Hacker News Reader

Comment by balls187 | Hacker News Reader

Foreign investors buying up single family dwellings and turning them into managed AirBNB rentals is also a problem.

And with all this new wealth in Seattle, Seattle Public Schools are still garbage.

At least with Redmond, Bellevue, Issaquah, and Sammamish, they invested in their public schools.

Do you have data showing that the schools are worse than similar schools elsewhere with the same demographics? The districts you list have been full of rich white people since forever.

For those who haven't been to Bellevue, this about sums it up: http://i.imgur.com/y1a7ZsV.jpg

Funny enough Amazon has turned Seattle into that, but much worse.

Small family run restaurants have been replaced by restaurants run by business-minded chefs serving overpriced and mediocre fare. There still exists some of seattle's former self, however Seattle is trending towards the bland and generic eastside, just without the parking and good schools.

Do you have data showing that those districts are rich white people, and without large pockets of Chinese and SE Asian families?

Median home price in Seattle is $722k (src: http://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/more-record...)

Median home price in Eastside is $880k (same source)

Home prices have direct correlation to school test scores.

Anyone with that wealth would probably send them to private school so I doubt they are concerned about the public school system.

For Microsoft at least, most of my coworkers send their kids to public school.

LOL, the private schools here are anti-vaxxer havens, when you hear about kids dying of whooping cough or similar in this state, it nearly always is at a private school. Also, its a non-union gig that pays a few grand less than SPS or the other public school districts. What your paying for with private schools in the region is to be in an upper crust social circle.

The Archdiocese of the Seattle Catholic Church needs to crack down on that, as they run the majority of the private schools in the city.

Wealthy people send their kids to the Mercer Island public school system all the time, but that island is a uniquely wealthy insular suburb community. If there was anything wrong with the quality of education received by its students, you absolutely know there would be a revolt of several hundred wealthy homeowners on the island, who would overthrow their city government.

As a former airbnb host, I feel these problems are due to existing bad policies on new construction or zoning unless the city has a huge boom in tourism and not enough hotels.

It's a reflection easily corrected though(more hotels).

I've lived in one that did that and watched the demand tank some everytime a new hotel went up. City had removed limits on downtown building a a few years ago....prior to that airbnbs did so good that city told hotels to screw off because they needed them to meet high tourism demand...even legalized them!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com