All fair comments. But why did you oppose the new apartment building?

NIMBY is as NIMBY does

Thank you. Equity and cries of “exclusionary zoning” are being used as a sledgehammer to gentrify historically BIPOC neighborhoods. Why can’t BIPOC be seen as stakeholders of generational wealth too? Why the stereotype of Black renters? And why is Urbanism (with a capital U) embodied in so many white candidates? I have so many questions.

Anytime I see the word "intersectional", my eyes glaze over. But I read the article anyway, and if you were writing a PhD thesis it might be interesting. Ms. Hollingsworth, please just tell me what you think has been working and what you think has not been working.

Seattle's wealthiest developers learned a long time ago that they could get the Stranger and other progressive mouthpieces to rubber-stamp their wish-lists by making sure their PR contains the right buzzwords and by characterizing any opposition as NIMBYism or Karenism or what have you.

Any number of policies that disproportionately burden working-class residents can be laundered via this method.

I was surprised to learn that Ron Sims - one of my very favorite politicians- faced red-lining when he wanted to buy his first house in Seattle.
Hollingsworth is shockingly inclusive and non- strident compared to some other recent candidates! Good luck!

Do I understand this right that she rents from her parents and is/was property manager for adjacent properties?? This may be the first time I've seen someone trying to steal renter valor. If you are a landlord and rent, you are arbitraging properties, not truly being a renter. This piece will be very persuasive to a certain voter who is singularly focused on identity politics and doesn't bother to read the article she's responding to that is pretty damning about how she was being a NIMBY opposing an apartment complex that would block her view, allegations which this rebuttal in no way refute. I was made aware of both articles by a text from Joy's campaign. I already knew I wouldn't be voting for Joy, but I now might volunteer for her opponent to help prevent having another chamber stooge councilmember.

@9 (Alex Washing Machine) - You misunderstood her. She's basically maintaining the lot that has been in her family by living on it, and renting and maintaining the sub-units that her family owns. It's the same lot that's been in her family for years but was divided into three different units. One of which she rents out to herself, and the other two are also rented out, and most likely it's to other relatives. She's not working for a 3rd-party property manager. She didn't buy a separate lot with a home as an investment property and rent that out to make additional income for herself. She's basically helping manage the current lot that's been in her family and ensuring that things like property taxes are current and the lot doesn't fall into a bad state, which would prompt the county and city to take action. This is what the mom-and-pop landlords that live in the same house they've owned for decades but rent out their basement or mother-in-law apartment.

This is what exactly she said:
"In an effort to maintain an aging home and keep up with the costs of living, our family home was subdivided into three rental units, including a unit where I currently live.

We are fortunate to have a three-generation arc in Seattle. While I have a family stake in this home, I am a renter, and if my family sold the land, we would be hard-pressed to find similar, affordable housing in the neighborhood where I was raised and want to stay. Even as a “success story” of Black homeownership and longevity in our city, each generation is literally losing ground."

She's not stealing renter valor. She's basically trying to keep the property that she lives on as a renter in the family for generations to come. That has always been a challenge since city and county officials tend to look at the POC-majority neighborhoods as potential blighted neighborhoods and try to keep their property values lower than the majority-white neighborhoods.

Well-written and an effective rebuttal. However I do think she’s kinda calling the kettle black (no pun intended, and it’s a crappy pun anyhow) by stuffing decades of systemic racism into a critique of a single article The Stranger wrote. Isn’t that basically her complaint, that TS extrapolated from one article to convey a host of other untrue implications?

Also @4 is a lazy asshole.

@3 - "Thank you. Equity and cries of “exclusionary zoning” are being used as a sledgehammer to gentrify historically BIPOC neighborhoods. Why can’t BIPOC be seen as stakeholders of generational wealth too? Why the stereotype of Black renters? And why is Urbanism (with a capital U) embodied in so many white candidates? I have so many questions."

I don't reveal much about myself b/c i don't want to get doxxed. But I'm a black homeowner in District 3, where I also live. When I moved in, one of my elderly neighbors, a kind sweet elderly white woman, thought I was renter moving in and scoffed at the idea of another renter. Well she wasn't told by her son, who lives next to her, that a black guy had bought one of the units.

The reason BIPOC aren't seen as stakeholders of generational wealth is due in part to generational systemic racism that's been going on in this country and Canada, since the late 1700s. (Yes. I included Canada https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/black-history-until-1900). I'm not going to into the intricate historical details, but fast forward to the establishment of the GI Bill and the FHA Loan program and you'll see how racist our government was with regards to giving out loans to Black vets and black families and then of course red-lining. That was the groundwork of BIPOC families having either no or little generational wealth to build and pass onto descendents. Add into the mix of eminent domain and the shady shit racists did to black landowners throughout this country and voila, we land ourselves into current events where BIPOC like myself have to teach everyone history only to have the racists scream "Critical race theory".

My family (both the Hispanic and the non-Hispanic sides) have historically rented parts of our houses to other relatives (siblings, cousins, etc) as a way to build up equity in Santa Barbara. Hard to get a mortgage otherwise.

However, I don't think we would describe ourselves as renters, or as preservationists, even if some of this was in Hispanic neighborhoods.

Look, the best thing to do when one is NIMBY is just admit it. Sure, you have reasons, everyone does, but there are a lot of BLM signs on anti-housing NIMBY lots in Seattle.

@14
Yes yes yes!
BLM! (But not in my neighborhood!)

There sure are a lot of white progressives trying to deny a black woman her reality. As property records are public, I’m going to take Joy at her word that she’s a renter (as I would assume the Stranger would have already reported otherwise).

Nice rebuttal Joy! Thanks to the editors for running it.

NIMBYs co-opting progressive language. No thanks.

@19 what makes Joy a NIMBYist?

@19 are you looking for someone more like Sawant? I mean that hasn't really worked out well for D3 in the last 3 years hasn't it?

@10 this is not complicated. She's a property owner, landlord if renting to non-family, and definitely not a renter.

@16 and @19 TS hasn't called her out because it's a subjective matter of ideology. I am not surprised some people would consider someone who contributes to a family mortgage as a renter even though that strikes me as absurd. Deriding supposedly racist white progressives is a weak evasion of the substance. No one is automatically right or wrong because of their race. Just because a non-white person claims to be a renter doesn't mean a white person can't push back on the claim. Leave race essentialism to the actual racists.

@22 Sawant was the biggest NIMBY. I'll take Hudson who is pro housing and pro transit.

@25 her family owns the property, no? Sounds like she is paying into the equity of the property, perhaps at a below market rate, that she will eventually inherit. That's not the usual meaning of renting.

@25 Joy is clear in the article: "While I have a family stake in this home, I am a renter, and if my family sold the land, we would be hard-pressed to find similar, affordable housing in the neighborhood where I was raised and want to stay." She benefits from good fortune that her peers whose family never owned don't have That's not enough though. She tried to block the apartment complex that may have gave others a chance at affordable housing.

@27 She states that the reason to split the house up (which we can assume was paid off a long time ago) into rentals was to be able to afford the cost of maintenance. You may not know this, but old wood Seattle houses need a lot of maintenance from the weather. That doesn't appear out of the air like some sort of faux-Marxist pixie dust. It's expensive and getting more so. But you sound entirely entitled so I'm assuming you wouldn't get it. And who's to say her renters aren't being offered affordable housing compared to what was going to be built?

I mean the horror, the horror! of someone owning a home and/or their own business. How dare they! Shouldn't it be the State taking care of all our needs while we wile away the hours toiling at the pot shop or kombucha brewery?

@28 you are making assumptions about my politics that you have no basis for. Surprise, I'm a homeowner of a home built in 1900 that requires maintenance. Maintenence costs don't make the property owner a renter.

@28 you're assuming things you have no basis for. Surprise, I'm a homeowner of a home built in 1900 that requires maintenance. Maintenence costs don't make a property owner a renter.

@Alex Washington Machine - "She benefits from good fortune that her peers whose family never owned don't have"

You say that as if it's easy to keep property within the hands of ones' family. From personal experience with it, as a POC, in my own extended and close family in the South, it's not easy.

Also what do you have against black families, who are property owners and historically have had their homes, aka source of generational wealth, taken from them through dubious methods by local and state governments and shady investors, trying to keep their properties within the family for future generations? Are you implying that both I and Joy should off load our properties later in life so that our families can't benefit from them?

You yourself are a property owner. But have you considered what happens if you want to leave your property to your decedents, either direct or indirect (eg. nieces/nephews/cousins).

@25 - Thank you for finding and sharing that article!!!

@31, Alex Washing Machine is proving that communism doesn’t see color. He thinks that your property, and Joy’s and mine should belong to the collective. Doesn’t matter the color of the skin of the prior owners. If they are owners of property then they have zero right in how their neighborhoods are managed. The collective will decide.

Alex Washing Machine is going to need a heck of a lot of scaffolding if he ever decides to come down off that horse he's on...

@31 what you quoted says what I said, just that other people haven't had a chance of inheriting a home, nothing to suggest it's easy for POC to keep property in the family. Also, I didn't say anything to oppose POC having properties and keeping them in the family. Less fortunate people have to rent, and she opposed a project that would increase the apartment supply for her personal self-interest. It reflects poorly on her principles.

@33 Brilliant red-baiting, really persuasive. She has a right to have a say in how her neighborhood is managed, and I have a right to judge her as a candidate when it's relevant to important policy she would have a vote on.

@34 Oh no! What do I have to do to flatter unpleasant, crass old people? It wouldn't be noteworthy that she's being misleading about being a renter except that she actively worked against renters' interests by opposing the apartment project for her self-interest as a property owner.