Seattle now decade’s fastest-growing big city in the U.S. | Hacker News Reader

Seattle now decade’s fastest-growing big city in the U.S.

seattletimes.com

57 pointsspking53 comments

It's fast-growing, but the land-use policy is still oddly parochial in may ways: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-fut....

The vast majority of the city is still zoned for single-family housing: https://www.theurbanist.org/2017/10/23/the-path-to-eliminate.... Just allowing multi-family housing and eliminating property requirements would do a huge amount to alleviate affordability and income inequality problems.

Its REALLY intense living here - I lived in the bay from 2004-2014, and moved up here for better COL. I'm riding the wave now, but its getting ever higher and my income needs to increase by the same amount. I'm a developer, but not a superstar - I make more than the median dev income, but that is not enough to afford any sort of permanent housing much of city limits.

I am hoping for an economic shock at this point - anything to shake loose all the people holding onto their investment houses while the values are going up, and maybe then all the brand new apartment buildings that wouldn't be able to find tenants might convert to condo's. Supply is desperately needed - even renting is a bloodsport (far more than NYC or even the SF bay, if a little cheaper).

Its literally my #1 concern about the area. If the wave rises to the point that I can never achieve housing stability without a 1.5 hour commute, I'll move (just as so many of my friends here have). Colorado and Portland are next, but even there the whispers of NIMBYism are getting louder. I'm beginning to think at this point that the economy is out to get everyone who's under 35 - the only place there are jobs that pay well enough to afford anything are vastly more expensive.

We're still more affordable per sqft than most top international cities and many US cities -- I think the mentality of needing a large sqft unit, or yard, or single-family home in Seattle needs to change. We have a ton of parks if anyone needs space. For the quality of life, I still think Seattle is very affordable.

That being said, I completely agree that zoning needs to be overhauled.

I want a condo or townhouse. Apparently condos are unfeasible in WA due to state liability laws.

There are plenty of condominiums in WA, especially on the east side.

Lots of existing ones, but not a lot under construction. This[1] talks a little bit about why there haven't been a lot of projects in the last few years.

http://thelens.news/2018/01/10/the-need-for-condominium-liab...

Only a few cities are more expensive than Seattle ATM, like LA, SF, NYC, Boston maybe.

It isn't as simple as upscaling zoning, you need roads to go with it. West Seattle has horrible traffic these days because they built a bunch of high density housing around California Avenue. They did add rapid bus transit, but everyone still drives even if they have an apartment.

Yes we're between 5th [0] and 7th [1] depending on the measure, which is think is appropriate. Most of the places I'd rather live globally are more expensive [2].

[0]: https://nested.com/research/rental/2017/us/all

[1]: https://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/real-estate/T006-S001-mo...

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/admin/1000000054865...

Paris’s rent doesn’t include the (train/métro) suburbs, where 80% of the people live. It’s a very different market than the Bay Area.

As far as international cities go, very few offer better than Seattle salaries for software engineers. Maybe maybe Zurich, but definitely not Paris or London.

And yet, in the mid 100s in salary one can’t afford a place here.

Compared to other international non-US cities? Seattle is still very affordable. Places in Zurich aren’t cheap. Heck, even Vancouver is more pricey.

> Its literally my #1 concern about the area. If the wave rises to the point that I can never achieve housing stability without a 1.5 hour commute, I'll move (just as so many of my friends here have). Colorado and Portland are next, but even there the whispers of NIMBYism are getting louder. I'm beginning to think at this point that the economy is out to get everyone who's under 35 - the only place there are jobs that pay well enough to afford anything are vastly more expensive.

I'd suggest the Southeast if you can. $300k houses are quite viable with 30 minute commutes.

> I make more than the median dev income, but that is not enough to afford any sort of permanent housing much of city limits.

If you have a large, single income family perhaps not but for most people it should be plenty to buy.

600k gets you a shack or a small condo on the outskirts with a long car commute. For someone making $150k trying to buy an $800k property is really stretching them thin

Oh bullshit. 600k would get you a 2bed condo in Capitol Hill, or a perfectly livable house well within city limits. Source: my recent condo purchase in Capitol Hill, redfin.

There is not a single 2 bedroom up for sale in Cap Hill for 600k or under. There are 5 1 beds with 600 square feet or less. That’s it. I got my number off of current postings

Oh sorry, this one isn't legally in Capitol Hill, guess you should move to Atlanta or Bothell to find anywhere less than $1 million - https://www.redfin.com/WA/Seattle/1400-Hubbell-Pl-98101/unit... - bye!

At this point Seattle is a fairly crummy city in a fairly nice location. The region and climate are nice but the traffic is hell, the crime is bad and the housing costs are astronomical. The tech salaries are high, but it doesn't make up for the otherwise poor quality of life.

Poor quality of life? I guess my standards are low, because my quality of life here is great.

I'm pretty sure crime is far lower in Seattle than other large US cities, especially violent crime.

People say the same about crime in Portland too and really it's just property theft/drugs.

Plus Portland gets the same amount of rain, as Seattle.

Why speculate when there's data[1].

    City        Violent Crime/100k   Property Crime/100k
    Los Angeles        16                         60
    San Francisco      90                        711
    DC                 79                        672
    Chicago            33                        108
    NYC                7                          18
    Houston            42                        193
    Seattle            88                        808
    Portland           77                        850

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

No, the actual values are quite different. From [1], the same source:

    City        Violent Crime/100k   Property Crime/100k

    Detroit        1759.6                     4093.6
    DC             1202.6                     4516.2
    Houston         966.7                     4397.5
    Chicago         903.8                     2946.3
    San Francisco   776.8                     6138.0
    Boston          706.8                     2316.1
    Los Angeles     634.8                     2359.6
    Seattle         598.7                     5522.0
    NYC             585.8                     1518.7
    Portland        472.8                     5234.8
    Raleigh         392.3                     3063.0
    Austin          372.5                     3771.0

(I added a few cities that are frequently on HN and rearranged them.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b....

You are correct. Unfortunately I can't go back and delete my erroneous post or edit it.

I misinterpreted the "total" column as total events, and divided them by the population. Hopefully people looking at my original post will continue to read down to your reply, and this correction.

Yes, I wondered about the heading labeled "total" as well! It was a bit confusing to be there next to the actual population of the city number. I had recently looked up the NYC crime rate though and I figured out the "total" column was actually the total/100k.

It's far higher than SF at least, in fact I'd say it's higher than most US cities. Plus the traffic is less of an issue with the light-rail expansion (assuming you live close enough to light rail).

But still far lower than most of the rest of the world.

Is the climate actually nice? I could not live in a place where it's cloudy most of the year.

Nope, it’s rains here all the time, go to California instead. Much better weather there. :)

If you’re considering moving here, think hard about it. It does rain for most of the year, meaning that there’s lots of “green” all over the place (if that’s your thing). Also, in the summers it’s basically 60-70 straight days of 70s and sunny. Not a lot of variety imo.

Seattle has the highest amount of rainfall per year of any mainland region.

This is just flat out wrong. We do get more cloudy days than any major city in the U.S. but we don't actually get that much heavy rain. This is at least partly offset by the fact that the temperatures are much milder year round. Seattle barely gets any snow in the winter, and rarely gets very hot in the summer.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle#Climate.

The winters here can be really rough. For me, owning a SAD lamp is pretty much a requirement.

It won't be for long! Taxes and spending in Seattle have shot way, way up, far in excess of the recent population growth.

The insistence that Americans migrate away from high-tax areas doesn't seem to be supported by the facts. Connecticut and the Bay Area are losing population, but so are heartland states like Kansas. Seattle is the fastest-growing area in the country, but close behind is Texas. I don't think partisans on either side of this question have an empirical leg to stand on.

I lived in Seattle for three years, and I just moved away two months ago.

I tend to agree with you, but Seattle is in a state with 0% income tax, so just because the city’s taxes are rising doesn’t mean they’re net higher than other large cities.

Yes, and Texas also has no state income tax. Both are friendly places to small business.

Which I think is the answer to the puzzle: the job and housing markets matter a lot more than the tax situation.

It seems like this thread proved the opposite of the point you were trying to make -- that Americans are indeed migrating to states with no state income tax?

It hasn't "proved" anything, it's just two cherry picked examples

Texas is not friendly to small business. Small businesses require customers. Texas has a lot of poor people, who typically don't shop. Seattle has a lot of well off people with disposable income. If there are no customers, low taxes don't mean much.

Not relevant to an online tech startup. Also not even true since TX is a very large state with plenty of wealthy people.

Kansas isn't losing population and neither is the heartland. Both have been growing slowly and non-stop since the mid 1960s. Kansas hasn't had a single population decline, year over year, in about 50 years.

Kansas:

2000: 2,694,000

2010: 2,859,000

2017: 2,913,000

These are all consistently increasing year after year:

Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio.

Illinois is hit or miss, however it's up a million people over 20 years.

Michigan is the only one that has particularly struggled. Its population remains above where it was 20 years ago; it's about 50k people (~0.5%) below its 2004 record high.

Connecticut is definitely struggling, they've seen zero growth over seven or eight years, and comparatively little growth over 40 years despite being an affluent state.

I disagree with this in spirit. The rustbelt is not losing population but it is stagnating compared to rest of the nation. I'm from Ohio and I noticed something startling looking at population stats - before 1970 population was increasing at double digit rates many decades. After 1970, very low single digits (some decades less than 1% growth). In 1970 the population was 10,652,017, while in 2017 it is estimated at only 11,658,609. The population is barely replacing itself.

If you look at other rust belt states you will see a similar trend, and I believe it is due to people moving away looking for work, starting in the 70s. The decline of the auto and manufacturing industries here is likely to blame. The same trends generally apply for Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky and Indiana. In Pennsylvania the trend started much earlier which maybe follows the steel industry decline. Anecdotally much more than half of the people I keep in contact with from high school and college in Ohio have moved away, myself included.

That's why I was very specific when I pointed out that the population growth has been slow. There was no confusion about rapid growth (although some of these states are growing quite solidly, Minnesota for example).

The parent was clear about the claim: Kansas and similar heartland states are losing population. It's false.

Over decades there's a massive difference between gaining 0.3% (or similar) population per year and losing 0.3% per year. Kansas gained 1/3 more people over 50 years. Had that gone the other direction persistently, they'd barely exist as a state today. Contrast that with Germany over that time, which has seen maybe 5% growth. Germany would have loved to have 33% growth over 50 years. Or the Baltic states, which are more comparable in size to a Kansas - zero net growth over 50 years. Now that's stagnation.

Or put it into more concrete economic terms. With the additional 1/3 more people, Kansas has an extra $38 billion in annual GDP output today, a total of ~$160 billion. Had they gently gone the other way, and declined slowly over time, it would be more like $60 or $70 billion today. It's a huge difference. They have a GDP per capita higher than Sweden, so when you can organically add 1/3 more people to that, it's a very meaningful economic result.

The parent was specifically speaking about migration patterns, and Kansas is losing population through migration. It is currently able to make up for that loss through having babies, but that isn't very relevant to the argument on whether Americans are more likely to move to or from high-tax locations.

Kansas is considered to have a declining population in demographic terms because it is a) growing more slowly than the rest of America and b) getting older, (http://www.ipsr.ku.edu/publicat/kpr/kprV29N1/kprV29N1A1.shtm...) both of which are symptoms of the fact that more people are migrating away than are moving in (http://www.ipsr.ku.edu/publicat/kpr/kprV29N1/kprV29N1A1.shtm...).

The impression that Kansas is losing population is probably due to the fact that most of Kansas (the rural part) is losing population.

"The rural population of Kansas continues to decline in a process known as rural flight. The past few decades have been marked by a migration from the countryside into the cities. Kansas now has more than 6,000 ghost towns and dwindling communities, while communities in Johnson County (home to metropolitan Kansas City) are some of the fastest-growing in the United States."[0]

[0] http://worldpopulationreview.com/states/kansas-population/

> It won't be for long! Taxes and spending in Seattle have shot way, way up

There's an argument that places with lower taxes and lower government investment attract and are better for businesses. The evidence in the U.S. seems to be overwhelmingly otherwise.

The states with the lowest taxes and investment are the poorest; all the great American industries, from automobiles to finance to IT to education to many others, started in high tax/investment locals, boomed there, and remain there. Perhaps investment is a good way to yield returns.

Texas would beg to differ with this assessment

> Texas would beg to differ with this assessment

OK, what great U.S. industries were born, boomed, and remain in Texas? Oil doesn't count; that's a coincidence of geology and geography.

I also said states with low tax and investment were relatively poor; Texas' median income is below the U.S. median (which is true of almost all the die-hard red states):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income

EDIT: A few edits

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