"The Transit Riders Union drew inspiration from that victory and, in 2022, led an initiative to raise the minimum wage in Tukwila, winning with an astounding 83% of the vote. That set off a chain reaction, inspiring minimum wage initiatives in Renton, Bellingham, Everett, and Burien."

Weirdly enough this story was posted on CHS today: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2025/03/the-latest-in-the-un-staffed-wave-capitol-hill-has-a-self-serve-soma-kombucha-taproom

"Meanwhile, counter, kiosk, and QR service continues to be a growing element in Capitol Hill food and drink as businesses try to keep up with the spiraling costs of rent, goods, and workers."

Coincidence? Progressives keep pretending they can pass these policies and demonize both landlords and business owners while ignoring the real world repercussions. These policies create less housing and less jobs.

As for initiatives, Katie you should probably pay attention to what is happening in Olympia. The D's are so irritated with Brian Heywood they tried to pass legislation this session that would make it so onerous to collect signatures it would essentially kill the initiative process. Right now it seems like that is dead but I wouldn't be surprised to see them sneak it back in before the session ends.

@1 is it a coincidence that businesses are also struggling with their rent? No, commercial landlords suck too. Great (accidental) point.

@2 I suppose you think commercial landlords are artificially inflating rent despite the plethora of empty storefronts downtown. Newsflash when you implement policies that drive up costs for landlords those things get passed along to the business that are renting from them.

https://clerk.seattle.gov/search/ordinances/126982

When are the social housing folks going to realize, THEY ARE THE LANDLORDS NOW?! Good luck adhering to all the unworkable regulations they've pushed through! Can't wait to see them put forth their operations and finance planning to take it all into account. They've completely avoided this topic thus far. But as a small landlord (not yet one of the 10,000 who have pulled units from Seattle's registry due to such a flawed regulatory environment), let me say "Welcome to the rental operations world. You have arrived ... and it isn't what you're expecting."

A pragmatic approach would be to work side by side with other housing providers to re-balance municipal laws for a healthy rental ecosystem. But it looks like Katie Wilson and Tiffani McCoy are reallllly confident they got this. Once again, good luck! Let the public money be spent and the painful lessons learned.

@4 feel free to "pull your unit" (in other words, sell to someone who'll use it as a residence not a passive income vehicle)

@5, it’s going to be “used as a residence” either way. The pulling of a rental unit is a win for the land owners, not the tenants, driving up those rents again.

1: "Progressives keep pretending they can pass these policies..."

They're not pretending, they're passing them.

@4: The whole project has been based upon the most ludicrously wishful thinking, starting with the bald-faced lie about no tax money required. When they discover those regulations further raise costs, they’ll be back for more money. Ditto their promises about using only union labor.

After several rounds of more tax money, each required to remedy one of these easily-predictable costs, Seattle’s voters will tire of ever-more taxes for no new housing delivered, and stop voting for those taxes. Then the Stranger will join the social-housing folks in yelling at Seattle’s voters for being intolerant conservatives who hate the poor and don’t want to help the homeless.

@8 someone's a little sensitive the initiative passed with a supermajority. Cope harder.

@9: I don’t reside or pay taxes in Seattle, so I don’t care about the civic commitment or the money. Social housing is a worthy goal, and works well elsewhere, e.g. white-collar professionals living in Vienna’s social housing. My concern here is the consistently high levels of fail achieved across the sets of the Stranger’s pet projects, policies, and politicians, which, if continued here, could make social housing look very, very bad.

@9 when only 37% of people even bothered to vote I don’t think you can claim a supermajority.

@7 you should the rest of the sentence I wrote before you spout off