How to make a housing shortage much worse: rent control. If I owned rental property in this town I'd sell it a developer to build a godawful concrete box and make a fortune and get the hell out of this stupid little town.

I just saw twitter feed from the Landlord Convention in which a demonstrator interrupted the lunch to yell about how she deserves to feel safe in her apartment yet tenants or Seattle City Council representatives have pushed for the law preventing Landlords from doing complete background checks making it harder to keep tenants safe. You can't have it both ways.

I’ll get you and you high security deposit, my pretty! Mama needs a new pair of ruby slippers-

Like there’s landlords in this town who are unwilling to sell to any developer to build a godawful concrete box.

It’s kind of hard to understand how more godawful concrete boxes are bad for renters. Those big godawful boxes *are* big. As in they increase the supply of housing. Which moves rents in the right direction.

The other thing about big godawful boxes is the city council has a lot of say over what is built. Getting one of our present landlords (mostly a bunch of dicks, btw, good riddance) to sell is a bonus.

AND, another thing. If the state would get out of Seattle’s business, the power to control rents would include protections for renters who are displaced because their dick landlord sold out to a developer who wanted to build a godawful concrete box, offending the eyes of yuppies with its looming squareness.

Isn’t Business 101 that you gots to know your market? The public of Seattle wants rent control and mandatory affordable housing in new construction. That’s why they keep electing your Kshamas Sawant and Theresas Mosqueda and such. Don’t be in the landlord business in this market if you can’t deal with that reality. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

And wouldn’t rent control collapse Seattle’s economy? You guys keep saying that. Why don’t you let Seattle’s hippies have enough rope to hang themselves? You could finally prove your Austrian economics! Let’s run that experiment!

Imagine if several landlords attended and disrupted a tenant’s union meeting.

@5 ”Isn’t Business 101...?”

No.

@7

I know. Libertardian parasites constantly threaten to leave. They never do. What's up with that?

Landlords, developers, bankers, wall street, are to blame for housing shortages for most people.
Housing which is beyond the reach of most wage earners. Many have long commutes to their jobs in the cities now since they cannot afford to live here anymore. So clutch your pearls or pants and whine about rent control and ignore the rumble in the streets greedy, shortsighted, dimwits. #6 Go on ahead.

Please pass rent control.
Please.
Because...
The disincentive will crash the build supply of new stock,
The 'why bother' reduction in maintenance in current stock, will put upward pressure on quality units.
The siege mentality of current renters, not wanting to move will create further scarcity, and so inflate prices

It will make owned houses INCREDIBLY valuable.
And so their owners less likely to rent, and more likely to vote against any zoning/development that reduces the value of their nest egg.

Please pass rent control, Liberals.
PLEASE!
Let's go, just like NYC and SF (where theres' SO much plentiful, quality, affordable housing available.)

Because you'll be making homeowners F'n Mazillionaires!

While not doing a damn thing to solve your 'problem.'

Heidi why are you passing on the opportunity to go up a few clicks on the Scale of Wokeness by using "homelessness" instead of "houselessness?" You need to pick up your game!

What rent control would do is to create a class of "winners" (those who are lucky enough to be in apartments that become rent-controlled), who never leave their places, and "losers" (young people, those new to the area, etc.) who never get the chance to live here because there are no vacancies. This is exactly what has happened other places.

Then add the disincentive to build/add more rental housing created by rents that are artificially low, and you practically guarantee that the housing crisis will get worse, not better.

The only way this gets better is if we actually build housing for those who want to live in Seattle. That is how the increase in rents gets slowed or stopped. That is how we have enough vacant units so that people can find a place to live. And that is how we stop everyone from having to move to the suburbs.

Or just try to punish landlords as much as you can. Kshama would be proud of you.

Rent control creates a predictably increasing supply of disenfranchised, (see San Fran) whilch become a self-regenerating vote machine for 'progressive' politicians, who can stuff the corpse of a city with municipal bureaucrats to "hold space" for the victims of politics.

This isn't about solving problems. This is about power, money, prestige and control through politics.

People who believe in Sawant and O'Brien are merely suckers. Gullible chumps.

Effing self-entitled commies. Can we get you all some ponies too? No one owes you shit.

Mike O'Brien owns a couple of rental properties. As a gesture of his high principles, why doesn't he disclose income statements on each property? Would anyone wanna bet that he doesn't mark to market?

Same goes for any other SCC member who owns or invests in rental property (even through their IRAs or other stock holdings).

Thanks for the link to the Rent Control debate, Heidi!

It's yet another reminder of how Kshama packs audiences to create the appearance of popular support and (the real benefit) big boosts to her gargantuan ego. I wonder how much taxpayer money went to producing the placards.

When Bolshevism comes to Seattle, it will be wrapped in a scarf and carrying taxpayer funded protest signs.

We have rent control and property tax control (Prop 13) in San Francisco and what's happened is NOBODY EVER MOVES. I was lucky enough to buy a house long before the market became the insane mess that it is now. But, if we were a normal market, we'd have moved to a better house letting a first time homeowner buy our current place. However, I can't afford to pay $1,000 a month in property taxes so we don't move. Same things with our friends in apartments. Many of them can't afford new apartments, so they don't move. They *do* buy property outside of San Francisco, which they then rent to people who want to live in SF (i.e. instead of the landlord profiting from their property, my friends do, indirectly).

The real solution is population control. Add 100,000 people to a city and prices are going to go up unless you suddenly build 70,000 new units of housing (assuming some people will live together).

The GOP gets power and tries to dismantle the federal government. The Democrats get power in WA and use regulation as a weapon to go after folks they think are bad. This sucks.

It's not "the Democrats" doing this *to* anyone. It's the people doing it, and they are doing it *for* themselves. The people of Seattle want rent control. They elected a slate of pro-rent control (and pro-income tax) candidates across the board to do their will, and the people's will is rent control and income tax and a high minimum wage.

The obstacles to these things have always been the minority conservatives of Washington who had gerrymandered their way to a slim majority in Olympia. For some reason right wingers in Wenachee couldn't sleep at night knowing people in Seattle had income tax and rent control. Seattle isn't imposing any of this on them. They were imposing their will on us.

Finally, that has ended. Now the possibly exists for the state government to get out of local city affairs and let the people of Seattle or any other city make their own choices. This is not "regulation as a weapon". It's democracy.

The fact is that conservative right wingers don't believe in democracy any more than they believe in states' rights or cities rights. They don't want a city they don't even live in to have rent control any more than they want a city they don't even live in to ban handguns. Their only motive is spite.

Wenachee and Colville and Bumfuckistan, WA should be happy. They can huddle there in church and praise Jesus that homo cuck Seattle is going to carry itself to hell in a handbasket. Because the *people* there *chose* to have rent control and income tax and $15 per hour.

The truth is that rightwing fanatic religious freaks have a shitty economy with no jobs and no wealth. Their only hope is that a bunch of somebody else's money falls from the sky and gives them a prison or a military base or nuclear plant or something. Or Jesus puts oil under them, like Alaska or Texas or Saudi Arabia. Then they take all the free money and pretend they built that. The PhDs who know how to get the money out of the ground are transplants from gay cuck fucking MIT and Standford. Without all those book-reading liberals "your" oil would still be in the ground and you'd still be in a mud hut, fucking troglodytes. Your welcome.

Fucking hypocrites are so full of shit. Be grateful that Seattle subsidizes your unsustainable rural lifestyle. If we cut off the money you'd lose your schools, your health care, your police, your jobs, everything. Say thank you and shut the fuck up while Seattle takes care of Seattle. Nobody is making you assholes raise your minimum wage. If Bumfuckistan doesn't want income tax, you don't have to have it.

Just listen to yourselves. You're *utterly* full of shit.

@22: "and the people's will is rent control and income tax...."

Yeah too bad you have that pesky little things like state law and the Constitution, and you commies have been ruled against on those issues multiple times.

Besides if you really gave a crap about the "people's will," then you would be urging the King County Council to obey the people's will and allow a vote in whether to ban so called "safe injection sites," just like every other city in western Washington has done.

It’s sad. There’s absolutely no middle ground. Yes, Republicans are mostly a bunch of ignorant Jesus freaks who wouldn’t know their way around a college textbook beyond wiping ones ass on it.

However, capitalism works. If Liberals claim a monopoly on reason, which they mostly do, then they would also acknowledge the realities that intellectuals have brought us: Social Darwinism is the law of the land. Concepts like rent control, though well intentioned, simply don’t work, as the vast majority of economists agree on. This article doesn’t take the time to quote economist concensous, because The Stranger has always been the opposite side of the coin of political extremes, not social and economic practicalities. If you’re against rent control or a $15 minimum wage, then you’re a terrible republican! Look at all these brave liberals fighting against Trump’s minions at the Convention Center!

It is sad to see such an educated city such as Seattle live in an echo chamber. There is a reasonable middle ground, and it falls on deaf ears. We need to model ourself against European countries. A healthy mix of Capitolistic fiscal policies and democratic socialist public policy.

Nope! In America, it’s one side or the other.

@23

You have a problem with Democrats taking a case to the court, and respecting whatever decision they make? You have a problem with a democratically-elected majority changing the law? Nobody is questioning the rule of law or skirting due process except you assholes. This is exactly what I mean about right wing conservative Jeebus freaks. You don't really believe in the law or democracy.

If you want a vote on safe injection sites, why don't you do it right? Follow the law. Use the process. No, you dumb illiterate fucks, you DON'T get to put safe injection sites on the ballot if you don't do it legally. Nobody is going to close their eyes to a ballot initiative that skirts the law just for the sake of conservatives who are too inept and retarded to do it right.

The judge made a ruling and explained to you dumb fucks exactly what you need to do if you want to ban safe injection sites: win some fucking elections. Win a majority on the King County Council and win the Executive and your guys in office can carry out your will. Why can't you do that? You are U-N-P-O-P-U-L-A-R. The voters, they don't want you. That's why.

Also you fought a War on Drugs for 40 years. It was a dismal failure. Everyone saw you fail. We saw you. We were there. Not going to keep doing your failed shit. Remember personal responsibility? Remember consequences? The War on Drugs was a stupid strategy with stupid goals and stupid execution. Your plan sucked and you did a shitty job. Drugs won and you lost. Now you're fired. Take responsibility for that. We fired the drug warriors and hired some pros who read books and shit, and KNOW things. They're dealing with drug abuse using tactics that WORK. If that pisses you off so much maybe you shouldn't have done such a shitty job and lost your dumbass drug war. You did this to you.

Democracy, motherfucker.

@ 25: Guess again, dipshit. I'm a lifelong Democrat, and I've consistently voted that way. What I am NOT is this new socialist breed of Democrat that's infecting the party. You know, the kind of people who think they deserve whatever they want, and have other people make that happen for them.

As for the heroin injection sites, the signature gatherers for the initiative got way more than the required minimum, and followed the law to the letter. I was there that day to witness the judge's decision. She, being a good SJW, said nothing about winning elections. She said she ruled that way because she disagreed that citizens should be able to vote on public health issues.

Nevermind the health of the whatever lucky neighborhoods get stuck with the injection sites. Nevermind that it's not healthy to shoot poison into your body, or that there's no provision for detox and treatment. And nevermind that the city and county had no problem letting voters decide other health issues, like banning smoking within 25 feet of buildings, letting grocery stores sell liquor, and putting a blatantly regressive tax on sugary drinks. You know, for the "health" of people the council thinks are too stupid to make decisions for themselves.

The GOP gets power and tries to dismantle the federal government. The Democrats get power in WA and use regulation as a weapon to go after folks they think are bad. This sucks.

Rent Control is one of those funny areas where progressives, who are happy to point to how evidence shows that climate change is real and tax cuts don't pay for themselves with magic fairy dust, decide to just throw facts out the window. Rent control in NY and SF has been repeatedly shown to at best just shift costs (controlled units are less, uncontrolled units are higher) with a high likelihood that the lower rents on controlled units don't fully offset the higher costs of market rate units. Rent control might have a slim chance of passing in Seattle, but not be enough to carry a state wide initiative. Seattle is still a mostly "liberal" and not "progressive" city, where voters want policies that reflect at least some level of fact based support.

The biggest irony was an article in the Daily on this topic where students were marching in favor of rent control. I get that the UW is expensive, but locking in rents for existing tenants is just going to impede the natural turn over that is needed when most residents come for a short 4-5 year period. Students and other individuals who move on a more frequent basis would feel the worst impact of rent control.

@22- "the people's will" is not always a great idea. Exhibit A - our esteemed President Asshole and the clowns who are destroying the Senate.

And it is often not good policy. Rent control is a great example. See this piece in the Economist: https://www.economist.com/blogs/economis…

Among the article's points: "Rent controls also mean that landlords may also become choosier, and tenants may stay in properties longer than makes sense. And some evidence shows that those living in rent-controlled flats in New York tend to have higher median incomes than those who rent market-rate apartments."

I'd argue that if people in rent-controlled apartments have HIGHER income than average, it is an indication that rent control is hardly protecting low- to moderate-income tenants. More likely that it would make it HARDER for them to rent a place.

That is in line with what several commenters here, at least some of whom who have experience living in rent-controlled areas, have said (see 14, 20, 28). It would be an absolute disaster here, where rising property values will continue to raise landlord's expenses which will provide even less incentive to maintain & rent their properties.

There is more than enough demand here to take most/all of the rental stock off them market & turn it into owned housing. I get multiple solicitations every week from people who want to buy our rental property & turn it into townhouses. I'm sure other landlords do too. If renting property out becomes too big a headache or untenable as a business, what do you think would happen?

Oh lookie, the rentiers, their shills and assorted d-list flutters are trolling the Stranger comment section. Yawn.

Economics is an ideology, not a science. It's really insulting to some dedicated climate scientists when you lump them in with economists.

Rent control has been "shown" to have adverse consequences by right wing libertarian economists. There's an array of assumptions this type of economist makes that produce predictable conclusions. For example, if the total amount of housing with rent control is less than without rent control, these economists will say that that rent control makes the supply of housing decrease. We don't want that! To them it makes no difference when the total amount of housing is lower while at the same time, the amount of *affordable* housing is greater. For those whose entire goal from the beginning was to get more affordable housing, it is success. For economists whose preconceived ideas don't account for human needs, the goal is always assumed to have been increasing the overall supply.

This is an example of why they never get it. And why they fail decade after decade to convince highly sophisticated cities across the developed world to repeal their rent controls. Meanwhile, real scientists get all the respect.

@31

While there are topics of Economic Theory which border on the speculative, historically and financially, I would dispute that Economics as a whole is an Ideology. That’s painting with a pretty broad brush. Most of the bread and butter of Econ is based on pretty well established scientific principles. There’s a reason aspects of free trade do not jibe well with very left leaning Liberals, as it tends to leave a fair amount of people in the dust. Those principles almost perfectly reflect the laws of nature, i.e. scarcity, demand, value, resource management, etc.

Now, we can tamper with those laws to a certain extent for the betterment of society and social justice. But in my opinion, concepts like rent control are a complete abomination to everything that works well with Capitalism. Rent control, being a concept within the broader topic of economics, is indeed an ideology because it is based on misplaced desire and belief, not established and well argued data. One does not have to be an ignorant Republican to realize this.

@31 ”Economics is an ideology, not a science.”

That’s some “fake news”-type bullshit right there. Good economics research follows the scientific method and is published and replicable by the community. You can’t hand-wave away an entire discipline — even if it’s inconvenient to your argument.