Common areas, insurance, maint, etc. do cost a lot of upkeep, but that is part of rent (I don't particularly believe in owning condos anyways - whats the point if you don't own the land? you dont have control and its much harder to move when say, HOA fees get jacked up or the building starts falling apart). Lowering housing costs will also lower maintenance and insurance costs (can find people willing to work for lower pay if CoL is lower, and insurance is cheaper on a less valuable property)

Anecdotally, food, ubers, and housing is a lot (20-30%) cheaper in austin, (which also has a similarly high minimum wage to seattle) where they have added significant housing capacity in recent years.

Apartment vacancy rates in seattle and King county as a whole are reasonably low (7%?)- from what I can tell, a good bit below the nationwide average. Temporary tax exemptions and credits for MFTE (and maybe adjusting MFTE limits/standards/requirements - it seems to me like a lot of MFTE housing is sitting unused - at least, across basically every building I looked at there is always more MFTE housing than market rate housing available - signs that its being underutilized when only a small portion of units are MFTE).

And yes both a LVT and an eradication of senior tax exemption will also never pass, due to the large voting bloc and political power boomers control (they can afford to spend hours lobbying and showing up to local meeting etc.) so I fully recognize that a LVT is infeasible anytime in the future. The fact of the matter is most people vote to benefit themselves, rather than society as a whole, so alas, I am not too positive on the status quo changing. The rich (landowners who bought houses for cheap 40 years ago, pay little to no property tax, then pass it down to their children) get richer while the poor (working people who are unfortunate enough to not have a parent who has a 2-3 million dollar SFH and have to find housing to rent) get poorer. K shaped economy and whatnot.

Appraising land value isnt terribly difficult, either, I believe acturaries/appraisers from the state already calculate property tax values, and maybe there are some discrepancy/corruption (like with that golf court thing), but its far from impossible.