The new Seattle, where everything looks the same
In a housing shortage, you don&#x27;t have to build a nice building to make money. If people are stretching to find a place in a neighborhood they want, you can&#x27;t charge higher rent for a nicer building.<p>Our priority in boomtowns has been to use our government to create exclusive neighborhoods for the wealthy. People feign surprise when more and more people get excluded from our cities while they fight for laws that exclude people from every single neighborhood.<p>If we care about ending the disgusting practice of government-imposed income segregation, we must make our neighborhoods inclusive, especially near jobs, parks, and transit. In inclusive neighborhoods, we don&#x27;t exclude people by declaring the neighborhood full by law. You can always add more homes to include more people. Cities full of inclusive neighborhoods will be affordable to all, especially if we use our tax dollars to subsidize homes for those whose needs the market might not meet.<p>Our current practice is to decorate exclusive neighborhoods with subsidized homes and pretend we care about inclusion. It&#x27;s a lie. Providing homes for everyone in our cities near the things they care about is possible. Building homes that people can afford to make look nice is possible. We&#x27;ve chosen to enforce exclusivity instead. It is unjust.