.

Of course, that's true of a lot of US cities that are growing these days. Certainly NYC or Boston were much grittier in the 80s/90s than they are today with a net outflow of population.

Yes. Also, I worked at the downtown McDonald’s then (3rd and pine), which was pretty run down and a hangout for homeless at night, so my impression is pretty biased. Not sure if this is still true, but back then many of the homeless were Native Americans, which is unique to the PNW (and Vancouver) grit, I guess.

I had to double check, but you mean Bellingham, not Bellevue.

Oh, ya that was a typo, oops, it would be hard to get a ferry from Bellevue into the sound via the canal :). My great aunt and uncle would visit us from anchorage (or Ketchikan? I was young) on the ferry and we saw them off at the ferry dock downtown.

I've never even been to seattle but i can at least tell you that grunge started there. Can you imagine a new genre of music starting in seattle now?

Also,

> There's an art gallery across the street from me. Many coffee shops and restaurants have locally created art for sale.

There's a ton of those in SF, too. Gentrifiers enjoy the old culture and all its signifiers; that's why they moved there in the first place. (IDK what you mean by street performers but there sure aren't those in SF.)

There’s a dude who dances on the corner by my bus stop because he likes it. No shortage of buskers either. The bar up the street does rope dancing on I think Tuesday night.

I’m not sure how to reconcile “all the artists are leaving” with “gentrifiers like art” and the presence of many forms of art all over the place. Which is it? Are artists not supposed to sell art? I really don’t get it.

Grunge didn’t really start here, it just blew up here. It’s more of a Pacific Northwest thing than a Seattle thing. If you ever come visit check out the Nirvana exhibit at MoPop (previously EMP), it does a great job explaining the evolution of grunge.

There are several local bands who are doing well on the national stage. The biggest is Macklemore although he’s not really my style.

The music scene in Seattle seems healthy to me, you can get a variety of shows any night of the week. The metal scene is supposed to be big but not my deal so I don’t know a lot about it.

I was at a backyard/underground wrestling show (hosted by a local band) last summer where the heel taunted the audience by telling them they’re a bunch of people who moved here 8 years ago and are mad at the people who moved here 5 years ago.

From where I sit Seattle has a multitude of healthy subcultures. It’s just fashionable to complain.

Funny seeing our neighborhood dancing dude mentioned on HN (assuming you’re talking about the guy that posts up across from Easy Street)! When he started showing up I was really happy to see just a little bit of life and eccentric expression being brought back out on the street. Seattle was my hometown and still is my home. I’m probably one of the complainers many people are complaining about on this forum. That said, I have made friends with a bunch of new folks who moved from Cali within the last several years. Really great, wonderful people and I have nothing against them. Nevertheless, at this point it’s far from the city I grew up in, fell in love with, and now miss (even though I still live here) As the cost of living rises, the culture changes.

Really just warning you, it sounds possible that it's where SF was 10-15 years ago. I personally knew multiple artists who lived in SF, tried to sell their art to techies, slowly noticed that all their friends were becoming techies (and all their artist friends were leaving), their rent continually rose, and had to move out. These places are friendly to artists right up until they aren't.

This exact scenario happened to me in Seattle. But I took a corporate job instead of move.

I moved out here last year - I do not live in Seattle proper, but I work there. I love Seattle but it is a crazy town that to me seems like it must've always been in flux. For the love of God do not move here if you don't want to be stressed out about housing costs and don't want to deal with an insane commute regardless of almost anywhere you live.

I'm trying to find it but there was this old video recording from either 1995 or 2005 (I don't remember which) of a Bob Dylan-ish parody song being performed on acoustic guitar and the lyrics were complaining about the exact same things back then that you hear complained about here today. As a matter of fact, don't move here if you can't handle complaining.

There are a lot of them from an old tv show called Almost Live. Here's a good spot to start from '97

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr5-Obhi1pE

That is the exact video I was searching for! Thank you!

Seattle is a boom(and bust)town. Always has been. That's what makes it appealing to me. I'll ride out whatever happens next because I have no illusions that this crazy growth can continue. I'm willing to accept the complaining, it hasn't driven me out yet. As one of the most educated cities in the nation I expect to be able to challenge perceptions. I hear the line repeated often in local media but nobody has ever been able to explain to me what magic thing Seattle has lost. I suspect that's because it hasn't actually lost it.