I'm considering relocating from Seattle purely based on the fact that we can make WFH commonplace. Why pay insane rents to physically be in a location I can work remotely?
Editing to add Seattle has world-class rock climbing, mountaineering, and hiking under an hour's drive from downtown, and if you aren't doing that you're probably missing out on half the joy of living here.
For a smaller place (900sqft for a 2 or 3 bedroom) they're asking $3200 in logan square.
Right arround the corner (western/armitage) they're asking $1800 for a studio.
Chicago rents have been increasing but nowhere near west coast or east coast prices
The trendy neighborhoods can be just as expensive as SF SOMA, but there's so much inventory, so the non-trendy but nice neighborhoods are much, much cheaper.
I feel like thats a minority opinion. The weather is terrible, the food is terrible, service at restaurants (or pretty much service in general) is terrible. A huge portion of the city shuts down at night. Where NYC is a city that doesn't sleep, Seattle sleeps. There are drug needles in the streets, and I routinely see homeless people defecating on sidewalks. I even saw a bus stop turned into a homeless person's 'house'.
The only thing I see that Seattle has going for it is low taxes.
Are there any other US cities that don't sleep?
So two cities then?
Dude, either I have been away too long from NYC or you have not lived in hot humid places.
Compare this to Seattle where I could wear a sweater in August and I'd say it's brutal.
That just means New York has a summer time.
I never found New York very humid, but Seattle is more humid than New York.
* I moved here from Canada, the weather really isn't that bad; it's been a beautiful spring here while all my Canadian friends are still dealing with snow
* Seattle has a huge number of sakura and so the city has beautiful pink cherry blossom clouds everywhere for the entire month of April
* The entire environment is so incredibly lush & green; it's called the Emerald City for a reason!
* The food is quite good, actually
It's funny that the thing you think Seattle has going for it - low taxes - directly contributes to the issue of homelessness and half of your complaints.
I've lived here for 40 years. It's always had low taxes, but the problems you're talking about are very recent.
I can't think of a single place that spends money on homelessness that doesn't get more of it.
Furthermore, if a city is expensive and getting more expensive like SF and Seattle, it means that city is becoming harder for people without decent earning power to stick around. It's like a video game being changed from easy mode to hard mode. Seattle and SF are hard mode, which means most people at the bottom will fail to ever succeed there. By spending the money in Seattle and San Francisco, you're throwing good money after bad money because you're helping many people stay in a place in which they likely won't ever succeed. The money would be better spent in locales around the country where it's easy mode for someone to get back on their feet.
Trying to solve homelessness in Seattle and San Francisco is one of the most egregious wastes of money I've ever seen. It's practically a homelessness industrial complex in San Francisco already and starting to become one in Seattle. Everyone advocating most ardently for it are people whose salary is paid from these tax dollars. It's the Shirky Principle in action.
I ardently advocate for this and my salary isn't paid by it, because I want to live in a strong society where shelter is provided for everyone who needs it. Your vision of society is, what, to ship people off somewhere else? Out of sight out of mind, right?
Back up that assertion with evidence. Also include evidence showing that places like Seattle and San Francisco are the best places to implement such solutions.
> and this is what the Tax Amazon movement is trying to accomplish: https://www.taxamazon.net/sign
Why should Amazon pay for this? If you think this is so important and the right solution, how much money have you donated towards this? If you're expecting Amazon to pay for this then you've got no skin in the game and risk nothing by being wrong.
> I ardently advocate for this and my salary isn't paid by it
And as an ardent advocate, how much have you spent on this?
> Your vision of society is, what, to ship people off somewhere else? Out of sight out of mind, right?
I have no vision. I'm a utilitarian and care purely about successful outcomes, optics be damned. I'm just not so naive as to think that the best place to try and get people back on their feet are places where they stand the least chance of doing so because even competent, educated people that have no vices like drug addiction have to work hard to succeed in a place like Seattle and San Francisco.
Your approach just puts people in the middle of the ocean, but gives them a life jackets. They are almost certainly still going to drown under those conditions. My proposal is to find a kiddy pool or at least someplace shallow with calm waters and give them a life jacket.
You have to have more heart than brains to think some of the most expensive, competitive markets like Seattle and San Francisco are good places to try and get people back on their feet again. And if you genuinely think that such an approach is a good one, you should be the first to spend your hard-earned money to prove it.
The Tax Amazon movement would also levy a tax on Microsoft, because it's a tax on all big businesses which operate within Seattle, which I'm perfectly happy about, but I'm sure you're very used to being wrong about everything so this matters not.
I have no idea how you can care about "successful outcomes" without vision since success is not a value-free metric. That should suffice to make you think a bit, I'm going to cut short the gish-gallop here because interacting with you is generally unpleasant. Goodbye.
What's fraudulent is your shameless promotion of taxing a direct competitor of your employer.
Many of your comments on this HN story have included a plug for the tax amazon pac, making all those comments basically political spam and spam has no place on HN.
> You'll be happy to learn far smarter people than you have taken a crack at this problem! Go read the first few sections of Industrial Society and its Future
Referencing the Unabomber? Really? Someone sending mail bombs and killing innocent people is your idea of "far smarter people than you have taken a crack at this problem"? In one breathe you say you don't want people dying in the street, and in the next you're quoting a serial murderer.
> your (frankly, extremely basic) idea that everyone must have a financial stake in policy to desire its realization.
People can desire the realization of whatever policy they want. However, if they have no skin in the game, that desire can be summarily dismissed by others, especially by those that do have skin in the game.
The Seattle City Council is tirelessly working to fix that.
I miss legal weed, but I sure don't miss much of anything else in Seattle.
My apartment is $850 and that gets me 2 bedrooms, 1200sqft. In a definitely not as large city mind you, but $1500 is insanely expensive for one bedroom.
Seems like you could have all of that without living in downtown...
I'm happy to maximize my TC and not worry about the extra $10k a year to live in a nice, modern building.
But you gain: * cheap land * neighbors with skills beyond typing * cheaper labor pool for assistance you might need (electrician, plumber, private pilot training, etc, etc)