I don't mean to come across as argumentative, but as someone who's lived in not-Magnolia-Seattle for a long time, a lot of the points made by that neighborhood come across as intentionally contradictory. Magnolia residents have, for as long as I can remember, pushed for density to be somewhere else on the basis that "Magnolia's infrastructure just can't handle it" or some other variation on the theme of "density is great just not here why don't you try building in Ballard instead."

To wit, the Magnolia Community Council, as early as the mid-2000s, was pushing against a western light rail extension (as in, west of 15th) because it would bring more people to the neighborhood. They've also argued against trying to make a Sounder stop in Ballard, just across the Locks, because people could walk there from upper Magnolia (or Metro might make good on its "threat," in some people's words, to run a commute route on Commodore Way) and, thus, increase the number of people living in Magnolia.

The arguments have always been that more people can't possibly fit there so, well, how about Ballard?

Magnolia residents love to argue in bad faith, anything to not straight up admit they don’t want to see poor people.

They’ll tell you they can’t pay more taxes because they never get anything out of it, then shoot down every proposal to build more transportation infrastructure in their area because it will bring in people, and use that as an excuse for why they can’t build more buildings. And then complain about how it’s the city’s fault.

Yes, why wouldn't residents of Magnolia want the same violent, unpoliced drug addicts now inhabiting the streets of Ballard and West Seattle in their neighborhood too? In other countries with dense development, those are often nice places, but in Seattle we don't lock up repeated criminals.

https://www.myballard.com/2018/11/03/man-stabbed-after-chasi...

https://q13fox.com/2017/10/13/west-seattle-mom-walking-infan...

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/from-home...

That was helpful ... because while the (blog) article gave a prominent place to an activist's opposition, it didn't explain the motives for opposition.

(Helps explain why Bullitt isn't so easy to visit. Also helps to explain why the 2001-quake-damaged bridge is still standing!)

Converting parks to more housing isn't really a density issue, it's more like does Seattle want parks or not?

Imagine converting Central Park in NYC to more housing.

The discussion is not converting Discovery Park to housing. That is a myth pushed by the Magnolia Community Council to raise people's hackles as "the Council is in the pocket of big developers to steal your parkland."

The discussion is to convert the old Fort Lawton along Texas Way W to housing (and adding a portion of it as public land to Discovery Park).

Why are developers expected to solve these problems? With more people living there, there will be a larger tax base to support services and infrastructure in the area. The city is the entity that should be building bridges and the residents (present and future) are the ones who should be funding it. By all means, the developers should pay market value for the land, but expecting them to fund bridge maintenance nearby just doesn't make sense to me.

While I understand your point, those new residents don't generate new taxes instantly. Development itself takes time - residents trickle in. And one years worth of taxes likely isn't enough to fund infrastructure.

So, if there's no kick-in from the developer, it could be years or decades before funding is in place.

I agree that it's not (directly) the developer's problem to solve. But, to the extend it might make their development faster or possible, they should have an interest in kicking in funds. And communities should rightly ask for that money.

Isn't this the problem that municipal bonds are supposed to solve?

Sure, but that costs more than getting the developer to foot the bill.

The developer will pass those costs along to the buyers of the new housing. Which means you effectively want those people to subsidize the existing residents.

Besides that, making new development extremely expensive with all this haggling is one of the major reasons for the housing crisis.

This sort of quid pro quo on infrastructure funding is not uncommon and big developers are familiar with it as a concept.

The city where I live made re-development of an old railyard contingent on funding a new bridge over the tracks that were still active. It worked out great for everyone; now there's a nice new neighborhood and fewer accidents on the new bridge, which is wider and straighter.

Just think, if Fort Lawton had been developed twenty years ago, perhaps the decisions about where to bother spending transit money would have been made differently. (It's not like anyone had any idea about that bridge having issues twenty years ago either - so it's a bit of a post-hoc explanation for all that NIMBY-ism)

This is NIMBYism trying to conceal itself with faux-progressivism ("but big developers! infrastructure!").

The more requirements you tack on to any kind of housing development, the more expensive it becomes to build housing, and so projects on the margin get killed and rents go ever-higher. That's not acceptable.

If Magnolia needs new infrastructure, that should be handled by the city government, and funding for it should come from city-wide property taxes or municipal bonds. Tying infrastructure funding to individual housing projects is silly, and if I'm being cynically honest, I have a feeling it's a fig leaf to mask that the real goal is to just kill the project entirely.

Indeed, it reeks of NIMBY stonewalling; yet another reason not to build along the litany of reasons not to build. The Party of No has had decades upon decades to fix bridges and infrastructure with their sprawl and their cars, and what has that gotten us? Sorry, but that bridge didn’t start crumbling yesterday, and preventing new buildings won’t help it.

Exactly what Minneapolis is seeing right now with it's 2040 plan that requires upzoning basically everything to allow at least duplexes in interior neighborhoods, and more dense allow corridor routes, etc. The main arguments are "It will destroy the character of our neighborhoods", "It's just a boondoggle for developers", and "The current infrastructure can't handle the increased density". Really it's people who have their comfortable little neighborhoods and don't want those filthy renters coming in.

One of the reasons why suburbs are so attractive is because other taxpayers subsidize their existence. New developments shouldn't get the same free ride regardless of density. Ideally what should happen is the city should plan the infrastructure, and the development should be forced to pay in their percentage of estimated load capacity into the building of it.

But I don't know how realistic that is or isn't. Maybe it's more feasible to have a temporary special tax assessment on the property to help pay for their share of it.

I mean, it’s realistic enough considering we used to build infrastructure and buildings. Only relatively recently did this become an issue.

Is it possible that a larger portion of government expenses goes towards debt service such as debt for infrastructure built years ago and pension payments? This would leave fewer resources to invest in the future.

I think thats a big part of it. Strong Towns blog aruges that suburbs are a growth ponzi scheme.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/16/the-growth-pon...

From part 4: talking about the 70s when infrastructure maintanence and replacement bills started coming due "The critical insight today is to understand how we reacted to the end of the first life cycle of suburban development, when those maintenance costs started to come due and cut into our growth-generated wealth. This time there was no spatial shift as seen in the other large, economic corrections. Instead, we made a choice to double down on the suburban experiment by taking on debt.

We used debt to drive additional growth and sustain the unsustainable development pattern for a while longer. A lot of this debt was public debt, but we facilitated mechanisms for increases in private debt as well (for example, Fannie and Freddie early on and then subprime mortgages and securitization later). Here is a graph showing our public and private debt levels since the beginning of the suburban experiment. I have noted roughly the first and second life cycles of those initial investments."

> The more requirements you tack on to any kind of housing development, the more expensive it becomes to build housing, and so projects on the margin get killed and rents go ever-higher. That's not acceptable.

That’s not faux progressivism. That’s real progressivism, just applied to an area some progressives want to see flourish rather than be killed.

The idea that a U.S. city in 2019 would just let a bridge fall down and not replace it, is absurd--especially in the context of a new development. "This would lead many to assume" is doing a ton of work here to make this seem like a reasonable concern.

Your optimism is nice, but unfounded. South park (South of Seattle) was left with one bridge for four years: https://www.historylink.org/File/10808

In Michigan, they've resorted to making some bridges single lane after they were rated too old for two cars at a time.

https://www.wxyz.com/news/getting-around/heavy-vehicles-usin...

https://www.freep.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/05/1...

The north part of West Seattle also basically has the one bridge. And WA did have an I-5 bridge collapse a few years back, although IIRC it was collision-induced structural damage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-5_Skagit_River_Bridge_collap...

I live in West Seattle, and there are technically two - there's also a drawbridge for pedestrians/cyclists/two lanes of traffic. Both are pretty new, and work well; the Magnolia situation, on the other hand, is a lot tougher. The residents of Magnolia are also known to really fear additional connectivity (especially public transit) in part due to an unfounded fear of crime.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/07/02/28583329/magnoli... (title sarcastic)

They did replace the South park bridge, so my optimism seems pretty founded?

Michigan is not willing to leave bridges down; they lack money. Not an issue in a wealthy suburb of Seattle.

I would add that overreach is a thing and it alienates many of us who are not fundamentally against greater density. Perfect example: the developer is planning a seven story structure to replace the current Albertsons property across from the pool. That's seven stories from the alley at the back of the inclined lot which means more like eight or nine from the sidewalk. And it will occupy the entire space, shoe-horning itself up against the relatively affordable three story apartment buildings on either side. At the first public meeting when asked why they were going so big their exact words were "because we can". So, yeah: even reasonable, progressive people get bent out of shape.

At the grocery store I pay for 8 apples.

"Why are you taking 8 apples?"

"Because I can."

I can see why people would get bent out of shape.

why do you think this is a problem?

That's my point developers have absolutely no interest in chipping in to improve transportation infrastructure to support their developments. They are trying to skate by pirating off the already existing ones.

Worse it sounds like in Seattle they're trying appropriate precious public space as well.

Does Seattle not have TIF bonds? The primary purpose of them is to pay for infrastructure upgrades needed for new development and then use the rise in property tax revenues on the new development to pay off the bonds.

If only there were some way for people to band together to pay for infrastructure which helps all of them

Exactly. Magnolia provides a significant source of property tax revenue, yet is constantly ignored when it comes to infrastructure upgrades. It almost makes me want to move out.

I live in Magnolia (Briarcliff), and the claim that this is about bridge capacity is nonsense. It's about poor people being in a wealthy neighborhood, nothing less and nothing more.

It would added 200 households, who would live primarily in townhomes and apartments, into an area that has roughly 9,500 households, the majority of whom live in single family residences. This is not going to make a noticeable change to our commutes.

I agree we need to invest in infrastructure for Magnolia, but that problem is orthogonal to this development.

I am now homeless because of this development. I moved to the seattle area to be closer to my family (who all moved out here from the east coast). Making it easier for developers to do this sort of thing only adds to the problem. I've been homeless in seattle for 8 months now and have been working full time in the industry I went to school for. I sincerely regret coming to this part of the country. Never thought I would see gentrification as bad as it is here.

No, you're homeless because there isn't enough housing to make it affordable at the market rate. Assuming you're actually homeless.

> I am now homeless because of this development.

No, you aren't.

You are right.

The reality is that the parent poster is homeless because of people like us, who moved to Seattle, to work for 5x the prevailing wage, and have pulled up the cost of housing across the board.

I'm not even convinced the person is homeless. The story doesn't pass the smell test. I have friends who work dishwasher jobs in Seattle but can still afford to live here, albeit with roommates. Someone who is educated, working full time in their desired career, and has been homeless for 8 months? Bullshit.

And even if that were true, the development isn't what made him homeless, and neither is the high wage growth. Seattle chose to not accommodate new residents with additional housing...the displacement at the hands of high(er) income newcomers is the direct result of that decision. Building more is the solution to this problem, not the cause of it.

No, that's still wrong. There is nothing ethically problematic about "accepting a job", and it's entirely possible to have a hot job market but not leave people homeless. The parent poster is homeless because Seattle isn't building enough housing to accommodate all the new residents, and that is what drives rents up. That, in turn, is driven by NIMBY opposition and bad policy.

I think both of you are right. The Venn diagram of "people who moved to Seattle to take a job paying 5x the prevailing wage" and "people who think Seattle was perfect and should never change from the state it was in the day after they arrived" seems, in my experience, to be almost completely overlapping. The voice of "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody" often originates from locals but is amplified by the people who newly-arrived and who can afford a $900,000 single-family residence in a "bucolic neighborhood" and now live in mortal terror that four-floors-and-corner-stores will be built nearby.

And then they have kids so everything turns into "that will severely impact my family and my children" so the rest of us are monsters for proposing such a thing.

Sorry for being hyperbolic; this raises my hackles a bit.

This isn't a problem that exists alone in Seattle.

Tour elementary schools across the nation, and you'll encounter lines of cars waiting to pickup/dropoff children. This is emblematic of the shift that has occurred in pockets of American society--the needs of the individual over the good of society.

Seattle just has unique geographical constraints that exacerbate the issue of individualistic thinking.

They have this because people don't trust their kids to walk home or be unsupervised any more, not because of individualistic thinking. And to be blunt, they are not entirely wrong; a dirty little secret of the old days is how much bullying or worse happened among unsupervised kids.

> And to be blunt, they are not entirely wrong

Actually they are. Humans are notoriously bad for understanding risk.

The rise in helicopter parenting DESPITE the fact that in no time in American history have children been more safe [1] is due to the fact that we (parents) have access to more information and news, and stories of children being harmed are sensational.

Our children would be fine riding the bus and waiting for the bus stop like we did as kids, but the fact that it's MY child means that I must do everything I can to protect them, regardless of the rationality of it. It is very much about individualistic thinking.

1: https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/infant-child-and-teen...

> No, that's still wrong. There is nothing ethically problematic about "accepting a job", and it's entirely possible to have a hot job market but not leave people homeless.

Much like communism, this is theoretically possible, but is not practically possible in most US cities, in the year 2019. Certainly not in the ones that are actually undergoing tech booms.

Given the constraints and social norms that our society operates under, a hot job market = misery for a lot of people.

Note that a sufficiently cold job market, and the urban decay associated with a shrinking population also leads to misery for a lot of people.

Have you seen Dice's latest billboard advertisement recently?

It says "Who can afford to live in Seattle? Programmers!". For most of Seattle proper, its a sad but accurate statement.

If you look at other big cities though, Seattle's rent isn't that much worse. The big difference is how many programmers there are here, versus other high paying jobs. I'm hoping to see Seattle catch up there, bring in some lawyers, bankers, doctors, etc.

I mean, look here: https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rental-data/ it doesn't even make the top 100 for median 1br rent prices in US.

Those numbers look very inaccurate. A 1 bedroom in Kenmore, WA for $1700 is the median? I find that really hard to believe, unless that is the median price for a unit built in the last 5 years in Kenmore. Ditto for the Puyallup, WA median 1BR price listed.

The data surprised me a whole lot as well. I can't speak to its accuracy, but it's the best I've found so far.

Where are they gathering it from? Seems overpriced for reality compared to census data and friends that have recently leased in both areas.

Seattle definitely is more expensive for a 1BR than either ex-urb: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-now-m...

Hum.. interesting. The article does explain that census data is quite different, includes utilities (now I'm curious if utilities are more expensive in Seattle), and the data is gathered by survey. So I'm guessing randomly asking people how much they pay.

Now from reading the methodology of my link: https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-report-method...

They say they also use census data. So the numbers shouldn't be this off. But one difference is that my link doesn't count all census data:

> Our rent estimates do not include rent-controlled units, rental units considered substandard in quality, seasonal rentals, or public housing units.

Where as the Seattle time article explicitly said they do, and that's why you see New York for example having a much lower median than Seattle.

It's still surprising that would account for bumping down Seattle by more than 150 in rank. Another thing they mention is their data is adjusted more frequently for market trends by combining it with active appartment listings. So maybe Seattle only recently improved dramatically, I did.notice a surge in new listings due to a lot of new appartment units being built.

I don't know, nothing very conclusive, seems like it's hard to even get the numbers right.