A plain, one-story, 1890s wood house of little distinction, barely large enough for a couple and their two children in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, now brings daily offers of $1 million to its owners. It is not for sale. But enormous wealth accumulation in the once-affordable city has opened up a growing gulf between the tech class—whose high earners can spend $1 million on an 1890s box—and middle- and lower-class earners, who are living in the same economy of stagnant wages as the rest of America.
A recent McKinsey report on Seattle homelessness found that the supply of housing for those earning around the median income had halved just since 2011. Bill Rumpf, the president of affordable-housing developer Mercy Housing Northwest, describes the low-end rental market as “brutal,” with many people just a health crisis or costly car repair away from eviction.
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