> If someone builds a fancy new apartment building with amenities, units in the 60 year old building next door automatically fall in value and become more affordable. We need to build housing, period.

More than likely (at least here in Seattle), the 60 year old building next door has already been bought by a developer and is just waiting its turn to be redeveloped into more fancy new luxury housing.

Because >80% in single-family zoning. Let them build denser there and they will tear down single homes instead.

But those maps aren’t equally distributed. Yes, Seattle has alot of SFH zoning in…lake city, greenwood, rainier. But the place where they are building luxury town homes aren’t it, as soon as the zoning allows for it, developers buy out the old small craftsman homes built in the 1920s and replace them with multiple 3-4 story luxury townhomes.