Four years ago, my wife and I found a modest little apartment at the top of a hill by luck. Last spring, they started refurbishing the apartment above us, but we were so busy that we hardly noticed. My wife has a pair of jobs, and I’m usually either at work or at school—so most of our time at home, we’re making dinner for each other and falling asleep on our little green couch. At the start of the summer, on Memorial Day, we had our first day off together in three months, and we decided to make a date of it. We were on our way to the ship canal to feed the ducks.
As we opened our apartment door to leave, I saw something taped to it.
It was a notice of rent increase. Our rent was going up by $300.
They might as well have evicted us.
We moved here from California four years ago, just in time to witness Seattle’s construction boom. When they began working on the other apartment…