Posted on March 30, 2025
Post categories: In the Media News Real Estate Research
In recent years, Seattle’s supply of housing affordable to residents with the lowest incomes has sharply declined. Developers have renovated many older buildings that once offered lower rents and reintroduced them at significantly higher prices, displacing longtime tenants and reducing housing options for people on fixed or limited incomes.
During the 2010s, the city lost more than 14,000 affordable rental units. At the same time, the number of people living unsheltered in Seattle and King County doubled.
University of Washington professor Gregg Colburn, who researches housing and homelessness, points to a key cause: not enough housing. “It’s just pitting people with limited resources against one another for not enough housing,” he explains. Many individuals now spend more than they can afford on rent or crowd into shared spaces to get by. Colburn notes that these arrangements are precarious—one unexpected event, like a job loss or medical bill, can push people into homelessness.
New construction has helped slow rent increases, but rising building costs and fewer new developments threaten to stall progress. Without continued investment in housing across income levels, the region could fall back into the same conditions that deepened the crisis.