As Seattleites and their money flow south, Tacoma residents grapple with changing neighborhoods

Real estate agent Marguerite Martin built a business convincing Seattleites they could move to Tacoma. Now, as Tacoma housing grows increasingly unaffordable for its own longtime residents, particularly in historically black neighborhoods, she said she wishes she hadn’t. In 2013, as the Tacoma housing market recovered from the financial crisis, “If you can’t buy a house in Seattle ... then you should hashtagmove-to-Tacoma,” Martin said. She built a website, MoveToTacoma.com, and launched a podcast with a peppy jingle: “Move to Tacoma! Move to Tacoma! You’ll like it!” Her goal was to show Seattleites the Tacoma they thought of as a pungent, violent backwater was actually the City of Destiny: a quirky place with a small-town feel, light traffic, expanding transit, stunning harbor views and most importantly, for people priced out of Seattle, where the median home value currently hovers around $750,000 less-expensive homes, many of them quintessential Craftsmans. The median home price in Tacoma is $337,940, according to Zillow. Nearly 18,000 King County residents moved to Pierce County in 2017, 25% higher than two years earlier, according to census estimates. The influx is fueling the city’s sizzling-hot housing market and changing the composition of neighborhoods. Residents say some Tacoma neighborhoods have become bedroom communities, where everyone leaves for Seattle before the sun rises. Some Seattleites who don’t physically relocate are nevertheless investing in Tacoma homes, driving up rents and property values. The changes are most felt in historically diverse and lowincome neighborhoods like Hilltop, South Tacoma and Tacoma’s Eastside. Home prices in some of those neighborhoods have risen nearly one-third each year since 2016, according to data from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. As newcomers displace Black, Hispanic and Native residents, parts of neighborhoods like Hilltop are turning into what longtime resident Kellianne McNeil called “Wonderbread Lands” for their lack of diversity. But for many veterans of Seattle’s affordability crisis, Tacoma is a new chance to establish community. Rachel Collins grew up in the Central District, but bought a home in Hilltop after realizing she couldn’t afford to buy in her childhood neighborhood. “I simply see more Black people in Tacoma” than Seattle, said Collins, who is Black. “It’s not like they’re visiting. They live here. It makes me feel like I’m at home.”

Fierce competition

While Seattle was the nation’s fastest-rising housing market between 2016 and 2018, Tacoma now holds that dubious honor, according to Redfin. In Tacoma’s cutthroat housing market, bidding wars and weeklong (or even shorter) listings for most homes under $600,000 are the rule, according to brokers and home shoppers. Tacoma’s housing market is so fierce it’s not uncommon for buyers to approach homeowners who aren’t selling.

Displacement and rebuilding

Hilltop has lost nearly onethird of its Black residents, and many Black-owned businesses in Hilltop have disappeared, replaced by establishments like the Zodiac Supper Club, where eaters grill their own steaks, and the nationally recognized craft cocktail bar 1022 South J. “There needs to be a lot more attention paid to being respectful of neighborhoods,” said Jasmyn Jefferson, a Windermere branch manager and broker. Jefferson, who is Black, grew up in Hilltop. “There’s history to our neighborhoods that needs to be preserved.” The number of medium- and large-scale remodels in Tacoma rose 36% between 2016 and 2019, according to data from the city permitting office. But for some Seattleites displaced by the rapid gentrification of the Central District, Tacoma represents an opportunity to rebuild community. Collins bought her fourbedroom home in Hilltop in 2017 for less than $200,000, after she and her siblings sold the Central District home they’d grown up in. At the time, she would have loved to stay in the area. But, she said, “I literally could not afford to live in the neighborhood I grew up in.” She said her new Hilltop home is reminiscent of her childhood one. She likes being just off Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, and across from a grocery store just like the house she was raised in.

Move to Tacoma?

Transplants and longtime residents alike say they love Tacoma’s small-town feel. Neighborhoods just 15 minutes from downtown can be close-knit and familyfriendly. In University Place, a 400-egg Easter egg hunt draws participants from around the city, police lead a large Fourth of July parade and hundreds of kids trick-ortreat on Halloween. Some Seattle restaurants, closed by rising rents, have reopened in Tacoma so newcomers may not even need to leave their favorite watering holes behind. One of Martin’s early clients was Stell Newsome, who swapped renting in Fremont for owning a home in the Lincoln neighborhood south of the Tacoma Dome in 2015. At the time, he said commuting between Seattle and Tacoma was “a breeze.” But the tens of thousands of people working in Seattle who were shoved south in the past years have slowed traffic on Interstate 5 to even more of a molasses-like crawl than before. Some mornings, Newsome said he’s stuck in gridlock at 4:45 a.m. Marianne Bigelow has noticed all her new neighbors in Northeast Tacoma pull out of their driveways at 6:30 a.m., come back after 7 p.m., and “walk their dogs in the dark.” “Everybody goes north,” she said. “That’s where the jobs are.” MoveToTacoma.com is still up, helping potential residents find the right neighborhood to grow roots in. But taking in how Tacoma has changed since she began advocating Seattleites flock south, Martin said that if she had a chance to do it over, she’d orient her website and podcast toward people already living there. These days, her podcast features segments about high rents and interviews with local anti-racist groups. “I refuse to take all the credit or all the blame. I believe this was market forces and I just had some fortunate timing,” she said. “But as long as people hold their wealth in property, there are going to be people who win and people who lose.”