It's not the "sharing economy," it's the "rental economy." Sharing is when I give you half of my sandwich, or let you crash on my couch when you're too drunk to drive home.

Did the landlord break their lease or did they get evicted at the end of their lease? It's unclear from this story.

/nottheonion: Man living in historic hotel upset owner wants to rent room to someone else.

Let me get this straight. Two tenants are kicked out so the owner's 25-year-old daughter (who “coincidentally” recently became an "owner") can occupy the space, which is now listed as an Airbnb?

The owner's daughter makes money off the building - but also the Airbnb?

But she needs to rent out her apartment as an Airbnb...to afford her apartment?

And the other LLC owner named in this article, Dean Haugen, is also running an Airbnb out of the same building??, but his primary residence is on Vashon Island?

There is a lot wrong with this picture.

I live downtown and good spaces, esp in Pioneer Square are hard to find.

Sounds like they made the 25-year-old daughter an owner of the "trust" so they can keep pushing out tenants to create Airbnbs.

How is this a "sharing economy" when the LLC owners are kicking out tenants?

The marijuana "odor" from the previous tenants is a bit moot considering the building "smelled ripe with urine." LOL

I thought rooms at the State were 75 cents.

Kick the "sharing" con-persons out of Seattle.

I Fuckin Love the Internet ht tps://www.instagram.com/leelamw/

@12 - Oh lordy. Good find!

As a property manager I'd just like to say to all renters: If your lease says your rent is due on the 1st, and you have a grace period (meaning no late fee) til say, the 5th, your rent is still late if you pay it on the 2nd!

If you don't want your landlord to be able to evict you for something that petty, pay your rent on time! Pay it early!

I can't count the number of times my tenants have asked me if I could waive the late fee because their rent will be "just one day late" on the 6th. That's not one day late, that's five days late.

Of course your landlord can still just raise your rent by a million dollars with 60 days notice and get you out that way. But that's another issue...

In Portland we have regulations for Airbnb units, but the City doesn't do jack shit to enforce them. For all practical purposes, Portland is just as wild-west about the so-called "sharing economy" as anywhere else.

You don't have a right to live in a (weirdly, stupidly, incomprehensibly) desirable neighborhood unless you pay the mortgage. Period. Full stop.

If you're a tenant your landlord has a right to the maximum return on investment in rents. Just as you would were you the landlord. Rents too high? Guess you'll have to live elsewhere, or pay the asked rent.

If these folks want to use THEIR property as part time vacation rentals it's nobodies business but theirs and their prospective renters. Period. Full stop.

I've done something similar with a cabin I own, and the numbers sound great! I can double the rent and use it myself! Well, until you figure damage, cleaning, hassle managing multiple tenants instead of one etc etc etc. Frankly, the idea that the owners are using these as personal housing/vacation rentals instead of a get rich quick by screwing tenants scheme makes sense to me. More than the Snidely Whiplash caricature of landlords lazy Stranger "journalists" want to pretend all landlords are, anyway..

And as noted if rent is due on the 1st it's late at close of business the 1st. Having said which, rules applied selectively can get a landlord sued. And in the Peoples' Republic of Seattle finding a jury and sometimes even a judge that didn't have a bias against landlords would be hard. Even if the landlord was entirely within his or her rights, which this one may or may not be depending on who's closer to the truth in narrative here..

@13, go fuck yourself. We are not takers, we are hard working people who don't get raises that match the increases in rents. I've lived here for 23 fucking years. I have worked at Pike Place Market ( where wages would not make a decent standard of living possible these days), have worked in biotech, then got my ass kicked when the economy tanked and my experience didn't make me stand out among the 20+ others who would apply for the same (not very well paying) jobs I applied for.
I am now a stagehand, I mostly work at Seattle Center and other Seattle entertainment institutions. If you knew the hours I put in (sometimes after a dispatcher calls me asking how soon I can be somewhere), you would know that I, and my brothers and sisters in the union, were not fucking takers. If it wasn't for people like us, your concerts and theater wouldn't be as good, and would probably even be a safety hazard to the audience. So get fucked you elitist sack of shit.
It takes all kinds of people to make a city run, and I'm sick of hearing assholes like you call the hardest working of us takers.
Fuck you!

as someone who is both a landlord and (tries to be) a decent person, this gets messy. I want to honor my social obligation to keep good renters, and not be an asshole. However, if I'm renting a place for $1000 when the market dictates I could be getting $1500, I have 2 problems. I am taxed at the market value of the property, regardless of my goodwill, and I am missing out on $6000/yr of income.
So would you give up $6000/yr to be a good person?

Chris Jury, if you rent out below market value, I think you deserve a tax break for that.
Perhaps your taxes should be based on your profit margin and not the property value?

Also, rents aren't the issue here. Kicking out residents to use a residential space as a hotel/hostel (commercial space) is.

I've been reading about NYC & San Francisco and how in multi-dwelling buildings, landlords can't reserve units for Airbnbs. This story is about an LLC and its multi-dwelling building, and how the owners are taking units away from long term renters to host Airbnbs. To evict two tenants to create an Airbnb in a downtown longterm rental building is wrong. You can Google stories of families being uprooted in San Francisco for the exact same reason, and there is outcry. So why not in Seattle?

Also the owner's daughter is now an owner, as someone wrote above. Sounds to me like they made her an owner to facilitate this scheme. Thanks UberAlles for posting her Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/leelamw/ Look it up, people. This young woman is traveling the world, riding camels in Dubai, on chartered helicopter flights, and playing around in South Africa. But she can't afford her apartment in a building she OWNs and two tenants were kicked out, so she could host an Airbnb? Please. "Weiss acknowledges that she also earns money as a building owner, but says she still needs help paying her new rent." Brownstone, do you your homework. Look at her Instagram account, and tell me this gal is hurting for $$.

To Chris Jury, above commenter. You can rent your spaces at market value. You don't have to evict people and take living spaces away from tenants as the owner in this article. This is an LLC, not some individual home owner wanting to Airbnb a spare room. City of Seattle needs to regulate this. We are going to hear this story again and again, just like in NYC and SF.

Couldn't help but peruse the Leela Weiss Instagram account: A picture of her literally burning $100 bills. Not your best poster child for an Airbnb scheme https://www.instagram.com/p/_-V8XTgm9P/?…

Yeah, I think she can afford the rent.

@25 etc

What rights do building owners have? What obligations to make desirable neighborhoods affordable do they and the city have?

Sure, running a hotel is a different budiness subject to different regulations than renting apartments longer term is. The question is whether the cost of enacting and enforcing those regulations would be offset by accordable housing gains. And whether the limits placed on owners property rights are justified by what you consider a housing crisis tenants are facing. That is, do we forever take away property rights to temporarily alleviate rising rents?

There aren't many legal absolutes here. It angers you that two well off people ($2000 a month for a couple!) lost an apartment so that other well off people could maybe better their profit margin?

These aren't your poster children on either side. They aren't necessarily predatory sharks preying on the downtrodden. And these tenants sure as hell aren't economically disadvantaged in any rational sense of that phrase.

Oh and by the way, Kip, I've had people play the "landlord must be rich" game with me. Know what, I'm not. But it doesn't matter. What I charge for rent has not a single thing to do with my wealth and everything to do with maximizing my investment returns. Whether I burn money or barely make the mortgage doean't alter market conditions or tenant and landlord rights and obligations.

@28, so you think tenants should be evicted from their unit to create an Airbnb? Please. I'm not claiming that all landlords in Seattle are rich. I'm saying the gal said she needed help paying for her rent in a building she OWNS and she's burning money as evidenced by her Instagram account. Dude, tenants and landlords ain't always going to get along. You know this. Nobody said anyone was preying on anyone. But it's bullshit to evict people for the reasons stated in this article. Doesn't add up.

@28 You ask "What rights do building owners have?" Apparently you all have the right to kick people out of their unit to turn it into an Airbnb. ;-) Happy now?

@27 Those $100 bills are clearly fake. Also, the owner's wealth and spending habits are almost completely irrelevant to the conversation.

@Middleperson This conversation is all about wealth and spending habits- one of the the owners' defense for participating in becoming an owner, evicting a tenant to increase her income is because she can't afford her rent. Her wealth and her spending habits are clearly part of the story, fake money or not. When someone owns more than one property, and the other can only afford to rent, I would suggest it is all about wealth and spending habits.

@Seattleblues "What I charge for rent has not a single thing to do with my wealth and everything to do with maximizing my investment returns." Are you saying your investment returns have nothing to do with your wealth? I am baffled. Please clarify.

I'm saying what's true. I pay the mortgage- I have a right to decide within the law how to use my property. Whether I'm secretly Jimmy Buffet or barely scraping by has nothing to do with what I charge for rent or whether I want to try VRBO or Airbnb to maximize my returns on a damned expensive investment.

And your notion that we're all still in kindergarten and must share our stuff with the class? I have 2 homes, you have none- so I must house you? BS. If a person wants to live downtown in Seattle that's their choice. Making that choice affordable isn't the taxpayers, and absolutely isn't the landlord's responsibility.

Oh, and Narvid?

Any idiot paying 2k a month in rent csn afford a mortgage. Not in Seattle maybe and not at Pioneer Square certainly. Bit merely really wanting to live somewhere doesn't confer a right to do so.

@25, oh wow. You are absolutely right! Paris 17 weeks ago, all around the world. Man, I wish I had that kind of dough to be constantly travelling. Poor little rich girl struggling to pay her rent by working at a cafe....

One important point nobody is bringing up: hotels suck. Cabs suck. The "sharing economy" benefits middling wage earners who want the same things as the upper wage earners - efficient transportation and places to stay while traveling. Outright ban Airbnb and you'll be relegated back to the hotel only option, which are more expensive and outside the neighborhood you really want to stay in. I get the affordable housing angle too. Portland may be on to something.

This is an excellent article covering a prescient issue in our city, and I'm really happy the stranger is covering this sort of thing. I think AirBnB should be regulated and taxed like any other business. The city has a right to make zoning regulations for all buildings, and compel owners and tenants to abide by those rules. The activities of AirBnB hosts fall easily within the authority of zoning law.

All that said, could you have picked a worse example of who is affected by this kind of thing. I could give a shit if these two guys can find a giant, cheap apartment in *Pioneer Square* in which to 'get into' craft beer and legal weed. That's not an issue anyone should care about. It reads like a fucking Onion article, and undermines the very serious affordable housing crisis we're facing in this city.

Hey Seattleblues, when your ban expires, did you want to pose those two ethical quandaries to me like I offered? Last we spoke, you had (sort of) answered my questions, so I agreed to answer yours. Think you can stump the chump? I'll give you my honest and truthful answers to whatever questions (excepting sensitive personally identifiable information) you care to ask.