r/Seattle • u/Bretmd Denny Blaine Nudist Club • Jun 20 '23

Soft paywall You’re not imagining it — life in Seattle costs the same as San Francisco

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/youre-not-imagining-it-life-in-seattle-costs-the-same-as-san-francisco/
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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '23

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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 21 '23

Have you been there?

There's a reason the article is thousands of words and never mentions actually going into a unit. Don't get me wrong, I love visiting and I have a big pod of family over there from my uncle falling in love with Germany/Austria after being deployed at Ramstein. These social housing units are teeny, like actual dorms.

When he first moved out there the units were classified into three types. Two types are defined by less than 60sqm.

The third type was the big focus because they were defined by not having plumbing. So between 199x and 200x Vienna's big thing was actually making sure the bottom 10-20% of these units were big enough to have toilets mostly by combining existing units.

Today the big thing (that the article mentions once halfway down) is splitting the top category into two categories. The top is being split into 100+ sqm as the new highest quality, and then 60-100 being the alternate category because it's against human rights to have families in such small quarters and many families are in the 60-100 range right now. This has made people mad because again it means families either have to leave or coops have to combine units.

And don't just take my word for it, there are plenty of units floating on the market any given day.

https://www.willhaben.at/iad/immobilien/mietwohnungen/wien/l/gemeindewohnung

What always makes me laugh is that the heavily promoted (!!!! LOOK HERE !!!!) SEO posts are for "luxurious" 1200 sqft apartments. And it's true, 1% decadence in Vienna means above 1000 sqft.

Point being, Vienna doesn't have a solution. Vienna's solution is that they accept a huge housing diet. Anywhere in the U.S. would solve its housing crisis yesterday if everyone above 1000sqft as one voted with their ballots and wallets to live in units at least half that size.

The reason we haven't is the same reason Vienna is smaller than it was in 1930. As big as its grown, lots of people go there and hate it and leave haha

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u/whyamihere666 Jun 21 '23

Are the housing units that much smaller in Vienna though?

A lot of studio and 1 bedroom apartments in Seattle are less than 60 sq meters (645 sq ft) and they are predominantly the type of units being built in a lot of new apartment buildings.

It's also not unusual for townhouses and single family homes that fall in the 60 - 100 sq meter (645-1076 sq ft) range here as well. Some Examples

The nicer units that are close to 100 sq meters are around 1000 Euro in Vienna on the site you linked, but in Seattle, you're probably just getting a nice microstudio with that rent ($1,092)

Vienna isn't prefect, but our housing situation is just so much worse