The Seattle Process is alive and well…just as a consortium to build social housing gets some traction, another then opposes it and who knows if anything will ever get built?
The land is there, the funding could be found, but as noted in this piece, the bust part of the cycle, where the fortunate few watch the rest of us struggle or leave, has cheerleaders. Seattle doesn’t want to be a fair and equitable city, One Seattle, or anything of the kind. I think the promise of that, as unveiled at the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, scared people. (What this writer seems to forget is that all the changes he and his mossback friend decry were all wrought by local people cashing out their local businesses or failing to keep up with the times.) The local voters were offered a future with transit and managed growth but opted out, cherry-picking pools and parks for themselves (and to keep other people in their own neighborhoods) and rejecting anything that connected people.
According to the City of Seattle, currently most surplus public land is sold to the highest bidder; however, a state level bill passed in 2018 (SB 2382) “grants authority to cities to sell surplus property for below fair-market value – all the way to $0 – as long as the land is used for permanently affordable housing.”
And as we already know, that just turns what could be productive land into a speculative investment.
No matter what the bloviators on right wing media claim, Seattle is far from “woke,” whatever they think that means. It’s still a propertarian city of private parks surrounding single family homes that are no longer housing but tradable commodities…Wall Street, not your street.
This encapsulates the current mood pretty well, reminding me that Seattle is a city that is willing to share, as long as it doesn’t have to give anything up.
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