Chicago is a vibrant city, not a crime-ravaged third-world hellhole. (CityNerd) Ray rides several L lines and checks out the station areas.
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66 Replies to “Sunday Movie: Chicago”
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Chicago is a vibrant city, not a crime-ravaged third-world hellhole. (CityNerd) Ray rides several L lines and checks out the station areas.
This is an open thread.
Comments are closed.
This is a great video!
I’ve visited Chicago a week at a time 3 times on the last 5 years. It’s a huge city with lots of different things to see, I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’ve been to Europe and Asia as well, and Chicago certainly holds it own as a place to visit. It’s also way cheaper than NYC. A big difference between Seattle and Portland is downtown Chicago is one of the most interesting and best parts of the city, where as downtowns in the PNW tend to be dumping grounds for problems. All thee cities have charming neighborhoods… and lots of urban blight as well. That’s just life in the city I guess.
As far as economic opportunity over the last decade, Chicago beats Seattle for non-tech workers by miles and miles. Chicago has all of the opportunities in Seattle with housing prices a little higher than Minneapolis or Milwaukee. Not that I’d say Minneapolis or Milwaukee would be bad choices to relocate to either. One big thing I think the “New Urban Left” gets wrong is you only get one life and one vote. Left Coast urbanists look at housing in Minneapolis and think (wrongly) that that somehow could be replicated in Seattle or California. The right answer is packing up and moving to Minneapolis…. You adapt your life, the world doesn’t adapt to your desires. Over time thousands of people moving around looking for opportunity changes the world. Change doesn’t come from the top down.
I’m a Wisconsinite through and through, so I broadly support people moving to the Midwest, but I think it’s deeply misguided to imagine that it’s practical for someone to just up and move 2,000 miles to the Twin Cities on account of housing being cheaper. It’s worth trying to help solve the problems in the place that you live, rather than engage in reductive escapism.
Most people are constrained in their lives by work, family, and social ties to the places they already are, and the best place to enact change is always at the local level of the place you already are. You may look at Milwaukee as a great city with shockingly cheap housing (which it is), but it’s also a city that faces deep political issues stemming from longstanding conflicts in Wisconsin state politics. So many of the things that Seattle and Washington have done have been state government directed. There is a zero percent chance of that happening in the WI state legislature. At the local level, the City of Milwaukee exists in a metro area consisting of openly hostile suburbs and a legacy of extremely toxic conflict between suburban and urban interests.
Would I love to Milwaukee? Absolutely, it’s the closest big city to my hometown (Madison), and I have family there. But I wouldn’t move for new left urbanist reasons. Everyone here complains about Sound Transit and fiscal cliffs, and rightly so, but I guarantee if you move to Milwaukee you will have a much harder time using transit. MCTS is great, but it basically has no dedicated funding, 2/3 suburban counties don’t even pretend to run transit service anymore, and the third one runs service I could only describe as threadbare.
I’m obviously less familiar with the Twin Cities than I am Milwaukee, and Metro Transit is a pretty good operator from what I’ve seen, but the fact remains that the Seattle is one of the best for transit in the country. Sure, housing and prices are out of control, but I think setting up a coherent regional transit system in Milwaukee is more difficult than solving the housing crisis in Seattle.
Very well put. I completely agree.
I think the biggest thing people can do is learn from other cities instead of just trying to move to one that is somehow “the best”. Not just American cities but cities around the world. It is a bit tricky because something that works well for one area might not work for another but borrowing ideas from other places is a good way to improve your city.
blumdrew,
Go Badgers! I’ve spent a a day in Madison and it seemed to be one of the top small cities in the whole Midwest. Top notch college town.
If you’re so Wisconsin through and through, just how did you end up in the PNW? There’s a story about why you moved here and that’s your story. I hope Seattle is living up to your expectations. America was built on migration…. we’re not like Ireland where generations of people lived in 10 mile radius for 800 years. Looking at migration over the last decade, much of it has been from crumbling Blue States to Red States like Texas and Florida. This isn’t the old USSR where the government tells people where to live …. we are free to explore and find opportunities for ourselves. What drives me crazy is non-home owners thinking they “belong” somewhere and housing market needs to change to suit their needs. If a person con’t afford to live in Seattle, they need to move along to someplace else. Personally, I’d rather own a paid for bungalow in one of the better Milwaukee neighborhoods at 60 than have paid a whole lot of rent in San Francisco for 30 years, but that’s my personal choice. I also believe that’s a bad idea to ever chain your person fortune to the political changes you want to see… or worse yet, need to survive.
As far as housing and transit, I understand it’s may be impossible to find a place where they’re both good and inexpensive. Places with high density are great for transit, but their popularity is going to push up housing prices. Pick your poison I guess? Not owning a car certainly is an economic advantage… owning a house is also an economic advantage…. of course it’s possible to have both in neighborhood like Wallingford, but not without a lot of money to buy that house in the first place. Changing the zoning and adding density can’t possibly make housing more affordable, right? Seattle is just so high on the “demand” side of the equation that the “supply” side can’t catch up. Unless Big Tech tanks? Then the City might go the way of Detroit?
I love America and travel. The City Nerd guy really made a nice Chicago video!
@tacomee
I ended up in the PNW for personal reasons, and have stayed due to work and life constraints. I also don’t think there’s some blue/red divide on migration – internal migration patterns probably shouldn’t be reduced to anything more than generalized economic opportunity. The reasons why sunbelt states have had more economic opportunity over the last several decades are up for debate, but I think it’s extremely limiting to say it’s some kind of simple red/blue divide. Appalachia is conservative and economically depressed, Miami and Dallas are conservative and economically booming, northern Minnesota is relatively progressive and economically depressed, Seattle is progressive and economically booming. Local conditions are more deterministic of economic fortunes than red/blue politics.
The question of where people feel they “belong” is deeply personal, and often complicated. I feel like I belong in the PNW (despite being a renter who probably meets rent burden definitions), but I still strongly identify with Wisconsin on account of my personal narrative about my life and my family, who have been in Wisconsin for some 200 odd years. What I mean to ask is why should people be limited to moving in response to unaffordablity? I see no reason why that should be considered a more legitimate way of responding to cost pressures than advocating for whatever a person believes will reduce those cost pressures.
Incidentally, I think Milwaukee is an instructive example of how density and transit are strongly related, but still subject to local political pressures related to funding. For much of the 20th and into the 21st century, Milwaukee has been one of the denser US cities, but has fairly anemic transit by those standards. This is (in my opinion) easier to explain through political analysis of the conflicts between suburban, rural, and urban interests in Wisconsin than it is on density terms. For affordability, higher density zoning can help insofar as it reduces unit lane cost for housing, but this is obviously complicated by higher unit construction costs for taller buildings. A lot of the historically affordable parts of Milwaukee, Chicago, and Minneapolis are more like subdivided single family home neighborhoods (Milwaukee in particular has been known for its duplexes), which makes some sense. But ultimately, I think rising income inequality has much more to do with rising housing unaffordablity than we generally talk about, and that the problems with our housing market are simply reflective of the problems in our economic system.
Local conditions are more deterministic of economic fortunes than red/blue politics.
Agreed. Besides, just about all cities are to the left of the general public. It is the suburbs that lean slightly to the right while rural areas have returned to their libertarian roots (almost a century after embracing New Deal policies following the Dust Bowl and Great Depression). In other words there is a bigger political difference between one neighborhood or another in your “greater city” than there is between the heart of each one. Trump took Utah quite easily. He didn’t take Salt Lake City. He took Texas; he lost Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and El Paso. Yes, there are exceptions, but the biggest factors in voting are race and density.
Having said all that, allow me to move away from politics. I can easily see a connection between Wisconsin/Minnesota and the Northwest, given our Nordic heritage. I’m not the least bit Scandinavian but having been brought up here, I feel it. Fish, snow, not saying much — that sounds like home to me.
“Looking at migration over the last decade, much of it has been from crumbling Blue States to Red States like Texas and Florida.”
That’s a throwaway mentality, like when Walmart builds a store and then twenty years later they abandon it for a bigger store elsewhere, and these often decay into vacant buildings or are reused for strip malls that are still inconvenient and ugly. We need to help everywhere succeed, not leave behind ever-growing acres of debris as we screw up new places like the ones we left.
“This isn’t the old USSR where the government tells people where to live”
Who’s doing that? No country in North America or Europe tells people they’re only allowed to live in the one city and house the government assigns to them.
“we are free to explore and find opportunities for ourselves.”
This is about opportunity. Making the entire country liveable rather than just three cities.
” I understand it’s may be impossible to find a place where they’re both good and inexpensive. Places with high density are great for transit, but their popularity is going to push up housing prices.”
If the entire city is dense and has good transit, then there wouldn’t be these price spikes in the few areas that have them.
“it’s possible to have both in neighborhood like Wallingford, but not without a lot of money to buy that house in the first place.”
Why does Wallingford have so many detached houses going for $800K just a mile from the U-District, when Seattle’s population topped 500K in the 1960s and again in the 2000s and is now 781K? It’s not a small town anymore. This is what Chicago doesn’t have.
“Changing the zoning and adding density can’t possibly make housing more affordable, right?”
Repeating a lie doesn’t make it true. Adding more housing units reduces the upward price pressure on all units. When the crisis is extreme and has built up over two decades, it takes a lot of additional units to bend down the price curve again.
blumdrew,
I moved to Seattle in the early 80’s before most of the big tech rush and before the West Coast Housing affordability crisis headed North. I would argue that much of Seattle’s housing woes actually originate in California. There’s just been a steady stream of migration into Seattle by people, many who came from Cali, who had more money than the locals. Seattle, unlike San Francisco, built housing at a near unbelievable rate. I worked construction in the boom years and the building industry was just maxed out…. and the price of housing just kept sky rocketing. There’s this strong revisionist history on the blog where it’s bad zoning that made housing so unaffordable, but there just wasn’t enough boots on the ground to build anywhere near enough housing, zoning be damned.
Right now interest rates and a shaky economic outlook are slowing down building everywhere, so it will be interesting to see what happens in Seattle over the next decade. Amazon is the best corporate citizen there is. That South Lake Union district is amazing urbanism. I think Amazon certainly is less likely to leave than many other big corporations.
I do believe the rose is off the bloom in Seattle however. 30 years ago public education in Seattle was actually pretty good. Now it sucks just like every other big city in America and the rich send their children to private schools. Most of what made Seattle a big draw… reasonable housing, functioning City government, good public education system, are going away. It’s become San Francisco North I’m afraid. Seattle is a City of single people living alone now and I don’t think that’s sustainable over the next 20 years. Looking at the number of people without family who are over 35 and paying over 40% of their income on rent, I don’t see a happy ending for Seattle. All cities are meaner than Hell. Nobody really cares if you end up homeless.
Back to Milwaukee for a minute. Just how bad would life be in a duplex in a good neighborhood? Global warming might help? I’m not sure about the lake level rising however. Then there’s this! https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/2344-N-68th-St_Wauwatosa_WI_53213_M89406-33193 What an opportunity. A brick duplex with 2 bedroom units? Fixing and refinishing those floors yourself would be a learning experience, but it can be done. And that “Cream City” brick is gorgeous!
“Miami and Dallas are conservative and economically booming”
Miami-Dade county tends towards the Democratic Party, as does Dallas.
Actual election results in congressional elections may look a bit more conservative than the reality due to gerrymandering. Eg: the 2024 congressional map had Dallas split into 7 rural congressional districts. The 2028 map will attempt to make it worse.
“There’s this strong revisionist history on the blog”
The only one doing revisionist history here is yourself, dude. The facts are literally there in print in the Seattle Central Library and City/County records for you to look at yourself and yet you want to spin this tall tale fantasy about Seattle housing you’ve built in your head that is so detached from reality its not even funny.
tacomee,
Given that the two epicenters of tech jobs in the Seattle metro (Microsoft and Amazon) are essentially local firms, it’s hard for me to see how the housing crisis is a California import. I think the housing crisis in Seattle is partially explained by the boom in high wage tech jobs, but that land use policies and politics play a critical role. There’s a housing crisis in Madison (and Chicago) too, and while Madison has its fair share of high wage tech-like jobs, it’s definitely no Seattle.
I think the US housing crisis is best understood through the lens of the end of cheap available land for single family homes within a reasonable commute within tour current transportation network, alongside rapidly increasing wealth inequalities brought on by deindustrialization.
And you don’t need to sell me on Milwaukee, but if you were trying to sell me on Milwaukee, you ought to start in Milwaukee proper – not Tosa. The reasons I moved to Seattle after grad school not Milwaukee were almost entirely related to work opportunities. A great duplex in a good neighborhood doesn’t mean much if you can’t find a job.
And Ross – I think there’s more variety in rural politics than people tend to assume. And given the long-standing trend of non-citizen migrant labor in ag, it’s worth considering how citizenship status impacts perceptions of rural politics. But that’s a can of worms. I do agree that there’s a lot of shared cultural heritage between the upper Midwest and PNW, especially given the rail links between the Twin Cities and Seattle
blumdrew,
So why is Amazon based in Seattle and California? Maybe because Jeff Bezos could afford to colonize South Lake Union? Because that place and Belltown used to be pretty run down. San Francisco was already full up? As Northern California grew so expensive, tech start ups headed North to take over Seattle. This changed everything!
The key word here is colonization. It explains 99% of history (and prehistory) in North America. We’re a nation of wave after wave of people moving in and making a better life for themselves. The land was never really empty and the original people often suffered for it, but that’s just life. Because I’m a realist and don’t have a college degree, I was always ready to make sacrifices to be on the winning side.
Tacommee – check you Amazon history; the company has never been “headquartered” in California; Bezos chose Washington for access to talent and lack of a sales tax (https://www.historylink.org/File/23230), and then moved from Beacon Hill to SLU because that was where it could get office space fastest (from Vulcan), not because it was cheaper.
Microsoft is in Washington simply because Gates is in Washington, though Gates & other leaders have been open about how being not in California has helped with talent retention.
As for the engineering centers of the CA companies, that is a desire to follow the talent, not cost avoidance. Cost savings come from moving work to India, to Seattle.
You have to look at what else was happening while Californians and higher-wage Californians were moving north, and how local/state policies created the built environment we have now.
Until the 1950s, all cities and towns and most neighborhoods were built walkable.As a city’s population grew from 10,000 to 100,000 and 500,000, density and height spontaneously increased with it — that was the way to absorb the massive number of new households and jobs. It wasn’t just newcomers, but also children becoming adults and households getting smaller.
Zoning put an end to that, freezing 80% of cities at a low-density, car-dependent level that also banished retail to a few commercial islands. But older cities like Chicago and New York had already become big before the zoning stranglehold took hold.
Seattle wasn’t so lucky: it was still just 250,000 and had a small-town mindset, and had difficulty adjusting from its recent rural single-family past. Los Angeles was 1.5 million in 1940, and it adopted universal parking minimums, which led to the uniform medium density much of the city has now, and why its inner city doesn’t look like Manattan or have world-class transit anymore. All the other cities in the west coast, midwest, and south have similar patterns.
Seattle’s housing crisis started in 2003, when rents started rising faster than inflation or wages. What if Seattle had already been built up like Chicago by then, or had adopted Chicago’s lenient zoning in 2003? Then the vacancy rate wouldn’t have gone below a stable 5-10% to a cramped 3% or an emergency 1-2%. Then all those California newcomers and wealthier Californians would have found a looser housing market with less competition for each available unit. That would have made it harder for landlords/sellers to make price increases stick. That’s how Chicago and Dallas were able to avoid high price spikes for decades. Chicago did it with infill density; Dallas with sprawl and some medium density, but the key was: they let the housing inventory rise to match the population increases. That’s what Seattle hasn’t been doing since 2003, and is why prices are so high now.
The issue is partly more needing more of any kind of housing units anywhere, but it’s also of needing more units specifically in inner-city locations near frequent transit stops and walkable retail. That’s what the public wants more than what’s available: it’s visible in the price per square foot. It’s why Ballard and Capitol Hill are more expensive than Renton or Lynnwood, or than all but the highest-price boutique suburban locations (e.g., downtown Bellevue and the Spring District area, inner Kirkland near the water). But here’s the point: with looser zoning, the difference in price between walkers’ paradises and most other neighborhoods would be smaller, at best just a trivial amount. Then more people would be able to live in some walkable area with frequent transit somewhere, even if it’s not a prestigious neighborhood two blocks from the Space Needle. We need Greenwoods and Capitol Hills in Renton, Bellevue, Redmond, Federal Way, and Des Moines, but unfortunately there aren’t any, so people squeeze into the original ones and drive up the prices.
As for construction being maxed out in the 2010s, two issues.
One, those same people could have built buildings with more units near frequent transit stops rather than putting the same effort into unwalkable lower-density buildings in car-dependent areas. That would have allowed the same construction capacity to create more urbanism. But they were prohibited by zoning limitations, so they built what they were allowed to build in locations where they were allowed to build.
Two, more of the region’s past growth in the 2000s and 2010s could have been in Seattle and the inner suburbs instead of in the exurban periphery 30+ miles from downtown Seattle and downtown Bellevue. They could have leveraged the 2000s real-estate bubble money that was sloshing around looking for a market. And the 2010s boom money. Then we would have gotten a lot better built environment and much more walkability — like Chicago has now.
So partly we have to look at what the region’s total construction capacity can accomplish now, but we should also look back at missed opportunities over the past two decades and beyond, that could have led to a much better situation now.
tacomee, you often talk about how people don’t want to live in apartments next to freeways, or isolated at freeway exits. Like the cluster at Ash Way P&R. People don’t want to live there but they have to live somewhere, so they live where they can. Imagine that entire cluster had been built in near north Seattle (south of Greenlake), replacing single-family blocks. Then many of those people who would prefer to live in a more convenient environment could do so, and would have easy access to U-District station for most of their travel needs. Some of the people in those apartments want to live in Snohomish County; e.g., for family or job reasons. So those people could have lived in similar places in downtown Lynnwood or the Alderwood Mall area if those buildings had existed there, while the rest could have lived in Seattle or the Eastside or wherever would have been their first choice.
Mike Orr,
The reason things are the way they are is 2/3rds of Americans own their own house, or at pay a mortgage on one and much of the other 1/3 hopes to own a house in the future. Seattle, Chicago and NYC aren’t like the other 90% of America.
There hasn’t been a single major party candidate in a presidential race to ever say a single bad word about home ownership. Most people in this Country think a house with a white picket fence IS America. People save thousands and thousands of dollars for a down payment and 30 years of payments to own a house of their own.
I know that’s not your dream or your life… but you’re in a very small minority.
@tacomee
> Most people in this Country think a house with a white picket fence IS America.
And so what exactly? you can still get a single family house if you desire in most of the country and most cities. Why exactly would approving apartments and townhouses in Seattle stop that.
> Because I’m a realist and don’t have a college degree, I was always ready to make sacrifices to be on the winning side
And why exactly is upzoning Seattle so dangerous to you. I really don’t understand, you’re in Tacoma and keep saying about local zoning etc… but it doesn’t even affect you. Then you say some other xyz city should build the apartments and townhouses. Well why can’t the other xyz city be Seattle.
> I would argue that much of Seattle’s housing woes actually originate in California. There’s just been a steady stream of migration into Seattle by people, many who came from Cali, who had more money than the locals.
Sigh you almost get it but can’t actually put the dots together.
Californian cities relative to their job growth didn’t zone enough and therefore didn’t build enough housing. Seattle also had job growth and built some more housing though a bit less than their job growth.
And yes when other cities don’t build then people will move out to other cities. That doesn’t justify saying that a city shouldn’t build any housing at all.
“I would argue that much of Seattle’s housing woes actually originate in California. There’s just been a steady stream of migration into Seattle by people, many who came from Cali, who had more money than the locals.”
Seattle’s population growth and housing price increases can’t really be blamed on California. It is much more a function of the job market in Seattle.
Not all Californians are wealthy or can sell expensive homes. And if they did, they could migrate to lots of other places and pocket a bigger difference after buying a similar sized home.
Lots of those high paying jobs go to people from lots of other places. The ultimate truth is that Seattle is a fun and desirable place to live for people who are wealthier and more educated and innovative, and many employers can afford to offer higher salaries because most are innovative, intelligent, entrepreneurial people..
Trust me, if Seattle had an economy like Clarksville TN (also booming) full of low-skill jobs and tiny new 1000 sq ft boxy homes, housing costs would be a great deal lower.
Al. S
Well, if you have a low paying job and can swing buying a 1000 sq ft cracker box house… You’re in the money!!
I used to own a house like this in Tacoma. I loved living in it. I was a painter when I bought it and it served us well for a a lot of years. I only moved out of it because my Mrs. got a way better job. I sold it for 3X what I paid for it. Now it’s worth 5X that. Not that I bought it to make money, but I needed a hedge against inflation. Because if you’re a working class stiff like me, there’s no other path towards financial peace and retirement other than home ownership https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/M1228069804.
Before I bought the house in Tacoma I used to manage these apartments… back when they were run down affordable units. Last time I checked it was $1800 for a studio, plus $75 bucks for utilities.
https://www.apartments.com/st-johns-apartments-seattle-wa/edcp0qn/
> I used to own a house like this in Tacoma. I loved living in it. I was a painter when I bought it and it served us well for a a lot of years. I only moved out of it because my Mrs. got a way better job. I sold it for 3X what I paid for it. Now it’s worth 5X that. Not that I bought it to make money, but I needed a hedge against inflation. Because if you’re a working class stiff like me, there’s no other path towards financial peace and retirement other than home ownership
and so what does have to do with enforcing single family zoning through all cities throughout america? You have not really explained why exactly that single family zoning must be applied to every single city. There will still be hundreds millions of single family homes one can buy. Will building apartments and townhouses in seattle herald the apocalypse?
The flip side of Californians moving to Washington is almost as many Washingtonians move to California each year. So it’s not just an inflow of Californians, it’s a two-way exchange. Some of them move for college, like my dad did when he went to Stanford in the 1950s and then lived in San Jose for a few years, and then came back to Washington with a wife and kid.
WL,
Honestly, I support Houston style zoning in the entire State of Washington. If some REIT investment group wants to buy any property I’ve ever owned and tear it down and build apartments on it, I’m OK with that. I’d need to be paid for that however. I’d need money for next house and profit on my investment.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/4059-Latona-Ave-NE_Seattle_WA_98105_M28455-89662
Here’s a rough guess about how open zoning might work in Seattle. A builder could buy this house posted above. By the time you tear down the house and build a 4 plex, they’d need to sell for over $750,000 each. Can you afford that? Sure, the zoning is going to change in Seattle, but the price of housing? Nope, that’s staying sky high for foreseeable future.
Hey, I think anybody who makes less than $100,000 in greater Seattle should just leave for greener pastures in someplace they can afford, but that’s just my opinion. Stay if you want. But don’t count on zoning or some sort of government intervention to bail you out, because it’s not going to happen.
“I support Houston style zoning in the entire State of Washington.”
Let it be known that tacomee supports eliminating zoning in Seattle and the rest of the state, which is equivalent to upzoning to infinity. Thank you for your support for density. Now, why are you against Seattle’s upzoning changes and proposals, which are a subset of this?
@tacomee
> Here’s a rough guess about how open zoning might work in Seattle. A builder could buy this house posted above. By the time you tear down the house and build a 4 plex, they’d need to sell for over $750,000 each. Can you afford that? Sure, the zoning is going to change in Seattle, but the price of housing? Nope, that’s staying sky high for foreseeable future.
And how much does that one house currently cost? Probably around 1.3 million. it will still increase the amount of housing though. With your reasoning we would have never built single family houses either and left them as farms as well.
We literally see the end game of never building more housing, bay area with their 3 million dollar houses.
> Hey, I think anybody who makes less than $100,000 in greater Seattle should just leave for greener pastures in someplace they can afford, but that’s just my opinion. Stay if you want.
And sure that is your opinion.
> But don’t count on zoning or some sort of government intervention to bail you out, because it’s not going to happen.
Zoning is literally the government intervention that prevents more housing from being built.
That house is not a typical one that gets torn down. It is a nice house on a small lot. Here is the type of house that typically gets rebuilt: https://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Dashboard.aspx?ParcelNbr=2826049059. It is a modest house on a big lot. There are actually plenty of smaller houses but a lot of them have been torn down. The lot is 12,240 square feet. The limit in the neighborhood is 7,200. So while there are plenty of subdivisions in the neighborhood, that lot can’t be subdivided. Instead they would put up what is essentially a triplex. One (big) house, an ADU and a DADU. But unlike a typical triplex, it can’t be easily built. The rules are such that it becomes a very complicated building process. They typically sell all three units for about 2 million (combined). But there is only one “owner” — the other two units are either rented or condos. You could probably add twelve townhouses on the lot. But let’s assume only ten. If you sold them all for $250,000 then the gross would be about a half million higher. It is quite easily likely you could build them for that much (extra).
Would they sell them for $250,000? Of course not. But the point is that someone would make a profit selling them at that price. As more and more are built that is what the price moves down towards. Keep in mind, these are townhouses. Also keep in mind this isn’t Wallingford. It is the north end — a land without sidewalks, without signature parks, without much to offer except maybe good transit and Ethiopian food. With enough construction it seems quite reasonable to get a townhouse for 250 grand.
Small apartments — no taller than the houses — are even better value. Instead of ten houses you have a small (three-story) condo with thirty units. Sell each unit for $100,000 and you make a profit as long as it doesn’t cost a million dollars more to build the apartment. Sell each unit for $200,000 and you can spend several million (extra) dollars building it. Again, this isn’t what they would go for right now. But eventually the price approaches that.
To be clear, it isn’t just zoning. It is other very time consuming, often BS-laced regulations that slow down development. The city needs to do more than just adopt Spokane-style zoning. They need to work with developers and figure out how to go on a huge building spree in the area. We have treated developers like they are evil even though they are the only ones who will get us out of this mess. It is like being pissed off at farmers during a food crisis. Maybe if you just let them do their job we can build housing that is more affordable.
“By the time you tear down the house and build a 4 plex, they’d need to sell for over $750,000 each”
“And how much does that one house currently cost? Probably around 1.3 million.”
The house is listed at $995K. $750K for each 4-plex unit is just tacomee’s theoretical guess. What’s clear is that each unit would cost less than the single house (if it’s well maintained) or than replacing the single house with another single house (usually a McMansion) would cost. So even if each quarter unit costs $750K or $500K, it still costs less to the buyer. And the seller would get 4 x 750K = 3 million, or 4 x 500K = 2 million — much more than they would get for the single house. So density pays.
If the owner built 8 units instead of 4, each one would cost even less for the buyer, but the seller would make even more.
Mike Orr,
It would be impossible to build 8 units on that lot and still have 8 parking spaces…. and anybody who can afford a $750k condo certainly has at least one car.
https://rgprobuilders.com/cost-to-build-a-house-washington/
Here are the raw numbers for residential construction in Seattle. My professional guess on this lot would be 4 units, 1150 sq ft per unit and a price over $750k per unit. Because that segment of the market is still strong in Seattle, there’s no reason to build anything different. Sure, builders *could* build things in more affordable way, but why? I work for my profit, not anybody’s affordable housing. What if I told you that the builders like to get together over breakfast and discuss ways to keep their profits as high as possible? (and also housing prices as high as possible?) Believe it! I’ve crashed a couple of meetings…. https://www.mbaks.com
Things are certainly changing in the building industry right now with less restrictive zoning and of course I’m all for it! But the builders look at this way…
Less restricting zoning = more unrestricted profit.
Please notice that “affordable housing” is not part of the formula. And things change over the course of decades…. the next phase of building in Seattle is just starting and we’ll be dead before the City sees the full impact.
@tacommee
> Less restricting zoning = more unrestricted profit.
sigh yes of course it makes more profit. Because people want to live in houses. when you make swaths of single family homes it is also profit. I don’t see you ranting about that. What exactly do you think happened when farm land was zoned for single family houses.
It is also why upzoning and building apartments doesn’t cost money to the city, people can get mortgages and then pay the builder.
“Chicago has all of the opportunities in Seattle with housing prices a little higher than Minneapolis or Milwaukee.”
Chicago has mixed use buildings such as 875 North Michigan Avenue (formerly known as John Hancock Center), with huge numbers of offices, some restaurants, and some 700 condominiums.
This is the very type of mixed use building “Left Cosst Urbanists” have been advocating for as a solution to the housing crisis for decades, but suburb advocates keep insisting such things can’t work in the USA. So, west coast cities are stuck with vast areas of expensive single family housing.
@Glenn in Portland,
Of course housing in Chicago (city) is cheaper than in Seattle (city). Seattle has been one of the fastest growing cities in America over the last 30 years, whereas Chicago has been consistently losing population over the same period.
Housing gets real cheap real fast when a city is shrinking. But a shrinking population with the resultant cheap housing shouldn’t be taken as a sign of success. It actually indicates economic failure.
Now if you want to compare suburban Chicago area to the equivalent area surrounding Seattle the story gets a little murkier, but then you are really talking about suburbs and SFH’s.
The biggest reason Chicago has cheaper housing is because they build more housing. Here is a good rundown: https://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-way-to-affordable-housing/ (scroll down to “Chicago”).
“Between 2002 and 2008,” writes economist Ed Glaeser in Triumph of the City, “Chicago issued 68,000 housing permits . . . [while] Boston issued 8,500 housing permits. . . . Chicago issued more than three times as many housing permits as San Jose, California, a city that is almost as large and far less dense.”
And with a population density over 12,000 people per square mile, those gains aren’t single family homes in converted industrial areas.
Lazarus,
You’re absolutely right about shrinking economies and housing prices.
The tough part is none of this is controlled (or even influenced a great deal) by public policy. Companies and industries are also free to move around the Country just like people. Chicago already has a socialist mayor and Seattle and NYC both seem to on verge of it…. but does it really matter? Is big corporate America really calling the shots?
Chicago’s northern half is increasing population; it’s the southern half that’s shrinking and bringing the city total down. That’s due to deep-rooted segregation and disinvestment in the southern half. Ray mentioned it in the video.
@Lazarus, you obviously have not driven down Lake Shore Drive since you were a little boy. There is a five block thick solid strip of high rises nearly six miles long just west the Drive. It is easily ten times the size of South Lake Union. I expect that there are probably a million people living in that strip out of the total of nine-and-a-half million in the MSA.
Yes, there are also large areas of the city which are blighted, though less so than twenty years ago, but those areas were originally built in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries and are sliced up by the dozens of rail lines connecting Chicago to every part of the midwest.
@Glenn in Portland,
“…. with a population density over 12,000 people per square mile….”
It’s unclear what point you are trying to make with that statement as the relationship between supply and demand is not altered by such things as population density.
Additionally, Seattle’s population density is now above 9000 people per square mile. For what it’s worth.
And, if you want to look at urban density, then Seattle and Chicago are almost identical, differing by only about 100 people per square mile. Almost identical in urban density.
Na, as long as Chicago (city) continues its decades long pattern of shedding population there will continue to be downward pressure on housing prices in Chicago (city). And as long as Seattle (city) continues to grow there will be upward pressure on housing prices. That is just simple economics.
@tacomee,
“The tough part is none of this is controlled (or even influenced a great deal) by public policy.”
As long as Chicago (city) continues its decades long pattern of shedding population, Chicago will have downward pressure on housing prices. And as long as Seattle continues to grow at the rate it has been, there will be upward pressure on housing prices. That is just simple economics.
And the other little detail about supply and demand that people seem to be overlooking is that prices tend to react to an imbalance in supply and demand almost instantly, whereas supply reacts very slowly. This is particularly true of housing which has long lead times.
Yes, policy can have some influence on the supply side of the equation, but supply will be very slow to react. Policy on the supply side is an imperfect tool for attaining immediate price relief.
This is exactly why so many “progressive” politicians instead focus on things like rent control, rent caps, renters rights, etc. They basically give up on controlling prices directly via supply policy, and instead just focus on price. And of course this is bad policy.
Na, as long as Chicago (city) continues its decades long pattern of shedding population
Chicago proper grew in population grew in the last decade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago#Demographics). The overall metropolitan area has grown every decade since 1950 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_metropolitan_area).
By the way, this is in the link I referenced above. I don’t know why it is so hard to click on the link and read the information. You might learn a few things.
Don’t look at population, look at households. Many Midwest cities have much lower population but are still growing households due to falling household sizes. It is household formation, not raw population, that drives demand for housing stock.
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/cities-losing-population-could-still-be-gaining-households
“…. with a population density over 12,000 people per square mile….”
It’s unclear what point you are trying to make
OK, I’ll try and explain it to you. Chicago has added a lot of new homes where old density used to exist. This is different than “green field” development, like, say, Maryville. In Maryville they have added a lot of housing. The population has grown quite a bit in the last few years. But almost all of the housing is on land that used to farms or forests. In contrast, in Chicago itself, a lot of the new housing is on land that was urban before. It is like Tokyo. They replace relatively dense areas with even more dense areas. This is what is meant with the phrase “growth is concentrated in the densifying urban core” referenced above.
Yeah, good point AJ. I was going to mention that as well. Birth rates are down. This means smaller families in the same homes. An increasing number of households puts a lot more pressure on the housing market than larger families. Chicago has managed to deal with the increasing household demand by building a lot more places to live (as the article mentioned).
@Lazarus: You realize you can actually look up Chicago’s population?
Over the last 40 years, the population is relatively stable – dip in the 80s and flat for the 90s, 00s, 10s and 20s. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
@Matt,
Here are some facts:
Since 1950 the population of Chicago (city) has shrunk 25%. 25%!!
Since 1950 the population of Seattle has increased 65%. That is a big number!
Looking at it another way, Chicago now has about the same population that it had in 1920. 19 fricking 20! Whereas Seattle has never been so populace. We are at an all time high.
So if you apply supply and demand analysis to the two cities, which city do you think would have the higher prices? Hint: it ain’t the one that is contracting.
Na. Chicago is just another failing Midwest city. It isn’t as bad as Detroit, but it is slowly failing nonetheless.
And I actually prefer Detroit anyhow.
@Lazarus
City boundaries are arbitrary, and 1950 isn’t a meaningful benchmark for modern housing prices.
Downtown Chicago (the loop and areas near it) have absolutely exploded over the last decade or two. Easily something like 2-3x population since 2000. It feels much more lively than most of Seattle
“It’s unclear what point you are trying to make with that statement as the relationship between supply and demand is not altered by such things as population density.”
Tacomee has promoted the idea in the past that the only thing Seattle should build is single family housing. You don’t get to 12,000 per square mile with single family housing alone. Seattle already is full of single family houses. It can’t gain any more population by building more single family.
There’s only so much land within a desirable distance of employment. If single family housing is the only thing you build, you quickly run out of land in the desirable area.
Chicago has affordable housing because it has sufficient housing, and part of that sufficient housing is building options other than single family housing. This puts more housing in a desirable range of employment, shopping, medical care, other families, etc.
“Na, as long as Chicago (city) continues its decades long pattern of shedding population there will continue to be downward pressure on housing prices in Chicago (city). And as long as Seattle (city) continues to grow there will be upward pressure on housing prices. That is just simple economics.”
Only if Seattle doesn’t build enough housing to match the population growth. If it does, price rises will be minimal or zero. The reason we’re in this bind is Seattle didn’t build enough housing between 2003 and now (22 years!). In the fastest-growth period between 2012 and 2017, Seattle was building 9 units for every 12 added jobs. So a quarter of the new workers had to live in the suburbs and commute. That tight housing market is what caused rents and prices to spike so fast, which displaced people who had been living in Seattle to the suburbs too. And those new jobs aren’t the only added housing demand. There’s also children turning 18, couples getting divorced, parents having children, etc.
“Many Midwest cities have much lower population but are still growing households due to falling household sizes.”
Just like Pugetopolis and the rest of the country. When I was a kid in east Bellevue most of the neighbors had 2, 3, or 4 children. My next-door neighbor had 6 children. Mine was about the only family with 1 child.
Now it’s most common for couples to have 1 child or no children. Those are the people buying the houses that earlier had more children in them. And more single people are buying a house and living in it alone.
Chicago is one of the few things tacomee and I agree on. That’s what I want here: lots of walkable neighborhoods and most destinations around frequent transit stations. I’d like to see something like Chicago’s northern half between the Ship Canal and Greenlake, Ballard and UW. Where most buildings are 3-10 stories. And ubiquidous frequent transit. That would allow a lot of people to have that convenience, not just the richest 30% who have to squeeze into multifamily islands. I’ve long said Chicago is a model for what west coast cities should be like.
Chicago gives you 2/3 of New York’s and DC’s liveability and convenience at prices comparable to Seattle or sometimes less. Those are the only cities in the US that really approach European levels. LA doesn’t. San Francisco maybe does in the denser parts but it’s much more expensive than here. Other American cities are all worse, often much worse.
So of course I’ve thought a lot about moving to Chicago. I finally decided not to because of the very cold winters and hot summers and high humidity, and to not be far from my elderly relative whom I knew I’d have to help someday, and because everybody I’ve known long-term and and all the things I know about the area over the years are here. And people shouldn’t be forced to move to Chicago. It couldn’t fit a hundred million American pedestrians/urbanists in any case.
Chicago historical housing segregation (and it’s lingering present day effects) makes Seattle looks like Reston, Virginia. Spend an entire winter in Chicago (almost as long as Seattle ‘s rainy season) before packing your bags.
Chicago used to be known as the most segregated big city in America. It’s an uncomfortable truth — and not something that Ray would probably emphasize in a feel-good, time-limited video.
And having stood on a somewhat windy El platform at -10F, I don’t think I could handle the cold well enough to reside there.
“having stood on a somewhat windy El platform at -10F”
Did people see the header in one of the L platform clips? It was on a pole, a round panel with a button like an electric hand-dryer blower. I imagine you press the button and warm your hands at the panel for a minute or two. How common is this amenity? How well does it work to mitigate the windy -10F days?
It’s probably better now — but the El platforms had overhead heaters that would activate for a few minutes if you punched the adjacent button. Your forehead would warm to feel almost burning while your feet remained ice!
Inequality: Suppose there are 100 households. Half make $50K; half make $100K. There are 90 housing units. So clearly everybody making $100K will get a unit, and 80% of those making $50K, and the remaining 10 people making $50K won’t have shelter.
Now suppose there’s another group of 100 households. Everybody makes $70K, and there are 90 housing units. Again 10 people won’t be able to get a unit, but who it is will be based on something other than income. Maybe random, maybe who’s the quickest to apply, maybe sociological factors.
It would be best to have low inequality, and enough housing for everyone. And affordable healthcare and education. The US could achieve these things if it didn’t spend so much money and energy trying to avoid it, and if the top 5% hadn’t been extracting 95% of the national productivity wealth since the late 1970s, money that would have gone these things. It works in European countries.
One thing that I find interesting about Chicago is that the aerial rail line stations have been catalysts for neighborhood creation. It’s a case study at how rail transit doesn’t need to be in a subway to create a vibrant, walkable TOD neighborhood in the long run. And part of that is because it’s not a radically different elevation from the street.
Agreed. I point to Chicago and wonder why the 2nd downtown line cannot simply run elevated down 5th (or another avenue). Most other old subways have elevated sections in the periphery (NYC has a ton in Bronx and Queens), but Chicago is a bit unique that many of the preferred neighborhoods and the CBD have elevated rail and do just fine with the noise.
Because no elected official in recent Seattle history has been willing to say no to NIMBY neighborhood groups?
You think Katie Wilson would just plan a cheaper elevated line and just tell the naysayers to go pound sand in the presser? Her campaign literature is all political soft porn of unicorns and rainbows… can “Katie the Mean Girl” show up and take charge?
The reason Chicago has elevated rail in its core is almost entirely inertia. Most US cities tore down their elevated railroads and mass transit as fast as they could, often with disastrous consequences for transit riders. NYC is the obvious example – they promised to replace the 2nd avenue elevated with a subway like 80 years ago and it’s still not anywhere near done.
In Chicago, there were too many wealthy people riding the North Side Mainline to work in the Loop to tear it down, and not enough capacity in the replacement subways – though those subway projects did lead to the tear down (in the case of the west side main line) or deprioritization (in the case of the south side main line) of a significant amount of elevated lines. Eventually, the city stopped considering the removal of the downtown loop and is rightly proud of it now, though the CTA has been leaping between fiscal crises for the last few decades so time will tell what happens with it in the future.
Even in Vancouver, where elevated trains are both new and ubiquitous, I doubt they would’ve had the political will to do an elevated viaduct – meaning the current success of Vancouver as a transit city can mostly be chalked up to Canadian Pacific building a tunnel under downtown and then barely using it (only half kidding). For what it’s worth, I fully support elevated trains in downtown Seattle, and think anyone talking about blight from an El is a weirdo but it’s also like the OG NIMBY issue
AJ
If Seattle can’t build an elevated light rail line, it shouldn’t bother with building light rail. Because there isn’t money enough to tunnel.
My question is… did Seattle really want light rail in the first place? Because the City seems completely unwilling to compromise to get things done.
It would be very difficult to put anything more underground in Chicago. It’s already a huge tangle under there. In the early 1990s they had a huge project to disconnect the sewer lines from the storm drains so there weren’t so many sewer overflows. Just trying to work with pipe runs was a huge problem under there. Among other things, Lake Michigan isn’t that far below ground level, which makes the water table really high. You don’t have to dig down too far before you’re dealing with major water intrusion problems.
As illustrated a few years ago.
“The tough part is none of this is controlled (or even influenced a great deal) by public policy. Companies and industries are also free to move around the Country just like people. Chicago already has a socialist mayor and Seattle and NYC both seem to on verge of it…. but does it really matter?”
Density, walkability, and transit are not capitalist vs socialist issues. Both kinds of politicians can pursue goals leading to a walker’s paradise, and both can be nimby and us-vs-them. Seattle’s restrictive zoning is due to both Republican and Democratic nimbys at the local and state level. A socialist who pursues free fares and neglects frequency and transit-priority lanes as unhelpful as a capitalist who doesn’t pursue free fares and also neglects frequency and transit-priority lanes.
It doesn’t cost any money to upzone beyond a nominal amount to change the maps and explain the system to people. So it can be done when the city has a surplus or a deficit. It increases personal freedom, because it gives landowners more flexibility in what they can build, and allows them to build what buyers and renters want, rather than being limited by us-vs-them neighbors who don’t want change in other people’s lots.
Mike Orr,
I feel like “zoning” is like a Seahawks 96 yard “Hail Mary” pass with 00:00 left on the clock. I’m all for zoning changes, but understand that housing is a question of supply and demand and the profit of the landlords and builders.
We don’t live in the old USSR were the government could “fix” everybody’s wages at 70K and force the construction industry to build thousands of high-rise units everybody is forced to live in.
Currently I think much of the construction industry is focused on building for high income folks… because that’s where the money is. Who can blame them?
Nobody is talking about building soviet commie blocks other than really fringe of fringe tankies, although you’d benefit from actually reading books on the USSR and Soviet Housing instead of sounding like your reading off a 1950s red scare pamphlet. And this is coming from someone who isn’t a tankie like at all and has talked to people who grew up in Eastern Europe during the USSR. The topic of Soviet Housing is more complicated and nuanced than your implying here with your strawman of an argument.
If you serioislu believe density is somehow some government controlling plot, then that’s really on you for not going to a library to read up on the topic as to what urban planning is. All it does is question your credibility as a reliable narrator for the opinion your espousing.
Zach B,
I said nothing about density. It’s quite possible build dense housing in the US, look at NYC or Boston. What I said is builders build for profit and focus on projects that bring in the most money.
Seattle’s construction industry is currently focused on projects for upper income residents. As long as the out of town money’d crowd keeps moving in, it’s just hard for locals to keep up.
Looking at the high number of units built over the past 20 years, and Seattle certainly is one of top cities for new residential construction, are you sure zoning played ant role at all? I imagine can’t higher income people not moving to Seattle. And I certainly can’t see the construction industry wanting to build too many units to cut their high profit margins or even lower profit “affordable” housing.
If you feel like the deck is stacked against you… it is. Everything in America has been stacked for homeowners since WW2. Maybe some posters on this blog could explore some sort of co-op private development with a shared building? I’m not sure how to get around the bad Washington State condo laws, but now it the time if there ever was.
I don’t know…. maybe contact Marty Campbell to start for building co-op housing in Parkland or better yet, The Lincoln District? Silong Chhun is running for office (I’m guessing he doesn’t win, but he should!) so he’s a little busy now, but win or lose, he’s be interested in helping with a co-op project.
I love any community DIY project!
“If you feel like the deck is stacked against you… it is”
Never said that, so please don’t put words in my mouth to justify your cynical takes. I’m happy with my life and where its going. And unlike you,, I want people to live here because they make Seattle and Tacoma better compared to someone who’ll complain and whine about transplants moving here till the cows come home. I miss some things about old Tacoma, but I sure as heck don’t miss everything about old Tacoma either. It’s a much nicer place than it was in the 90s/00s.
My parents were both transplants, both came up here for better economic opportunities and settled into a home in Tacoma and have lived here for multiple decades building a community for themselves. They both have always been welcoming to new neighbors who move into the neighborhood because they benefit from them being there than not. Have they had problem neighbors, sure but we all do from time to time.
“There is a five block thick solid strip of high rises nearly six miles long just west of [Lake Shore Drive in Chicago].”
And Madison Park got one highrise and the zoning was quickly tightened to prevent any more.