We've been kicking around admitting something here for a week or two. This post to the Slog is a good wall to bounce the thoughts off of. We're part of the statistics in the post -- 83% of residents downtown are single. Technically, K & I are single but we've recently decided to change that and the next step is finding a home together to become un-single and raise a family. We both harbored naive hope that we would be able to make a go of it in the city's downtown. We don't see a lot of kids downtown but we wanted to change that and to make the city's social, art and political structures part of our family's roots. We knew that we'd pay a price for this -- if nothing else, it would be more financially expensive let alone the other types of costs and burdens. But we believed the benefits would outweigh the effort.
Now we know it just ain't going to happen. We've looked. And looked. But there isn't an option for anybody looking to make the next step. Downtown is full of small condos and apartments and the few larger living spaces are designed not to provide an option for families but, instead, an upgrade option for the extremely wealthy. Mind you even these people (whomever they are -- K's a lawyer and I work for a large software behemoth) aren't getting a useful space -- they are buying a downtown luxury space with the extra room added in features like humongous bathrooms.
We are leaving Uptown even though we were willing to dedicate ourselves to being part of the structure and contributing to its changes. Now we know downtown Seattle just doesn't have a place for us. We still hope to be part of the city -- but our roots will be planted in some other neighborhood, away from the core and away from the heart and soul of what drew us here. Poor, poor Uptown -- we could have been friends.
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2 comments:
How sad... Uptown will be a little less "up" without you living there! Where are you planning to move? Are you going to stay inside Seattle?
We're sad -- that's for sure. We've both lived here for more than three years so leaving the area will be a big change. But the city definitely goes on without us and maybe doesn't really need us downtown. I wonder about that part -- maybe a city doesn't really need or want families living in its urban core as long as it can attract them to spend their time and money there (btw, Seattle hasn't really figured that part out either) But we're definitely staying in Seattle proper -- looking for an area that still has the urban touches we wanted from Uptown. I'll post a bit about neighborhoods under consideration. I'm guessing that, since we're rarely NOT part of trend, there must be others out there like us. Who knows? Maybe the move to the urban-burbs (the urbs?) of Seattle is just part of the reality of life here.
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