If this logic holds, any council member who rents, property or has a family member who does so, is also disqualified.

Then we’ll end up with even less housing. Mom and pop landlords are leaving in droves.

@1 no. From the article:

According to a 2010 opinion from the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission (SEEC), landlords do not constitute a “substantial segment of the City’s population.” Therefore, council members “who own Seattle rental property may not participate in matters affecting persons with an interest in rental property.”

Hannah, is an angle/take that hadn’t occurred to me, thanks for looking into this!

Sounds like a poor opinion about recusal. Does anybody really think the council members are self dealing with these rule changes? No. That’s not what’s behind their opinions. The elected council members oppose costly rental protections because they are barriers to property owners making their properties available for rent. These barriers reduce the number of units available for rent. With more people bidding up the prices, rental prices are higher and fewer renters get units instead of being homeless. And we’ve been in a homelessness crisis for years, without rental protections doing anything but quick cost shifting to landlords at the expense of destroying the overall rental market. Seattle voters understand this, which is why we elected the council that we did.

@5 "The elected council members oppose costly rental protections because they are barriers to property owners making their properties available for rent. These barriers reduce the number of units available for rent."

No they don't. People don't just let houses sit vacant, if they decide not to rent they sell. Plus as has been discussed a market analysis found after the new regulations were implemented landlords didn't leave Seattle at any higher rate than the nationwide trend.

But again, anyone concerned with the number of units available would make much better use of their time advocating to eliminate exclusionary zoning in every neighborhood than complaining about tenant protections.

@3 Ah, thanks, I missed that.

@6 the issue isn't the overall number of landlords but the type of landlords. What the city is losing right now is smaller landlords. You're right that they are selling so some of the units are being taken off the market and some are being transferred to larger corporate entities who are better able to manage the risk because they can spread over their larger portfolio. I remain convinced the regulations are doing exactly what they intended which is drive smaller landlords (who typically have more affordable units) out of the market to accelerate the housing crisis until people ask for government to start providing housing. Thinking removing zoning restrictions is going to help isn't realistic either. The current zoning allows for plenty of new housing right now so the question is why is that not getting built?

must be nice to be able to totally ignore a segment of society because there are relatively few of them.