‘My blood pressure went through the roof’: Gee reacts to $2.2B wealth exodus from King County

A recent report found that King County lost more than 68,000 taxpayers in 2023, which resulted in a net loss of $2.2 billion in adjusted gross income.

Many of the wealthy residents in King County have reportedly moved to either Snohomish or Pierce Counties due to the cheaper housing costs.

Gee Scott, co-host of “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio, cited the catchy headline in a Puget Sound Business Journal article, “Wealthy King County residents leave with billions as lower-income newcomers arrive,” which caught his attention, but didn’t explain the whole problem.

“My blood pressure went through the roof when I saw this, and I said, ‘Here we go,’ because this has been the narrative,” Gee said. “But then I dug into it. I get what they did with the headline, but here’s what I want to remind y’all of: Do you remember gentrification? Where folks on the block couldn’t afford the property taxes anymore. So a whole bunch of people in the Central District had to go away.

“They had to move to Kent, Auburn, or Tacoma, because people couldn’t afford to stay in the Central District,” he continued. “It was 97% Black in the 70s, now it’s less than 10%. It happened, so here we are today, there are a lot of people being priced out of King County, and they’re going to Pierce or Snohomish County.”

What the wealth exodus could mean for housing prices in Pierce and Snohomish counties

Ursula noted that the median home price in King County is nearly $860,000, while in Pierce County, it’s about $580,000. She wondered what would happen to the housing prices in both Pierce and Snohomish counties with the mass wealth exodus heading anywhere but King County.

“Well, they’ll go up. I just don’t know about necessarily right now,” Gee said. “This happened in 2022 and 2023, and I can tell you that in Pierce County, houses, as far as going up in price, have trickled. They have not gone up as fast as many think. The story needs to be, and I’m glad that they talked about the layoffs [in the article]. We talked about 1,400 people from Meta being laid off, and what this is going to mean.

“Maybe prices go up, but the story is this: We will see what is going to happen over the next two to three years,” he continued. “People talking about property taxes, income tax, all that stuff for the rich, the millionaires, and all those things. If we continue losing jobs in this way, then the landscape of how Seattle looks is going to be different.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.