Comments on: Our house

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:37:35 +0000

Also, I’d argue the point isn’t that density makes housing cheap — the cost per square foot of building 12 stories is always going to be more than the cost of building 1 story. The point is that as land cost becomes more and more of the cost of housing, the *only* way to stay affordable is by adding density.

Take the Silicon Valley area, for example, where residents have been very unwilling to allow anything beyond single-family housing. Housing costs are far, far higher than in Seattle, in an area where incomes are only slightly higher, and people with lower-income jobs are commuting 50-60 miles daily.

By comparison, New York, which is arguably more desirable than Silicon Valley or Seattle, has a history of dense neighborhoods. While Manhattan is, of course, crazy expensive, a low-income family can afford to live in a modest apartment in Brooklyn or the Bronx without having to spend hours commuting. I’d argue that being open to density made that possible.

So in Seattle, it’s not that Belltown itself is affordable. It’s that Belltown has made the rest of the city more affordable.

By the way, relaxing single-family housing restrictions doesn’t have to mean an explosion of development in residential neighborhoods. It could mean, for example, allowing duplex conversion of houses that are more than 20 years old.

By: Roger Valdez

Roger Valdez — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:02:54 +0000

The conundrum of why dense cities are expensive is an important one to look at. There are some answers. One that I think is an important one to consider is the one offered by Virginia Postrel in a piece that ran in the Atlantic Monthly called “A Tale of Two Townhomes” (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200711/housing).

The view is that cities like San Francisco and Seattle have a powerful, entrenched and motivated group of people who, while left leaning in their poltitics, fail to make the connection between their opposition to new housing and the cost of housing.

The more difficult it is to build the more expensive the housing. In places like Dallas when the price goes up they just build more housing until the increase in the supply begins to affect prices.

I don’t know if this is THE answer but it is an interesting article. Also, we will need to factor in what rules have changed in our post bailout market place.

By: Shawna Gamache

Shawna Gamache — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:35:42 +0000

Hi Steve,

Great comments. But what do you think about Irene’s argument that increased density hasn’t yet brought affordability? Is Belltown more affordable now?

I think of San Francisco and its increased density and sky-high prices, and then there’s super-affordable Portland with single family houses everywhere. Could there be another element at play?

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:27:47 +0000

I’m sympathetic to Ms. Wall’s views; I agree that it’s nice to have trees and yards and that townhouses are often ugly. That said, I find Mr. Valdez’s arguments more convincing. Though Ms. Wall mentions that we have 3 times the land capacity needed in the next 14 years, I doubt that fully 1/3 of those land owners are looking to redevelop their land to the fullest potential (e.g. are we really expecting to have rows of 6-story apartment buildings along Aurora). And so I expect, then, that housing prices will increase even further over the next 15 years as the city remains desirable but we run out of land to develop.

Fundamentally, people want to live in Seattle, even in smaller-than-traditional spaces — witness townhouse sales. This is desirable environmentally and desirable economically, and as a city, we should let it happen.