{"id":17163,"date":"2024-10-17T17:12:22","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T09:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/why-housing-affordability-looms-as-a-final-frontier-for-seattle-areas-space-industry\/"},"modified":"2024-10-17T17:12:22","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T09:12:22","slug":"why-housing-affordability-looms-as-a-final-frontier-for-seattle-areas-space-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/why-housing-affordability-looms-as-a-final-frontier-for-seattle-areas-space-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Why housing affordability looms as a final frontier for Seattle area\u2019s space industry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Panel
Participants in a panel at a Bellevue Chamber luncheon focusing on the Seattle area\u2019s space industry included, from left, U.S. Rep. Adam Smith; moderator Mike Fong, director of the Washington State Department of Commerce; Kelly Maloney, co-founder of Space Northwest; and Brian Huseman, vice president for public policy and community engagement at Amazon. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BELLEVUE, Wash. \u2014 The biggest applause line at a Bellevue Chamber event focusing on the Seattle area\u2019s space industry came when attention was paid to a down-to-earth topic: housing affordability for the industry\u2019s workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t just come here to work,\u201d U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., told the audience at today\u2019s sold-out luncheon. \u201cThey come here to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

The space industry is definitely on the rise in the Seattle area \u2014 particularly in a cluster of suburbs extending from Bellevue to Redmond and Kirkland to the north, and to Kent and Tukwila in the south.<\/p>\n

Mike Fong, who is the director of the Washington State Department of Commerce and served as the event\u2019s moderator, said the state\u2019s commercial space ventures account for $4.6 billion in economic activity and more than 13,000 jobs.<\/p>\n

That figure has continued to grow in the two years since the economic impact report that Fong cited first came out. Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture is said to have about 11,000 employees spread across the country, with many of them working at the company\u2019s HQ in Kent. Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper satellite network \u2014 which is ramping up facilities in Redmond, Kirkland and Everett \u2014 has built up its workforce to about 2,000 employees. <\/p>\n

When you include the workers at SpaceX\u2019s satellite factory in Redmond, Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond, LeoStella in Tukwila and a host of space startups, it all adds up to more pressure on the region\u2019s housing market. That pressure is already sky-high. For example, the median selling price for a home in Bellevue is more than $1.5 million, based on figures from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot everybody who works in these companies is going to be issued 200 grand a year in stock options,\u201d Smith told the audience, which included business leaders as well as elected officials. \u201cHow are you going to afford a place to live? You\u2019ve got to be better at building housing, building it affordably.\u201d<\/p>\n

The region\u2019s communities and employers have been trying to address the affordability crisis, but Smith said more needs to be done.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot have the nightmare permitting process that you have, all the requirements that go into that, and be able to build more housing,\u201d he said. \u201cI know there are a lot of people who are strong advocates for spending more money on housing. I applaud that. I do. But if we don\u2019t change the cost structure of what it costs to build that housing, there is not enough money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith also said the state needed to devote more attention to the education system, particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, known collectively as STEM. Kelly Maloney, co-founder of a public-private consortium called Space Northwest, expressed a similar sentiment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe workforce of the future are really the young individuals that we need to embrace and have programs for,\u201d Maloney said. \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot done, but there\u2019s also a lot that still needs to be done, and a lot of it is for the underserved and the marginalized.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not all bad news. \u201cOne policy area that we are getting right is workforce development,\u201d Smith said. \u201cYou see a lot of cooperation between businesses, unions, community \/ technical colleges and, increasingly, high schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brian Huseman, Amazon\u2019s vice president for public policy and community engagement, pointed to Project Kuiper\u2019s partnership with Lake Washington Institute of Technology in Kirkland. That partnership aims to create a certificate program for satellite technicians, some of whom are likely to end up working for Project Kuiper.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re helping to train and create a new class of jobs,\u201d Huseman said. \u201cWe\u2019re incredibly excited about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Maloney suggested that Washington state\u2019s space industry could adapt the playbook used by other sectors of the tech industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that I think would serve our state well would be a partnership with government on an incubator specific to the space industry, or tech and related industries,\u201d she said. \u201cIt would be something that would enhance people at the startup innovative stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are already a few space-centric startup accelerators, including Starburst, Amazon Web Services\u2019 AWS Space Accelerator and the Techstars Space Accelerator. A venture studio called Actuate Ventures is just starting to get off the ground with plans to create innovation hubs in Redmond and other space industry hotspots. Will there be more? Stay tuned.<\/p>\n

Fong said today\u2019s rising interest in commercial space ventures is just the latest manifestation of the region\u2019s leadership in the tech industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really building on a 60-year legacy, going back to Boeing\u2019s work on the lunar rover during the Apollo missions,\u201d he said. \u201cIn truth, the unique DNA of the Pacific Northwest is what fosters and enables us to have an enduring role in this emergent economic opportunity.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Participants in a panel at a Bellevue Chamber luncheon focusing on the Seattle area\u2019s space industry included, from left, U.S. Rep. Adam Smith; moderator Mike Fong, director of the Washington State Department of Commerce; Kelly Maloney, co-founder of Space Northwest; and Brian Huseman, vice president for public policy and community engagement at Amazon. (GeekWire Photo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4468,4469,4470,4471],"class_list":["post-17163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-affordable-housing","tag-bellevue-chamber","tag-bellevue-chamber-of-commerce","tag-housing-affordability"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}