What is true or not true about Seattle dying?

[Gunnar]

These questions are mainly directed at Res Ipsa, who, if I am not mistaken, lives in the Seattle area, which according to recent conservative claims is seriously in decline.

How to you rate living in the Seattle area?

Are conservatives' claims about the impending demise of Seattle due to liberal policies based on evidence, or are they mostly dishonest, self-serving, conservative hype?

What are your favorite things about the Seattle area?

What do you dislike the most about Seattle?

[Res Ipsa]

So, I guess like San Francisco and Chicago, Seattle is a conservative punching bag.

I live about 20 miles north of downtown, and I haven’t been downtown that much since the Pandemic began. So, I’m not as in touch as I would be if I were commuting daily to my downtown office or going into the city for events.

Seattle went into the pandemic with an affordable housing crisis on its hands. Amazon’s corporate offices, and expansion of high tech employment in Seattle drove the cost of housing sky high. The run down parts of the city where the homeless has sheltered were rapidly gentrified into pricey condos and apartments, pushing out the homeless. It was a wonderful place to live and work if you made a solid six figure income and you ignored the increasing number of homeless encampments.

The housing process had a dramatic effect on the surrounding suburbs. I have a pretty big house, and my mortgage payment is less than the rental for any decent two-bedroom apartment in the area.

So, I would have characterized it as a wonderful place to live, if you had the income to afford it.

The pandemic didn’t much affect the high salary workers in tech because they easily shifted to remote work. So did lawyers and other professions. The hardest hit were retail and food service employees. But Seattle also Is a big tourist destination, and there was no 2020 tourist summer. So lots of downtown businesses that depend on tourists suffered. Summer 2021 was not much better.

Then there were the confrontations with the police in summer 2020. There has already been friction over racial police practices, and the department was operating under a consent decree that it was hoping to get lifted. Summer 2020 took that effort backwards. The department made a ton of mistakes, which played right in to the defunding the police movement. Layoffs were announced and morale took a huge hit.

At the same time, departments from the burbs and surrounding communities were hiring officers, so the made offer to the SPD that the officers couldn’t refuse.

So, the department ended up with substantially reduced staffing and, predictably, crime began to increase. I think that situation is improving, but areas of the city that has most recently gentrified had become more dangerous to walk in.

The Seattle City council has always been a mix of progressives and more conservative business types. It does some odd things from time to time, but that’s been true forever. Mayors have been all over the map politically for some time. It’s a complicated city with complicated problems, and the notion that that any political ideology has destroyed it is political propaganda.

If you’rea long time here, you think about the past time when Congress canceled the SST program. Someone bought a big billboard on I-5 that said “Will the last person who leaves Seattle please turn out the lights?”

No one ever turned out the lights.

So, I’d say it’s neither a hell hole nor a utopia. It has a couple major problems that it is trying to come to grips with: The homeless population, housing costs, and public safety. Lots of downtown businesses learned that they can operate efficiently and less expensively without a ton of pricey prime office space. The more people continue to telecommute, the fewer people there are on the street. That makes it hard for downtown businesses — especially the smaller ones. And if businesses are shuttered and fewer people are around, the cherry feels less safe.

I like Seattle, even though I haven’t lived in the city limits for years. But the big draw for me isn’t as much the city itself as the location. It’s just damn gorgeous here. Two mountain ranges within easy reach. Hiking galore. I’m ten minutes from Puget Sound and about two hours from the Pacific Ocean.

The worst thing is that four month dismal stretch of drizzly, short days Nov.— Feb. That’s why I have and use a light box. Driving in the City is a pain that I avoid as much as possible. But our commuter bus system is good and the light rail is coming to my burb soon.

[huckelberry]

I do not live in Seattle but in the same state. Family member in Seattle area. Seattle has long been congested. It has the worst traffic in the United States this side of the Appalachian mountains. It rains entirely too much.There are streets that a person feels a parachute might be good safety assist for driving down.

Politics probably will not solve these things

And when it is not raining there is fog and mists. There are clouds preparing for rain or hanging about between rains. People all ware grey and black clothes.

Of course this is all personal . I have an uncle who lived in Seattle for years and then move to New Mexico. He found himself one day staring up at the blue sky and shouting out, "all right already, enough, why don't you do something already?

[Res Ipsa]

I do not live in Seattle but in the same state. Family member in Seattle area. Seattle has long been congested. It has the worst traffic in the United States this side of the Appalachian mountains. It rains entirely too much.There are streets that a person feels a parachute might be good safety assist for driving down.

Politics probably will not solve these things

And when it is not raining there is fog and mists. There are clouds preparing for rain or hanging about between rains. People all ware grey and black clothes.

Of course this is all personal . I have an uncle who lived in Seattle for years and then move to New Mexico. He found himself one day staring up at the blue sky and shouting out, "all right already, enough, why don't you do something already?

All true, Huckleberry. Seattle it’s described as “wasp waisted.” All traffic going north or south has to pass through a narrow neck of land (Heh). It’s just geography.

Those streets get steeper and stepper as I get older.

[Gadianton]

Amazon’s corporate offices, and expansion of high tech employment in Seattle drove the cost of housing sky high. The run down parts of the city where the homeless has sheltered were rapidly gentrified into pricey condos and apartments, pushing out the homeless. It was a wonderful place to live and work if you made a solid six figure income and you ignored the increasing number of homeless encampments.

Right-wingers don't get that big cities can't be run like one-light towns. I watch this right-wing YouTuber now and again, Nick Johnson, who has a great show talking about cities and towns from coast to coast. He drives through the towns and shows his footage and talks about the town problems, and has local guests come on to give their perspective. He gets political now and again, and blames Democrats for being soft. He bolsters up-and-coming cities in Florida that have planned well and stayed true to conservative values in the very short term, but I keep thinking that as any of these surging redneck cities are today, Seattle and LA once were.

Once Tesla and others pour the money through Texas you'll be left with the same scenario as LA and Seattle. People living month to month will literally be pushed to the streets and forced to camp in front of Ajax's office door downtown. Town leadership will turn blue, not because blue has all the answers, but the only thing red knows is lower taxes and build more jails. If only it were that easy. So blue hobbles along, but there is no alternative past a certain city size.

[Binger]

Amazon’s corporate offices, and expansion of high tech employment in Seattle drove the cost of housing sky high. The run down parts of the city where the homeless has sheltered were rapidly gentrified into pricey condos and apartments, pushing out the homeless. It was a wonderful place to live and work if you made a solid six figure income and you ignored the increasing number of homeless encampments.

Right-wingers don't get that big cities can't be run like one-light towns. I watch this right-wing YouTuber now and again, Nick Johnson, who has a great show talking about cities and towns from coast to coast. He drives through the towns and shows his footage and talks about the town problems, and has local guests come on to give their perspective. He gets political now and again, and blames Democrats for being soft. He bolsters up-and-coming cities in Florida that have planned well and stayed true to conservative values in the very short term, but I keep thinking that as any of these surging redneck cities are today, Seattle and LA once were.

Once Tesla and others pour the money through Texas you'll be left with the same scenario as LA and Seattle. People living month to month will literally be pushed to the streets and forced to camp in front of Ajax's office door downtown. Town leadership will turn blue, not because blue has all the answers, but the only thing red knows is lower taxes and build more jails. If only it were that easy. So blue hobbles along, but there is no alternative past a certain city size.

Houston, Dallas, SA and Austin are all going this same damn direction.

I own a business with an SF address, I have clients in SF, my kids finished high school in SF. Res's description is very similar to SF. The only difference I would say is that the weather is foggy but not constantly drizzly. The roads are still steep and the crime is reason enough to leave the state, not just the city. My son had his truck stolen from him at knife-point in SF. He was lucky, they just stole his truck.

[huckelberry]

I do not live in Seattle but in the same state. Family member in Seattle area. Seattle has long been congested. It has the worst traffic in the United States this side of the Appalachian mountains. It rains entirely too much.There are streets that a person feels a parachute might be good safety assist for driving down.

Politics probably will not solve these things

And when it is not raining there is fog and mists. There are clouds preparing for rain or hanging about between rains. People all ware grey and black clothes.

Of course this is all personal . I have an uncle who lived in Seattle for years and then move to New Mexico. He found himself one day staring up at the blue sky and shouting out, "all right already, enough, why don't you do something already?

All true, Huckleberry. Seattle it’s described as “wasp waisted.” All traffic going north or south has to pass through a narrow neck of land (Heh). It’s just geography.

Those streets get steeper and stepper as I get older.

Res Ipsa, thanks for making a more substantial reply about Seattle. Mine of course is just lighthearted and about obvious geographic problems.

I was amazed driving about the Phoenix area finding it so easy to deal with compared to the Seattle area. Of course it is , Phoenix has plenty of and then extra room while Seattle is squeezing highways in very cramped space. I was just learning the finer points of driving a standard transmission car when I first had to negotiate a stop on one of those veritical streets downtown Seattle. It was a learning experience stuck in my memory.

[Gunnar]

Thanks for all the replies to my questions. They more or less confirmed what I suspected, namely that the problems of Seattle are the same ones common to any rapidly growing, increasingly congested metropolitan area and not likely the fault of any one particular political ideology. My youngest brother lived and prospered in the Seattle area (Bothell) for decades, before recently retiring and moving to Arizona to be closer to several of his children and grandchildren who settled there. I get the impression from him that though he had a lot of happy memories of the Seattle area and raising his large family there, he became increasingly disenchanted with the place by the time he retired and moved. He is or was a diehard rightwing conservative, and voted for Trump twice, despite agreeing with me that Trump is a morally detestable human being.

[Gunnar]

Town leadership will turn blue, not because blue has all the answers, but the only thing red knows is lower taxes and build more jails. If only it were that easy. So blue hobbles along, but there is no alternative past a certain city size.

Thanks for your contributions to this thread. I found the above quoted perspective particularly interesting and quite likely valid, especially "but the only thing red knows is lower taxes and build more jails." That seems to be increasingly the go to philosophy of the GOP.

[Gadianton]

Houston, Dallas, SA and Austin are all going this same damn direction.

Let's say I have a town that's attracting big business for the cheap land and labor available. I know based on countless examples, that as wages rise, that my fixed income people or those otherwise barely making it are going to feel the squeeze. This is an externality. According to free-market principles, people will simply move to areas they can afford, but in reality that doesn't happen. Maybe some do, but many do not. And so there is this externality that comes with injecting big money into the economy. Knowing this in advance, shouldn't we, as the ruling body of the town, levy taxes on the business from the start in order to pay for the future programs, whatever they may be, to help those displaced by the money?

Granted, this may ruin the deal, as the big business will look elsewhere. But shouldn't we as the town rulers shrug it off and say we don't want it if it can't be sustainable?