Development and construction is a job, and people have to be paid to do it. A common profit margin for people in the construction industry is 15-20% on labor and materials. And the value of those construction jobs across the industry is significant–2.8 billion dollars for the local economy last year. We want to be a city that has a place for blue-collar tradespeople to live and work.
Polling shows that people support more housing broadly. A supermajority of people in Washington want more housing in their neighborhoods. Seattlites, by a two-to-one ratio, would allow four to six story buildings for social housing in every neighborhood. A supermajority also wants lots more housing in single family neighborhoods.
Nearly everyone currently living in Seattle lives in a home built by a developer who made some money on their home.
Grouping housing and services together in a centralized hub results in far less harm to the environment than spreading them out into rural or suburban areas where additional roads and strip malls must be built. These car-dependent communities result in far more carbon emissions, toxic run-off from these roads into our streams and air pollution than more densely populated cities.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes that density usually leads to lower emissions. This map makes it clear how much more harmful spread out development is.
The Clean Water Council notes that: "Sprawl increases air pollution, which mixes with rain to become water pollution. In addition, urban activities create water pollution directly, through land run-off of construction site erosion, fuel spills, oil leaks, paint spills, lawn chemicals, pet wastes, etc. Sprawled, low-density development produces more than its share of this runoff. [See Non-Point Pollution] In addition, more water is consumed for lawn watering and other landscape activities, straining local water supply systems."
They also note that this increases driving, air pollution, loss of farmland, loss of wildlife habitat, and increased energy consumption.
It's worth noting that low density cities use WAY more concrete per person than high density cities. Concrete is by itself noxious, but it also makes land impervious and drastically increases runoff.
Sprawl is a major cause of the problems facing orcas. By destroying forests and salmon habitat, orcas have less food to eat. Runoff from cars pollutes the water, killing salmon and harming orcas. Dense urban housing means fewer trees are cut down and more salmon habitat is protected. Walkable neighborhoods mean less car trips, and less pollutants in the streams salmon depend on. Building walkable neighborhoods for more people to live in is not only friendly for orca, it is good for all the animals in our ecosystem.
Single-family detached houses are the most expensive category of housing. Other types of homes available for ownership like townhouses, condos and backyard cottages are hundreds of thousands of dollars less
“The median single-family home in Seattle sold for about $927,000, up 12%.…The median Seattle condo sold for $558,000… Seattle condo data includes condos in multifamily buildings and an increasing number of backyard cottages sold as condos.
Skepticism about new housing supply affecting housing prices can be addressed via this study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4629628
Pew reports that starting in 2009, Minneapolis enacted a series of policy changes that reduced and then eliminated minimum parking requirements, allowed construction of accessory dwelling units, and lowered minimum lot size requirements in residential zones, all with the goal of encouraging the construction of more housing. These changes culminated in Minneapolis 2040, a comprehensive plan that took effect in 2020 and codified the city’s commitment to expanding its housing supply, especially near commerce and transit. Minneapolis’ success in building new apartments has enabled the city to substantially add to its housing supply and keep rent growth low. From 2017 to 2022, Minneapolis increased its housing stock by 12% while rents grew by just 1%. Over the same period, the rest of Minnesota added only 4% to its housing stock while rents went up by 14%. Minneapolis is now has some of the most affordable rental prices of any big city in the country.
Austin built a ton of housing and finally caught up with and outpaced demand. Now it's prices are "collapsing."
The same article as #1 has a nice graph of what happened when Auckland legalized more housing and built faster. It stabilized rents while nearby cities continued their upward trajectory. Here is the academic research.
The ten metros that built the most homes per capita are almost all notable for their affordability.
The ten metros with the worst price to income ratios are almost all known for being terribly expensive and having a lot of homelessness.