Comments

2
"If payment plans had been available, her situation might have been different."

how?

if someone can't afford to save for 6 months to cover move-in fees, prior to finding a new place, how are they going to be able to pay back those same move-in fees over a 6 month installment plan? i don't get how this legislation actually helps anyone other than those who can already afford move-in fees to spread out their upfront costs over a longer period.

i understand needing to help out those who are on a fixed or limited income but i don't see how this legislation does that. maybe i'm missing some important point?
3
@1:

For that matter, when did it become a right to live anywhere? So what if your job, your medical practitioners, your family, your friends, your culture - are all in the same place; a place where you could actually afford to live until just a couple of years ago, but that now has been taken over by hordes of invading Visigoths with more money than you who have impelled an upward spiral of escalating rents and home prices as property owners seek to maximize profit? Fuck you. Just move to some place where rents are cheaper, but then incur the additional expenses of transportation, time, and effort to get to all those things that were affordably accessible until just recently. Or better yet, get a new job, a new living situation, new friends, a new doctor and dentist, a new life you don't want and didn't ask for, because you don't deserve what you had before - you're not worthy to live in the same city you've been in for 20 or 30 years or your entire life. It doesn't belong to you anymore, so just get the fuck out now, please, and don't come back.
4
@3: How long do you have to live in a place before you have the right to always live there, independent of all other factors, and by what basis do you make that decision?
6
@3 Its ironic how much you sound like a coal miner trying to hang onto a dying profession. I guess such resistance to change is only ok for city dwellers, that can't stand the idea of moving.

And for this idea, "incur the additional expenses of transportation," sorry but that's what is causing the rent to go up, so you're already paying for it
7
"It doesn't belong to you anymore, so just get the fuck out now, please, and don't come back."

If you are a renter, it never belonged to you, it belonged to your landlord.
8
@5:

Most of the people being priced out of Seattle DON'T want to live in a New York Penthouse; they just want to live in a decent, affordable home in their own fucking city. But, according to you and others, they don't have a "right" to live here, because greed, economic inequality, and the onslaught of newcomers all take precedence over longevity, or any economic or cultural contribution they may have made up to this point. Well, fuck that.

@6:

Mass Transit =/= SOV commuting expense. It DOES, however, equal more time spent commuting, which means less time for doing everything else one needs to get done during the course of a typical day.

And current housing costs aren't being driven by future transit expansion - not yet, at any rate. It's being driven by one thing, and ONE thing only: a massive, unprecedented influx of people being paid six-figures as a starting salary to write code so that you can find the cheapest shit online in a matter of milliseconds.

Also, change =/= displacing long-term residents out of a city they've spent the better portion of, if not their entire lives helping to build.
9
@8 You misunderstand. People are free to live wherever they want, as long as they can afford it. Maybe if i dumb it down a bit you'll understand: You don't go to a grocery store and insist that you have the right to buy milk for $.05 per gallon because its what you used to pay.
10
What does it mean to say that "housing is a right"?
11
Don't y'all worry. Trump's gonna clamp down on H-1B visas and get all vindictive on Bezos, so the tide of tech workers and foreign capitol will ebb. *Greatness!*
13
@12 You won't find it affordable for long.

Look. It's simple. When cities become so inflated that the people who do all the base work to keep the city livable can no longer afford to live there the inflationary effect compounds and creates bubbles.

The people who collect garbage, maintain buildings, fix sewers, nanny your little brats, install drywall, cook and bring you meals in restaurants - when they can't afford to live here and when they have to commute from farther and farther out you get labor shortages. Especially in cities like Seattle with no serious mass transportation infrastructure.

When you get labor shortages you get MORE inflation, not less.

Then YOU can't live here anymore. Then shops close. Restaurants close. Shit hollows out. Businesses leave. you get Detroit.

Then there the cultural effects. When artists, musicians, actors etc can't afford to live you get no dynamics and no real culture that isn't sold to you by some mega-corporation. Cities turn to shit. Is that what you want?

Come on man. This is a settled matter in sociology and economics. It's worth supplementing culture and labor from the bottom up. Right now we supplement it from the top down via failed trickle down economics and it doesn't work and never has.
15
PS. I have no opinion on eliminating "move in fees" or what impact that will or will not have on affordability. It doesn't seem like eliminating them will destroy the foundations of capitalism, however, and it's not much of a hill to die on.
16
@14 Not everybody can move. Saying "just move" is just being stubbornly ignorant of other people's lived reality.

Anyway, so you move somewhere else and start another bubble? Great.

Come on man. You're not seeing the big picture. We don't care if one person lives here or not.

Were talking about the social dynamics of economically displacing thousands of people every year and the cumulative effect that has on society. Which is bad. This has been studied to death.

Look. I make mid six figures. Not bragging. Just a fact. I own property here. I'm doing pretty okay. But I have reason I have to stay. A parent with Alzheimer's being one.

But it's in my interest that a base level of workers who make between 25K - 40K CAN live here. It's in my self interest over the long haul. And yours too. Whether you choose to believe it or not.
18
@13
just like the SF Bay Area?
right...just a failing economy because rents went up so some "artists" can't get the subsidy they would like
no, friend.
19
The disabled section 8 renter described in the piece definitely needs and deserves some sort of help with moving costs etc being priced out. But I also dont think the burden should be placed soley on the shoulders of the landlord - particularly ones with small holdings say only a single home or condo they rent
20
I agree - the landlord shouldn't have to provide payment plans - especially small landlords. Instead the city should create a fund for move-in fees that you can apply for if you need help with these. That would provide the money for those that need it while not creating a burden and risk for landlords.
21
"especially because landlords do not need these payments in a lump sum. Security deposits are not typically used until the end of the tenancy."

Uh, but if you end up with a nightmare tenant, the 'end of the tenancy' could be quite soon, and it takes doesn't take very long to do expensive damage. Heck, a place can burn to the ground in the space of a few hours.
I agree vulnerable people should get help with security deposits, but small landlords shouldn't be shouldering a burden that should be shared by the whole community.
22
@13

"When you get labor shortages you get MORE inflation, not less.

Then YOU can't live here anymore. Then shops close. Restaurants close. Shit hollows out. Businesses leave. you get Detroit."

I live in a Detroit suburb.
That isn't what happened in Detroit.
Detroit has never had a "labor shortage", Detroit has a jobs shortage.

In fact, Detroit is starting to experience gentrification, and the population is going up, not down.

You make a lot of good points, but Detroit is a very bad example of a city hollowed out by labor shortages.
As of October 31, 2016 the unemployment rate in Detroit is 11.3%.
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#13: Just got back from a couple of weeks in NYC. I spent much of the time in Manhattan, one of the most expensive cities in the world. And oh yes, what a wasteland. No restaurants, no culture, no art, no theater, no interesting people, no museums, no new construction, no anything. Why would anyone want to live there? So sad.
24
Housing isn't a human right, although it should be. Oh, sure--the UN has some document that probably proclaims it a human right, but people who really believe that are renters. Landlords don't, and whenever it's time to sell your house, it's to the highest bidder by all possible means, not to the person who needs it the most, fuck you very much.

In this world, baby, you're on your own. Maybe that'll change some day, but not in America during the lifetime of anyone reading this.
25
To the "if you don't have all the money now, how can you expect to pay it using a payment plan?" morons on this thread. Y'all understand how a f***ing mortagage works ye? Oh do you not have $500k on hand? Oh you want a payment plan?! What kind of nonsense is that.
26
I love that homeowners get to have a 30-year payment plan, write off the interest from their taxes but god forbid a renter should get something similar. We're all just scum in Seattle apparently.

Please wait...

and remember to be decent to everyone
all of the time.

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