According to real estate price site Zillow.com, for much of the past 365 days, the growth in Capitol Hill home prices has lagged — falling behind everything from the city in general to the entire USA. We’re using zip code 98112 as a proxy for Capitol Hill homes in this case. It’s a similiar situation with other nearby zips.

With the arrival of June, Capitol Hill prices are soaring again and growth is catching up — still trailing the county and state as a whole but surpassing the city’s growth and the rest of the country. We also know of several anecdotes of the classic old-school bidding wars and houses selling the second they are listed. I’m sure there is seasonality at work here and the folks from Rain City can probably blow a zillion holes in Zillow’s data but comparison measurements across the different areas at least share the same bad measuring sticks. Bottom line: It doesn’t look like it’s going to get any easier to buy a home on the Hill any time soon.

Source: Zillow.com

–j

The mayor handed out checks to various Seattle neighborhood organizations, Seattle PI says, but nothing for Capitol Hill. We’re not complaining, just noting. Most of the projects sound good — especially those involving streetlights and pedestrian safety. Brochures and banners? That’s what our tiny hometown chambers of commerce, etc. spent their energy on too. Hasn’t really worked. Ever. They’re still tiny hometowns.

–j

We hear that crime is increasing on Capitol Hill. Usually, the statements are accompanied by anecdotal evidence — a burglary or car break-in. When Kyle Huff went on his rampage, the ‘anecdotal evidence’ turned into quite a boogie monster.

But a closer look at the data so far in 2006 reveals this: The areas where crime has grown the most are far away from Capitol Hill. Using the ‘Uniform Crime Reporting” data from the Seattle police department, we compared the first quarter of 2006 against the same period in 2005. Only neighbor census tract 77 — known to me and you as Madrona — ranks in the ‘Top’ 10 for Seattle crime growth in 2006, driven by an increase in aggravated assault (from 1 to 6 incidents) and residential burglarly (from 7 to 16 incidents reported).

Below, we mapped the 10 areas with the highest crime growth rates in three different categories:

• Major crime (all crimes minus non-aggrevated assault) red circles
• Auto theft (a subset of major crime) yellow circles
• Residential burglary (another subset of major crime) blue circles

We also mapped the 10 areas showing the biggest improvement so far. green circles

Here is the spreadsheet (sorry for the spamy hoster but, hey, they’re free!) so you can double-check our work. If you want to find out what census tract you live in, click here for a handy address look-up tool. In the meantime, sure, there are caveats. The UCR data only deals with reported crime, of course, and many of the totals for some census tracts are quite small so five or six incidents can drive a major change. Also the reports are definitely influenced by policing priorities and practices. Still, there are some truths and concerns in the numbers — instead of celebrating Capitol Hill’s ‘exoneration’ we’re wondering what the heck is going on over in census tracts 106, 107 and 108.

On the flipside, looking at the data this way masks some of these crimes in the anonymity of big numbers. Take a look at census tract #76 in the spreadsheet and you’ll note an innocuous looking 14% increase in total crime vs. 2005 marked by big dips in burglary and aggravated assault. These relatively trivial crime trends, in this light, counterbalance the murder of 6 people. We’re a bit torn by this — is it gross understatement or fitting perspective that Huff’s horrific crime rolls up to a not-so horrific tally?

–j/k

Given a choice, we pick up The Stranger to figure out what we’re doing on a random free night. But the Seattle Weekly will do in a pinch and a few features keep us checking in online every week — our favorite, by the way, is Brain City with regular suggestions for good nerd events to add to the calendar of things we wish we had time, non-lazy ass-ness to go do. While it appears the Weekly doesn’t have one of its own new-fangled blog things, it has added a list of Seattle blogs to its Web site. Ever witty, they call their little list the Blogwash. Ho ho. Still, we’re happy to be included and especially like the added intrigue of being listed as ‘Author undisclosed.’

–j

While The Stranger remains obsessed with outing Jamie Pedersen as a ‘weasel,’ we’ll focus on the real issue in the 43rd district race: the yard steet count

Currently in our hood, it’s Pedersen by a landslide. We’ve seen three or four for Jim Street that look like the image to the left — really, a bit too clever for our tastes in political signage — and two for Lynne Dodson but that’s it for our neck of the woods.

BTW, we know Jamie personally just so everybody knows what’s up. We’ll probably vote for him but we’re waiting to get a better understanding of all the candidates before we jump on any bandwagon. We were also waiting to decide whether to put one of Jamie’s signs in our front grass. However, all this nastiness from Dan Savage and friends pushed us to join the Pedersen sign brigade.

We’re not sure which yard is Dan’s so we can’t report which sign he has in his front yard. Maybe his is our favorite yard in the area — it sports a sign for both Street and Pedersen. Democracy!

–j

The Slog finally noticed our little bitch session about their lack of attention to other blogs in the city. You can read the post here. We also got some sweet little notes from the habitual Slog comment crowd. One even called us retarded! Thanks mom! So, clearly, our message really hit home and got the Sloggers thinking about building community. Our work here is done!

We like the Slog. A lot. We’re curious to see if it will keep growing into bigger and better things for Savage and Co. We pointed out something it doesn’t do very well. Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe it’s not important. But a lot of other people who create influential, culture-shifting blogs are showing that building this kind of support is a key part of the puzzle.

–j

Proof we no longer live in Uptown? This is the 2nd post we’ve made about traffic circles. Here’s the first in case you missed it. More proof: We’re going to take the time to post about how people drive around traffic circles. But really, it’s pretty darn irritating to see people wasting their lives. Here’s the deal — when you come to a traffic circle and no other car is approaching, you don’t have to go around the circle. It’s perfectly legal to cut the circle short as illustrated below. We really can’t stand watching another car do the loop-de-loop. Do it and we’re going to wave you down and stop you.

By the way, turns out traffic circle design is all part a process called ‘traffic calming.’ You can look it up. Clearly the people behind this stuff do not understand how irritating it is to see people doing needless steering because nowhere in these ‘design criteria‘ do they mention the need for clarifying signage.

Instead, they focus on crap like this:

1. The distance between a traffic circle and the street curb projection (off-set distance) shall be a maximum of 5 1/2 feet.

2. The width between a traffic circle and a curb return (opening width) shall be a minimum of 16 feet and a maximum of 20 feet.

3. As the off-set distance decreases from the maximum 5 1/2 feet, the opening width shall increase from the minimum of 16 feet.

And so on.

–j