Crosscut has an interesting story about new high-rises in Seattle.

Consider: there are currently 13 high-rise apartment or condo buildings of at least 24 stories in development or planning in the downtown area. The average is 39 stories. Another 24 high-rises are in the proposal pipeline, according to city and industry reports.

Not all the proposed towers will be built, of course, but those that are “launched” will represent a shift in downtown housing that is unprecedented not only in size but also in socioeconomics. Like 4/C, many are being “amenitized” for an upscale market. To be profitable, they will need rents of around fifty percent above the city average, according to several industry estimates.

This is not a bad thing for affordable housing in the city. California's Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) published a brief last week that recommended that California encourage more private housing development as a way to make housing more affordable. They note that a lack of housing supply increases prices and rents.

Further, new market-rate housing, although it is "typically targeted at higher-income households," actually increases the supply of housing available for lower-income households. This occurs because

New housing generally becomes less desirable as it ages and, as a result, becomes less expensive over time. Market-rate housing constructed now will therefore add to a community’s stock of lower-cost housing in the future as these new homes age and become more affordable. . . .

 

Housing that likely was considered “luxury” when first built declined to the middle of the housing market within 25 years.

Interestingly, the LAO finds that displacement (which occurs when an area's overall population increases but the population of low-income households decreases, for example) actually declines with more private development:

. . . displacement was more than twice as likely in low-income census tracts with little market-rate housing construction (bottom fifth of all tracts) than in low-income census tracts with high construction levels (top fifth of all tracts).

Moreover, the LAO finds that "that market-rate housing construction appears to be associated with less displacement regardless of a community’s inclusionary housing policies." (Inclusionary housing policies are those in which "most new market-rate construction is paired with construction of new affordable housing.")

Meanwhile, the state Senate has passed 2SSB 6239, which would allow cities and counties to adopt property tax exemption programs

to preserve affordable housing that meets health and quality standards for very low-income households at risk of displacement or that cannot afford market-rate housing.

It was requested by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who, as PubliCola notes,

has a goal of creating 20,000 affordable units in the next decade; 6,000 are supposed to come from so-called grand bargain between housing advocates and developers to give developers an upzone in exchange for a percentage of guaranteed affordable units. The housing levy, which the mayor has proposed doubling this year, is supposed to create another 2,100. Murray’s legislation in Olympia, the city says, will create about 3,000 units.

The spate of new luxury development in Seattle will help with that goal.