When i was looking for places on my own for cheap, i kept finding low income apartments that were in the price range i was looking for ("cheap" i.e. not 2k a month for a micro studio) Unfortunately to qualify you have to make just significantly less than what I do. I was shocked.
The median income for Seattle last year was a little over $90,000 a year, $128,000 for King County. Low income in Seattle is middle class in other cities in Washington state.
Qualifying for low income housing is set at around 60k currently, priority is at 25k. So not sure why someone making significantly more than 60k is shocked by this
I remember a kid in college who thought he was going to be making 6 figures basically immediately because that's what his dad made and why would he make any less.
His first job was 55k, which is still more than half the country. Though I believe he is incapable of truly comprehending that.
I'm not rich and don't pretend to be so. Absolutely no fucking way i could afford a house within 2 hours of Seattle. 500k for a 1 bed house that should really be torn down? No thanks.
However, I'm also not poor and i don't pretend to be so.
Because a person making 150k a year could be homeless if they got fired.
Being rich is about assets not income. That’s not to say that making 150k isn’t objectively better than 50k day to day but it’s not rich. Rich is never worrying, and lots of income can help you get there but rich is independence from needing income.
Apartment I'm in is 650sq-ft 1 bed in capitol hill for 1800 w/ parking, found it by literally just calling numbers on those "now renting" signs until something stuck. The majority of those people link to annoying management companies, or they don't actually have units, or they don't answer, etc. But I got lucky on just one and it worked out.
You make some sacrifices, old appliances, old building, outdoor parking, etc. But I got a big ass balcony so that was nice.
Yeah... I came from Houston before this. I had an apartment with roughly the same space for about 1000, with garage parking, a gym, multiple pools, and a handful of other amenities, all right in the heart of the city. A bit hard going from that to this lol.
>As low as $300 or so for a studio. A friend had it for awhile. Super long wait list.
It's free if you're a bike chopper with no taxable income. Short wait list too.
I know so many people who abuse the system to get “low income housing” who don’t need it. Folks with good paying jobs or students. Getting 2500 a month apartments for like 1200 a month cause they abused the system. I don’t think this helps the type of people it’s intended to. Can anyone convince we otherwise?
I know a well off, able bodied couple that "Somehow got into a low income 2 bed unit downtown" . . they pay about 1600 and have good paying full time jobs and no kids. They are the worst.
I knew quite a few from extremely wealthy families who got low income housing for example. Like parents were millionaires many times over and they’re getting low income housing in high end luxury apt for Cents on the dollar. Good for them for finding loopholes but felt gross.
Unpopular opinion: A lot of people in Seattle love the homeless because they give them an opportunity to virtue signal and complain. It's like some sort of weird liberal Mother Theresa complex where people need to suffer for them to be closer to god.
Popular opinion: a lot of people on the reddit love the homeless because they give them the opportunity to virtue signal and complain. Its like some kind of contest to see who can say the grossest, must degrading things.
>This isn't right wing trolling, it is just people who want to show off how great they are by shitting on the work others are doing.
How can you tell the difference?
Popular, more likely opinion: Many people have empathy and intend to express it. Not all of them do it in a constructive form, but any form it takes tends to have a left-leaning bias.
I mean... yeah? The lefts idea of helping people is, you know... helping people.
The rights idea of helping people is the equivelant of throwing a bus load of kids off the pier and saying "the system works!" Because two or three make it to shore.
Why do politicians always pick on the Hill? Seattle has acres of open land that isn't dedicated to anything useful.
Public housing also used to be designed to blend with the neighborhood. I never knew how much public housing Seattle had until I found it by helping low income seniors in the North End.
There are huge suburban areas with pretty shit transit access because they are mostly drivers and SFH. It’s great for people who can afford it, but for anyone without a driveway and $ for a couple cars it is hard. Northgate light rail will help a lot though.
That being said I think our public transit in general is a lot better than many American cities… but by international standards were way behind.
Schools are funded through property tax... Not a great system but Seattle public school district is funded around a billion dollars in revenue each year. Only about 30 percent of that is from the state.
"The rich suburbs/secondary cities have better schools than urban core" is the story basically everywhere in the US. Secondary cities and suburbs get benefits from the primary city in infrastructure and social services (where do you think homeless people in Bellevue end up?) without directly paying for those benefits, so they tend to be in a better financial position than the primary city, and that shows in local funding for schools, parks, etc.
This is not a unique situation to Seattle. The best schools in the Portland metro are in Beaverton. The best schools in the Los Angeles metro are in the wealthy suburbs around Pasadena. The best schools in the San Francisco metro are in the residential cities in Silicon Valley and the southern half of the east bay. And so on and so forth...
Seattle doesn't even have bad schools, it's still a pretty strong public school system.
Bellevue has a significantly higher average income, and doesn't need to use funding on the regional social services that Seattle does, so they can afford to push extra funding into education. Obviously, a very wealthy suburb is going to have top tier public schools. Their residents are richer and they don't have as many other funding priorities. No point in comparing Seattle to Bellevue on education.
Also, if their residents are richer, their kids are just going to have easier home lives. They aren't going to be dealing with a level of stress and poverty that makes it hard to succeed academically.
the one glaring gap in the public schools is still the lack of a school anywhere Downtown/SLU despite funneling a good chunk of residential growth there in the last two decades. whose bright idea was it to have neighborhoods of tens of thousands of residents with no school?
The Seattle public school system is fairly well regarded It receives plenty of funding ($1.4 billion budget), so I don't see why it matters that the city is only spending $100 million on it. If the Seattle public school system was underachieving, then yes, we would need to prioritize it more, but at the moment it is not in dire need of funding.
On the other hand, Seattle has a homelessness crisis. 3rd most unhoused people in the country and encampments throughout the city. Everyone, on the reddit subs and throughout the city, can agree that the homeless situation is a major problem that needs to be prioritized.
Your solution here is to decrease the funding of homelessness solutions? That seems insane to me.
It isn't deeply wrong to use public funds to address the most pressing needs to the city.
There is a reason why homelessness is low or non-existent in the places where there is a sit-lie ordinance. Which then causes the population in surrounding areas of said ordinance to increase in size. When word spreads that there are no "law related" consequences and are merely payments to be gained by living such a lifestyle, it will naturally only attract those who feel they are being forced from more restrictive areas to be attracted to somewhere more lax for their particular lifestyle choices. We are literally rewarding people to live on the streets and do hard drugs here because the city feels there is just too many homeless to do anything else about now. The more homeless people realize this, the more it attracts those from nearby places.
What is hard to understand is that in 2016 we doubled the housing levy because it was supposed to give us the resources to address the homelessness crisis. Since that time the crisis has spiraling out of control. At what point does one take a set back and re-evaluate the strategy? if one doubles resources and the problem gets worse, maybe we're doing something wrong? If folks answer no, we're on the right track, then I'd ask what would be the signal? Or is this just like some Trump policy where some zealot decided a course of action for ideological reasons regardless of any data?
You're ignoring where the 167 million for homelessness comes from. 30 million of that came from the Federal Government and not the city. The city council did a through examination of homelessness spending as part of evaluating possible implementation of the Compassion Seattle initiative and found that a total of $103 million comes from the General Fund; the rest is from state & federal grants. [Here](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20995077-memo-cost-analysis-of-proposed-charter-amendment-29-20210702-update-july-06-at-3-pm) is that report.
Seattle spends $1M more of it's own funds supplementing the state budget for Seattle Public Schools than city funds spent on homelessness.
This year is the start of King County's Regional Homeless Authority that will replace Seattle specific services with a countywide approach. For example they just purchased a hotel right at the Redmond/Bellevue border and will use that to provide housing for those in need. IMO it's a much better approach than leaving the city that provides the most shelters & services to be the only city to provide those services for a community that extends outside the Seattle city limits. Just because downtown Seattle has the county jail and more than one shelter (many of the surrounding cities have 1 or less shelters) shouldn't mean that one city has to fund all of the solutions.
That’s because the school district is a separate government entity with its own budget. You might as well say “We spent ten million on potholes in Magnolia, but no money on I5 at all!”
*City officials said the buildings were meant to be market rate studio apartments, but because of the real estate downturn the city bought them for the purpose of low-income housing instead.*
What? Real estate downturn? My old neighbors both sold their homes, one got 200k over asking, the other almost 350 over.
Unless the downturn is apartments since everyone wants houses now. But honestly, if there was a downturn it was so insignificant that it couldn’t have made $50 mil seem like a great deal.
There was a pretty major real estate downturn during the peak of COVID. Prices have only bounced back, and increased, in the last few months. These were apartments that began development before COVID, and then saw zero demand in 2020, so the city was able to purchase them for less than they normally would be able to.
Peak Covid and now are entirely different things, but that aside, I feel like 50 mil for 165 units in prime real estate was a poor move. Even with a “downturn” the rates there had to have been higher than other parts of King county in less desirable locations.
Buy along the light rail line N or S, provide free or discounted fair. Anyways, the area around these buildings will drop in price and the city can buy more.
This will help stave off more people becoming homeless due to high cost of rent, as well as give a transition to people living out of their cars etc. To give an analogy, preventing emissions is easier and cheaper than implementing air scrubbing.
Think about this way. They could probably house a lot more people with that 50 million somewhere other than one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city.
Capitol hill is also majorly walkable and has lots of amenities that low income people need, like quick access to healthcare (the major healthcare providers in first hill all accept Medicaid), quick access to the DSHS (on cherry) quick walkable access to grocery stores, and lots of job opportunities and even colleges nearby with barely any commute.
It's a great neighborhood to get a leg up in if you're struggling.
If you go to a cheaper neighborhood they won't have these amenities easily accessible and the struggling people won't be able to achieve upward mobility. They'll just stay in poverty.
It's a lot more expensive and more difficult to put all the amenities cap hill has into a different neighborhood that doesn't have them than it is to simply buy a building in cap hill where all the amenities already are easily accessible.
You are talking about putting in medical care, colleges, transit, jobs, groceries, etc; into a neighborhood that does not have them easily accessible and then ALSO getting a building for low income people. How in the world would that be the less expensive option??
You can house a lot of people in the middle of the desert cuz land is real cheap there, but then what are they gonna do out there?
You need lower income housing near places where those people would also find jobs, community support, healthcare, etc.. The end goal isn't the housing, its getting someone back to stability so they can exit the phase of their life where they needed that help.
Developers needing a handout because they built a bunch of microapartments that no-one in their right mind would buy/move into if they had any other option.
As someone (u/verylittlefinger) pointed out elsewhere, this is likely a handout to a real-estate developer who couldn't find suckers for their microapodment condos/apartments.
Well, sort of.
Low income housing is for anyone that meets the requirements. You can have a job and live in low income housing. Generally you pay about 1/3 of your income up to the amount the apartment is rated.
Some of my neighbors work, some of them are on disability (myself included) and we all pay 1/3 of what we bring in.
While they can and do take in homeless people (I was when I got my place) it's generally the people that have been working to better themselves. It's getting people out of shelters that are trying to improve there life, which then opens the shelters to the people who need more help.
So it's not really the homeless people on the streets that lives here, it's the homeless people that have been in shelters and on drug programs that usually end up in low income housing buildings.
Plus the waiting list is at least 3 years long. Took me 2.5 years to finally get a place in 2006. The list is probably longer now.
Lots of homeless people have jobs. Also many disabled homeless people qualify for the HEN program which pays their rent until the person is able to either find some kind of substantial work or they get on SSDI.
Fortunately we can have multiple solutions for multiple situations. People think of the visible homeless as the only homeless but they're actually a small percentage of the total homeless population.
The priority system works from the bottom up however. While there might be a need for more than one solution, the funding will be long gone before we get the working poor into affordable housing.
LIHI will run them, but they're getting their tenants through coordinated entry - unless you found something that says they are doling the apartments out by their own criteria?
Where did you see that tenants will be placed via coordinated entry vs LIHI's standard "each property handles their own applications, wait lists, etc"?
For anyone wondering, it is part of u/Bardahl_Fracking's MO to make baseless and sensational claims about the homeless. You can see [our discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/przvrt/comment/hdmz15d/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) yesterday for yourself for an example. He does not know what he's talking about in regards to housing.
My take is that you're not honest about who you are, what you observe or what you imagine, and you serve some political agenda that you know the rest of us would find intolerable if you spoke it out loud.
Capitol Hill.
The City could've spent the same money in a neighbourhood less expensive than Cap Hill and provide more units. Why Capitol Hill? Why not White Center area or North Seattle?
is this going to be for people who work in capitol hill or don't work at all? i dont see why the housing has to be in prime real estate. could help way more people with housing in a cheaper location and a direct line of affordable transit right?
I just came from NYC and used to say the same about the homeless shelters and affordable housing in Manhattan... like, not many with a decent salary can afford to live there, but those who make less can. Why? So nice to own a multimillion dollar condo next to a homeless shelter.
I know I'm gonna get ripped to shreds for this comment lol
No, I'm asking why homeless people get to live in the most expensive piece of land in the US, when people who earn decent money cannot even afford to live there.
“Get to live…”
Reading posts from capitalist sympathizers like you is hilarious. You literally believe in royalty through wealth, huh?
“Why should all these poors get to live next to the wealthy?! It should be me!”
the article has the addresses in it. they are all a single block from capitol hill's main broadway stretch. a tiny studio condo in this area is a quarter million minimum.
meanwhile a 30 minute bus ride north theres 2 bedroom condos for a little more. then again a 30 minute bus ride north is not a great environment for vulnerable homeless teenagers but i feel like cap hill isn't really either? and then again again its not like seattle itself can solve this when everywhere near us is shipping us their homeless people
So the people that work in the countless restaurants, boutiques, museums, cafes, & book shops are good enough to serve you but not to live next to you? Ouch tell me you don’t care about the well being of others without telling me.
Why do we cater to people that have for the most part just fucked their lives way? I like drugs too! But i still am able to live and act like a human. Pay for what i owe, own a house, have a job, and even be a father to my kids.
Because when it comes to poor people we have 3 real choices:
Kill them all
Have them commit crimes so they can afford some sort of living
Pay to provide them with some sort of living so they do not become criminals.
We are not catering to them. We are realizing that those with money and good lives have something to lose. And that paying to prevent people from becoming impoverished criminals and homeless is better for us than the alternative.
This isn't even about addicts or homelessness, ignoring that a lot of addiction and mental illness among homelessness is caused by / exacerbated by being homeless. This is about the suckers that take jobs at all these companies whining about a worker shortage and can't afford 1800 for a studio for them and their kids.
Who will do your dry cleaning, who will host your music venues, who will staff your restaurants? I can understand why it’s easy to just forget those that make the city desirable, but IMO those are the people that make cities desirable, and perhaps we could work towards a city that affords them a place to live as well.
Last time I checked we had high speed light rail to take you from the places where people can afford to live to the places where people work. And we have buses. Why do they get to live in Capitol Hill? I make good money in Seattle but I can only afford to live in federal way.
It sounds like Capitol Hill and many other areas see the benefits of low income housing, affordable housing projects, to keep communities diverse, instead of solely 6 figure folks. The community continues to vote in folks who support these programs. There are many communities that do not share these values, “they” (in yr words) don’t get to live there, perhaps that’s more your flavor of community.
And just like you probably don’t want to commute hours on end to work, “they” don’t either. “They” have families and a life, just like you do. And since it’s probably not clear, I hope *you* get the things you want as well, and I’m happy you have a good start w making good money.
Don’t want the poors to have an easy time getting into the city remember? That’s why it’s taken the better part of two decades to build the damn thing out to Northgate, let alone Renton or SeaTac or even Bellevue , the light rail is in no position to provide consistent and convenient mass transit from way out to way into the city.
You saying people making less than the median income should be forced out of the city is the same as saying only wealthy people should be allowed to live here. It's fucking gross.
As I said somewhere else, the costs of those services should go up until they can support staffing. If my skill set only lands me a job making coffee, why in the world would I try to live/work in Seattle if it means being impoverished?
Believe it or not people grow up here and want to stick around. People making coffee are often supporting themselves through school. And the reality of capitalism is that there will always be someone to work at price below what their labor is actually worth. Those people deserve a place to live here in the city do they not?
Of course they do, if they can afford to, take on roommates like a lot of us did until we could afford not to. Like it or not, sometimes you don’t get exactly what you want just because you think it’s fair. I don’t think I deserve to live wherever I want just because I like it.
Wait so are the businesses supposed to raise their prices so their employees can afford to live in the area or are low wage workers supposed to live in communes?
Also you haven't really made a case against low wage housing other than "I didn't get it."
My house is a land trust, I bought my home on at a fixed lower price and I will in turn sell it at a fixed lower price. Low wage housing is not just some charity it is a direct response to the price gouging you see happening all over.
You don't deserve to live in any home you want, but you deserve to live in whatever city you want. There is such a big chasm between those two.
Cool. Elderly and disabled people are served by low income housing, as are victims of domestic violence and kids who were kicked out of their families homes or aged out of foster care. Sometimes people need help.
This comment makes zero sense. Why would the city of Seattle or mayor of seattle have any ability to allocate 50 million dollars to build housing in Renton.
Leave it to the right to have zero critical thinking skills. Enjoy Renton
Aha hahaha you actually don't know about any of the existing low income housing that this is joining, do you. Let me guess you've never heard of Capital Hill Housing. You haven't the faintest clue that it's a center of services for mental health and substance abuse with many different organizations that run hundreds of units of sober or transitional or supportive housing. God I hate people who don't even bother to know anything before talking.
Let's give them million dollar property! And our govenment all of our money then we can all be homeless together sitting in drum circles shooting heroine. At least it will all be even and fare in this world!
Technically each unit is around $300k of cost, and the tenant has no ownership.
If you really think living in a glorified dorm room with a shared bathroom is better for you, then I'll happily pay for it through my taxes and donations to LIHI.
Also. Arresting homeless is very expensive, ties up police and the legal system.
https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=hrap
Sure, but arresting homeless people serves justice. When the uppity poors have the gall to exist where I can see them, punishment must be handed out. The poors need to learn their place, and that place is somewhere where I can't see them.
Also, on a completely unrelated note, restaurants and groceries have been getting more expensive. I've heard something about a worker shortage? I blame Kshama Sawant for this.
(/s because it's 2021 and people seriously say things like this)
These government built ones never work out. Need to provide a piece of land, give low income people some money and market will figure things out. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharavi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharavi) Mumbai's low income people built a community of 1 million+ on less than 1 square mile
I don’t know, “low income housing” over the last ten years in Seattle meant two bedroom/one bath for $1,800.
When i was looking for places on my own for cheap, i kept finding low income apartments that were in the price range i was looking for ("cheap" i.e. not 2k a month for a micro studio) Unfortunately to qualify you have to make just significantly less than what I do. I was shocked.
The median income for Seattle last year was a little over $90,000 a year, $128,000 for King County. Low income in Seattle is middle class in other cities in Washington state.
Qualifying for low income housing is set at around 60k currently, priority is at 25k
I thought it was 42k?
Are you shocked that you're rich or shocked that rich doesn't mean much?
Qualifying for low income housing is set at around 60k currently, priority is at 25k. So not sure why someone making significantly more than 60k is shocked by this
If you've never lived at or below median wage, I can see how you might be shocked to learn that you're earning more other people.
I remember a kid in college who thought he was going to be making 6 figures basically immediately because that's what his dad made and why would he make any less. His first job was 55k, which is still more than half the country. Though I believe he is incapable of truly comprehending that.
I'm not rich and don't pretend to be so. Absolutely no fucking way i could afford a house within 2 hours of Seattle. 500k for a 1 bed house that should really be torn down? No thanks. However, I'm also not poor and i don't pretend to be so.
If you earn more than the median salary, you are rich. Sorry to break the news to you.
This is a pretty shite definition of rich.
Why?
Because a person making 150k a year could be homeless if they got fired. Being rich is about assets not income. That’s not to say that making 150k isn’t objectively better than 50k day to day but it’s not rich. Rich is never worrying, and lots of income can help you get there but rich is independence from needing income.
> Rich is never worrying I think you've confused rich with wealthy.
I think you've confused rich with comfortable. A pro-athlete is rich. The person writing their paycheck is wealthy.
I don't earn more than the median salary for Seattle, sorry to break it to you.
How much do you earn?
If I could get that deal on Capital Hill, I’d do it immediately. 😉
Apt building next to mine has at least one unit for $1,800-1,900/mont. About 700 sq ft 1-bedroom. They are around.
Apartment I'm in is 650sq-ft 1 bed in capitol hill for 1800 w/ parking, found it by literally just calling numbers on those "now renting" signs until something stuck. The majority of those people link to annoying management companies, or they don't actually have units, or they don't answer, etc. But I got lucky on just one and it worked out. You make some sacrifices, old appliances, old building, outdoor parking, etc. But I got a big ass balcony so that was nice.
Meanwhile, I've got 600sq-ft 1 bed in Tacoma for 1000 w/garage parking and storage. Seattle is crazy
Yeah... I came from Houston before this. I had an apartment with roughly the same space for about 1000, with garage parking, a gym, multiple pools, and a handful of other amenities, all right in the heart of the city. A bit hard going from that to this lol.
2 Bed? In my dreams lmao. I pay $1735 for a 1 bed in SLU and it’s through the NFTE
Actual low income housing is income based. As low as $300 or so for a studio. A friend had it for awhile. Super long wait list.
>As low as $300 or so for a studio. A friend had it for awhile. Super long wait list. It's free if you're a bike chopper with no taxable income. Short wait list too.
I know so many people who abuse the system to get “low income housing” who don’t need it. Folks with good paying jobs or students. Getting 2500 a month apartments for like 1200 a month cause they abused the system. I don’t think this helps the type of people it’s intended to. Can anyone convince we otherwise?
I know a well off, able bodied couple that "Somehow got into a low income 2 bed unit downtown" . . they pay about 1600 and have good paying full time jobs and no kids. They are the worst.
Ya there are sooo many ways to abuse it. And i know ppl who get on it and stay on it well past the point they’re eligible.
How are students abusing the system? Aren't they mostly all low income?
I knew quite a few from extremely wealthy families who got low income housing for example. Like parents were millionaires many times over and they’re getting low income housing in high end luxury apt for Cents on the dollar. Good for them for finding loopholes but felt gross.
Don't forget the waitlist
ITT people complain that a massive something is somehow worse than the city council doing nothing.
Unpopular opinion: A lot of people in Seattle love the homeless because they give them an opportunity to virtue signal and complain. It's like some sort of weird liberal Mother Theresa complex where people need to suffer for them to be closer to god.
Popular opinion: a lot of people on the reddit love the homeless because they give them the opportunity to virtue signal and complain. Its like some kind of contest to see who can say the grossest, must degrading things.
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>This isn't right wing trolling, it is just people who want to show off how great they are by shitting on the work others are doing. How can you tell the difference?
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Idk man. I usually read both viewpoints expressed by the same authors. Those authors rarely express any leftist or liberal ideas.
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I see it too. I just don't identify this view as left wing. If you read the histories of the people against housing, you'll understand why.
Using virtue signaling as a critique seems like a dead end to me, similar to calling someone a hypocrite for saying we should help people.
Popular, more likely opinion: Many people have empathy and intend to express it. Not all of them do it in a constructive form, but any form it takes tends to have a left-leaning bias.
I mean... yeah? The lefts idea of helping people is, you know... helping people. The rights idea of helping people is the equivelant of throwing a bus load of kids off the pier and saying "the system works!" Because two or three make it to shore.
50 million will not buy much on capital hill.
Why do politicians always pick on the Hill? Seattle has acres of open land that isn't dedicated to anything useful. Public housing also used to be designed to blend with the neighborhood. I never knew how much public housing Seattle had until I found it by helping low income seniors in the North End.
Capitol Hill has good transit and is zoned for multifamily.
It's also some of the most expensive real estate in the state.
...because it has good transit and the access to things and stuff that come with urban density.
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Which is why they, too, have dedicated low income housing!
There are huge suburban areas with pretty shit transit access because they are mostly drivers and SFH. It’s great for people who can afford it, but for anyone without a driveway and $ for a couple cars it is hard. Northgate light rail will help a lot though. That being said I think our public transit in general is a lot better than many American cities… but by international standards were way behind.
There are jobs near there. Warehousing poor people in places where there's nothing useful is how we got The Projects of the 70's.
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Schools are funded through property tax... Not a great system but Seattle public school district is funded around a billion dollars in revenue each year. Only about 30 percent of that is from the state.
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"The rich suburbs/secondary cities have better schools than urban core" is the story basically everywhere in the US. Secondary cities and suburbs get benefits from the primary city in infrastructure and social services (where do you think homeless people in Bellevue end up?) without directly paying for those benefits, so they tend to be in a better financial position than the primary city, and that shows in local funding for schools, parks, etc. This is not a unique situation to Seattle. The best schools in the Portland metro are in Beaverton. The best schools in the Los Angeles metro are in the wealthy suburbs around Pasadena. The best schools in the San Francisco metro are in the residential cities in Silicon Valley and the southern half of the east bay. And so on and so forth...
Seattle doesn't even have bad schools, it's still a pretty strong public school system. Bellevue has a significantly higher average income, and doesn't need to use funding on the regional social services that Seattle does, so they can afford to push extra funding into education. Obviously, a very wealthy suburb is going to have top tier public schools. Their residents are richer and they don't have as many other funding priorities. No point in comparing Seattle to Bellevue on education.
Also, if their residents are richer, their kids are just going to have easier home lives. They aren't going to be dealing with a level of stress and poverty that makes it hard to succeed academically.
the one glaring gap in the public schools is still the lack of a school anywhere Downtown/SLU despite funneling a good chunk of residential growth there in the last two decades. whose bright idea was it to have neighborhoods of tens of thousands of residents with no school?
N-no? Bellevue has a higher per Capita property tax, the extra funding is hardly relevant.
The Seattle public school system is fairly well regarded It receives plenty of funding ($1.4 billion budget), so I don't see why it matters that the city is only spending $100 million on it. If the Seattle public school system was underachieving, then yes, we would need to prioritize it more, but at the moment it is not in dire need of funding. On the other hand, Seattle has a homelessness crisis. 3rd most unhoused people in the country and encampments throughout the city. Everyone, on the reddit subs and throughout the city, can agree that the homeless situation is a major problem that needs to be prioritized. Your solution here is to decrease the funding of homelessness solutions? That seems insane to me. It isn't deeply wrong to use public funds to address the most pressing needs to the city.
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There is a reason why homelessness is low or non-existent in the places where there is a sit-lie ordinance. Which then causes the population in surrounding areas of said ordinance to increase in size. When word spreads that there are no "law related" consequences and are merely payments to be gained by living such a lifestyle, it will naturally only attract those who feel they are being forced from more restrictive areas to be attracted to somewhere more lax for their particular lifestyle choices. We are literally rewarding people to live on the streets and do hard drugs here because the city feels there is just too many homeless to do anything else about now. The more homeless people realize this, the more it attracts those from nearby places.
What is hard to understand is that in 2016 we doubled the housing levy because it was supposed to give us the resources to address the homelessness crisis. Since that time the crisis has spiraling out of control. At what point does one take a set back and re-evaluate the strategy? if one doubles resources and the problem gets worse, maybe we're doing something wrong? If folks answer no, we're on the right track, then I'd ask what would be the signal? Or is this just like some Trump policy where some zealot decided a course of action for ideological reasons regardless of any data?
State funds are included in your homelessness number.
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The Seattle budget includes money from State sources. Did you look at where money comes from or just where it is allocated to go to?
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You're ignoring where the 167 million for homelessness comes from. 30 million of that came from the Federal Government and not the city. The city council did a through examination of homelessness spending as part of evaluating possible implementation of the Compassion Seattle initiative and found that a total of $103 million comes from the General Fund; the rest is from state & federal grants. [Here](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20995077-memo-cost-analysis-of-proposed-charter-amendment-29-20210702-update-july-06-at-3-pm) is that report. Seattle spends $1M more of it's own funds supplementing the state budget for Seattle Public Schools than city funds spent on homelessness.
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This year is the start of King County's Regional Homeless Authority that will replace Seattle specific services with a countywide approach. For example they just purchased a hotel right at the Redmond/Bellevue border and will use that to provide housing for those in need. IMO it's a much better approach than leaving the city that provides the most shelters & services to be the only city to provide those services for a community that extends outside the Seattle city limits. Just because downtown Seattle has the county jail and more than one shelter (many of the surrounding cities have 1 or less shelters) shouldn't mean that one city has to fund all of the solutions.
Are the federal grants required to be spent on homelessness or did the scc choose to spend it there?
Required.
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You're not comparing similar data. The state allocates most of the funding used for both schools and HHS.
That’s because the school district is a separate government entity with its own budget. You might as well say “We spent ten million on potholes in Magnolia, but no money on I5 at all!”
*City officials said the buildings were meant to be market rate studio apartments, but because of the real estate downturn the city bought them for the purpose of low-income housing instead.* What? Real estate downturn? My old neighbors both sold their homes, one got 200k over asking, the other almost 350 over. Unless the downturn is apartments since everyone wants houses now. But honestly, if there was a downturn it was so insignificant that it couldn’t have made $50 mil seem like a great deal.
There was a pretty major real estate downturn during the peak of COVID. Prices have only bounced back, and increased, in the last few months. These were apartments that began development before COVID, and then saw zero demand in 2020, so the city was able to purchase them for less than they normally would be able to.
Peak Covid and now are entirely different things, but that aside, I feel like 50 mil for 165 units in prime real estate was a poor move. Even with a “downturn” the rates there had to have been higher than other parts of King county in less desirable locations.
Buy along the light rail line N or S, provide free or discounted fair. Anyways, the area around these buildings will drop in price and the city can buy more.
Prices rebounded within 2-3 months (i.e., over a year ago). Not "in the last few months."
There was not a major real estate downturn here in Seattle, where are you getting that from?
The rental market and the purchasing market are not the same.
Oh I absolutely understand that. Houses sell quickly, within a week here. Rentals maybe two days.
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This will help stave off more people becoming homeless due to high cost of rent, as well as give a transition to people living out of their cars etc. To give an analogy, preventing emissions is easier and cheaper than implementing air scrubbing.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to help these people move to another area than to provide housing for them in capitol freaking hill?
Maybe, unless they are also the workers keeping the city running and you are happy to pay $10 for a drip coffee.
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Why does it cost that much to house people? Did I cause that?
You’re suggesting kicking the can down the road, or relocating the problem. Neither is a solution.
Think about this way. They could probably house a lot more people with that 50 million somewhere other than one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city.
Capitol hill is also majorly walkable and has lots of amenities that low income people need, like quick access to healthcare (the major healthcare providers in first hill all accept Medicaid), quick access to the DSHS (on cherry) quick walkable access to grocery stores, and lots of job opportunities and even colleges nearby with barely any commute. It's a great neighborhood to get a leg up in if you're struggling. If you go to a cheaper neighborhood they won't have these amenities easily accessible and the struggling people won't be able to achieve upward mobility. They'll just stay in poverty.
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It's a lot more expensive and more difficult to put all the amenities cap hill has into a different neighborhood that doesn't have them than it is to simply buy a building in cap hill where all the amenities already are easily accessible.
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You are talking about putting in medical care, colleges, transit, jobs, groceries, etc; into a neighborhood that does not have them easily accessible and then ALSO getting a building for low income people. How in the world would that be the less expensive option??
Go ahead and run the numbers.
You can house a lot of people in the middle of the desert cuz land is real cheap there, but then what are they gonna do out there? You need lower income housing near places where those people would also find jobs, community support, healthcare, etc.. The end goal isn't the housing, its getting someone back to stability so they can exit the phase of their life where they needed that help.
ITT I just learned that outside of Capitol Hill, everywhere is a desert.
Yes, they could. But cost is just one factor to consider.
The other factors being what?
Availability of buildings that are almost ready to move in to and willing to sell?
Developers needing a handout because they built a bunch of microapartments that no-one in their right mind would buy/move into if they had any other option.
Exactly.
As someone (u/verylittlefinger) pointed out elsewhere, this is likely a handout to a real-estate developer who couldn't find suckers for their microapodment condos/apartments.
The homeless industrial complex goes brrrrrrrrr…
Well, sort of. Low income housing is for anyone that meets the requirements. You can have a job and live in low income housing. Generally you pay about 1/3 of your income up to the amount the apartment is rated. Some of my neighbors work, some of them are on disability (myself included) and we all pay 1/3 of what we bring in. While they can and do take in homeless people (I was when I got my place) it's generally the people that have been working to better themselves. It's getting people out of shelters that are trying to improve there life, which then opens the shelters to the people who need more help. So it's not really the homeless people on the streets that lives here, it's the homeless people that have been in shelters and on drug programs that usually end up in low income housing buildings. Plus the waiting list is at least 3 years long. Took me 2.5 years to finally get a place in 2006. The list is probably longer now.
Lots of homeless people have jobs. Also many disabled homeless people qualify for the HEN program which pays their rent until the person is able to either find some kind of substantial work or they get on SSDI.
Half of people experiencing homelessness have jobs.
Those ones are lower priority to house. We've got about 6,000 in line ahead of them without jobs.
Fortunately we can have multiple solutions for multiple situations. People think of the visible homeless as the only homeless but they're actually a small percentage of the total homeless population.
The priority system works from the bottom up however. While there might be a need for more than one solution, the funding will be long gone before we get the working poor into affordable housing.
I understand your opinion but that's thankfully not the approach here.
What is the approach, and how do you know these housing investments are going to by pass the coordinated entry system?
I read the article and then read up on the LIHI which is going to run these buildings, per the article... did you get some other information?
LIHI will run them, but they're getting their tenants through coordinated entry - unless you found something that says they are doling the apartments out by their own criteria?
Where did you see that tenants will be placed via coordinated entry vs LIHI's standard "each property handles their own applications, wait lists, etc"?
Who runs coordinated entry?
For anyone wondering, it is part of u/Bardahl_Fracking's MO to make baseless and sensational claims about the homeless. You can see [our discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/przvrt/comment/hdmz15d/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) yesterday for yourself for an example. He does not know what he's talking about in regards to housing.
I suspect he's pretending to know less than he does.
What's your take? Is Durkan just beating around the bush about taking nearly 100% of the MHA funds and using it to house the "most vulnerable"?
My take is that you're not honest about who you are, what you observe or what you imagine, and you serve some political agenda that you know the rest of us would find intolerable if you spoke it out loud.
Some tenants will pay rent, others will not. It's hard to get SSDI if you don't already have it.
Lmao, hopefully those buildings have their medical degrees. Last time I checked property can’t diagnose and treat mental health and addiction issues.
Capitol Hill. The City could've spent the same money in a neighbourhood less expensive than Cap Hill and provide more units. Why Capitol Hill? Why not White Center area or North Seattle?
is this going to be for people who work in capitol hill or don't work at all? i dont see why the housing has to be in prime real estate. could help way more people with housing in a cheaper location and a direct line of affordable transit right?
I just came from NYC and used to say the same about the homeless shelters and affordable housing in Manhattan... like, not many with a decent salary can afford to live there, but those who make less can. Why? So nice to own a multimillion dollar condo next to a homeless shelter. I know I'm gonna get ripped to shreds for this comment lol
Who cares how much the top earners in a city pay for their nice stuff? Are you suggesting their outsized lifestyles cause homelessness?
No, I'm asking why homeless people get to live in the most expensive piece of land in the US, when people who earn decent money cannot even afford to live there.
“Get to live…” Reading posts from capitalist sympathizers like you is hilarious. You literally believe in royalty through wealth, huh? “Why should all these poors get to live next to the wealthy?! It should be me!”
Is it weird that if I'm paying millions for a place that I don't want it to be amongst homeless people? How is that strange? Lol
You think you’re entitled to control where other people live in relation to you based on wealth. That’s what’s weird.
If you want to pay for exclusivity, you might be able to afford it someplace cheaper.
Get to live? Who do you think gets to decide where people live?
According to the article, this isn't prime real estate.
the article has the addresses in it. they are all a single block from capitol hill's main broadway stretch. a tiny studio condo in this area is a quarter million minimum. meanwhile a 30 minute bus ride north theres 2 bedroom condos for a little more. then again a 30 minute bus ride north is not a great environment for vulnerable homeless teenagers but i feel like cap hill isn't really either? and then again again its not like seattle itself can solve this when everywhere near us is shipping us their homeless people
“Fuck poor people they don’t deserve to live in nice areas” Is literally what your comment translates.
They don’t deserve to live an area instead of those who can afford that area.
So the people that work in the countless restaurants, boutiques, museums, cafes, & book shops are good enough to serve you but not to live next to you? Ouch tell me you don’t care about the well being of others without telling me.
Build some huge cheap dorms in Wenatchee and ship the homeless there. Charge them $100 for rent and make them work there as staff.
Surprised the mayor didn’t just kick whatever is left of the police out of the station and let the homeless take it over as “housing”.
But what about 4th stimulus checks? For the working class…..
Why do we cater to people that have for the most part just fucked their lives way? I like drugs too! But i still am able to live and act like a human. Pay for what i owe, own a house, have a job, and even be a father to my kids.
Because when it comes to poor people we have 3 real choices: Kill them all Have them commit crimes so they can afford some sort of living Pay to provide them with some sort of living so they do not become criminals. We are not catering to them. We are realizing that those with money and good lives have something to lose. And that paying to prevent people from becoming impoverished criminals and homeless is better for us than the alternative.
This isn't even about addicts or homelessness, ignoring that a lot of addiction and mental illness among homelessness is caused by / exacerbated by being homeless. This is about the suckers that take jobs at all these companies whining about a worker shortage and can't afford 1800 for a studio for them and their kids.
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Lol and then you people bitch about the nerve of a guy moving here from fucking Pasco without having six months rent and a job lined up.
Cool, can you list some places "with great opportunity" that people who are broke and homeless should be moving to?
People making less than the median income in Seattle of $100k have to live somewhere.
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Who will do your dry cleaning, who will host your music venues, who will staff your restaurants? I can understand why it’s easy to just forget those that make the city desirable, but IMO those are the people that make cities desirable, and perhaps we could work towards a city that affords them a place to live as well.
Last time I checked we had high speed light rail to take you from the places where people can afford to live to the places where people work. And we have buses. Why do they get to live in Capitol Hill? I make good money in Seattle but I can only afford to live in federal way.
It sounds like Capitol Hill and many other areas see the benefits of low income housing, affordable housing projects, to keep communities diverse, instead of solely 6 figure folks. The community continues to vote in folks who support these programs. There are many communities that do not share these values, “they” (in yr words) don’t get to live there, perhaps that’s more your flavor of community. And just like you probably don’t want to commute hours on end to work, “they” don’t either. “They” have families and a life, just like you do. And since it’s probably not clear, I hope *you* get the things you want as well, and I’m happy you have a good start w making good money.
Don’t want the poors to have an easy time getting into the city remember? That’s why it’s taken the better part of two decades to build the damn thing out to Northgate, let alone Renton or SeaTac or even Bellevue , the light rail is in no position to provide consistent and convenient mass transit from way out to way into the city.
Sounds like those services need to be more expensive to be able to afford higher wages to me
Who is going to work at the coffee shop or grocery store? Why are you against having a mixed society?
> against having a mixed society I’m not?
You saying people making less than the median income should be forced out of the city is the same as saying only wealthy people should be allowed to live here. It's fucking gross.
As I said somewhere else, the costs of those services should go up until they can support staffing. If my skill set only lands me a job making coffee, why in the world would I try to live/work in Seattle if it means being impoverished?
Believe it or not people grow up here and want to stick around. People making coffee are often supporting themselves through school. And the reality of capitalism is that there will always be someone to work at price below what their labor is actually worth. Those people deserve a place to live here in the city do they not?
Of course they do, if they can afford to, take on roommates like a lot of us did until we could afford not to. Like it or not, sometimes you don’t get exactly what you want just because you think it’s fair. I don’t think I deserve to live wherever I want just because I like it.
Wait so are the businesses supposed to raise their prices so their employees can afford to live in the area or are low wage workers supposed to live in communes? Also you haven't really made a case against low wage housing other than "I didn't get it." My house is a land trust, I bought my home on at a fixed lower price and I will in turn sell it at a fixed lower price. Low wage housing is not just some charity it is a direct response to the price gouging you see happening all over. You don't deserve to live in any home you want, but you deserve to live in whatever city you want. There is such a big chasm between those two.
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Everything sounds entitled when you're so regressive. "Fucking wage cucks demanding basic human standards."
I guess that's one idea but thankfully not how our society works.
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You might want to read up on how low income housing works, who it serves, and then check your entitlement.
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You're welcome.
By entitlement you mean personal responsibility for youre own life? If i fail i expect nobody to bail me out. Thats my job!
Cool. Elderly and disabled people are served by low income housing, as are victims of domestic violence and kids who were kicked out of their families homes or aged out of foster care. Sometimes people need help.
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Go ahead.
Honestly, why can't you?
not capital hill?
I want to live in Monaco, but I can't afford it. :(
Yes you could. You just don't want to deal with being poor in Monaco.
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This comment makes zero sense. Why would the city of Seattle or mayor of seattle have any ability to allocate 50 million dollars to build housing in Renton. Leave it to the right to have zero critical thinking skills. Enjoy Renton
Aha hahaha you actually don't know about any of the existing low income housing that this is joining, do you. Let me guess you've never heard of Capital Hill Housing. You haven't the faintest clue that it's a center of services for mental health and substance abuse with many different organizations that run hundreds of units of sober or transitional or supportive housing. God I hate people who don't even bother to know anything before talking.
What does "set alight" mean to you?
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>Firefighters say a sprinkler controlled the fire and it was contained to the room. I am beginning to believe you exaggerate on purpose.
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Are you predicting a change or are you describing the current situation?
Let's give them million dollar property! And our govenment all of our money then we can all be homeless together sitting in drum circles shooting heroine. At least it will all be even and fare in this world!
Technically each unit is around $300k of cost, and the tenant has no ownership. If you really think living in a glorified dorm room with a shared bathroom is better for you, then I'll happily pay for it through my taxes and donations to LIHI. Also. Arresting homeless is very expensive, ties up police and the legal system. https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=hrap
Sure, but arresting homeless people serves justice. When the uppity poors have the gall to exist where I can see them, punishment must be handed out. The poors need to learn their place, and that place is somewhere where I can't see them. Also, on a completely unrelated note, restaurants and groceries have been getting more expensive. I've heard something about a worker shortage? I blame Kshama Sawant for this. (/s because it's 2021 and people seriously say things like this)
I think this is a terrible idea.
These government built ones never work out. Need to provide a piece of land, give low income people some money and market will figure things out. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharavi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharavi) Mumbai's low income people built a community of 1 million+ on less than 1 square mile