Childcare in seattle: Seattle Daycare | Bright Horizons®

Seattle Daycare | Bright Horizons®

Early Education & Preschool That’s More Than Daycare

Bright Horizons in Seattle offers quality, year-round programming and a number of convenient locations throughout North Seattle, Downtown Seattle, South Seattle, and the Eastside cities of Bellevue, Bothell, Issaquah, Kirkland, Redmond, Sammamish, Snoqualmie, and Woodinville.

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Enhanced COVID-19

Health & Safety at Our Seattle Centers

Health and safety is our number one priority, and we have implemented a number of enhanced protocols, including reduced class sizes at our center.

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Frequent cleaning and disinfecting of high-touch surfaces, toys, and laundered items

Strict drop-off and pick-up procedures to minimize contact

Face masks/coverings required for all staff, regardless of vaccination status

Teachers trained in all protocols

Daily health screening and temperature check for adults and children

Explore Daycare in the Pacific Northwest

Working parents shouldn’t have to choose between child care and early education. Our programs ensure you don’t have to, offering convenience for your workday, and enriching learning experiences for your child.

Bright Horizons at Denny Triangle

651 Bell Street


Seattle,
WA 98121

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Bright Horizons at Upper Queen Anne

1716 2nd Avenue


North Seattle,
WA 98109

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Bright Horizons at Lower Queen Anne

315 1st Avenue


North Seattle,
WA 98109

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Bright Horizons at Denny Triangle

651 Bell Street


Seattle,
WA 98121

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Bright Horizons at Upper Queen Anne

1716 2nd Avenue


North Seattle,
WA 98109

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Bright Horizons at Lower Queen Anne

315 1st Avenue


North Seattle,
WA 98109

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With convenient Seattle area locations, we’re never far from your home or workplace.

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What Questions Should I Ask a Daycare Provider?

What ages does Bright Horizons in Seattle serve in its daycare program?

Most of our Seattle child care centers serve children ages six weeks to six years. Bright Horizons is more than daycare. We have programs with developmentally appropriate curriculum for infants, toddler, preschool and pre-K.

I’ve looked at other daycares in Seattle with long waitlists. What if I want to enroll at a Seattle Bright Horizons center but space is not available?

You can select and register with up to three Bright Horizons child care locations, including the center in which you are most interested. By registering, you are confirming interest in all three centers. Once registered, we will add you to our waitlist and offer you a space as soon as one becomes available. Our goal is to accommodate families as soon as space allows, and so during the entire process, we will keep in touch with you regarding your status. While waiting for a space to become available at the first-choice location, many families enroll at their second or third choices temporarily until space becomes available at their first-choice centers. Enrolling at another location will not only solve your immediate child care needs, but will provide you priority access to your first preference.

What is the background check process for daycare staff at Bright Horizons Seattle child care centers?

Bright Horizons conducts comprehensive background checks on all prospective employees and frequent visitors. In Seattle, the state of WA Department of Youth and Families requires background checks for employees of a daycare or licensed child care facility.

Bright Horizons background checks consist of a county criminal record check for the past seven years performed in all counties that a person has lived, worked or attended school. In addition to the county criminal search, a sex offender search, OFAC search, and a social security verification trace are also conducted.

Is it safe to send my child to a Seattle daycare or preschool?

Bright Horizons is trusted by parents in Seattle, including many doctors and nurses, to care for their children. We’ve partnered with pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Kristin Moffitt of Boston Children’s Hospital to implement enhanced safety protocols for all areas including daily health screening, distancing, cleaning, and disinfecting. Our goal is to ensure that all of our health and safety practices in every center are in line with recommendations provided by the CDC and requirements of state and local municipalities. Our Seattle centers have the well-being of children, families, and staff at their core.

Do Bright Horizons daycare centers follow state/local requirements for masking and vaccinations?

Where there are additional state or local requirements, for example around vaccination/masking, Bright Horizons also complies with applicable legal requirements in each jurisdiction in which we operate.

Are daycare staff at Bright Horizons in Seattle trained in CPR and First Aid?

All Bright Horizons Seattle staff are trained regularly in CPR /First Aid and Universal Precautions. You can feel confident that your child is safe and receiving the best care possible while in our care.  Families of children in our care use the to get photos, real-time updates on care, learning, and milestones, and stay up to date on important notifications.

All Bright Horizons Seattle staff receive ongoing training, including CPR/First Aid and Universal Precautions. You can feel confident that your child is healthy, safe, and thriving while in our care. Bright Horizons families use the MyBrightDay mobile app daily to get photos, real-time updates on care, learning, and milestones, and to stay up-to-date on important notifications.

Is Bright Horizons a Seattle-area daycare?

Bright Horizons has a number of Seattle-area locations. Search by zip to find the one closest to you.

At Bright Horizons we make sure you can enjoy the convenience of daycare combined with a quality early education experience. We focus our daily experiences on comprehensive, optimum development of each child: mind, body, social self, and character. Here’s how we do it:

Preparing Children for Success in Life by:

1. Approaching life as an invitation to learn
2. Becoming a confident and competent lifelong learner
3. Becoming a confident and competent user of technology
4. Developing emotional intelligence: personal power and social skills

Preparation for Academic Excellence by:

1. Developing the social and cognitive skills necessary for school success
2. Achieving excellence in language and literacy
3. Developing an engaged, reflective, inquisitive mind and appreciation of science
4. Achieving excellence in logical/mathematical understanding

Providing a Rich and Rewarding Childhood by focusing on:

1. Happy days
2. Wonderful relationships
3. A World of experience

How much does daycare in Seattle cost?

Daycare tuition depends on your child’s age, as well as your choice in center location. To get a customized tuition quote for Bright Horizons in Seattle, we will set up a Zoom meeting with you to discuss your family’s needs and calculate what tuition would look like for you.

Does Bright Horizons in Seattle have baby daycare?

Yes. Most of our locations offer infant care programs for children starting at six-weeks old. We’re happy to schedule a safe, personalized Zoom visit for expectant parents who would like to learn about why Bright Horizons can offer more than a daycare, even for our youngest learners. Bright Horizons in Seattle is a great place for babies.

Does Bright Horizons in Seattle have a toddler daycare?

Yes. Most of our locations offer toddler programs for children to start to explore independence, language development, and social skills. We’re happy to schedule a safe, personalized Zoom visit for parents who would like to learn about why Bright Horizons can offer more than a daycare. Find out what toddlers learn in our Seattle child care programs.

Does Bright Horizons in Seattle have a daycare preschool program?

Yes. Most of our locations offer preschool and pre-K programs for children that prepare them for school success. We’re happy to schedule a safe, personalized Zoom visit for parents who would like to learn about why Bright Horizons can offer more than a daycare and what school readiness at Bright Horizons in Seattle looks like.

Is Bright Horizons hiring daycare teachers in Seattle?

Yes. Please visit our careers site to view all active Bright Horizons job openings in your area. Our careers site allows you to search for all open positions (part-time, full-time, and temporary) in our centers, including positions at client center that only enroll families who work for specific employers.

Is Bright Horizons a good place to work in Seattle?

Yes, but don’t just take our word for it! We’ve been named 20 times as one of FORTUNE’s 100 Best Companies to Work For, and are honored to be the only child care company to ever make the list.

How can I find child care when a Seattle daycare center is closed?

Having a sitter or two familiar with your family can be extremely helpful when you need back-up care. With the Sittercity app, you can search for local babysitters and nannies, or post a job detailing your needs, and have interested child care providers reach out to you directly. The Sittercity app has built-in screening tools that give you control to hire with ease and confidence, which include secure messaging, interview booking, professional references, and background checks.

What is the difference between daycare and in-home child care in Seattle?

With a babysitter or nanny in your home, your child gets personalized, one-on-one attention in an environment controlled by you. Your child care will match the exact schedule you need, all in the convenience of your home. If desired, you can also get house management help from your in-home provider. A daycare facility tends to be a more cost-effective option that takes place in a child-specific setting. Most will have built-in programming and structured socialization for all of the children in attendance. In the end, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to child care—pick the environment that’s best for you.

How are working parents supported by Bright Horizons in Seattle?

Bright Horizons in Seattle supports the whole family because we know that success at work and success at home go hand-in-hand. We designed our centers, programs, and schedules to keep the needs of both children and parents in mind. 

Does Bright Horizons have summer care in Seattle?

We have a partnership with Steve and Kate’s camp locations as well as our Summer Explorations programs for children ages 3-5 and 6-12. 

Does Bright Horizons in Seattle allow children with special needs to enroll in daycare?

Yes. Bright Horizons in Seattle accommodates a wide range of special and individualized needs in our group programs. We offer inclusive programs that focus on each child’s strengths and support a collaborative team approach with the teacher, director, specialists, and families. The team will work closely together to maximize your child’s opportunities for learning, growth, and development, and minimize any barriers or safety issues that a group program may present.

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Childcare in Seattle, WA | Daycare Near Me

Childcare in Seattle, WA | Daycare Near Me | Kiddie AcademyFind the best daycare and preschool in Seattle at Queen Anne for you at Kiddie Academy of Seattle at Queen Anne | Kiddie Academy

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Every day your child’s imagination grows and their curiosity gathers momentum—Kiddie Academy of Seattle at Queen Anne empowers and celebrates all of it.

Our Life Essentials^® learning approach and curriculum encourages children to explore and progress in their own way, and at their own pace. At Kiddie Academy of Seattle at Queen Anne, your child will grow socially, physically, emotionally and intellectually. Our highly trained teachers are there every step of the way to guide, nurture and cultivate your child’s development.

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Kiddie Academy Owner in Seattle Market Brings Home President’s Circle Award

Local business leader, Devinder Singh Josan, of Kiddie Academy of Bellevue, Bothell, Kenmore, Kirkland, Mill Creek, and Seattle at Queen Anne, recently received the President’s Circle award at Kiddie Academy’s…

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Empowering at every age: our learning programs

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Why Seattle at Queen Anne families and Kiddie Academy find each other

Our approach to early education is to capture the momentum of curiosity and involve parents in every minute of it. That includes you.

Life Essentials

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Guided by our well-rounded philosophy and curriculum, our highly trained teachers help develop what’s unique in every child—nurturing imagination, fostering creativity and preparing them for school and for life.

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Community-based care

We believe every Kiddie Academy should feel like an extension of family. Take a look inside our Academy to see what makes us the perfect place for your child.

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Our commitment to health and safety

Nothing matters more than your child’s health, safety and security. That’s why every Kiddie Academy follows our strict health and disinfection guidelines called Health Essentials, has a restricted-entry system and a thoroughly vetted staff trained in first aid, CPR and emergency drills.

Learn about our Health Essentials program

Hear from our parents

“We have the best teacher, appreciate all the communication, and the whole team is so caring. ”


Jessica A., Seattle at Queen Anne

“I like receiving daily reports at the end of the day and also, being able to watch my kiddo whenever I want. ”


Duygu Sonmez T., Seattle at Queen Anne

“Teaching quality is excellent. ”


Matthew D., Seattle at Queen Anne

“Have been very happy with Kiddie Academy of Seattle, Queen Anne. ”


Saptarshi B., Seattle at Queen Anne

“Everyone there are nice, helpful, and patient to our kid. Great location. Nice facility! ”


Jake (Pei) Z., Seattle at Queen Anne

“Everything! The teachers are awesome, the facility is clean, and the curriculum is wonderful. Staffing has been a bit light lately. However, that is understandable given market conditions. ”


Dana B., Seattle at Queen Anne

“Structured curriculum and weekly updates on what’s coming for the next week. ”


Ritu C., Seattle at Queen Anne

“Maintains a personal touch and provides individual care tailored for the kid’s competency. ”


Bharanidharan A J., Seattle at Queen Anne

“Clean, safe and reliable care. Child seems happy. I enjoy the daily reports with pictures. ”


Jen B., Seattle at Queen Anne

“Been an awesome ,6-7 months with Kiddie Academy. We were worried when we moved to Seattle late last year about son’s education. Right from the begining , my son loved to go to class and sipnply adored his teachers and their way of sitting with the kid and allowing the kid to explore interests. Given… ”


Varun S., Seattle at Queen Anne

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Find out more about our Academy.

Contact us to learn more about what makes Kiddie Academy stand out among educational child care providers. A member of our team will contact you.

Welcome tips and insights to the family:

Parenting Essentials

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The learning doesn’t stop for parents, either. That’s why we created an information resource with helpful tips on everything from enriching our STEM program at home to introducing lifelong healthy eating and fitness habits.

how Boeing, Amazon and Microsoft created modern Seattle / Sudo Null IT News then and King of the Cloud. Three companies have shaped Seattle as it is today, driving three waves of economic development. First Boeing, then Microsoft, and more recently Amazon. At the same time, a sharp influx over the past decade of IT employees with an average salary twice the median for the region has caused an acute shortage of housing. In the center, entire blocks of affordable housing were demolished, and expensive apartments were built in their place.

An increasing number of homeless people began to fill the streets of Seattle, in some places because of the tents, the city simply became unrecognizable. Let’s try to figure out what happened.

A ferry from Edmonds, a suburb of Seattle, with the mountains of Olympia National Park in the background. Source: Seattle Times

1. Agglomeration and transport planning

Seattle on the coast of Puget Sound in the northwestern part of the United States has a population of about 740 thousand people, and is the center of King County, Washington, forming an agglomeration with a population of 4 million people (Seattle metropolitan area). Together with Portland, the capital of the neighboring state of Oregon, and Vancouver, the capital of the Canadian province of British Columbia, it forms Cascadia (meets Pacific Northwest), one of the large cross-border mega-regions with a total population of 9.3 million people. This more amorphous socio-economic entity does not yet have an administrative coordinating body, but the possible construction of the UHSGT high-speed rail line will change this.

The megaregion is named after the Cascade Mountains, a large mountain range to the east and south of Puget Sound, which prevents the further passage of water-saturated air masses from the Pacific coast, falling precipitation. Because of this, Seattle has received the not quite well-deserved nickname “the city of eternal rains.” Although the total amount of precipitation there is less than in New York or Miami, it’s just often cloudy or drizzling light rain (it’s more correct to call it rather “the cloudiest city”). But when the sun shines there, and this is mainly May-September, the surrounding nature turns it into a real Emerald City, the “emerald city”. By the way, the sun periodically glances throughout the year, just the weather is very changeable.

Cascadia megaregion (left) and the Seattle metropolitan area (right)

Seattle has a well-developed public transportation system based on mainline and city buses with dedicated lines (King County Metro), streetcars and light rail (Sound Transit), as well as ferries (Washington State Ferries is one of the largest systems in the world in terms of passenger traffic). Their billing is integrated, so you can have one ORCA card for all modes of transport. Thanks to the convenience of the system, the rapid population growth in Seattle and the surrounding area did not lead to a transport collapse – yes, there were more traffic jams, but without public transport, the share of which in trips already reaches 57% (25% drives a car), there would be complete seams. By the way, most employers compensate to some extent the transportation costs of their employees for public transport – not Tokyo, of course (I already wrote about shinkansen), but nonetheless.

The success of public transportation is linked to the creation of a Regional Council (PSRC) with the status of Metropolitan Planning Organization, a transportation and economic planning organization for the entire Seattle metropolitan area. To do this, PSRC, which unites four districts (King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap) with 82 cities and a total area of ​​16.3 thousand km2, has developed a common transport strategy VISION 2040. Not everywhere in the US and in the world as a whole, this can be done. Often contradictions, politics and simply subjective factors hinder joint transport planning on the scale of an agglomeration — almost always its socio-economic boundaries do not coincide with administrative ones. The situation only becomes more complicated when agglomerations are located on the territory of several administrative units at once, as in the case of New York (states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut) or Kansas City (states of Kansas and Missouri, legal conflicts are interesting).

Speaking about the development of transportation in Seattle, one cannot fail to mention two notable tunnels. A transit DSTT of just over 2 km runs under the city center, from 1990 to 2005. it was used for buses, and after modernization with the laying of deep rails – together with the light metro. It was interesting to watch how buses and carriages waited for each other at the stations and took turns darting into the tunnel. This solution was the only one in the United States before the transition to exclusive use by light rail in 2019.

And the second one is State Route 99 tunnel also known as Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement tunnel. From 1953 to 2019 the two-level Highway 99, built over Seattle’s waterfront, separated the city from the water’s edge. He would have stood for the same amount if he had not received serious damage during the earthquake of 2001. As a result, they decided to demolish it, replacing it with a two-level tunnel 3.2 km long. For this purpose, Hitachi designed and built the world’s largest tunneling shield with a diameter of 17.5 m, named Bertha. Not having gone even a quarter of the way, it broke down (after all, rocky soil), the repair took two years. They did not disassemble it again, but laid a vertical shaft to the head of the shield for repair. The tunnel was finally completed only at the beginning of 2019Large-scale construction of a new park promenade has already begun on the site of a two-level viaduct.

2. Three Waves of Seattle Development

▍ How Seattle Became Jet City

In 1916, the first Boeing floatplane (William Boeing) took off from Lake Union, in the same year he founded the Pacific Airplane Company, which later became The Boeing Company. He was not local – the son of German immigrants grew up in Detroit. He was brought to the then wild and deaf state of Washington by chance – he started as a timber merchant. Actually, the abundance of forests (planes were then wooden / plywood) and Seattle’s good location between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, and determined the future of the city when Billy became interested in aviation. After the US joined WWI, the military ordered 50 floatplanes from Boeing, and the business began to grow rapidly (the military will remain the most important customer for the company). At 1929, Boeing merged with Pratt & Whitney to form the vertically integrated United & Transport Corporation. But in 1934, the US government accused the corporation of monopoly, dividing it into three independent divisions: the Boeing Airplane Company itself, United Aircraft (Pratt & Whitney, Chance Vought and Sikorsky) and United Air Lines.

Billy Boeing couldn’t bear it, gradually starting to move away from the management of the company, preferring a quiet life on a yacht and breeding horses. After the departure of the founder, Boeing’s business went neither shaky nor roll, until it was strongly spurred on by the outbreak of war and the mass production of “flying fortresses” – long-range bombers Boeing B-17, and by the middle of the war, strategic Boeing B-29. The number of employees at factories in Seattle and other states has increased several times. But there is some kind of evil irony in the fact that in one of their air raids in 1945, B-17s bombed Hohenlimburg, among the other half of the Reich, the steelworkers’ town where the family of the Founder’s father, Wilhelm Böing, came from. Billy Boeing himself died in 1956, never having had time to witness the heyday of world civil aviation based on the creations of his designers and engineers – for the first post-war decade, the main income of the corporation continued to come from orders from the Pentagon. However, a couple of years before his death, he was nevertheless invited to the solemn ceremony of rolling out the Boeing 367-80, which later became the famous Boeing 707.

Boeing’s business throughout the history of the corporation has developed in waves, then falling, then recovering again following the national and global economy. The number of employees of the corporation changed accordingly, sometimes exceeding 100 thousand people, sometimes dropping to 40-50 thousand. One thing remained unchanged – each job in the industry created ~ three additional jobs in related sectors. And if in 2016 in the state of Washington 75 thousand people worked for Boeing, then another 19 people worked in related industries2 thousand (total 267 thousand people). As a result, in 2015, the aerospace sector accounted for 59% of the exports of the entire state of Washington. This multiplier effect, as well as Boeing’s leading role, despite the ups and downs in employment, ensured the formation of a strong middle class in and around Seattle. It is to the Boeing aircraft factories that the city owes its transformation from an unknown provincial town on the wild northwest coast into one of the world’s hi-tech centers. The aircraft industry, like the auto industry in Michigan and Detroit, has become a massive social lift. It gave uneducated workers not only the opportunity to earn decent money, but also send their children to college – the key to the future boom of techno-hipsters in Seattle and the surrounding area, which began in the second half of 1980s

Employment dynamics of Boeing in Washington State (Seattle, Renton, Everett, Auburn, Frederickson) over the past 100 years. Source: Mark Nowlin, The Seattle Times

▍ Boeing 747: born in the shadow of a big brother

In the early 1960s Pan Am Airlines, Boeing’s key civilian customer of the time, reaping the benefits of the boom in air travel, persuaded the company to develop an aircraft with twice the passenger capacity of the previous 707. Pan Am placed a firm order for 25 aircraft worth $525 million, with deliveries starting by 1969. As a result, Boeing had only 28 months for the entire development program, a third less than it took to develop a conventional-sized airliner. From the very beginning, work proceeded in an emergency mode. And this despite the fact that the company did not particularly believe in the commercial success of such a large airliner, immediately laying the possibility of its rapid conversion into a cargo aircraft – hence the characteristic raised cabin, as well as the fixed jumbo jet.

Back then, Boeing hoped to sell at least three to four hundred aircraft, seeing the project as secondary to the 2707 SST, an ambitious 300-passenger, Mach 3 supersonic passenger jet (the Concorde had a capacity of 100 people and Mach 2). Later, the silhouette of the Boeing 747 will become an icon of industrial design, and more than 1,500 of them will be sold worldwide. The airliner, which received the nickname Queen of the Skies among the pilots, due to a sharp increase in passenger capacity (440 versus 180 for the Boeing 707), changed the very economy of air travel, making them truly massive. Yes, now it is gradually leaving, like the A380, just since the mid-2000s, the air transportation market itself has begun to change in favor of less capacious, but more flexible twin-engine models.

Back in 1966, for the production of the first wide-body airliner, they began to build a separate aircraft factory, choosing the small lumberjack town of Everett north of Seattle. Until now, the Boeing Everett Factory with an area of ​​398,000 m2 is the largest building in the world. But then the 747 project was still perceived by the leadership as an “ugly duckling”, – everyone raved about the idea of ​​supersonic flights (the Tu-144 made its first flight on December 31, 1968, the first Concorde flight – in March 1969), all forces were thrown there. Despite this, gradually 4.5 thousand people of the Boeing engineering department become the core for a team of 50 thousand people, one way or another involved in the work on the jumbo jet. As a result, the first flight of the 747 took place on February 1969 as promised by Pan Am.

Production of the 747-8 at Everett will be halted in November 2022. Its fuselage length is twice the distance flown by the Kitty Hawk, the Wright brothers’ first aircraft. Source: Boeing

Meanwhile, in May 1971, despite the strong support of the Nixon administration, the US Congress voted to cancel the Boeing 2707 SST project (there was no money for everything at once – the lunar program was still a priority, plus there was a war in Vietnam). It was a blow under the belt for Boeing – the closure of such a large-scale project due to the high costs of the 747 program and the parallel creation of the short-haul 737, the future bestseller based on the 707/727, led to the layoff of 60 thousand people. Another 43 thousand people lost their jobs in related industries. As a result, the biting nickname of the plane that “almost ate Seattle” was firmly entrenched in the SST.

At its peak in June 1968 in the state of Washington, one in five employed Boeing, and Seattle at the time was rightly called the world’s largest company town. The sales of the 737 and 747 that had just taken off were also not encouraging – the oil crisis of October 1973 hit the entire aviation industry very painfully. Up to 85% of Boeing’s business at that time was associated with sales to civilian airlines, which suddenly became unable to purchase new aircraft. Before Seattle loomed the ghost of Detroit, failed city. There was some kind of psychological breakdown, an outflow of residents began, real estate sales collapsed by 35%, sales of new cars – by 50%, the unemployment rate jumped to 17%, etc. It was at this time that the famous billboard appeared, zeitgeist of that time.

The famous billboard of two realtors Bob McDonald and Jim Youngren. By 1971, Boeing laid off 60,000 people. Author: Greg Gilbert The Seattle Times

▍ Microsoft’s Role in Diversifying the Seattle Economy

A key event in diversifying the city’s economy was the 1979 move of Microsoft’s headquarters from Albuquerque to Bellevue. This Seattle suburb was home to co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen of the town (after all, family support means something). And according to some estimates, Microsoft’s IPO alone seven years later made 12,000 Seattle employees of the company dollar millionaires. Later, as the business grew, various spin-offs began to separate from Microsoft, or other startups were founded by people from the company. Therefore, the importance of the corporation for creating a powerful IT and venture ecosystem around Seattle cannot be overestimated.

Already on this base somewhere since the mid-2000s. Amazon also began to grow rapidly. Today, Seattle and its environs (Redmond, Bellevue, Everett, etc.) are the headquarters of Expedia, Zillow, Tableau, F5 Inc, Valve, T-Mobile, Getty Images, Alaska Airlines, Nintendo America, PACCAR Inc, Blue Origin and Fortive, large offices of Google and Facebook (6 and 5 thousand employees respectively), Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, etc. Silicon Valley. By the way, in 2021, Seattle ranked second in average hi-tech salaries in the US ($158,000/year), and this year it became the best city for STEM job seekers.

As of March 2021, Microsoft had 57 thousand employees in the Seattle metropolitan area, about a third of their total number worldwide. Well, Amazon came out on top, which, at the end of 2020, due to the global boom in e-commerce, hired another 16.5 thousand employees during the pandemic, bringing their number in the region to 80 thousand people. Boeing, after laying off more than 20,000 employees during the crisis with the 737 Max, which continued due to the pandemic, had less than 56,000 employees at the end of 2021. Here is such a “big three” of employers in the Seattle agglomeration. There are, of course, other large medium-sized companies that form the backbone of the region’s economy, such as the educational cluster (University of Washington and Washington State University, more than 32 thousand people in total), medical cluster, retail (Nordstrom and Costco Wholesale Corporation with 11 thousand people). ), the world’s largest ferry system, civil and naval shipyards and naval bases, etc.

Speaking about the loss of Boeing’s leadership among the region’s employers, one should keep in mind the multiplier effect of employment in related industries. Therefore, Seattle and its environs are still the center of the largest aerospace cluster in the United States (in addition to Boeing, these are Blue Origin / Kuiper Systems, the production sites of SpaceX, Aerojet Rocketdyne and LeoStella, etc.). At first, the state of affairs was not affected even by the transfer of the headquarters in Chicago in 2001 after the merger with McDonnell Douglas. The seizure of power by an alien management with a toxic corporate culture and the gradual loss of “engineering spirit” to please the financiers gave rise to a sad joke “McDonnell bought Boeing with Boeing’s money.” It was after this that the “new” Boeing began moving production to other US states with less strong unions and lower salaries, and also relying heavily on outsourcing. It was in that decision that the roots of the troubles with the 737 MAX and partly with the 787 lay (“Boeing is no longer the same, it stopped caring about people” – something like this can be heard from old-timers and veteran manufacturers).

▍ Pride and Curse of Seattle: Not Just Bezos’ Ears

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in Bellevue in 1994. It can be said that this was the third key event for the entire region in the 20th century. after Boeing and Microsoft. The choice of location was not accidental, Microsoft had already settled in Redmond and many ambitious programmers were spinning around. Bezos was not a local, he chose the state of Washington from a purely cold calculation – as one of the most sparsely populated. At that time, retailers only paid sales tax in their home state, and sales to other states were not taxed (he started with online book sales). Smaller population – small local sales – lower taxes. In addition, Washington is a regressive tax state, and in Seattle, with a household income of $25,000, it pays 17% of local and state taxes, and only 4.4% with an income of $250,000.

This was the beginning of a long journey of minimizing tax payments, which subsequently led to the formation in 2003 of AEHT and Amazon EU Sarl – Amazon’s subsidiaries in Luxembourg (with Project Goldcrest, The Guardian figured out the tax avoidance scheme). By the way, Jean-Claude Juncker, the architect of the tax reform that made it possible for a tiny European principality to become a paradise for billionaires around the world, later became President of the European Commission. And Bob Comfort, the then head of the Amazon tax department, became the honorary consul of Luxembourg in Seattle – as you understand, such serious things are not done from scratch. In general, flight to the kindest tax jurisdictions is one of the foundations of the company’s global success. So, for the right to place the second headquarters of Amazon (HQ2) in the United States, a serious struggle unfolded between US cities. Bezos waved the carrot at 50,000 new jobs and $5 billion in investment. The state of New Jersey offered $7 billion in tax breaks, but the states of Virginia and New York won in the end.

Meanwhile, the Seattleites kept warning those about the dangers of “Seattle-ization” when, due to the ongoing Amazon boom, housing in it for locals (normal residents without six-figure salaries) became unaffordable. It was with Amazon that the lion’s share of business and construction activity was connected in the center of Seattle after the crisis of 2007-2008, when the company decided to move its headquarters closer to the center of Seattle, to the South Lake Union area. In 2017, Amazon occupied 19% of Seattle’s office space, the highest percentage occupied by a single company in American history. This resulted in the construction of almost 10,000 high-end apartments in the center in 2017 alone (twice as many as in the previous year, and in ten years combined, more than in the previous 50 years). While practically nothing was built on the outskirts, especially in the affordable housing segment.

However, this pace of construction has not kept pace with the influx of new residents. Before the pandemic, up to 20 thousand people moved to Seattle every year, attracted by high salaries in the IT industry and, above all, from Amazon ($100-110 thousand per year, twice the average salary for the agglomeration). According to the Seattle agglomeration in 2010–2019 the numbers were even more impressive: 60,000 new residents each year and only 19,000 newly built housing units.

This imbalance between rapid population growth and lack of supply in the market caused a sharp increase in property prices. The median cost of a one-story house in Seattle increased by 110% to $820 thousand by 2018, and the average cost of rent by 64% to $2 thousand (now it exceeds $2.6 thousand). In Bellevue, by February 2022, amid rumors that Amazon plans to place another 25 thousand employees there, it has reached $ 1.56 million. Growth is likely to continue, making suburban Seattle the place with the most expensive real estate in the United States. ahead of New York and Silicon Valley. All this has caused an acute housing crisis, according to the municipality, up to 45 thousand households spent more than half of their income on housing (in 2018, 54% of households rented housing, and this share is growing). According to the calculations of municipal employees, households can breathe more or less freely with annual incomes of $75,000 (higher than the median income in the state). While the greatest shortage of social housing was observed in the subgroup of households with minimal incomes (up to 50% of the median or less than $35 thousand, see graph).

Overall, the 2021 Puget Sound Regional Council estimates that 46,000 housing units must be built in Washington State to fill the housing shortage, with at least 11,000 housing units for the homeless.

Causes of the housing crisis in Seattle. Deepening disparity between housing supply and population growth due to high migration in 2010-2019 Source: PSRC, 2021

3. Costs of the economic boom

▍ The housing crisis and homelessness

As of 2021, Seattle was the 18th largest city in the United States, and in terms of the number of homeless people, it remains in third place, after New York and Los Angeles. At the beginning of 2020, in King County, which includes the Seattle agglomeration, there were about 11,750 homeless people. At the same time, almost half, 5,600 people lived on the streets, another 4,000 lived in shelters for the homeless, and about 2,000 lived in temporary social housing. By another method of counting, there were four times as many homeless people in King County. As a result, their tents and sleeping bags are everywhere – under bridges, in open spaces, on sidewalks, on patches of lawns, in parks. As a result, some areas of the city began to resemble refugee camps. In 2020, more than 120 such small towns of homeless people from 2 to 10 tents were scattered throughout the city.

This is due not so much to drug addicts (Washington State in 2012, one of the first in the United States to legalize marijuana as a remedy) and finished drunkards, but to poverty and the crisis of the social security system in general, an acute shortage of affordable housing, lack of control over rising rents, as well as a large number of mentally ill people on the streets of all American cities without exception. It is estimated that in King County, approximately 4,000 homeless people, or 34% of the total, suffered from various mental disorders. For this special “thank you” to Reagan, who at 1981, as part of the reduction in support for the healthcare system, ordered the release of them from hospitals.

Newly elected Bruce Harrell became mayor, promising to clear downtown streets and city parks of homeless people while building new temporary shelters and social housing. In an ideal picture of the world, after the dismantling of the tent camp, the homeless are relocated to shelters. Their stay there should be temporary, the next point is resettlement to affordable (social) housing. But since it is sorely lacking, all the shelters are overcrowded. Therefore, the newly dispersed tent city reappears somewhere nearby. There are unenviable statistics in 2020, when only a quarter of the inhabitants of the dispersed tent cities received places in homeless shelters, and only about 5% of them received it within two days after the camp was dispersed.

Let’s see if Harrel can do it, all the Seattle people are holding their fingers, but things are moving very slowly so far, not least because of the pandemic. In 2021, King County bought 9 properties for temporary shelters for 1,600 homeless people – seven hotels and two high-rise buildings, so far only two properties for 180 people have become really used for these purposes.

Increase in the number of homeless over the past 10 years in Seattle. Sources: Seattle Times, KCRHA, GeekWire Photo/John Cook and Johnny Miller

▍ Microhouses and tent cities

In order to somehow solve the problem of the homeless “from below”, various NGOs have been working in Seattle for many years in two directions. First of all, they take part in the City-Permitted Villages municipal program, when two or three dozen small temporary wooden houses (average area 11 m2) are located on the officially designated territory. So far, there are only about a dozen such sites, and they provide shelter for about 440 homeless people, all of them are managed by the NGO Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI). Othello Village is one such settlement, consisting of 28 wooden cabins and 12 tents with a shared shower, toilet and kitchen tent. In pre-Soviet times, 34% of the inhabitants of these tiny-house settlements actually moved into permanent social housing after some time, which can be considered a success.

As for the second direction, tent camps, such spontaneous settlements of the homeless appear in all states. They started showing up in Seattle as early as the 1990s, but the city government cracked them down. The precedent was the decision of the city court on Tent City 3, which was taken under the patronage of the NGO SHARE / WHEEL. This tent city for about 100 inhabitants was legalized, but with the condition of its rotation on private territory for no more than 90 days (an official invitation is required). For example, in 2017 and 2021 its host was the University of Washington. Tent City 4 was also legalized, but in 2004 it was moved from downtown Seattle to the eastern shore of Lake Washington, where it also moves from place to place on a rotating basis. As a rule, most of the residents of these two legalized tent cities work, one-time hot meals, garbage collection, toilets are organized there, and strict internal rules apply (it is forbidden to drink, use drugs, fight, etc.).

▍ What about big business?

The big business of Seattle has also begun to participate in resolving the issue, but so far it is either a tribute to fashion or an attempt to whitewash itself in the eyes of the public. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen donated $30 million back in 2017 to an affordable housing project for the homeless in Seattle. At the beginning of 2019-2020 Microsoft decided to allocate $750 million to solve the regional homeless problem, but 97% of this amount is loans to developers (part at a reduced interest rate). And only $25 million will be directly allocated in the form of grants and subsidies to eligible NGOs. In January 2021, Amazon also announced a $2 billion Housing Equity Fund, but only $344.3 million of that is for King County (and also in low-interest loans).

These are crumbs compared to what is required. Amazon is not even going to compensate for the losses incurred. Over the past decade, 112,000 affordable housing units for households below 80% of the median income have been demolished to build luxury apartments throughout King County. Against this background, the promise to sponsor the construction of 2-3 thousand units of such housing looks like a grin. Therefore, the philanthropy of Seattle corporations is not able to solve the problem with affordable housing, if at all it has such goals.

4. Adapting the zoning system to address the housing crisis

While the municipality and various NGOs are trying to solve the same problem from different ends, the city zoning system is being adapted towards increasing the allowed number of storeys (up-zoning).

In fact, upzoning in the single-story single-family housing blocks of Seattle has already been. There were more than 10 thousand different duplexes, triplexes, townhouses and ADUs. But in most cases, this is a historical heritage, they managed to build up to 1923, when the zoning system was adopted in Seattle. Since 1980, the quarterly housing capacity has remained virtually unchanged, while the population has grown by 40%. And if in 1923 single-family zoning covered a third of the city’s territory, today it exceeds half. Since 1994, it was allowed to increase the density in single-family housing zones only with the help of ADU, these are residential premises that complement the main house on the same site (a small guest house, a garage with a second residential floor, etc.). Due to restrictions, only about 1,500 have been built since then, no more than 1% of the city’s housing stock. By comparison, in neighboring Vancouver, which is facing an even worse housing affordability crisis, ADU accounts for more than a third. In 2019The City Council has finally loosened ADU restrictions by allowing up to two such additional housing units to be built on the same lot, while simultaneously increasing their allowed area. So things start to get better.

In addition, the 1990 Comprehensive Urban Development Plan and its update Seattle 2035 introduced three new zoning categories for the first time to contain Seattle’s sprawl. They were called urban villages – “growth zones” for the concentration of urban development in them: six urban centers with maximum density, six hub districts with intermediate density and 18 residential areas. These were special zones of mixed land use (mixed use) with housing, places of application of labor, services and recreation areas within walking distance from public transport routes. Accordingly, the remaining 2/3 of the city’s territory has retained the traditional zoning for single-story buildings (Single Family Residential). The strategy paid off, after two decades, 75% of construction activity and 80% of new jobs in Seattle accounted for urban villages.

According to the Seattle 2035 plan, priority development will continue in urban villages along transport corridors. In 2017, up-zoning was carried out for downtown and the university district, and a mandatory affordable housing (MHA) program was adopted for new development projects. In 2019, all 27 urban villages in Seattle expanded its operation. Developers admitted to the development of these new sites must include affordable housing in their projects (5-11% depending on the area and allowed additional floors) or pay a tax ($53-350 per m2). Thus, up to 6,000 affordable housing units are expected to be built in Seattle over the next 10 years. In total, about 6% of the territory of Seattle fell under up-zoning. You can read about affordable housing development projects in Seattle, their financing and costs, as well as who exactly can apply for such housing, here.