Seattle is not a city for the poor

For a city with leaders who often decry how expensive it is to live in Seattle, they sure do like taxing us, don’t they? And the residents directly impacted don’t seem to care either. As KING 5 points out, many of us are about to pay $250 more a year over the next three years after voters passed sales increases for Metro buses and property tax increases for preschool education. That, on top of the tax hike for parks.

But at the same time, Mayor Ed Murray wants it to be cheaper to live in Seattle. The entire City Council seems to be making a push for housing affordability.

Yet, residents (rich and poor) keep getting taxed higher and higher. Proposals keep getting pushed to raise taxes on business (from parking taxes to linkage fees and everything in between). And more taxes are coming. Murray recently said, “I think it’s important to remember that Seattle[…] does not have one of the highest tax burdens.” In other words, stop complaining, it’s not that bad, and expect more to come.

Here’s something I’d like folks to ponder, particularly progressives who want to live in their version of a utopian city: What if Seattle isn’t meant to be a city for the poor or lower middle class? Because, despite the talking points of fighting for the average Joe and Jane, the city that Seattle truly wants is not a city the poor can afford. And that’s unfortunate. I want a city that is good for everyone.

The city wants you out of your car (they’ll force it) and onto bikes (especially the Pronto bike share bikes, a company our current SDOT Director Scott Kubly used to work for,) or Metro. The city will force businesses to pay employees more than they’re actually worth in the market, with this ludicrous notion that the more you pay the employee, the more they’re likely to spend (something that the proponents say but quickly retreat from when you use their logic and ask ‘why not pay employees $100 an hour’). The city wants their community centers to offer ‘free’ yoga and pottery lessons.

These ‘wants’ all have costs and consequences — intended and unintended.

You make it harder to drive in the city, then people from outside of the city will not want to come here to spend their dollars on our restaurants, museums, concert venues and other great stores. That leads to less city revenue to pay for the yoga and pottery lessons. You force businesses to pay employees more than they’re worth, you’ll get the most vulnerable employees (those with the least skills and education) fired or laid off to be replaced by the least vulnerable (those with the most skills and education). And even with the city’s housing affordability plan (they’re still coming up with it but it will focus primarily on taxing the rich and businesses), people without a job won’t be able to live here.

The way it is now, the city is relying on primarily upper middle class and those oft-vilified One Percenters) to fund these progressive ideas — and even though the theory is that all these policies will help make Seattle more livable, costs continue to increase. And their plan is to continue to rely on the wealthier residents to fund everything in this city without keeping their costs under control. That’s not a very good plan. You can’t guarantee that the One Percenters and businesses will forever stay in the city. What happens if they leave? What happens if the tech industry changes for the worse? Sure, we’ll always have Bill and Melinda Gates (maybe some city leaders will ask them to fight unimportant issues like HIV and malaria so we can have some free yoga lessons in community centers no one will attend) but they can’t handle the burden alone.

Seattle leaders have successfully created a city that is not friendly to the poor and lower middle class – as much as they wish it could be. I’d argue for course correction, but the people keep voting the same type of folks into office who rely on inconsistent means for our growth. It sure worked for Detroit.