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Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

You can, just move out of Capitol Hill in Seattle which is one of the most desirable areas in one of the most desirable cities located in one of the most desirable geographies in the wealthiest country on earth.

This place looks nice! https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2742-Lincoln-St-NE-Minnea...

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There are many cities in the world where a head chef can live in the desirable neighborhood within a desirable city while working at their desirable restaurant. For example, the owners of a local wine bar where I live in Bogota are able to operate a wine bar below their apartment with relaxed zoning laws. Just not possible in the U.S.

Not just high-end restaurant jobs. The local owner of the ferreteria (home repair goods) lives above his store as does a window/glass store owner. And this is in a relatively pricey, high end neighborhood. In other neighborhoods is even more common. My family recently sold a restaurant in Bogota and the new owners are converting the top floor into a home for themselves.

I'm not sure if you meant to, since you seemed to be talking framing it around individual choice, but you've just made the case that something is fundamentally damning the economy in cities like Seattle. That's exactly why issues like housing affordability need to be identified and treated at the systemic level.

If people can't satisfyingly live near their work, then they can't work there, and then the work can't be done. If workers has to move to another state to practice their craft, a city needs to proactively recognize and address the problem if they want to avoid a coming blight.

Well because individual choice and governance choices both exist simultaneously and dynamically.

In this particular case, though, I think the thing that is daming Seattle (and similar locations: Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Denver, Aspen, anywhere remotely desirable) is geography and climate and there isn't much you can do to fix that because you can't create new geography out of thin air. "Ohio is so boring", "I need to be near mountains and fresh air", "I like to surf", "I love to hike" are all things that can't be effectively replicated and so wherever those things exist prices will skyrocket relative to other locations.

Can Seattle literally build more? Yes. Will that solve Seattle's housing affordability problems? No it won't. In the short term interest rates and cost to build mean that most units will be higher end. Certainly won't mean a 2-3br house anyway. In the long-term unless something drastically changes Seattle is just desirable and there will be many more people who want to live there than there will be homes unless we could just snap our fingers and create new housing, nevermind governance issues, it just isn't happening folks.

I do empathize though. Please don't mistake my comments for callousness. But sometimes the truth (as I see it) just needs to be state. If you want to work as a chef and afford a 2br house it just is not happening in Seattle and you should make peace with that.

The people who build, own, and operate the very luxury services (such as culinary destinations) that contribute to an area's reputation as "one of the most desirable areas in one of the most desirable cities located in one of the most desirable geographies in the wealthiest country on earth" should be able to afford living there.

>should

Why?

>Why?

Because if they leave then they will no longer contribute to the area's desirable reputation.

In the free market they will leave and get replaced. Or enough will leave and wages will go up

But they can commute in like many people do, right?

Yes, to an extent. Commuting adds friction to working there, and if it becomes too much of a burden then people are likely to relocate.

And in this specific case (head chef at a popular bar) living in the neighborhood allows him to keep abreast of other bars, local trends, etc which benefits his work.

My comment contains the "why" already.

And where would that chef work then?

Should they simply give up on their own ambitions and career goals?

I've only ever been to the airport, but I imagine there are great restaurants and innovative career-oriented chefs in Minneapolis too.

You're essentially saying Seattle is too expensive for chefs to live in, which means it's too expensive for nice restaurants, which means it's too expensive to function.

Now extend your own logic to teachers, service workers, etc.

> which means it's too expensive to function

Well it functions up until people such as this head chef say "screw these housing prices" and relocate somewhere else and open their restaurant and have a better life and then whoever is living in Seattle gets crappy or extremely expensive restaurants to account for the high housing prices.

Indeed. So, speaking as someone who lives in the Greater Seattle area, enjoys the local restaurants, and would like their head chefs to remain here - it is a problem, and I would like to solve it. Even if it means that my home equity might not be as valuable on paper as it would otherwise be in 10 years.

Sure… but Seattle is valuable and desirable because it is Seattle. The only thing you could do to make it like you wish is to make Seattle undesirable.

Think about it like this. What do you think of when you think about Indianapolis, or Kansas City, or Charlotte, etc.? Do those cities seem very desirable to you? Places you want to go and uproot your life to move to?

Probably not. Flat. Boring. Dog shit weather. Car-only infrastructure. (I know I live in a similar city for family/friends reasons)

You can’t solve this problem with less home equity - that’s a contradiction. The great things you enjoy are tied 1-1 inseparably from your home equity. The only way for your home equity to not be as valuable in ten years as it otherwise would be is to get rid of the very things that you enjoy!

The only reason why none of these sound particularly desirable is the overall politics of their respective states. Otherwise, I wouldn't have a problem living in any of them now that remote work is reasonably well established. It wasn't back when I bought a house here - then it was all about the jobs.

I also have to note that "dog shit weather" is literally one of the things that define the Seattle experience. I don't actually mind personally, but a lot of people do.

> The only reason why none of these sound particularly desirable is the overall politics of their respective states.

That’s not the only reason and you know it. And even if it were the only reason for you it’s not the only reason broadly speaking. But the desirable political climate adds to the desirability of Seattle.

> I also have to note that "dog shit weather" is literally one of the things that define the Seattle experience. I don't actually mind personally, but a lot of people do.

Seattle has fewer homes with air conditioning than even San Francisco [1] at 33% (as of 2018). Kansas City is at 99%. It’s very moderate throughout the year. You don’t get crazy temperature variance. Seattle isn’t San Diego but it’s not Buffalo, Kansas City, or Mobile either.

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-is-le...

The Free Market(tm) has decided we don't need teachers, obviously

> The Free Market(tm)

If it was a true free market, housing wouldn't be an issue because developers wouldn't be forbidden from building density. Capitol hill is a disaster for city living as most of it are single family homes, whereas they should be 5 story condo buildings.

Ah yes, the no true Scotsman of capitalism

Capitalism and free markets are not synonymous, and you can have the latter without the former (indeed, that was the case for most our history as economic species).

Capitalism is detrimental to free markets because it has inherent positive feedback loops that concentrate capital. Concentration of capital inhibits competition, and a market without competition is by definition not free, regardless of the amount of government regulation in it.

Is a free market free of regulation?

It could be, in principle. The problem with monopolization of capital is fundamentally caused by our overall conceptual take on private property as an abstract concept. Within that framework, you need regulation to keep the market free. But it's not the only framework that is possible; e.g. consider the situation where all capital is commonly owned and held in usufruct by its actual users ("everything is a co-op").

>everything is a co-op

That sounds an awful lot like socialism

That's because it is. Free-market socialism is a thing, with a spectrum from centralized demsoc to left libertarians to anarchists. "Freed markets" is the term usually used specifically in the latter context:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sheldon-richman-libe...

Usually this dialog line goes the ancap route, I'm pleasantly surprised

I do think you need some mechanism of enforcement though, history has shown that violent people will easily come along to dominate in the way that they see fit

Ironically, I'm former ancap, although that was 20 years ago now. But I don't think that any ancap would be willing to assert that "capitalism is detrimental to free markets", not even the ones who argue that monopolies are actually good by definition because they're market-efficient. That unregulated capitalism and free markets are synonymous is practically dogma in those circles, or at least it was in my time there.

History did indeed show that violent people will try to take over - it is how we have the system of governance that we do today, after all. But individual violent people are not really dangerous to the community as a whole; it's only when they organize in sufficient numbers and possess sufficient resources that it is a threat. I believe that the best way to secure society against such threats is a broadly decentralized organization, such that any attempt to organize to concentrate power is clearly visible in its early stages and can be nipped in the bud by those immediately adjacent to it, without escalating it to higher levels of governance. The latter should be mostly about coordination of efforts and plans, not coercion.

The actual amount of policing power and the exact level of governance on which it should be the strongest is something that, I think, would need to be figured out by experiment. Maybe Murray Bookchin is right and it is, indeed, municipalities. I would hope that it can be more fine-grained than that. But I'd be immensely happy with any working proof of concept, so long as it does not preclude further tweaks and experimentation. If Rojava lasts, it might provide some more useful data.

At some point it would if no teachers would work in Seattle

Market will move instead to where it is reasonably cheap and labor is available, leaving a ghost town behind. Ultimately this results in high concentration.

There's literally no force compelling it to invest in a failing area, or one perceived to be failing.

It’s too expensive for chefs to live in Seattle it really is. People here don’t spend enough money eating out to justify the number on chefs so they can’t afford to live in decent housing

He’s saying that the people who spend money in Seattle don’t care if the chefs leave. That comes with the freedom to choose what to spend on.

Specific to Seattle, once you see what the teachers are teaching kids there you'll see that they soon won't actually need teachers. Nobody that has both a functioning brain and children would put their kids in Seattle schools.

The problem kind of solves itself.

I can afford to live in Seattle because I make more than a head chef. I would like my city to be affordable to head chefs, since I have friends who are. Seattle is a very nice place and I would like it to be easier for my friends to live here and not be forced to move away, since it makes the city worse and I'd rather the city become an even more desirable place in years to come.

> I'd rather the city become an even more desirable place in years to come.

This is the problem and partially (mostly maybe) why Seattle and other “cool” cities are in the position they are in now. If Seattle was undesirable like, idk, Gary, Indiana then you’d be able to get your friends there and a head chef can buy a house and such. But then it’s Gary. That’s the dichotomy that Seattle and other cities face. Can’t escape it. What you are asking for and wanting just isn’t realistic.

Imagine if I came up to you tomorrow and said I’d like to live with an ocean view in Santa Barbara in a walkable neighborhood with street cars and all my friends and family could afford to live there with a 3br house and the chef makes a lot of money and has this killer restaurant… you know that’s not going to happen. Seattle isn’t any different.

I don't agree. We basically ban people from living in the city with zoning, and even to the extent that the problem isn't zoning we could treat housing more like we treat other public services (electricity) and just make sure that it's available. There's no natural law that things have to be this way, it's a choice that we make and I think it is reasonable to ask it to change.

Nobody bats an eye when we build substations to support the lights in the restaurant, but building homes for the workers is "not realistic."

I know you don’t agree, but the results speak for themselves. I do agree that things don’t “have to be this way” but where I’d differ is that to solve the problem the vast majority of Americans or Seattle residents would disagree with how to solve that problem. You’d have to do something like tax people at 50-60% or their income to pay for the new housing and it just won’t work. Zoning slows down development sure but so do environmental review processes and such. Also even if new development was instantly approved it takes time to build and developers have to spend so much money on the land that they just build very expensive apartments or condos. But this doesn’t alleviate price pressure because the demand to live in Seattle is too high. The evidence is that like in the OP a chef at a top restaurant is living miserably in a 400sqft apartment just to be in Seattle instead of leaving to alleviate their own dissatisfaction.

I’d also personally avoid framing things as such “build homes for the workers” because it implies a very top-down industrial capitalist or communist viewpoint that I think many are resistant to.

Like water flows through the path of least resistance the easy solution here is people are just going to put up with it or move. If it’s a burden I recommend moving.

If you think there is hope with price pressure relief you only have to look to Manhattan, because that’s the future you are facing in my opinion.

-edit-

For the example I can’t think of any tier-1 city that has gotten less expensive over time (please do not cite Tokyo or Japan) except maybe Chicago and even then I doubt that it has really gotten cheaper versus just not as expensive as fast as peer cities.

Chicago is a good example. I don't know if Seattle can actually get better, but it doesn't have to get worse as fast as it has been. And we should at least seriously look at options to try and make it better. (Not just throw up our hands and say that it's unrealistic to expect the city to ever get more affordable for lower income folks.)

But even Chicago is only bad because they let crime seemingly get out of control and the weather sucks and it is still expensive in the areas you’d want to live in.

I definitely think people should try I just think that the expectations need to be set better. Making $100,000/year and living on Capitol Hill in a 2+ bedroom home is just not going to be realistic without giving up something.

One thing Seattle and similar cities can do to help alleviate this though is to continue to or start to dramatically end the usage of personal auto travel and transit. For example I-90, I-5, and I-405 should all be shut down as they traverse through the area. Probably also tearing down and revitalizing areas where there are more than a couple of lanes in each direction. That’ll give more space throughout the greater Seattle area for people to live and fewer cars means more local shops and more money to spend on them too.

Push for relaxing zoning laws, there was a bill in WA legislature this year which would help, I think this one.

https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1110&Initiativ...

But then you'd have to live in Minneapolis?

I grew up there. It is a good place to live: education is valued, lots of nice people, many good jobs.

The weather isn't the best in winter, but if you know how to put on a coat it isn't that bad.

Why don't you still live there?

Got a job elsewhere a couple downturns back.

Which is maybe why rent in Seattle is so relatively expensive?

Instead of Seattle? What's the catch?

The studio is worth it if you're walking to your restaurant 6 or 7 days a week and checking out other neighborhood hot spots. If you're commuting to an office tower a few days and on Zoom or hiking the rest, it's not. And of course if you make it easier or harder to drive to the office (and consequently worse or better to get around on foot) the prices would shift to reflect that, a good example of how the crisis Andre Cooper is writing about hamstrings unrelated things like transportation policy.

Most people are not willing to move away from all of their family, friends, and career. Software engineers are uniquely privileged in that we can work remotely, many, many other careers cannot do that

Remote isn't available for all tech employees (software or otherwise) and historically we have advocated that people move to places like the Bay Area to obtain corresponding higher wages (I have to move to California and uproot all of my friends, family, and career ??). YCombinator itself famously required(s) entrepreneurs to uproot their friends, family, and career to move to the Bay Area.

At the end of the day people can make the right mix of economic and sociological choices that they want. But what's not going to happen is everyone in Seattle gets a 2-3 bedroom house and you can make peace with that fact of life or continue to be frustrated.

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