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.