City Hall takes a step to invigorate downtown Seattle by allowing higher residential towers.
    • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
      3·
      9 months ago

      Studies show pretty conclusively at this point that increasingly housing supply, regardless of how it’s done, leads to decreased pressure on housing costs.

      The city is welcome to build public housing if it wants, but until it gets around to that, the least it can do is not make it literally illegal for anyone else to build meaningfully dense housing.

      Just to give an obvious example, it will obviously benefit the people who wind up living in the housing that is built. They’ll likely be relatively wealthy, but you can add some incentives and subsidies for some affordable units, and even despite that, a wealthy person moving into a new apartment means that person isn’t moving into some other unit, reducing demand on it and enabling lower prices across the market.

  • Pandemanium
    3·
    9 months ago

    Ha, they’re hoping they can stop the open heroin use by having construction projects take over all the sidewalks… yeah, sure, that’ll work. But seriously, what kind of source is this? Stop population decline? “Seattle loosen”??

    • StringTheory@beehaw.orgEnglish
      31·
      9 months ago

      They want to stop a certain type of population from declining. Can’t let them be replaced, y’know! Of course, the planet’s human population is exploding… unless you don’t consider some people to be human.

        • Vodulas [they/them]@beehaw.org
          2·
          9 months ago

          They were referring to the fact that most of the time when you see a name like “Stop population decline” that means they are into great replacement theory. The comment made perfect sense, but I don’t think it is accurate in this case. The site seems to focus on making better housing in cities

      • Pandemanium
        1·
        9 months ago

        That’s usually what it is, but I was confused why that particular group would even care about downtown zoning regulations in a place like Seattle. 🤷

        • Vodulas [they/them]@beehaw.org
          1·
          9 months ago

          Yeah, it is an odd name for a group that is anti-NIMBY, pro affordable housing, etc. If you look at their about page, they seem to want to address the underlying issues of people just being able to live and couching it in population decline, which is…a choice.

    • tintoryOP
      1·
      9 months ago

      Seattle Loosen Downtown Zoning Regulations

      Apparently that is the case, considering they relaxed some of the rules but not all of them.

      Don’t really care about the source, their articles aren’t reactionary and they are a good collection on stuff that I care without having to go look around on YIMBY, Paid Leave, Child Care, Anti Austerity, etc etc

      • Vodulas [they/them]@beehaw.org
        1·
        9 months ago

        I think they are pointing out a typo in that headline. It should be something like “Seattle to Loosen” or “Seattle Loosens.” Normally I am not one to correct grammar if the point is made, but they are positioning themselves as a news source. That kind of mistake does not inspire confidence in the source.

  • Vodulas [they/them]@beehaw.org
    3·
    9 months ago

    More density is better, but they point out that this will only add 10-20 affordable units downtown. We need better affordable housing rules in this city