By Phuong Le -Associated Press
SEATTLE – Seattle’s booming tech industry has brought a massive influx of new residents with big wallets to the city. But an ensuing housing crunch has led to skyrocketing rents and home prices that have strained middle- and working-class families and deepened the city’s crisis of homelessness.
To keep construction humming and help people of all incomes stay, city officials have come up with what’s dubbed the “grand bargain”: Let developers build taller and denser in core areas across the city and require them to either include units that working-class people can afford, or pay for projects to be built elsewhere.