It now takes at least 6 figures for a family to get by in Seattle

The other morning, down in the Chinatown International District, the line outside the door was 200 long, snaking around the cul-de-sac at Eighth Avenue and Weller Street as though fans were waiting for a big show.

The opening was indeed big, and unfortunately keeps getting bigger. They were waiting for the 10 a.m. doors at the Chinatown ID food bank.

This is how it’s been going across the city this fall. Demand at the food bank in the U District is up an alarming 47% compared with last year. It’s the same in North Seattle.

“We’re actually seeing more people now than we did at the peak of the pandemic,” the director of North Helpline food bank told KING 5 News.

Why is this happening? Two teams of researchers have been looking at the Seattle area as a distinct micro-economy, and have found that once again, we’re at the top of a list — though not one we want to be on.

The Seattle area ranks as the place with the fastest-growing prices in the United States, according to one new analysis of the economies of the 50 largest U.S. cities. We’re not yet the most expensive place to live — San Jose, Calif., i.e., Silicon Valley, gets that dubious distinction. But the cost of living is escalating faster here than anyplace else.

This past week, the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity analyzed what it calls the “true living cost” for 50 cities — adding up big-ticket items such as housing and child care, but also food, health care, transportation, technology like internet access, and personal household items. The goal was to estimate the minimum of what it takes to make it, on a modest budget, in places around the country.

Incredibly, it’s now in the six figures for a family of four in Seattle — about $107,000. That’s up more than 80% since 2005, which ranks us No. 1 for fastest-rising cost of living, ahead of Honolulu.

University of Washington researchers at the School of Social Work recently published a similar finding — that in Seattle it now takes $102,000 to keep a family of four afloat. On the Eastside, it’s $119,000, making that one of the priciest places in the nation.

What’s most remarkable about the UW finding is how rapidly the economic pressure cooker is intensifying. They found that the cost of basic life necessities in Seattle just went up by $16,000 per family in a single year — from $86,000 in last year’s estimates, to $102,000, an 18% jump.

There’s the run on the food banks, explained. The UW’s report, called “Overlooked and Undercounted,” attributes most of this cost-of-living jump to food, housing and child care. (The average cost of day care in Seattle, now more than $14,000 per year, has passed the UW’s in-state tuition).

The people getting squeezed are not “a small nor a marginal group, but rather represent a substantial proportion of households in the state,” it concludes. It estimates that more than 1 in 4, or about 700,000 households statewide, are below water.

In Seattle, this is the echo to the tech boom, and it remains the challenge of the times. The city has done a lot of work in the past decade on it — by pushing higher wages, for instance, and forming a subsidized preschool program. More needs to be done, even as free-market costs are an elusive thing for governments to do much about.

It was striking that the same voters who picked a supposedly “moderate” slate for the Seattle City Council also endorsed the most ambitious tax levy in city history, nearly a billion dollars for affordable housing. The vote on the levy was not close — it won by 38 percentage points. That’s not a call for Seattle to get timid.

Both the city and state can look for more ways to ease the cost burden. Example: In Europe, which has had an even worse cost-of-living crisis post-pandemic, they’ve been cutting the price of mass transit. Spain has a program that grants free train tickets for trips up to 300 kilometers (about 180 miles). We don’t have a train network like they do, but how about making buses and light rail free for a set period? The state has collected $1.2 billion extra in tax money since it passed its budget in April that it could use for something like that.

Likewise, a Seattle City Council member, Alex Pedersen, recently suggested eliminating the city’s usurious 15.5% tax on water. (He wants a capital gains tax instead.) Decades ago, the state canceled a much lower sales tax on groceries, because it was considered inhumane and punishing for the poor to tax life-sustaining food. What possible justification is there for taxing water (at least nonexcessive, personal-use amounts)? Yet Pedersen hasn’t gotten much official support for his idea.

It’s time for the state to consider ways to ease back on the price of energy, too, maybe with a gasoline tax cut or some other rebate plan. Gas is $4.41 a gallon here, third highest in the nation, according to AAA. It’s $2.73 in Texas. That 60% difference is brutal on the working class. I’m a supporter of the state’s climate change policy, in theory, but it’s going to get repealed by voters if lawmakers don’t give folks some kind of break.

That concept should be at the back of every politician’s mind in the months ahead — how to give people just a bit of a break. Because we’re now No. 1 on the kind of list where you really don’t want to be at the top.