What would happen if Amazon brought 50,000 workers to your city? Ask Seattle

[ehrnst]

Over the past decade, Amazon and founder Jeffrey P. Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, have added new products and business units at a breakneck speed and expected public partners to keep pace.

In Seattle, that meant rehabbing an area of more than 350 acres at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars in ongoing transportation and infrastructure upgrades expanding public transit, road networks, parks and utilities.
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It also put new strains on housing. Seattle is one of the most expensive places in the United States to live, forcing lower-income residents to move to far-off suburbs. The city and surrounding King County declared a state of emergency in 2015 over homelessness.

Since then, the problem has worsened. Rents in King County have more than doubled in the past 20 years and gone up 65 percent since 2009. Seattle spends more than $60 million annually to address homelessness, up from $39 million four years ago.

“We started seeing apartment listings that would say, ‘No deposit needed and priority for Amazon, Microsoft and Google employees,’?” said Rachael Myers, executive director of the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, a Seattle-based advocacy group. She said the area is “in the midst of the greatest affordable-housing and homelessness crisis that our state has ever seen.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/what-would-happen-if-amazon-brought-50000-workers-to-your-city-ask-seattle/2017/10/19/1d383c78-b359-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html?utm_term=.e4da15bd7cd3

[Luciferous]

1. Memphis officials are trying for this. FedEx is headquartered here, but I doubt

they'll get Amazon since they want a more progressive area. I bet it will go to Atlanta or Austin, and they can have it. I'm not interested in the mess this would bring.

[msongs]

11. "more progressive" is willing to screw taxpayers and give the $$ to corporations like amazon nt

[Luciferous]

15. Well Memphis seems to be fine with that part, but I don't think they fit the rest of the criteria.

Housing is cheap, if you want to live in a high crime area with terrible schools. The suburbs that do have good schools are very expensive considering the average income. I also don't think we have the infrastructure for such a large influx of people.

[DinahMoeHum]

2. The places angling for Amazon to land there. . .

. . .are giving prostitution a bad name.

Like animals in heat, the cities/states are laying on their backs with one leg in the air and saying "pick me I'm clean".

[The Blue Flower]

3. I was a renter in Seattle and worked with the homeless

Not only have rents and the number of homeless exploded, but neighborhoods and community have been destroyed. Developers are buying property at astronomical cost, shutting working families out of the market, and tearing down single-family homes to put up expensive and poorly constructed apartments and townhomes. I lived in the neighborhood of Ballard, just north of downtown Seattle. When I started volunteering at the Food Bank in 2002, about 300 people a week come through in need of groceries and services. Now the weekly number is over 1,300. Traffic congestion rivals LA, where I've also lived. I've relocated to Tallahassee, FL because it's affordable, much friendlier, progressive, and still green.

Whatever city gets Amazon's new hq should learn from Seattle's lessons. To make room for all the new workers, you have to make sure your citizens are able to stay in their homes. The price of exploding homelessness and loss of community is enormous in many respects.

[mrs_p]

6. Former Ballard resident here too

We moved to West Seattle in 2001 after one of those four story apartments went up. People could look directly into our 2 story apartment.

We since moved out of Seattle (which we still consider home) and know we will never afford to go back.

[csziggy]

10. Welcome to Tallahassee!

But frankly it is not as green as it used to be - the comprehensive plan that was supposed to restrict urban spread was dumped when St. Joe Paper Company decided to sell off much of their forest area and opened the southeast area outside Capital Circle for development. Some of that development spread across the Panhandle to Panama City and only stopped when it outran the market.

Now a plantation to the northeast of Capital Circle is reviving their plans which were shelved in 2009 when the housing market crashed. Before that, the plantation land to the north of us (we're well out northeast of town) which had been languishing in an estate was opened when the county tried to claim a road right of way they had been promised in the early 1980s. Instead of being managed as a whole, it is now chopped into 10 - 15 acre plots with little land management happening.

I've lived in Leon County since 1972 and watched them begin building permitting as a reaction to the Miccosukee Land Co-op which was started by hippies and they began building all kinds of oddball structures. In response the hippies became activists for protecting the local environment and were successful for years. Now some of the most active people have aged out or moved on but the community is still strong.

PM me if you want to know more about Tallahassee!

[Cicada]

4. Amazon should be required to build 100,000 apartments near their site

For their workers and workers in new businesses which will spring up around Amazon. The city should change zoning to make those apartments economically feasible and reasonably affordable.

The city should tax empty land as if residences were built on the land to provide incentives to housing creation.

We have a housing affordability crisis but we can fix it with changes in land regulation.

[crazycatlady]

5. Actually I think Amazon would be best for cities in decline that are losing population

One city I saw that made a bid for it was Atlantic City. With the decline of the casinos there, Amazon could be good.

[Yavin4]

12. Detroit, MI, or even better, Flynt, MI would be ideal

The state would bend over backwards to clean the water. Plenty ot top universities in the area. Cost of living is low. Population is dwindling so plenty of space for development of new housing.

[Act_of_Reparation]

13. That's not a bad idea.

The only problem I can think of is Amazon might have trouble convincing its people to relocate to Michigan.

[Yavin4]

14. The pitch is that their employees can buy houses dirt cheap and reap the rapid increase in value

Also, you have a lot of top public colleges and universities in the area to recruit from.

[JustAnotherGen]

7. No way NJ gets it but . . .

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2017/02/a_look_at_njs_struggling_foreclosure_market_in_19.html

We have a lot of empty homes here.

I don't know how big of an impact it would be - I've been head hunted by Amazon. Most of my peers have been too (not in the market for Seattle though). It would be more of a crisis for companies already here with their employees jumping ship than a housing a crisis.

If they came here? I would jump on it. Bayonne yes - Atlantic city - no. Too far away.

[mythology]

8. I'm not sure why a city spending on infrastructure and parks is bad

But the rest isn't really a result of Amazon by itself. It's a symptom of our increased economic disparity. Boston has the same problems without Amazon.

[Luz]

9. San Antonio told them hell no! The cost to the city

was not worth it.