Hey, I want to answer this one because I think it's important.

You might think of me as a privileged high paid tech worker driving prices up. Actually I come from a working class family in southern europe. I'd spare you the details but I spent all my live slowly crawling up my way to where I am. Nearing 40 my life savings are 5 figures, and I have never owned any property or anything of value. Had I been born in the US I would be held as a paragon of the American dream and social mobility.

So now I move and start in a new country all over again. We live in a visa that would kick us out of the country if I lost my job, and it will take years to achieve any kind of stability. We have to pay a good chunk of our inflated tech income to pay for rent.

I know complaining as a tech worker is playing the world smallest violin. I recognize and appreciate my privilege. But we aren't exactly the winners here. The winners are landlords and investment funds.

Blaming highly paid immigrants misses the point and just serves to tear us further apart. Instead we should look at the systems that have caused a systematic shortage of housing.

Brother, don't get me wrong. I'm completely empathetic. This place is not for everyone.

I've moved all over too. When I didn't like a place I figured out what was next went for it. I didn't complain about it on an unrelated comment thread on Hackernews. You moved to Seattle and are complaining about the rain! This is my home you're talking about, and you're talking about it like a review of a restaurant on Tripadvisor.

However, if you do want to discover the beauty of this place and make it your home I suggest you take your family out hiking. https://www.wta.org/go-outside/map - I promise you will find something here that will change your life forever if you give it a chance.

Those pesky people living their own lives and spending their own money moving to where they want to, driving up costs by existing

If only they did with their lives exactly as I told them to

What a terrible take. You're the kind of NIMBY who creates the problems then blames them on new residents. How about you listen to their problems and solve some of them instead of blaming them for problems they did not create.

The problem in Seattle is that it's been flooded by highly paid tech workers. Our population has exploded in the past decade (over 21% increase). The city council has pushed through tons of rezoning and construction has been faster here than elsewhere in the country but it can't keep up with demand.

So, it may not be polite to point it out, but it's not inaccurate to say that the problem is in fact people like the OP.

And the ridiculous concentration of wealth caused by tech companies able to hire those highly paid tech workers goes without blame? It's fairly inaccurate to present it in a way people like OP are the only issue here.

Of course they're not the only issue -- no one's arguing that.

What we're talking about is the negative reaction from other Seattlites to highly paid newcomers who complain about the weather and high prices.

From what I can find it looks like Seattle's growth rate was about 2% annually from the 1980s to 2000, then tapered off to 1.2% from 2000 to 2019.[1] I'm not very familiar with Seattle, but maybe that growth has been extremely localized? [1]https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23140/seattle/population

You're looking at numbers for the Seattle metro area. The story with the city itself is different. The population went from 608k in 2010 to 737k in 2020. That's a huge jump for a city that's geographically constrained and already had no empty land available for development.

20% increase in 10 years? Wow what an impossible number to accommodate. /s

This likely points to slow bureaucracies or people fighting change or growth at all costs.

It doesn't sound like you're familiar with the area. Seattle is geographically constrained and there was already no empty land available for development in 2010 when the latest surge of new residents began. We can only accommodate new people by tearing down structures that already exist and replacing them with denser structures.

> This likely points to slow bureaucracies or people fighting change or growth at all costs.

There are NIMBY elements here, but the city hasn't been shying away from development. It's a completely different story up here than compared to San Francisco. Take a look at the city skyline from 2010 to 2020 -- it's completely different.

But there hasn't just been development in the downtown core. In 2017, the city council approved major upzoning changes in 27 neighborhoods across the city. It was passed unanimously. Lots of single-family housing zoning went away and tons of construction has followed, but it can't keep pace with new arrivals.

In areas where single-family housing still exists, the city changed zoning laws to allow backyard ADUs. The number of backyard cottages exploded and many of them are being rented out.

Is the situation perfect? Absolutely not -- housing prices are still sky high. But it's a vastly different situation than the one you've dismissively alluded to.

Land utilization is always close to 100% in cities. It's a misnomer that cities can "run out of land". Cities go up, they increase density. If they can't go up, it is usually because of zoning restrictions. And that's a choice of local residents and authorities.

I don't think that's true at all. Do you have data to support it? Everything I've seen indicates that most large cities do have a significant percentage of vacant land ( https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13574809.2016.11... ) and that cities like Seattle, SF, NYC, etc are indeed unique in their geographic constraints and total land utilization.

What I'm really talking about what I say "geographically constrained" is the elasticity of housing supply. Cities like Seattle, SF and NYC have less elastic housing supply in part because of their current land utilization and geographic constraints hemming in new development. That's a pretty well understood phenomenon.

How do you think NYC supports the population it does? Manhattan is not filled single dwelling houses, but at one time it was. It was much easier to build in NYC in the past than now. If they applied the same zoning restrictions then as SF does now, it never would have become the city that it is today.

Seattle is still only the 10th densest city in the country.

Person: "I don't really like it here and think I might leave"

You: "stop talking shit and just leave"

???

I don't see what's so confusing. Unfortunately, it seems like a pretty predictable and rational response to me. All of the high prices in Seattle have been caused by the whopping 21%+ increase in city population (!!!) over the past decade.

When Seattlites hear newcomers, particularly highly paid software engineers, moaning and groaning about the weather and high prices, there is very little sympathy to be had.