I'm just glad I have a name for what I'd also agree was the single most lonely time of my own life, hunkered-down in a North Seattle apartment for 18 months before bailing on my green card and h1 and going back to Vancouver.
Because the weather wasn't the issue; but I'd suggest improving the rail transit and rolling the shitty moldy wet-wood lowboy apartments into something more dense to allow for beneficial green-space. This emerald city needs a little more greenery!
But transit and greenery may be a little avant-garde for a country still undecided on the issue of felons as kings :-\