Rent control's a lot like barebacking. It sounds like a great idea and even feels good but you still end up getting something you didn't bargain for at the end.
Not going to do it. She advocates "at will" hiring and firing of public employees, namely, the police and firefighters. "At will" means you have the same rights as any McDonalds employee. What she is too dumb to know is that hiring is subject to bargaining, and so this is an empty promise to begin with. If realized, it would amount to public employees having no representation in hiring and firing, and would politicize the process to put loyalties toward ideology over actual qualifications.
That, is one reason why we need to elect a socialist to city council, so that she can demonstrate that it doesn't actually fulfill its own promises.
There are others models of rent controls we could try - other than the most notorious 1960's and 1970's versions.
I mean. C'mon. THIS - our current system that places the market on some sort of holy alter - is the extent of peoples imaginations? Because, let me tell you, it's broken.
Leaving something as crucial as god damned shelter up to capricious market forces is insane and immoral. I think we can do better.
Fuck. If this is the best we can get living to work then let's just extend that market approach to air and water. Why the fuck not? Thin out the herd so only rich people can afford to live.
Anyway. The pertinent question is NOT if we should attempt some sort of rent controls but rather how the fuck is Sawant going to do that?
Sawant as a council person will have literally no power and very little platform to move anything legislatively.
My problem is all of these pro-Sawant posts is the empty knee-jerk sloganeering.
Basically. The what she has going for her for her is she's NOT Conlin.
That and she supports raising the minimum wage (which as a council person she CAN effect). And she's photogenic.
I doubt those things can overcome her kookier positions in the eyes of sensible voters.
Good thing for her there are not that many sensible voters out there.
I'll vote for Kshama Sawant and I have no objection in principle to goverenment-imposed price controls. But I don't think rent control is good policy because I don't think it will produce the outcomes its advocates desire. Its a huge benefit to incumbent tenants but its really hard on people looking for a place to live. This results in a kind of hoarding of rent-controlled apartments.
And other reasons.
Real socialism would have the city owning apartment buildings. If the city/state/whatever isn't going to put up the capital to develop housing stock, then it needs to leave the market to allocate those resources. Rent control is half-ass.
And BTW; rent control does not fulfill promises either. In a world where materials, labor, and other things drive up the costs of maintaining a building, and where these costs always rise, the means for upkeep is diminished as rents stay flat. What you end up with is a building that gets run down, eventually is uninhabitable, and guess what? It gets knocked down for bigger and better and more expensive housing. Yet another socialist policy that doesn't actually deliver the goods.
Not to say that I have anything in particular against Conlin. I'm just tired of hearing the same names over and over when people talk about the city council.
Advocating for things with zero chance of happening while making your followers believe that they can (by force of will) sure has worked out well lately.
The problems that K. Sawant identifies are most certainly real (and painful), it's just that her solutions read like a prelude to a tragedy about unintended consequences.
@1 - The last thing Seattle or Washington State needs is some version of Prop. 13, as anyone who's ever lived in California can tell you. There's a reason this state is in bad budgetary shape and Prop. 13 is the main component of it. Keep in mind that anything remotely like a cap on taxes will be seized by Grover Norquist and wrung within an inch of its life -- once enacted, you will never ever ever be able to rescind it or effectively revise it. If you're fine with living in a place where public funding shrinks in direct relationship to the difference between 2% and actual inflation, so that in twenty years there isn't enough money to buy the piss pot you need installed in that cardboard condo under Ballard Bridge, then go for it. Otherwise, rethink your problem and try to find an actual solution for it.
*Ensuring that any tax, enacted anywhere, at any time, is safe from taxpyers who may balk at it.
*Putting people into as small cages as possible and making the happier than those "sprawling idiots" who live in houses, with yards. Those are reserved for "the good billionaires" who are doing everything in the powers to make life better for the guys in Zambia digging Ytrium for their phabphonedeviceboxpods.
*Convincing Cool People that anywhere South of Yesler and North of 65th Street is a nowhere man's land of Tea Partiers, heterosexual adult men, and religious families. (Defined by insiders as rapists, pedophiles and deviants.)
I think rent control is a start. It's better than the status quo - the fastest rising rents in the country. But, yeah, it's not a magic panacea. That's why I'm a socialist. As long as housing is dominated by big banks, speculators, and property developers who exploit our basic human need for housing to feed the rapacious appetites of the 1%, we've got very little leverage.
Five Large is a classy guy! He made five thousand big ones selling guns after those kids were gunned down at Sandy Hook. For a while he pretended he was gay to leech sympathy and convince you you need a gun to keep from getting gay bashed.
Also, Five Large's term for a writer's desk is "work station". Classic. Never change, fucknuts.
Everything you guys are finding on Wikipedia about rent control only cites some really far out libertarian think tanks as sources, ignoring anything that doesn't toe that one narrow ideological line. So it claims economists all agree rent control is a huge failure. The problem is that nobody but ideological fanatics have been paying attention to the rent control related articles on the encyclopedia that anyone can edit (but few bother to). So you aren't getting an objective point of view. It's an example of how Wikipedia fails when too few editors are working on a given subject. The nuts take over and nobody is there to stop them.
@1 and @19, you idiots, we already have a version of Prop 13 wrought by Eyman years ago. Our property taxes can't be more than 1.(whatever) percent of the valuation. @1, look at your assessment notice: it probably went up.
As far as property taxes funding the state, they make up only a tiny part of the state's income. This state's funded by sales tax, which of course is why we've been broke over the past few years.
@23 Incentive for investment? Incentives under capitalism are insane. There are plenty of sane incentives to invest in millions of jobs, and transitioning away from fossil fuels. But none of the sane incentives are profitable for the 1% who lack any incentive to actually care about working people. What incentive to the growing ranks of the working poor have to support continuing the policy of holding down the minimum wage? What incentive do renters in Seattle have for supporting housing policies that promote sky-rocketing rents?
Way back @6, what do you mean, Sawant will have little power to do anything legislatively? Councilmembers are the municipal legislators. If you meant she won't have the power as a socialist, fine; but if you meant as a councilperson, you don't know much about municipal government.
Unlike capitalism, where investment is only based on the possibility of profit and poor communities are left to rot, socialists support massive investment in housing and jobs to meet the needs of the millions, not the greed of speculators. I have not seen a serious economist predict any rosie outlooks for US capitalism. Just the "new normal" of debt, poverty, low wages, and obscene greed. This is the reality of 21st century capitalism. It's a dysfunctional system. If it were a healthy system then there would be no hope for the socialists. But, here we are, making quite a comeback.
My god, it has been a while since I've seen such a case of Stockholm syndrome on this rent control proposal...I am one of those "parasites" in San Francisco that enjoys, profits from, and has a god damn reasonable cost of living due to rent control. But, holy shit, I never knew there were so many Stranger readers crying for my landlord living in his $10 million mansion in Hillsborough? Look, let's see how this works. I make a very decent $150K a year income. Due to rent control, I pay $1106 a month to my landlord. Guess what I do with the rest of the money? Dinner out, taxis, United Airlines, new cell phone every year, saving for my old age, reserve fund for rainy days. See how that works? People other than the inherited wealth rentier class get to suck up my money as it is used in economic activity outside of paying rent. I sleep very well at night. When the owner of my 12 unit building bought it, he knew exactly how much rent we were paying, how long each tenant had been in each unit, and that purchasing at the price he paid would give him about an 4% cap rate. 4% not enough? Citibank will give him FDIC insured 0.03% on his deposits. No gun pointed at his head. Good grief, cry me a river.
Actually you've just proven why we don't need rent control when someone making $150,000 a year (top 10% of the wealthiest in this country) gets to abuse it. If it it gives you a great break on rent, why not demand price controls on restaurant meals? Or those $8 loaves of locally made, organic artisan bread?
@40, you clearly have not lived in SF. Take the NIMBYism and anti development bent of seattle, jack it up by a couple of orders of magnitude, swap out methed out / crack smoking homeless assholes for just purely balls out crazy ones, throw in a shit ton of people who can write multi million dollar checks for shitty condos, and that's SF.
@38 Yeah, living in Santa Cruz, we all envied you up there when we got notices year after year 5-8% hikes and then the eventual "get out because I'm going to gut the place with the equity your rents built and then hike the rent 50-80%"
And finding a place in SF may be difficult but it's not unmanageable. You could never say that place didn't draw in new people because of rents.
42, agreed. And I appreciate how fortunate I am. However, my (our?) point is that this is a political / economic issue. Controlled rents are not "immoral." Put it to a vote. If rent control makes San Francisco or Seattle or Santa Cruz multi unit buildings less profitable and less expensive, is that a bad thing? OK, yeah, I might shed a few tears for a landlord in Detroit. But Landlords here have generally done just fine doing nothing.
I was making an unfunny joke about how personal situation should proscribe societal action. My property taxes didnt in fact increase, but even if they did by that amount, I hardly think my personal situation warrants government intervention because of the unforseen problems it could and would cause.
@34 due to previous legislation Rent Control laws in Washington are the domain of the state legislature not a city council. Sawant will literally have zero influence on these policies. It's been written about extensively here before.
@39 and 40: Don't have any stats, but I'm guessing 150k year puts me about 33% income percentile in San Francisco. I'm single. The smallest condo is half a million. 20% down and I'm paying $3000 a month mortgage tax insurance. No thanks. Same reason why I don't have flash car. And btw, in the 17 years I've lived here, I've forked over in excess of $200k. That's more than the original cost of all 12 units when built in the 60s. I'm not crying poor or whining that I don't have a good deal. But how much is ever enough for the property owner whose annual income is far, far in excess of mine? Its not like he got "tricked" into buying this building. You don't like SF rent control? Plenty of other cities to buy investment property.
jail bush, likely your landlord didn't own that building since the 1960s. and with rent control, yessir, new capital to build new is going to go outside SF. your mentioning the net worth of the property owner brings to light that in your mind, a proper rent control would need income and wealth verification of BOTH the renter and the owner....iow a massive monstrously intrusive govt. enforcement system......and pray, what if your girlfriend or boyfriend moved in? and suddenly this household was making $300K not $150K?
you deserve rent control then? what? what kind of enforcement system do you propose that would have the gumming monitoring who you live with, what their income is, etc.?
without this it's just a random reassignment of windfall rent value .....in nyc when i lived under rent control very clearly half the people i met enjoying its fruits did not deserve it. they either made a ton of money, they'd keep 3 bedrooms in a 4 br apt. VACANT, they actually lived in scarsdale, they illegally sublet the place, or often the entire building was abandoned by the landlord (thjis more in bronx). you're suddenly decreeing this class of assets can't get the same 3 to 5% appreciation most historically get; this leads to underinvestment; shortage; more political pressure for rent control; in the end, the old timers poor OR RICH make out wonderfully and the newcomers rich OR POOR just can't find a place because try to get this --- few developers go build a new building of apts. under rent control, can you imagine why?
btw why don't you spend the $3K a month, you're suposed to spend a third your income on housing, you of all people could afford to buy, yet profiteer off rent control. nice windfall you got there, we under$tand your motive$ in de$iring to keep it.
@36 - The difference between socialism and communism is, in practice, negligible. The totalitarians grab power and kill off their enemies. Want a real world example? East vs. West Germany between 1945-1990. Or North vs. South Korea, today. That shit don't work. Never has. Never will.
conlin at best does nothing. conlin at worst has caused a great deal of damage. even if sawant can't pass a thing she will keep these important conversations going, which, at the very, she's already done as can be seen by how much both supporters and naysayers have to say about a very small campaign. most people don't even pay attention to who is running for city council. i sure as hell didn't until sawant came along. from watching her since she ran against frank chopp there are two things i've learned. she's tenacious and consistent. she'll keep at it even if the naysayers say its pointless. i'll choose a dozen sawants over one conlin. sawant at worst will do nothing but keep the dialogue going. sawant at best will actually make a positive difference.
@53 Oh. You forgot the hell-hole that is France. And the concentration camps in Denmark and the Netherlands.
Ohhhhh. Right. None of that is true. The socialist democracies of northern Europe are universally measured and envied as the most successful and prosperous societies on the planet.
You honestly don't know what socialism IS or the difference between a totalitarian state and democratic state, do you?
@55 - Reduced gravity aircraft (aka "the vomit comet") simulate weightlessness, but there's no such thing as a free lunch. Western Europe has been floating through the peak, but its starting to fall. (See Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, & Italy.) It's going to end badly.
That, is one reason why we need to elect a socialist to city council, so that she can demonstrate that it doesn't actually fulfill its own promises.
There are others models of rent controls we could try - other than the most notorious 1960's and 1970's versions.
I mean. C'mon. THIS - our current system that places the market on some sort of holy alter - is the extent of peoples imaginations? Because, let me tell you, it's broken.
Leaving something as crucial as god damned shelter up to capricious market forces is insane and immoral. I think we can do better.
Fuck. If this is the best we can get living to work then let's just extend that market approach to air and water. Why the fuck not? Thin out the herd so only rich people can afford to live.
Anyway. The pertinent question is NOT if we should attempt some sort of rent controls but rather how the fuck is Sawant going to do that?
Sawant as a council person will have literally no power and very little platform to move anything legislatively.
My problem is all of these pro-Sawant posts is the empty knee-jerk sloganeering.
Basically. The what she has going for her for her is she's NOT Conlin.
That and she supports raising the minimum wage (which as a council person she CAN effect). And she's photogenic.
I doubt those things can overcome her kookier positions in the eyes of sensible voters.
Good thing for her there are not that many sensible voters out there.
And other reasons.
Real socialism would have the city owning apartment buildings. If the city/state/whatever isn't going to put up the capital to develop housing stock, then it needs to leave the market to allocate those resources. Rent control is half-ass.
By $200/month? Where do you live?
Not to say that I have anything in particular against Conlin. I'm just tired of hearing the same names over and over when people talk about the city council.
The problems that K. Sawant identifies are most certainly real (and painful), it's just that her solutions read like a prelude to a tragedy about unintended consequences.
Well fuck, someone needed to say it.
http://www.thestranger.com/binary/676a/1…
If this is how he keeps his work station I wonder how bad his house stinks, it is probably worse then Sawants chonies.
*Protecting high rents for landlords.
*Protecting bureaucrats from private alternatives
*Ensuring that any tax, enacted anywhere, at any time, is safe from taxpyers who may balk at it.
*Putting people into as small cages as possible and making the happier than those "sprawling idiots" who live in houses, with yards. Those are reserved for "the good billionaires" who are doing everything in the powers to make life better for the guys in Zambia digging Ytrium for their phabphonedeviceboxpods.
*Convincing Cool People that anywhere South of Yesler and North of 65th Street is a nowhere man's land of Tea Partiers, heterosexual adult men, and religious families. (Defined by insiders as rapists, pedophiles and deviants.)
Five Large is a classy guy! He made five thousand big ones selling guns after those kids were gunned down at Sandy Hook. For a while he pretended he was gay to leech sympathy and convince you you need a gun to keep from getting gay bashed.
Also, Five Large's term for a writer's desk is "work station". Classic. Never change, fucknuts.
As far as property taxes funding the state, they make up only a tiny part of the state's income. This state's funded by sales tax, which of course is why we've been broke over the past few years.
2) Socialism is a failed ideology, that at its zenith, had 80-100 million people dead at the hands of their own governments.
BTW, take a guess how many people capitalism killed?
Actually you've just proven why we don't need rent control when someone making $150,000 a year (top 10% of the wealthiest in this country) gets to abuse it. If it it gives you a great break on rent, why not demand price controls on restaurant meals? Or those $8 loaves of locally made, organic artisan bread?
Thanks for shooting yourself in the foot.
And finding a place in SF may be difficult but it's not unmanageable. You could never say that place didn't draw in new people because of rents.
But keep chasing windmills. Better Seattle loony left do that and actually be affective.
you deserve rent control then? what? what kind of enforcement system do you propose that would have the gumming monitoring who you live with, what their income is, etc.?
without this it's just a random reassignment of windfall rent value .....in nyc when i lived under rent control very clearly half the people i met enjoying its fruits did not deserve it. they either made a ton of money, they'd keep 3 bedrooms in a 4 br apt. VACANT, they actually lived in scarsdale, they illegally sublet the place, or often the entire building was abandoned by the landlord (thjis more in bronx). you're suddenly decreeing this class of assets can't get the same 3 to 5% appreciation most historically get; this leads to underinvestment; shortage; more political pressure for rent control; in the end, the old timers poor OR RICH make out wonderfully and the newcomers rich OR POOR just can't find a place because try to get this --- few developers go build a new building of apts. under rent control, can you imagine why?
btw why don't you spend the $3K a month, you're suposed to spend a third your income on housing, you of all people could afford to buy, yet profiteer off rent control. nice windfall you got there, we under$tand your motive$ in de$iring to keep it.
Ohhhhh. Right. None of that is true. The socialist democracies of northern Europe are universally measured and envied as the most successful and prosperous societies on the planet.
You honestly don't know what socialism IS or the difference between a totalitarian state and democratic state, do you?