The real estate industry in the north Seattle suburban area is putting on an intensive propaganda campaign, including supporting appropriately-minded political candidates. The propaganda campaign promotes the idea that single family housing must be replaced by high density housing because of the coming light rail transit line. The propaganda campaign is even convincing some of the “environmental community” that we can’t have mass transit without driving people out of their homes to provide high density housing. Anyone who opposes them is called environmentally unfriendly and against the good of the people. Don’t be taken by the propaganda.
We are witnessing the social and economic engineering methods of “white flight” in the ’50s. It wasn’t really “white flight, ” it was chasing white folks to the developing suburbs in order to make money three times. Yes three times.
- The real estate industry devalued people’s two-flats and bungalows with “they’re coming, you must sell now,” preying largely on first generation immigrants or their second generation children who didn’t realize that nobody was coming if they didn’t sell. That flooded the market and prices dropped to the fire sale level, buildings then to be sold to slumlords for a good commission.
- Those fleeing were urged to buy tract houses in a nice “safe” suburb, for a good commission.
- A generation later, the real estate industry came back to the neighborhood that they gutted, gentrifying for even bigger commission. In the process, banking made a lot of money too. Folks were forced, or perhaps better described as scared out of what they owned, using the inadequate buyout cash they received as a down payment on a suburban mortgage.
The banks cashed in big again on gentrification loans and mortgages on the new multi-million dollar properties.
I was in grade school, but I saw all of this in action and, since I seem to have been condemned to be analytical all of my life, I figured out what was going on. Decades later, I found that my assessment was not incorrect. We were forced from our home by “white flight.” We were renting. Relatives owned the property, but the effect was the same (including their move to the suburbs). My parents couldn’t find a place they could afford to rent in Chicago. They were turned away from housing they could afford because This property is for black people. You shouldn’t be here. You need to go to the suburbs and buy a house.
I watched the Chicago west side housing projects being built as a swath of housing and businesses was wiped out for the Congress Street (now Eisenhower) expressway. Even more was wiped out for the projects being built for those displaced by the expressway. I still remember wondering, if they are tearing down all of the small shops that had the owner’s apartment on the second floor, and building these big apartment buildings, where do the people in the apartment buildings work now and where do they go to buy what they need? It seems, that I was watching the creation of “the projects” and what would become known as the ghetto. There was a lot of money made in tearing down two-flats, bungalows, and shop/apartment buildings and constructing projects.
We are seeing this in action now, but instead of “they’re coming,” it’s “transit is coming.” “Everybody knows” that transit doesn’t work without density. “Everybody knows” is a propaganda statement. If “everybody knows,” it must be true and those who do not know must be deficient.
Let’s have a look at people who don’t know that transit doesn’t work near single family housing:
Western Springs IL
Hinsdale IL
La Grange IL
Brookfield IL
Evanston IL
Montrose (Chicago IL)
Oak Park IL
Each is on a commuter rail line or a metro (heavy rail transit) line. Unlike the limited service in the Seattle area, the lines served by commuter rail have 50-100 trains per day. The lines served by heavy rail have trains every 6-15 minutes. The folks in the pictures who are living in single family houses just don’t realize that they are contributing to the failure of transit. Oh wait. The transit system depicted in each picture has been operating for 125 – 150 years.
There are no Park & Ride lots in these pictures. Most folks walk or take a connecting bus. There is some parking along some of the streets, but it is not extensive. The bus service, particularly within Chicago, is arranged in a way that a walk to a bus is generally no more than one-half mile.
Downtown, walking distance for most commuters is up to a mile, but there is a lot of bus transit available in the downtown area as well. People actually walk to and from transit, even in Chicago winters (which would be frightening for anyone who has never lived outside of western Washington).
These low density areas along transit and commuter rail lines have survived without the recently available transit on demand service which makes the current single family zoning in the suburban area north of Seattle Washington even more viable.
The propaganda states that upzoning must occur in order to have effective transit. Yet, a quick inventory of parking lots in Shoreline shows that there are 125 acres, the equivalent of about 735 residential lots, dedicated to the part-time storage of automobiles, also known as parking. Of the potential uses for land, merely paving for parking is the least constructive. That land could have high density housing built above parking. One must ask why developers have no interest in this land.
Upzoning comes not only with displacing families with a good chance of substantially lowering their standard of living. It involves substantial destruction. While we scour the earth for minerals and increase the destruction related to mining, buildings full of copper wiring, copper pipe, iron pipe, and other re-usable items are merely compacted into trucks and taken to a landfill. Salvage is considered to be too costly by the folks who stand to make substantial profits on building high density housing.
Most of the houses subject to upzoning were built 60 or more years ago. There aren’t many trees left like the ones that were the source of the lumber in these houses. The wood used for construction in that era grew slowly in forests. It is more dense and stronger than the quickly grown trees used for today’s lumber. Like the metal items, the lumber is ground, compacted, and hauled to a landfill. Although much of the wood involved could not be re-used for building construction, it could be re-milled into material for furniture and cabinetry.
The methods of “white flight” and “density for transit” propaganda are similar. Instead of “they’re coming, you have to leave before it’s too late,” it’s “Transit is coming. We need it to relieve congestion. We can’t have it without density, so we must change the zoning to allow higher density.”
The effect is similar. “White flight” involved coercing owners to sell and move to the suburbs. This new flavor of propaganda convinces cities to rezone for density, which creates an immense jump in prices, which the tax assessor considers to be value. When the value increases, the tax increases, whether or not the owner wants to sell the property to realize the “value.” Owners can no longer afford the taxes and are forced to sell to the developers who were the cause of the increased price and tax. Instead of fleeing to the new suburbs, today’s victims will be displaced with few alternatives.
Thos
-30-
These comments are spot on IMO