Weather: Let’s start this Slog AM off right with the weather! Some of you may already be on your way to work, well aware of the conditions outside, so I guess this is for the girlies scrolling through Instagram in bed right now who haven’t even opened their blinds. I love you and I’m proud of you, btw. Anyway lol. We started off the early, early morning with some showers, but that should be old news by about 9 am. From then on, you don’t have to worry about rain or bundling up too much. Temperatures should sit in the mid 50s. We might even see a little sun in the late afternoon. Lucky us!

Rent control now: Enemy of the working people, State Sen. Annette Cleveland (D-Vancouver) stalled a SUPER WATERED-DOWN bill in the State Legislature to limit greedy landlords’ ability to gouge the fuck out of tenants. The bill did not advance in time for the cut-off, but I think you should still call Cleveland to remind her that she personally contributed to the housing affordability crisis. You can call her Olympia office at 360-786-7696. Rich will likely roast the fuck out of her and the Democratic party later today on the blog. See ya there!

You have failed your party, Senate Dems:

Zuck on the hot seat: Congress grilled social media executives, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter’s Linda Yaccarino, and TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew for giving predators the power to exploit children online in a Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. I’m always jealous when Congress does this stuff. Like, I think the Seattle City Council should just make their enemies come in so they can air them out. 

PSA: Renton voters, remember to check yes on your ballot by February 13 to raise the minimum wage. 

Bad Apples: In case you’ve been living under a rock, Ashley writes an infuriating regular column about the normal, everyday fuckery of the Seattle Police Department called “Bad Apples.” And with so many “bad apples,” I’m starting to worry about the state of the barrel! Her latest really captures cops’ willingness to lie about stuff like a Brady Bunch kid trying to avoid a firm but ultimately feel-good lecture from their Lego-haired parents. See here:

Day 118: Israel continues its genocidal campaign against Palestine. Read Al Jazeera everyday.

Binda 2024: Lynnwood City Council Member Josh Binda, probably the youngest Black person ever elected to hold office in the State of Washington, officially announced his bid to become the youngest person elected to Congress. He’s running against Rep. Rick Larsen, who has been in Congress literally as long as Binda’s been alive, to represent Washington’s second Congressional District, which includes Bellingham, Everett, and Oak Harbor. Based on his comments in his press conference yesterday, it seems Binda is working the youth angle, so far not saying much about how he differs from Larsen on policy. A self-described progressive, I assume Binda will run to the left of Larsen. If so, Binda will have to duke it out with Jason Call, who already filed for the race and who has challenged Larsen from the left in the last two cycles. Call has yet to make it out of the primary, scooping up about 14% of the vote share in both of his attempts.

Build better cars, Kia: Seattle City Council Member Tammy Morales joined a group of council members from across the country to call on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to issue a recall on specific models of Kia and Hyundai. Why? Because they are sooooo fucking easy to steal that the council members say the volume of theft for those particular vehicles costs the City way too much in policing. Seattle’s been hip to the issue for a while, becoming the first City in the nation last year to file a lawsuit against the Kia and Hyundai for failure to install industry-standard anti-theft technology. The council also called for a recall in a resolution passed at the end of last year. 

Follow the money: Former President Donald Trump’s political action committee (PAC) reported its spending for the last half of 2023. The PAC spent $24.3 million, which amounts to most of what it raised in the last six months, on legal fees to the gaggle of lawyers defending him in his cases, including the one about his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the New York hush-money case, and the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. Another Trump PAC, Make America Great Again PAC, spent an additional $2.4 million on legal consulting fees. According to NBC News, this latest filing brings the Trump PAC’s 2023 total to $50 million in legal fees.  

For your ears: She’s sooooo Great Gatsby-coded.

Hannah Krieg is a staff writer at The Stranger covering everything that goes down at Seattle City Hall. Importantly, she is a Libra. She is also The Stranger's resident Gen Z writer, with an affinity for...

25 replies on “Slog AM: Senate Democrats Support Rent-Gouging, Josh Binda Challenges Rep. Rick Larsen, Trump PACs Spend $50 Million on Legal Fees In 2023”

  1. but El trumpfster’s

    MAGAtty rubes

    LOVE It when

    he Stiffs his

    attorneys

    and for the “advice”

    he got from Rudi Ghouliani

    it was worth every fucking penny.

    oh and

    END THE

    GENOCIDE:

    Dislodge

    Nutnyahoo

    & Free Israel.

  4. The rent control bill in the Leg would have reduced housing supply and made it harder to find a place to live. Kinda like how Sawant’s performative renters rights ordinances reduced the number of rental units in Seattle.

  5. Rent control is stupid. The stupid price of housing is a stupid supply issue, plain and simple. Build more housing and watch the rents go down. Instead of spending all that money enforcing rent control and subsidizing landlords, build a bunch of places for people to live. Charge reasonable rents for them. Watch the market “correct” itself when supply is better matched to demand. This entire discussion is stupid.

    And none of this “incentivize developers to build housing” bullshit either. Have the City do it with a State grant. Have the City collect the rents and maintain the properties. Look at what Big Government could do for you!

  6. Any renter or renters’ group should vet any politician running for an office that holds sway over rent control law with this one question: Do you or anyone in your immediate family own rental property?

    You cannot send landlords to city council, Olympia, or Washington expecting them to pass meaningful rent reform. All Republican and many Democrat politicians are in it for themselves. If passing or rejecting a bill helps you too, well, that’s great. But make no mistake. It’s what they want for themselves that matters. “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” was just a great movie. Don’t ever expect a politician to vote against self-interest. It would be a profile in courage. Man, if someone wrote a modern day “Profiles in Courage,” it would be a pamphlet.

    Most of us will be renters soon (if we aren’t the majority already) with home prices now in the multiples of $1M. I expect to see more renters in public office. And I recently saw where a great portion of all renters nationwide now pay close to 50% of their income for housing. Terrible and unsustainable. More housing is key, we know this. But how do you keep builders from only building towers of $3M condos? They’re going up like weeds here in LA, and you look at them and think, “Well that’s going to be unaffordable.”

    Actually, renters’ rights are pretty good here now. Not long ago they were terrible. LA has more than its fair share of absentee landlords, and something needed to be done. It got ugly, but we were persistent. The Housing Department wields pretty impressive power due to recent changes. However, those not under the protection of rent stabilization are getting slammed with unmanageable rent increases, but at least they can’t be evicted for no other reason than the landlord wants them out. Progress. Also, you can’t shakedown people with deposits and application fees, and credit reports can’t be used to evaluate prospective tenants. How about that? Because we know, don’t we, that most people, if they run into financial trouble, will pay their rent before they pay the credit card bill?

  7. Good people of Renton!

    Vote yes to raise minimum wage!

    This will be a boon for the companies that manufacture and maintain ordering kiosks at fast food places or self-check outs we find in most stores.

  8. If you want MORE of something, you make it easier to get, keep and maintain and you make the process uncomplicated. If you want less of something, you make it hard to get, complicated and difficult to keep and maintain. This works for almost everything in life, including rental properties.

    By passing this rent control legislation, you make owning and offering rental property difficult and complicated, especially for smaller housing providers.

    There’s a lot of risk involved in owning rental properties. Values go up and down, expensive home maintenance issues appear, it’s hard work with the hope of pay-out but not the assurance. Therefore, housing providers want a good rate of return or the risk isn’t worth it. If you eliminate or greatly reduce the potential or possibility of profit, you will lose many small housing providers.

    If a big apartment building with 100 units has 1 or 2 people not performing or paying rent, that represents 1 or 2% of their holdings. If Mom & Pop have a duplex or 4-plex and 1 or 2 people are not paying rent, that could be 50 or 100% of their holdings that are underwater.

    What this bill does is makes owning rental housing and providing rental housing more difficult. It makes it riskier and more difficult and complicated for the housing provider. It will chase many out of the business.

    Over the last 5 years, Seattle and King County has enacted dozens of new ordinances that taken together, significantly increase the risk to the small housing provider while increasing their costs. The result is an ongoing departure of rental housing as the providers (landlords) sell and leave the market. These homes typically become owner occupied, rather than continuing as rentals. According to the latest data from Seattle’s Rental Registration and Inspection Program, Seatle has had a net loss of 3,050 properties and 9,759 units since May 2021. During that time, just 27 rental units were added to the market. I imagine we would see the same loss of rental units county-wide.

    While designed to help tenants what these new rules and laws will do will make rentals less available and more expensive as property owners and landlords take measures to secure and protect their property.

  9. @7:

    Since 2016 there have been more than 70,000 units built in the greater Seattle metropolitan area, with over 10,000 units last year alone. But, we’ve also demolished roughly 5,000 units during that same period, mostly to provide land to cram more new units onto (https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/OPCD/Demographics/AboutSeattle/Citywide_Permit_Report.pdf). However, as @8 points out, most new housing is far above the price-point to be affordable to any but the highest earners, whereas most of what was demo’ed was well within that range. Meanwhile, Seattle continues to be the fastest-growing metro area in the country with a sustained rate of around 2.4% annually, which translates to roughly 100,000 new residents in the last decade. And that trend is projected to continue at an even faster pace, with another 100K coming in between now and 2029 (https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/seattle-wa-population).

    How is any metropolitan area supposed to keep pace with that kind of grown, and how are people making at or below the median income supposed to be able to afford these new places when wages are barely keeping up with Cost Of Living, and virtually NO NEW HOUSING is being built at price-points they CAN afford?

  10. Any conversation of rent stabilization aka rent control lite is not serious unless you are also going to address taxes/costs. The state/city has passed numerous tax increases and green initiatives that are going to drive costs up to maintain and/or retrofit these building. Contrary to what Hannah and other progressives would have you believe most landlords are making not huge profit margins on their rentals. The value you are seeing (and the investment thesis out there right now) is that with the various rules restricting supply you will see a rise in equity not income from the actual rental. To solve this it’s going to have to be a two pronged approach because you are never going to build enough supply in Seattle proper. We should embrace a regional approach and stop concentrating all the high paying jobs in Seattle that attract the masses and instead share that wealth with the rest of the corridor who also have more space to build things like SFH and other types of units that people desire. Unfortunately that kind of thinking is opposite the urbanist view of density right now so I don’t know that there will be politicians willing to embrace those solutions which means we’ll probably continue on our current path where we have shortages of housing and politicians who like to virtue signal and pretend its due to “greedy” landlords.

  11. Housing as Commodity

    when non-resident foreigners

    can ‘invest’ in the Citizenry’s God-

    Given NEED to be Housed & not even

    well this is Capitalism in its* Death Throes

    *and in Civilish

    Society’s.

    see:

    ‘Children

    of Men.’ pronto.

  12. Binda is a constantly bungling serial liar and an embarrassment to Lynnwood. It would be wise to be sure he doesn’t attain any higher office.

  14. speaking of

    Genocide:

    npr:

    Biden issues order

    targeting Israeli settlers

    who attack West Bank Palestinians

    The order named four people and will lay the groundwork for financial sanctions against settlers who carry out violent assaults, which have increased since Hamas launched an attack on Israel three months ago, triggering a full-scale war in Gaza.

    The order will not target U.S. citizens, who make up a significant number of the settler community. The Biden administration had issued an order late last year imposing travel bans on Israeli settlers who had attacked Palestinians.

    –by James Hider; 2/1/24

    https://www.npr.org/2024/02/01/1228388748/biden-executive-order-israeli-settlers-west-bank-palestinians

    Just say NO to

    Ethnic Cleansing.

    @Musicdoc

    da Nada

    dude!

  15. @8- as a small landlord I’ve only had a couple of people weasel out of paying rent. Both had crappy credit scores. No one with a 700 or better has ever stiffed me. So guess what I require now to rent an apartment?

  16. @ 18 – I want landlords to make a living. I know people save for years to buy an apartment house in order to have, say, retirement income because living only on savings and Social Security can be rough. I salute that.

    But do you charge a credit check fee? I’ve seen them as high as $75. Do you have renters with a FICO under 700 who are as dependable as it gets? Sorry you’ve had some run out on the rent. I’m not convinced they did it in conjucntion with a lousy credit score but rather because of moral shortcomings. Is anything under 700 lousy?

  17. @19- I agree that the tenants who stiffed us did it partly because of moral shortcomings. Those same moral shortcomings likely led them to stiff other people, which is the most likely reason they had lousy credit scores.

    The reason we set the bar pretty high now ( the 700 requirement) is partly the above and partly Seattles insane “ first in-time” requirement. Here, we’re required to rent an apartment to the first person who comes along and meets the advertised requirements. Nothing else matters. No other indices of sketchiness can be considered (not even a criminal record check showing that they have assaulted neighbors in the past would matter). The best way to protect your investment and your business is to set standards high enough that the marginal people can’t apply. This is a huge problem in that we can’t give individual consideration to, say, a single mom with a 550 score solely because of a divorce without opening the door to people who have a well-documented track record of just not paying their bills.

  18. Remember this from the Sara Nelson “Voter Suppression” article from earlier this week:

    “These lower turnout voters tend to rent, so they may move more often and forget to update their ever-changing address on their voter registration to catch every one of the four elections the County holds each year.”

    In cities with rent control, people move less often once they snag a sweet rent-controlled place. So – bring on the rent control! If people move less they will be less burdened with having to update voter registration. Win win!

  19. Before we go down the road of rent control, can we first put an end to the short term rental market? It always amazes me that folks can’t put 2 + 2 together and see the obvious cause and effect between the ascension of airbnb and rents.

    New York, LA, Palm Springs have all seen positive effects by regulating the tech bros – latest example, Palm Springs capped short-term rentals. Home prices are in free-fall https://www.seattletimes.com/business/palm-springs-capped-short-term-rentals-home-prices-are-in-free-fall/

    You want to strike a blow against the commodification of housing, ban / restrict short term rentals.

  20. @11 COMTE for the WIN!! I share your frustrations and concerns about vanishing housing affordability/

    Sadly, long gone are the days of a 1 bedroom / 1 bathroom / kitchenette / livingroom / dining room with 1 parking garage space for $560.00 (phone & utilities billed separately except water, sewer, garbage paid) per month.

    This was in Ballard up until 1997.

    @18 & @20 dvs99 and @19 Bauhaus I: I’m sorry to hear of this. I’m not 100% sure what my current credit score is, but the only credit card I have is a prepaid VISA that was a recent gift. I currently have zero credit card, mortgage, or student loan debt and just paid this month’s rent. I’m caught up so far, and my only bills will be for filing my 2023 tax return, tech assistance, and my iPhone statement at the end of the month. Depending on what I owe the IRS, I’m hoping to also get my piano tuned. That may have to wait because I don’t have a lot in savings.

    What happens when all new housing that is built are $3 million+-a-pop luxury condo high rises halfway to the sky? How many will stay empty because of the 99.99999999999999999999999999999% of us who can’t afford them?

  21. @24 Auntie- You’ve hit on exactly the problem. The City’s policies pretty much force landlords to not consider people individually. From what you’ve posted over the years, you are clearly a decent, responsible person. But you might find that your credit score is not all that high. In a reasonable world, where we can talk to potential tenants and see who looks like a good risk, that’s OK because we can look beyond the number. One of the best tenants I ever had was a single mom and her daughter (the recent divorcee I alluded to above) who worked two jobs to support her and the kid but had her score trashed by the divorce and the ex. She stayed for years, and because she was a great tenant we raised the rent only when absolutely necessary. That’s a win-win. But under current policy I can’t weed through the higher number of individuals who have low scores because of their actual behavior to find people like her. The result is that good people have a hard time finding homes because of rational business policies that are incentivized by the law.

    The other part of this is that, in general (and for obvious reasons), people with higher incomes are more likely to be able to pay their bills. This means that there is much less risk in offering expensive apartments than in offering affordable ones. In a world where it is harder to evict non-payers (or even to charge a meaningful late fee), this is another disincentive to offering or to build affordable housing.

    If the City wants more affordable housing, these policies need to be re-thought. Even in the best of times truly affordable apartments can likely be built only through public funding, because construction labor, materials, and land cost $$ (and we want those doing the construction to make a decent wage, don’t we?). Current law is making it harder to offer even semi-affordable places.

  22. @25 dvs99: As a landowner, do you agree with this law? Currently there are 749 billionaires in the Divided States alone who are hellbent on making our country and the rest of the world Of the Trillionaires, For the Trillionaires, By the Trillionaires. They don’t care if they destroy what’s left of the Earth and her resources in their desperate race for the last dollar, and won’t stop until they own everyone and everything. The current laws cater only to the insanely wealthy and must be changed.

    By the way, the last time I checked my credit score (I don’t know if it changed recently or not), it was above 800.

  23. @25 dvs99: I guess my question really is, if you had to choose between providing housing for A) an unemployed college educated female Gulf War veteran, musician, and composer turning 60, living on benefits with a good credit rating and a good tenant history (19 years, seven months and counting at her current residence), no burdensome debts, but next to no savings and B) a rude, loud, obnoxious hard drinking, whoring, NRA gun-loving, unvaccinated MAGA pro-Trumpist misogynist RWNJ bible thumper with $2 million in stocks and $500K in municipal bonds in trust to be inherited from his grandparents when he turns 40, but who currently has a credit rating of 300 because of his DUI record, excessive drug use, and filing Chapter #11 after his third divorce—-who would you rent to?

    If the City of Seattle prefers the latter over the former, both lawmakers and landlords alike can expect a mass exodus of reputable but declined rental applicants.

  24. @27 Auntie G- I’d take applicant A every time. And in this scenario, the drunken MAGAt would be ineligible to apply under any set of qualifications I would ever publish. The city does not prefer him under current laws. The problem is that if he managed to have a 700 credit rating, decent references, and the income needed, thereby meeting the advertised qualifications, and gets there first, I have no discretion NOT to rent to him. Even if he shows up in a T-shirt saying I Heart Pussygrabbers and carrying a gun in one hand and a PBR in the other.

    Fortunately, guys like that are not all that common and tend to have lousy credit scores and bad references from former landlords so we can DQ them based on those criteria. The problem is that a lot of good tenants get weeded out too. It’s a real problem in terms of who can rent a place to live. Until the law allows some reasonable discretion in tenant selection (that is, the person you’re trusting a few hundred grand worth of your property to), arbitrarily high qualifications are about the only way the landlords can mitigate risk. And BTW one’s bank balance is not something we look at. I don’t think it is predictive of whether they’ll pay the rent. You sound like a stellar tenant.

  25. @28 dvs99: Thank you for the compliment and encouraging insight. I can see how the rental qualification system can be tricky. I currently live in a very good place and neighborhood, and love where I live.

    What is scary for me is that I couldn’t possibly afford to move anywhere. Surrounding houses and new condo units are well out of my price range, and my landlord recently informed me that my monthly rent is going up

    again soon, however minimally.

    @29: I’ve noticed how hyper-judgmental you get when excessively chugging the MAGA Kool-Aid, raindrop dear. Too many Twinkies, perhaps?

    Go eat your paste before it hardens or someone flips you.

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