'Clarion call' for housing: Report says state fell well short on production

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

For the first five years of the last decade, Washington fell 225,000 housing units short of meeting the needs of the state, which around that time was the fifth-fastest growing state in the country.

That information frames a report titled Housing Underproduction in Washington State that was released Friday. Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Up for Growth produced the study with consultancy ECONorthwest.

The report goes on to list four "policy principles" to turn things around: increase affordable housing funding, zoning reform, regional planning and accountability, and public-private partnerships.

Not surprisingly, the housing shortage is worse in the Seattle-Tacoma metro area than in other areas of the state, with 48 percent of all renters said to be "cost burdened," meaning they spent more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing.

https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2020/01/10/clarion-call-for-housing-report-says-state-fell.html

[LisaM]

1. Where are these people going to go, and what infrastructure is going to serve them?

The population is growing too fast. I'm not against growth, but it's completely unmanaged, and there's nowhere to put 225,000 new people, especially in Seattle/Tacoma. The companies that are creating the huge demand for housing (which they envision as a forest of density) won't pay taxes, so buses, roads, and essential services are completely strained. Housing that's affordable now is often under the wrecking ball and the displaced people have nowhere to go, so the homeless population is on the rise.

I could look out my office window and count 20 construction cranes downtown with little effort. We are stretched. And, by the way, there is a vacancy rate for the luxury housing they are building.

I don't see an end to this, and it's just really an awful place to live right now. New tech workers have no housing (or won't move into the luxury units built for them), poor people are being displaced, and those of us in the middle are in constant fear of rising rents and/or being evicted so they can knock down more buildings and put up worker hives.