A new Silicon Valley-like Boomtown on the West Coast becomes so popular that it causes a home crisis.
Olympia, the capital of the state of Washington, had the fastest growing technological sector in the United States from 2018 to 2023, according to a report this week of the Milken Institute.
“Olympia's high-tech sector is really standing out,” says the report, that the growth in professional services and information technology sectors of the city exceeded the nation as a whole.
“Olympia's best-in-nation Five-year-old high-tech BBP growth is mainly powered by the design, software publication companies and data processing industry, which jointly represent 35.5 percent of Olympia's employment.”
However, the disadvantage of the eighth best executive city in America, as arranged by the Milken Institute, is that there is a serious lack of affordable homes and homes in general.
“Housing shortages are serious in cities in the state of Washington, and Olympia is confronted with some of the worst affordability conditions for the home,” the report said.
“A report from 2022 estimated that Olympia's home units were 6.4 percent lower than what is needed to meet the demand.”
In addition to the actual lack of housing, more than 7,600 households in the city are considered 'cost-bidding', which means that, according to Jacinda, Seltjes, the affordable housing program manager of Jacinda Steltjes, spend more than 30 percent of their income.
Depicted: an aerial photo of Olympia, which is arranged as the America's eighth best -performing city by the Milken Institute
Rental insecurity remains a problem despite the high share of well -paid technical jobs, which is largely because not everyone who has jobs.
Some of the largest private employers in Thurston County, where is Olympia, are Albertsons, Walmart and Great Wolf Lodge.
The fact remains that the median hour wage in the Olympia-Tumwater Metro area is $ 27.33, which amounts to around $ 56,000 a year.
So if a median earner lives in the median apartment ($ 1,509), they spend around 32 percent of their income on rent.
In general, experts do not recommend issuing more than 30 percent of your income before taxes on housing, but that rule of thumb is quickly blurring everywhere throughout the country, because the rental and mortgage interest rate remains trend.
This is by no means a problem that is unique to Olympia or Washington State. Nationally there is an estimated housing shortage of 4 million to 7 million.
And two cities that were slightly higher in the Milken Institute research – Colorado Springs in the Fifth and Austin, Texas, in the sixth – both have problems with a lack of affordable homes.
Two state agencies in Washington have recently expanded with the affordability problem, which shows that 250,000 inhabitants of the State are seriously rented. 'This is defined if paying at least half of your rent income.
According to that calculation, more than 3 percent of people struggle to pay a roof over their heads from a total of 7.8 million inhabitants in the state.
Olympia is also the home of its own data center. It is located on the Capitol campus of Washington and comprises 240,594 square base
Olympia's downtown is close to the State Capitol building and the appropriate Capitol Lake
According to a report compiled by the Department of Commerce and Housing Finance Commission of the State, there is generally also a shortage of home.
“The state is confronted with an estimated need for more than a million new houses in the next 20 years to meet the housing demand at all income levels,” the report said.
The report also said that of the 1.1 million new houses that have to be built by 2044, 400,000 of them must be affordable for households that have to be zero to 50 percent of the average income of the area.
Prosperity driven by the technical industry that is seen by some in the city of Olympia and Greater Seattle as a whole is reflected by those who are still taxed by the structure of years of high inflation.
The rural state of Washington sees its own power gap to play as data centers – huge buildings with hundreds or thousands of servers feeding the internet – increasingly popping up and moving small farmers in the city.
Quincy, a small town about two and a half hours away from Seattle, became the site for a massive data center of 530,000 square feet owned by Sabey Data Centers.
And just north of it is another data farm that is owned by Vantage Data Centers that include 775,000 square feet over three buildings.
Even Microsoft has a data center in the city just over 8,000.
And just north of it is another data farm that is owned by Vantage Data Centers that includes 775,000 square feet over three buildings
Displayed: the huge data center of 530,000 square feet in Quincy, Washington. It is owned by Sabey Data Centers
The city now has a new high school that is built with real estate tax that a trade union officer described as 'direct data center fees'.
Although the agricultural city is rich, the residents are not. Their shiny new high school still has four of the five students who are eligible for free lunch.
Moreover, the local population is concerned that the job market of the data center is not sustainable in the long term.
Bob Allen, a representative of the Union, heard that Quincy could get a new transmission line of 500 megawatts from a Federal Power Authority.
“That would give us 10 years of work,” he told the New York Times last month.
