A changing Seattle, and not for the better

"Worst time for gasoline prices to be soaring," bellows one headline. "Empty wallet? Blame Seattle inflation," harps another. "Area's middle class is losing ground."

As much of the rest of the nation slips into economic slowdown or recession, the Seattle area's stronger economy also is stirring jitters. Rising costs of housing and other goods and services in a high-demand city pinch middle- and lower-income residents, driving some residents out.

A city of rich and poor, of fewer families and fewer kids, is not the Seattle we aim to be. It is not the city many of us invested in or wanted to move to. Yet a 2006 Census estimate found Seattle second only to San Francisco as the big city with the lowest percentage of households with children — only 20 percent have children under 18.

A new King County report shows the middle class shrinking — there are more households making more than $70,000 and more making less than $28,000. That means a higher percentage of folks in the higher- and lower-income brackets and a smaller percentage in the middle class, earning roughly $55,000 a year.

Some call this the cost of paradise, and there is some truth to that. After a recession early in the decade and the loss of 80,000 well-paying jobs, our economy is rebounding. Unemployment is low. That means more competition and higher prices for limited housing. Seattle's inflation rate was higher than the national average last year.

For the working middle class, people who traditionally lived comfortably in Seattle, the firefighters, police officers, teachers, even professors, it has become harder to buy a home and raise a family.

As economist Dick Conway put it, the region has affordable housing, it just may not be in Seattle. If it is OK for everyone to move to Kent or Duvall or Idaho, for that matter, then no problem. But that is impractical.

"So the real cost of housing, even for people with good jobs, may be even higher for people working in Seattle but unable to live here," wrote former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer in a recent Times guest column. "The further out they have to live — given the costs of transportation, the downtime of a long commute and the impact on families of a dawn-to-dark workday — they will be paying a transportation and quality-of-life penalty, what some refer to as the 'time tax.' "

Some costs we bring on ourselves, a can-do city in a can-do region that seems to be building one of everything new — music halls, sports stadiums, parks, open space. People move here in part because we make those public investments. But how much is too much?

King County Executive Ron Sims, rarely fearful of taxes, says it is time to give residents a break. He almost promised not to put a spending proposal on the 2008 ballot.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, asked if he could imagine a year with nothing on the ballot, began talking about popular institutions, such as Seattle Center and Pike Place Market. In other words, no commitment to hold back.

Our area does well on low-income housing with public subsidies. Our state constitution currently prohibits direct subsidies to the middle class, so creative zoning and land-use policies ought to be tapped to encourage more compact and dense communities — and maintain the middle class.

It's not just housing prices that unnerve us. It's housing costs on top of inflation on top of salaries outside the tech sector that do not keep pace with inflation.

A real concern is locking people on the low end into poverty.

"They become communities where they say there is no hope and act like it," Sims says.

One great attribute of Seattle has been its many single-family homes in many lovely, single-family neighborhoods. Retention of the middle class used to sound like a superficial issue. But it should become a front-burner concern.

Our city is changing rapidly, and not necessarily for the better.