benmaritz
@benmaritz
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Affordable housing developer in Seattle, Tacoma and Portland. Dad, volunteer board member, aspiring pillar of the community
Seattle, WA
Joined December 2008
Only solution here is to build lots more housing -- which will require some real tradeoffs. Not just on zoning but also on policies that will reduce the cost of housing. Lowering energy codes, allowing landlords to collect rents more easily... are we ready?
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I believe it's this middle third of voters that are feeling the pain of the housing crisis, and they who are most supportive of huge Affordable Housing levies, possibly because they think it will help them.
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Social Housing will help them, but even optimists like me know that there will be at most a few hundred units a year of this.
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Above that, there are still a lot of people, about 1/3 of the city from 80-200% AMI, who have very few programs supporting them. Because affordable housing is income-restricted, it doesn't help them much.
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Then you get the 15% who re 30-60% AMI, the targets for classic "Affordable Housing". We have build a ton of this -- to the point where there is vacancy and real distress among operators. Our budget for this category has increased massively - from $50m in 2021 to $340 in 2026
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After that, people are pretty well spread out. There is about 15% of people who are extremely low income, earning below minimum wage. They are either homeless, or living in Permanent Supportive Housing. We have done a decent job of building PSH, but still not enough
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The first thing that pops out is that you have a massively skewed distribution. a full 3rd of the city earns 2x the median income. These are homeowners mostly, who benefit from the status quo as housing scarcity drives up asset value
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Why can't you "Affordable" your way to housing affordability? This chart explains it.
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A lot of b2b SaaS companies are cooked. Literally every weekend I vibe code a new feature on our internal app that removes the need for a big 3rd party solution. This weekend is an app for capturing photos from renovation projects and property walks (so long, CompanyCam and
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In Seattle, the most expensive city in the world for eating out, a mixed plate lunch with Diet Coke is $35 tax and tip included. The restaurant is getting brisk traffic at 2pm on Saturday.
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Today I wanted to build a card view for the internal task management system that we have been using. My staff tells me that they like that from Microsoft planner, so I’m having Claude copy it.
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I guess this is what the kids are doing but man it’s game changing. Virtual Machine on the cloud running Claude Code, access via Termius and tmux from your phone. Fully integrated CI/CD thru GitHub. New idea while in line at brunch? Code, test and deploy it before you are seated.
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For anyone concerned about affordability in Seattle don’t worry the B&O tax increase we just passed will fix it. (Revenue tax on all businesses)
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based based based
"As Utah’s housing crisis deepens, Gov. Spencer Cox (R) is floating a bold solution: take zoning power away from cities & use state authority to allow higher-density housing." “I don’t want to go the preemption route, but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t on the table.”
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Yep. And I do think we will get the AI jobs. All the people leaving MS and Amazon will be launching AI startups.
3) In Seattle, Essex said the market is "healthy" but "coming in softer." Noted Seattle lacked the AI job base of Bay Area. But Essex said they're "optimistic" as housing supply is slated to drop off nearly 40% next year.
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…and I got cut off because I hit my usage limit. Will finish it tomorrow.
one of my favorite things about vibe coding is that the AI always projects like 1-2 months to implement any new feature. We are doing this tonight.
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one of my favorite things about vibe coding is that the AI always projects like 1-2 months to implement any new feature. We are doing this tonight.
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one of my favorite things about vibe coding is that the AI always projects like 1-2 months to implement any new feature. We are doing this tonight.
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Seattle when?
Putting out sidewalk tables and chairs for your business is easy: fill out a free form, learn the rules like keeping sidewalks accessible, and you’re good to go. No permit or free required. We want San Francisco’s businesses to bring our streets to life—just follow a few simple
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