Cicero posted:

Obviously it's just greedy developers causing the problem. Developers in places like Phoenix or Houston aren't as greedy, so that's why housing is more affordable there.

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

If only another earthquake could level San Fransisco so redevelopment could actually happen.

Leperflesh posted:

The city has a backlog of demand on the order of a hundred thousand units or so, at least. The only way to get that kind of housing into SF without paving over its green spaces is to knock down existing housing and replace it with higher density.

Bad Mr Frosty posted:

Living all over the bay area for 35 years, I never understood the fascination with SF. If you find a nice job in SF, just take BART. You don't need to live in the city limits The bay area isn't like many other metro areas in the USA, SF doesn't have a monopoly on good food and entertainment.

FRINGE posted:

Cities should start discouraging business congestion that creates some of these problems.

Seattle has a problem with Amazon starting to make the city unlivable, whereas Microsoft (located nearby) does not have the same effect.

Rah! posted:

Amazon isn't making Seattle unlivable. It being a desirable city with a growing lack of housing supply is making it unlivable (for the non-wealthy).

Do you see the pattern?

enraged_camel posted:

Eh, I dunno. Just the other day I was reading an article about new hyper-luxury condos popping up in Capitol Hill where single bedrooms are four thousand loving dollars a month. The only reason that's happening is because Amazon is just a mile or two away and pays very good wages, so there's people who can afford that kind of rent and developers want to take advantage of the demand.

quote:

Supply of houses for sale in Seattle remains tight
By AUBREY COHEN, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Updated 4:16 pm, Thursday, February 5, 2015

Prospective home buyers continue to have little selection in and around Seattle, the Northwest Multiple Listing Service reported Thursday.

Seattle and King County had 1.3 and two months' worth of homes for sale, at the current sales pace, in January. That's down from 1.6 months and 2.4 months a year ago. While the supply is up slightly from December, seasonal variation complicates month-to-month comparisons. Four to six months is generally considered balanced between buyers and sellers.

"We just really are a fast growing city without enough inventory on the market," said Alon Bassok, a research scientist at the Runstad Center for Real Estate Research at the University of Washington. "Limited inventory, in this case, means to me that we're going to see prices go up even further."

In addition to the lack of homes currently for sale, the rental market is also tight and construction of new homes isn't keeping pace with demand, Bassok said. "So there's pressure on all sides."

In a listing service news release, George Moorhead, designated broker and owner at Bentley Properties, said: "The current inventory of homes available for sale has never been lower in my 22 years as a real estate broker."

enraged_camel posted:

Eh, I dunno. Just the other day I was reading an article about new hyper-luxury condos popping up in Capitol Hill where single bedrooms are four thousand loving dollars a month. The only reason that's happening is because Amazon is just a mile or two away and pays very good wages, so there's people who can afford that kind of rent and developers want to take advantage of the demand.

Rah! posted:

Amazon isn't making Seattle unlivable. It being a desirable city with a growing lack of housing supply is making it unlivable (for the non-wealthy).

Do you see the pattern?

quote:

Between March of 2009 and March of 2014, Gardner says, rental prices in the Belltown/South Lake Union neighborhood (which are considered a single market) have increased by 27.1 percent. On Capitol Hill, rents have jumped 31.5 percent. "Is Amazon's expansion an influence?" Gardner says. "Yes, it is. Any leasing agent in the area would say yes." And because of the way rents are headed in those areas, he adds, "It's going to influence a migration to other proximate, submarket areas."

The Amazon effect is being felt beyond the apartment-rental market. Bidding wars between home buyers push up the prices of houses, which "are a fundamental driver for determining rents" according to Nate Clement, business manager of the real-estate site Estately.com. (Full disclosure: Clement is my brother-in-law.) "We're facing the same nationwide conditions that have created a low supply of homes for sale, and locally there's certainly additional demand from an influx of buyers and renters coming for Amazon jobs," he says. "It seems bound to push prices higher and faster than elsewhere."

Barry Blanton of the Blanton-Turner property management company put it more bluntly in a market report last spring: "The in-city Seattle market is booming with the job growth of Amazon; $3 is the new $2."

Mike Scott of Dupre + Scott Apartment Advisors says it's a little difficult to pinpoint exactly how significant the Amazon effect is—partly because Amazon is so secretive, partly because of the recession between 2008 and 2010—but nobody denies that it's driving rents up.

quote:

Shortly after ‘Amageddon': How Amazon’s culture is taking a toll on Seattle’s future went viral over at GeekWire, Amazon dropped a bombshell. It’s building enough office space to nearly triple its Seattle headcount by 2019. If you like the current dose of Amazon on our city, how would you like two more doses of equal size? Well, it’s coming our way.

... One future for Seattle is that Amazon succeeds and the city resembles San Francisco. An overabundance of wealthy white males and a colossal traffic mess. Another possibility is a plethora of empty office towers and bankrupt developers that cast an economic shadow of gloom over the city for decades. The former is probably more likely – but it’s clear that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train of growth which Seattle is ill-prepared for.

quote:

Seattle rents rising faster than in any other major U.S. city

.. Earlier this summer CHS reported that average rent in the neighborhood had reached $1,557, a 12% increase in just one year. According to the latest quarterly apartment survey from analysts Dupre+Scott, median rent on the Hill is at $1,462. What’s even more impressive is the rent increases are happening amid a boom of new units. From March to September the report counted 605 new units — almost double the next highest amount in the past five years over the same time period.

quote:

Amazon pays $52 million for another full block in downtown Seattle

... For several years Amazon has been amassing properties in this part of downtown called the Denny Triangle. The Triangle is where Amazon is building the three-block campus which will include three 38-story high rises, as well as some smaller buildings.

Friday's acquisition may not be the last because Amazon has a right to buy another property in the area. It is the eastern half of the block between Bell and Blanchard and Sixth and Seventh avenues.

In addition, Amazon has the first right to negotiate the purchase of additional properties nearby.

quote:

Widespread increases are evident in rent statistics from Zillow, an online real-estate database: In the last two years, the median rent for Seattle studio apartments has gone up $434 in Wallingford, $419 in Capitol Hill, and $306 in Ballard.

quote:

2015's Apartment Influx Won't Stop Seattle's Rising Rents

Here's the good news, Seattle renters: almost 13,000 new apartments will be available in the region in 2015. Here's the bad news: Even then, you're still probably going to have to pay through the roof to rent them. According to a new report by Apartment Insights Washington, the average rent for new leases in apartments in King and Snohomish counties during Q4 2014 was $1,313, up 8% from last year. That's 2% more growth than the previous year and four times the rate of inflation. Plus, considering many of the new apartments will be located in luxury towers in high-growth areas such as Denny Triangle or downtown Bellevue, renters might see more availability but not at a cheaper price.

... And if all of this isn't morbid enough, Zillow just released new analysis saying that Seattle residents paid $7.8B (as in billion) in rent in 2014, which is up 8.6% from 2013

Bad Mr Frosty posted:

Living all over the bay area for 35 years, I never understood the fascination with SF. If you find a nice job in SF, just take BART. You don't need to live in the city limits The bay area isn't like many other metro areas in the USA, SF doesn't have a monopoly on good food and entertainment.

FRINGE posted:

Wrong.

Rah! posted:

This "Amazon effect" wouldn't be nearly as bad if Seattle had an adequate housing supply. It's not rocket science. Also, 13,000 apartments is not a significant number of housing units unless that much is getting added every year for like a decade straight (as far as SF is concerned...the amount needed is probably a little lower for Seattle, but still far above 13,000).

FRINGE posted:

The entire population of Seattle is just over 600,000.

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Seattle needs more cheap housing.

enraged_camel posted:

This is relevant:

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Seattle needs more cheap housing.

Space-Bird posted:

The SF rental market is basically entirely saturated..and hyper inflated rent/housing prices are extending out to the rest of the bay area. Not to say Seattle isn't having problems too, I just hope they don't end up in the same situation SF/Bay area is in now.

enraged_camel posted:

This is relevant:

Trabisnikof posted:

Its almost as if both of those cities aren't incredibly confined by geography or something!

quote:

Also, Houston has no zoning laws, not sure if you're trying to advocate for that too.

nm posted:

San Francisco is not really the same as the groups that get blamed for the housing crisis are google et al which are 50 miles away near San Jose.

FRINGE posted:

Cities should start discouraging business congestion that creates some of these problems.

FRINGE posted:

Amazon is empowering is drones to boot people out of their own neighborhoods.

News posted:

Company paying its workers crap

News posted:

Company paying its workers very well

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Seattle needs more cheap housing.

quote:

GOV. JERRY BROWN (D), CALIFORNIA: It is a wakeup call and it should be for everyone, because this executive order is done under emergency power. And it has the force of law. Very unusual. And it's requiring action and changes in behavior from the Oregon border all the way to the Mexican border. It affects lawns. It affects people's -- how long they stay in the shower, how businesses use water.

quote:

RADDATZ: -- Governor, but let me look at those. Again, 80 percent of the winter used by agriculture, but accounts for less than 2 percent of the economy.

Is that true?

BROWN: Yes, you bet it's true. But by the way, they're not watering their lawn or taking long showers. They're providing most of the fruits and vegetables of America to a significant part of the world.

RADDATZ: But is there something wrong there?

Should using that much water for almond production -- let me read you something else from "The Economist." "If water were priced properly, it is a safe bet that they would waste far less of it and the effect of California's drought would not be so severe."

BROWN: Most of that is true in the sense that anybody who's wasting water in their -- in -- not using the latest technology, that's not very smart.

But farmers are getting zero allocation from the federal central water project. And that's a big deal. That hasn't happened before.

Now, of course we can shut it off. If you don't want to produce any food and import it from some other place, theoretically, you could do that. But that would displace hundreds of thousands of people and I don't think it's needed.

There are farmers who -- who have senior water rights. Some people have a right to more water than others. That's historic. That's built into the legal framework of California. And, yes, if things continue at this level, that's probably going to be examined.

Jerry Brown posted:

ComradeCosmobot posted:

Also: some Bay Area water districts plan to put 30% rate hikes on the ballot this year because of lower usage.

enraged_camel posted:

This is relevant:

Leperflesh posted:

This is actually proof that during the period shown, Seattle built far, far more housing than San Francisco.

Because, of course, population cannot rise in a city without additional housing being built. To put it another way: Seattle is doing several times better than San Francisco at meeting their respective rises in demands for more housing.

Sydin posted:

There's no middle ground - either we do absolutely nothing to ag, or we cut off all their water and shut down all ag in the state. Come on Brown, you're about to term out anyway. Bite the political bullet and start cracking the whip on ag a little.


So you push residents to conserve like loving crazy (despite the fact that we're already conserving way more per capita than the national average to start with), it does nothing because residential usage only accounts for ~5% of total water usage, and now on top of having achieved nothing, you're bankrupting the municipal water companies and forcing them to hike rates to make up the difference. What a flawless drought strategy.

Dominus Vobiscum posted:

Of course we can't possibly treat this like a national food supply problem and call on Midwestern states to grow anything but corn and soybeans, either.

Sydin posted:

So you push residents to conserve like loving crazy (despite the fact that we're already conserving way more per capita than the national average to start with), it does nothing because residential usage only accounts for ~5% of total water usage, and now on top of having achieved nothing, you're bankrupting the municipal water companies and forcing them to hike rates to make up the difference. What a flawless drought strategy.

Dominus Vobiscum posted:

Of course we can't possibly treat this like a national food supply problem and call on Midwestern states to grow anything but corn and soybeans, either.

Trabisnikof posted:

You're still ignoring the fact that Ag is literally getting 0 water from the CVP. We don't need to ask Ag to conserve, we just shut off their taps. Meanwhile, we will never ever shut off the supply to cities, so yes conservation by residents matter.

quote:

I’m going to focus on our initial allocations for our water service contractors. For our north of Delta agricultural water service contractors, their initial allocation is 0% of their contract supply. For our municipal and industrial service contractors north of the Delta, their initial allocation allows for enough water to meet their health and safety needs, or at least 25% of their historic use which ever is greater.

For south of Delta water service contractors, and this focuses on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, the initial allocation for those contractors is 0% of their contract quantity. For the M&I water service contractors south of the Delta, initial allocation is enough water to meet their health and safety needs, or at least 25% of their historic use, whichever is greater.

For our Friant division contractors that are served out of the upper San Joaquin and Millerton Reservoir, our initial water supply allocation to those users is 0% of Class 1 and Class 2 water.Reclamation will be working with the Friant contractors to determine the amount of available water that is needed to meet their health and safety needs within the Friant area.

For our eastside water service contractors that are served out of New Melones Reservoir, initial allocation is 0% of their contract quantity due to a lack of available CVP supplies out of New Melones.

ComradeCosmobot posted:

It's not like the cities (EDIT: dependent on the CVP) aren't getting severe cuts from the CVP too. It's just that they can't be cut to 0 because of health and safety concerns.

enraged_camel posted:

This is relevant:

Cicero posted:

As an aside: Those chart axes are messed up. One's y-axis starts at 0 while the other's starts at 450,000; one chart's x-axis starts a bit before 1970 while the other starts a bit before 1990. Makes it a lot harder to compare them.

Trabisnikof posted:

That's my entire point. We'll never cut cities 100% so at the end of the day residential demand reduction is important because its one of the few kinds of demand that can't be shut off.

ShadowHawk posted:

Or we could rethink the fact that it's cheaper for a farmer to dump 70 gallons of water on the ground than for a resident to shower with 1.