Comments

1

Hahahaha it's so funny to piss off landlords! I hope they all sell their older, more affordable units and they all get torn down! LOL Yeah, take that you loser landlords!

3

OK Heidi, why, exactly, do people have the right to live wherever even if they want if they can't afford it?

4

A 2-person family is above 80% MFI if they each work full time at minimum wage in Seattle. You've got to be pretty poor to qualify for affordable housing in this town.

5

The complaints of the landlords all seems pretty reasonable. The first to view thing essentially removes the right to refuse service. A person should also be able to refuse to rent an apartment to somebody who has been, say, convicted of burning their own home down. I am totally down with requiring landlords meet certain safety and standard-of-living requirements, and reasonable rent control (like not being able to raise current occupants rent beyond, say, the rate of inflation), but as long as there is a market for it, they should be able to charge NEW tenants whatever they feel is fair market value.

7

Maybe because the landlords know these costs imposed on them get passed along to the morons who support them?

Call it an intervention.

8

How is it my rent isn’t being raised?

Is it because I pay on time?

Is it because I stop and talk to her?

Is it because I’ll do things like replace my bathroom fan without telling her?

Is it because I shopvac my walkway?

Is it because I won’t let her kill the bees if I can help it?

Is it because I’m going to help her remove the top of a tree before it reaches the power lines?

Or is it because I’m independent, and actually walk the walk?

9

Just of 4,236 respondents said "If you don’t make the money, why do you have the right to live in the city." Why does the headline suggest that all landlords in Seattle share this exact same sentiment?

For me, the most interesting part of this survey is the nature of the average landlord in Seattle: the vast majority own just a single unit, which they have held for over 10 years. In other words, these are by and large mom-and-pop operations.

10

Tear down your triplex and build 35 pods? How is building more housing a threat? "If you guys don't stop forcing me to be a good landlord, I'll build affordable housing! Sure you can afford it but it'll be a small space and then you'll sure feel silly!" Sure, buddy.

11

@3,

She didn't say the did, dumbass.

12

@10, yeah I didn’t understand that either. “Stop incentivizing me to create more density!” Uh...isn’t that a good thing?

13

I'd love to drive a Porsche, but I drive Honda... because, while I have a 'right' to drive a car, I don't have the right to drive whatever car I want, regardless of the cost.

The dealership should be prohibited from refusing to sell me the Porsche because of the color of my skin, or because of where my money's coming from. They can't not sell me the car becasue of my religion, or because I'm gay. But it would be insane to insist that they be regulated into selling me a Porsche for what I can afford to pay just becasue that's the car I want to buy.

14

@9 Should read "Just 1 of 4,236 . . . ."

Still can't understand why there is no way to edit comments on here.

15

@9 - most landlords have few units, but most tenants live in buildings owned by large (sometimes corporate) multi-unit landlords. If you want to benefit most tenants, you make rules with an eye on the large landlords. They are the ones that have been proven to engage in housing discrimination and the practices that the city council is trying to control. These rules benefit the most tenants, but also can hurt the majority of small-time landlords that have never done anything wrong.

For as long as I have been around, most of the City Council were landlords themselves. This may be the first council that isn't. It may very well be the case that they lack enough input from small-time landlords. But small-time landlords could direct their anger where it belongs, at the large landlords that are creating cause for new ordinances. They could actively participate in discussions that could lead to policies that reign in the biggest abusers without creating undue burden. But the largest landlord lobby group, RHA, has no interest in this, because the biggest abusers are their largest funders. Small-time landlords should have their own lobby group that actually looks out for their interests.

@3 - Your reasoning is dangerous. It inevitably leads to the idea that there are human beings that don't have the right to exist anywhere. If you can't see why that is a problem, there is really no point in discussion any of these issues with you.

16

"If you don’t make the money, why do you have the right to live in the city."
This is such a bullshit derailing tactic.

All the noise about affordable housing and displacement is about people that ALREADY LIVE HERE.

No one is talking about wannabe transplants complaining about how expensive their first Seattle apartment will be.

We're arguing that Seattle's current residents should have some reasonable expectation that they won't be forced to move out of the city because their current landlord noticed that demand for housing in Seattle is skyrocketing and figured they could raise their profit margin on your apartment through the roof.

To repurpose @13's car analogy, this is like if you were leasing a Honda, and the dealership decided to increase your lease payment by 30%, and when you complained, they told you to take the bus.

17

You don't have the "right" to live in a certain city or neighborhood.

We'd all like to live in certain places but that doesn't mean society is obligated to pay for it..

18

@13 then they all complain about the homeless which includes elderly sick women that can no longer pay the rent while landlords laugh all the way to the bank and the 30 somethings that can afford overpriced housing say elders don't have the right to live in an area they have supported for 14+ years if not a lifetime. Next they'll invoke soylent green and euthanize us.

19

Same problem as with San Francisco: limited area to spread out due to water features and everyone wants to live here. At some point there is simply no more room to build but we aren't there yet. There is a TON of seemingly abandoned commercial space in this town. We need to think outside the box - turn those empty office buildings into apartments! If our society would stop giving its blessings to single family dwellings of 2,000-plus square feet, more people could live in the same amount of space. Landlords are those people you want to rent to you so there is no point in cutting off your nose to spite your face.

20

Can a city only have rich people living in it?

A whole city?

Not a suburb...not a gated community...but a city (that has typically been home to people of all income levels.)

A city with people who are going to school.
A city with people who have part time jobs while they try to figure out their career path.
A city with people who work as waitstaff, teachers, musicians, etc.

It seems to me that a whole city needs places for people who have different levels of opportunities available to them. Places to start out...places to advance to...places to recover in.

I moved here in 1992 with a group of people--some just out of college. None of us had jobs when we moved here. Luckily, someone rented to us, even without jobs. Soon enough, we all found jobs--some of them better jobs than others--and we always managed to pay our rent. We all found better jobs...and better places to live...and most of us went our separate ways. I think all of us that moved out here in '92 all own homes now, pay taxes and are part of the community--a community that we love and that, I think, we all feel part of...

Had it been today instead of 1992, we wouldn't have been able to do that. Maybe we wouldn't have tried...maybe we would have all gone somewhere else.

And maybe, you'll think that'd be no big loss.

...and perhaps that's just the luck of making the right decisions at the right time. Right now is not the time to move to Seattle unless you're rich.

But, there are those who HAVE lived here, perhaps for most if not all of their lives, who are finding it hard to keep living here. Maybe they didn't find the right jobs, they didn't take the right career path, maybe they've hit a bump in the road...but they're doing what they can to keep themselves afloat (knowing that as expensive as it is to keep living here, it's not exactly inexpensive to pick up and move somewhere else...)

...and they're being told that they have no right to keep living here--despite this being a city that HAS TO BE more than just rich people (as those rich people need people to pour them drinks, walk their dogs, teach their children, entertain them at night, etc.)

Maybe no one has the "right" to live where they want to...but, I don't think you can expect a whole city to lack enough affordable housing to keep itself going...

(I thank the landlord who had a place available at a reasonable price and took a chance on some newcomers who needed a place to live before they could find jobs.)

21

What can't all the whining Sloggers simply move down to Seatac or Burien (coming soon, Lynnwood!) and take that train in? Or are there too many PoC down there and not enough craft breweries?

22

Vote smarter!

23

Landlords are parasites.

24

The sort of regulation the left wants simply does not work. They use all the wrong mechanism's. If we want affordable housing, then we need to limit foreign buyers with some sort of tax or penalty, we need to deport the 100k or so illegals in the greater Seattle area and stop bringing in so many foreigners and H1-B's.

If we provide nore subsidies, and we already give a lot to illegals and refugess we import(we need to stop bringing in half of Somalia tbh, it's not sustainable), this just overheats the service economy, lowers wages for the unskilled, and raises prices for everyone.

So, in summary, we need to end immigration and stop foreigners from buying real-estate if we want any real change.

25

Seattle is run by a bunch of dullards. I hope the landlords sue for any financial damages caused by rent control. Here’s a tip: the service industry is typically a stepping stone to something better. Like you know, a career and mortgage. Fkn crybabies.

26

21 People ARE moving further and further both north and south along I-5 in order to find affordable housing, and driving up housing costs all along the I-5 corridor. Lynnwood is already unaffordable for many renters, you dolt. People are commuting from Bellingham (almost 190 miles roundtrip) and rapidly driving up housing costs there.

It's just kicking the can down the road and then the state will need to enter the picture because it housing affordability and homelessness will become a huge regional problem. There is no solution in just showing people to the city limits.

Besides, it's as much a problem of depressed salaries and wages in all of the local non-tech sectors as it is a question of housing affordability.

At some point this newly blown rental housing bubble is gonna' go bust (as bubbles always do). When The Big A starts shifting jobs from here to HQ2, that might well be the pinprick that breaks it. Then we'll get to watch landlords, managers, and developers take it in the cajones, while this time single family owners chuckle from the sidelines.

27

Landlords are not evil. Most have less than 4 units. They have mortgages. If a landlord has a rental that’s worth $350,000. They are loaning the equivalent of a mortgage to strangers with only tenuous hope that they won’t destroy it. Their risk is high.
Some of the restrictions on landlords are very reasonable, others deny the owner their property rights, their right to decide what’s best for their own situations.
What this article did not cover, is the huge expense burden on LLs thru these and previous well-meaning local laws and rules.
The 10k to 20k damage repairs after a destructive tenant moves out. The cost of eviction and months of lost rent as squatters and nonpaying tenants are very difficult to remove. Nuisance suits from tenants and defrauding landlords with false service animal claims to escape pet fees and all the related damages tenants do while they’re being evicted.
These costs are rarely recovered and insurance companies will only cover one incident before raising premiums (up to 5 times what a landlord package usually costs) or cancel outright. A few claims and the landlord must purchase high risk insurance or go for protection levels below what the replacement value.
Landlords pulling their rentals off the market is only going to make the housing crisis worse.
Landlords aren’t rich, and when they can lose their investment, they need to financially protect themselves.

29

People before profits, unless they’re people and not corporations.

30

It's seriously amazing how all these bootlickers can look past the obscene, undeserved wealth and privilege held by property owners

31

Speaking as a landlord (though not in Seattle and who did not receive this survey and who owns commercial spaces) it has never been a better time to be landlord. If most of the respondents of this survey are so hard-up then they entered the market late, got greedy during the flipping craze, and are over-leveraged. Waaaah. So pardon me if I play the worlds smallest violin for these cry babies. There are more renters here now. And numbers provide political power. That’s fucking how democracy works.

I’d like to see the full survey. I’m sure there’s plent if stupid shit in there the city council wants that I’d hate.

But landlords can’t have it both ways. They can’t decry not having a voice just because suddenly renters have a voice - and owners have a city council who won’t suck developer and property owner dick like they used too because it doesn’t get them anything with majority of voters. It’s just total hypocrisy.

Eventually there is going to be a big correction. Eventually the bubble will pop. Probably with in five/six years. And these same cry babies will be begging for the city council to bail them out and half of them will be desperately selling these soon-to-be underwater properties to any one who can get the loan.

33

Would anyone WANT to live in a city where only the wealthy could afford to live? That would be a place with no art, no comedy, no sponatenity, no real music, no creativity or joy at all-just a place of entitlement and arrogance, a place where everyone was so obsessed with making sure that nothing that ever "lowered property values" happened that no LIFE could ever happen. When you put property and profit before people, people are forced to stop acting like people and simply be servants of profit and property. A place like that would basically be Sparta with gated communities.

34

"People before profits"

Nice slogan. It's working well in Venezuela where inflation just hit 1,000,000%

35

Part of the Problem be those parasitiKill sociopaths; SQUAT !!! --- planet.squat.net ( or adversely possess . . . . 18 million empty houses in MAGAland to choose from in the Home of the SStupid . . . . --- nationalhomeless.org & inequality.org ).

36

"It's seriously amazing how all these bootlickers can look past the obscene, undeserved wealth and privilege held by property owners"

Don't worry, sophomore year is always the toughest. Still young but suddenly realizing you will have to pay your own bills one day, have to find a major, and while "poetry therapy" is your "thing", well that would leave you embittered and resentful for the rest of your life.

So try not to be sophomoric. Or give away all your property and prove us wrong.

38

@37 This is all about resentment and bitterness. Youthful resentment, which is normal I suppose.

But the bitterness is from the over-40 year olds, and they need take a long look in the mirror.

Time to clean up your rooms first buckos!

40

@37 - Sucks you didn't plan ahead for those things.

And stop letting toddlers shoot holes in your roof.

41

@39 The only adults in the room apparently.

42

37: no more amazing than the fact you believe anybody's been a Stalinist since 1956. Or a large-C Communist since 1989. The Left of today has nothing to do with any of that. But you knew that.

43

Time to play Seattle’s favorite parlor game for white kids with shitty college diplomas:

“Who’s gonna pay my rents?”

Will it be:

A. Your mama
B. Your papa
C. The gub’ment

or

D. You!

44

"large-C Communist since 1989"

Socialist Alternative is a Trotskyite party that demands pull state ownership of all business ("Boeing making buses!"). That is if you believe their website.

45

36: "eventually u run out of other people's money"? You might want to tell T___p that, since that's the only kind of money he spend for anything. Meanwhile, you have no reason to assume that the person you were dissing there isn't doing a real job and supporting herself. Plenty of us who do work for a living disagree with the idea that Seattle should only be a city for the rich.

46

32: funny how you assume that older people in that kind of home would hate the idea of affordable housing and love high rents. People who support rent control and affordable housing have no inherent issue with the type of couple in your example, and if they're landlords, they tend not to be the problem kind.

47

Perhaps, in the not-too-distant future, popular cities -- New York, San Francisco, Boston, Austin, Denver, Seattle and others -- will become true refuges for the wealthy. Some kid who was born a few years ago will end up inventing sophisticated inexpensive electronic "fencing" to surround these cities in a bubble, so the poor and the riff-raff have to stay out permanently. Then they can have their cocktails and $20 donuts in peace.

48

Since Socialist Alternative supports political democracy, it's not comparable to "Large-C Communists", by which I mean the kind of hardliners who ran places like the USSR before Gorbachev or the Warsaw Pact states(other than Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring). They are radical socialists and could be called "small-c communist" but a small-c communist is simply a person who owns collective ownership-which can just as easily be community ownership or social ownership by working people without state ownership, managed and controlled by the people who do the work in the enterprises involved. This is massively different from Stalin and Mao's murderous regimes, and would mainly having the effect of democratizing the humanizing the workplace-there's no concern, after all, that can ONLY be run well by being run to get a few people at the top rich while everyone who does the actual work is living in perpetual fear of a dressing-down, or a demotion or termination

The model most people on the Left support now is co-ops, and in situation where economies of scale required something larger networks of co-ops working together to keep prices down, or at most factories with boards of directors elected by the workers and subject to recall by the workers at any point. This model wouldn't repress anyone or harm anyone. It would make life better for virtually everyone who works for a living, and would also essentially be a full-employment model, so there'd be few if any poor people for anybody to bash.

Oh, and you can't be a Stalinist and a Trotskyist at the same time-trying to be both would literally mean driving an ice axe into your OWN skull.

53

I understand that some neighborhoods are going to be unaffordable to many. But a whole city shouldn’t be that way. What about a lot of the people who work here, who don’t make upper middle class wages? What’s so wrong about wanting to love somewhat near to where you work? I mean, we’re talking about an entire big city here, not just a few upscale neighborhoods.

I don’t know if laws are going to help the situation. I just get angry when someone takes a saying that might apply to an upscale neighborhood (no one has a right to live here if they can’t afford it) and apply it to an entire large city.

56

"But a whole city shouldn’t be that way."

Try the "Taint", aka Skyway. Quick bus ride from downtown.

Oh wait, no white hipsters, cupcake shops, and craft breweries there filled with bearded male feminists.

57

"Socialist Alternative supports political democracy, it's not comparable to "Large-C Communists""

We'll do to right this time, we promise!

58

"The model most people on the Left support now is co-ops"

The great thing is in America you are free to go start them anywhere you like and we are free to avoid these places, and the smell emanating from their patchoulied patrons.

59

The landlords have valid arguments. Why should they have to charge less because a person has made a series of poor choices in their lives? Why should they have to rent to people that have a history of having made a series of poor choices in their lives? Why should I, as a city living, tax paying, Seattle citizen of over twenty years, subsidize stupid, self-defeating behaviour?

60

I’ve emailed Heidi several times about low income housing in Seattle, in response to this series. She has not once responded, which would be totally ok, except that in response to her stories, I emailed her when I had affordable vacancies in the city and was looking for low income applicants. No response.
I am a huge advocate for housing for all and low income housing.
I don’t believe this author can say the same.
Get off your fucking soap box and do something.

61

@52 - Love it.

62

@59 You're trying to use your history to defend the people who least care about it.

63

I had great experiences with landlords here through the years. Never chose a large landlord because I prefer the smaller ones who have paid their mortgage off. Currently I sleep in my living room b/c we don't have an extra space. Am I shaking my fist at the sky? No. This is the second time I've slept in a living room for an extended period. The first time in the 90s I did it to pay off student loans and medical debt and develop a savings. I worked full time, cleaned apt building hallways and stairs for reduced rent, sold my car and made crafts for extra money. I've lived in shared houses with 5 and 6 people and would do it again if it made sense economically. Maybe I would not want to do it but I'd rather do that than commute 1.5 hours one way. I don't blame anyone for how much money I make or the choices I have made to have a more modest life. Yes it is expensive to live here. But I choose to live here and this is what I can afford. Plus is I can walk out of my door and enjoy the city. My choice. Thanks to all the honest and hard working landlords out there. Landlords are not your parents or your benefactors. If you are an adult, that's life. If you don't like it there are many cities that are more affordable.

64

@59 Because they're gatekeepers for what comes out to be a necessary civic asset within a community, shitbird.

Plus, in the case of many landlords, there are those who have been in the property game for at least a few years and seen area rents practically double in the last 12 or so years (if not more).

Do you mean to tell me that rising property taxes (our overreliance on property taxes is kind of a poor idea but that's another topic) and maintenance costs completely offset those gains? If so, how fucking bad is your landlord with money, then? Who's the irresponsible one here, and why aren't the moral hazard police here crying a fucking river over these costs getting fully offloaded (with interest) onto tenants?

Wait. I know the answer.

65

The biggest irony is, due to restrictions on the ability to choose who rents, mandatory inspections that the landlord must pay for, and other rules that increase the risk exposure for those who rent out property, the net result will be higher rents. Oops!

The ordinance has a lot of good things in it, but fails at its primary intent, which makes it pretty fucking stupid.

65

Also, @31 knows what is up. How a landlord couldn't have made out like a bandit in the last decade is baffling.

That is, unless...

They're fundamentally bad at their job. We always do socialize the Costa of failure for the moneyed class though, don't we?

66

So the majority of respondents to this survey are small-time landlords. Are there data on how many units in Seattle are small (1-4) units as opposed to large commercial properties? That would give some perspective.

I guess it seems like the city council could use some common sense and treat commercial landlords (who only care about profits) differently than mom-and-pop landlords (who may be barely covering their expenses).

67

So, the question is: when all the people who do the things rich people want done but don't think they should have to pay someone a living wage to do, are no longer able to afford to live here, who's going to draw their triple tall half caf half decaf mochacinnos, walk their dogs, deliver their Pad Thai, and pour their craft brews for them?

Because the robots sure as fuck aren't going to take your elitist bullshit lying down...

68

59: A LOT of people struggle under de-regulated, de-humanized post-1981 capitalism(the kind we've had since the rich decided, as a class, that they no longer had any obligation to contribute to making this a society with any sort of compassionate, inclusive values, a place where upward mobility was no longer possible and the drawbridges were going to be pulled up and stay up. You can't put it down to "bad choices" in every single case where somebody is struggling, or even in anywhere close to a majority of cases. You're not entitled to judge everybody who's got it worse than you, and you can't just declare that everyone less wealthy than you should just be economically cleansed from any town or city where anyone would WANT to live.

69

8: because you "won't let her kill the bees if (you) can help it'? Did you just put that one in to see if people were still reading what you'd posted?

70

58: most co-ops have nothing to do with being "a hippie" or a stoner. Most people who work in them are hard-working folks, most just as "working-class" as you like to pretend to be. It's not as though there's anything worth doing that can ONLY be done by corporations run by Gordon Gekko/Lungren in OFFICE SPACE/Jeff Bezos types. Arrogant, self-interested autocrats have never had anything to offer the world that the rest of us couldn't do without. And if you lo

71

And nobody outside the Stalinist/Maoist tradition bears any responsibility for the deaths inflicted by those monsters. They killed solely in the name of their own power-they'd both have done exactly the same if they'd identified as capitalists. And there's no reason to think, given all the support capitalists inside Germany, in the rest of Europe, and even in some cases in North American gave to Hitler, that we could never ever have a "market values" state that wasn't just as totalitarian as Stalin and Mao and their acolytes were.

What happened in the USSR and China was solely due to the obsession with power held by the tyrants, not the ideology those tyrants pretended to be implementing. No significant Left group today supports anything remotely like what those bastards got up to. Trotsky, whatever else you can say about him(and I've got plenty of issues with the guy myself, like his indefensible involvement in the crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921, a rebellion in which Red Army soldiers and sailors fought to preserve the actual democratic-decision making powers of the Soviets) was killed for doing everything he could in the last sixteen years of his life to bring Stalin down and end his brutality.

You can't tar every leftist in human history with what Uncle Joe or The Great Helmsman did-and certainly not the Left of today, who in preferring things like co-ops and co-op networks have clearly rejected anything that could possibly harm anyone. The Left of today have no connection with the CPUSA types of the Thirties and their ideas have nothing in common with what those people defended. And you damn well know it.

72

@63- If housing is a "necessary civic asset," then let the city pay for it. I'm a landlord and would happily support the City raising taxes to pay for public housing. If we wan the ct to provide housing, then the cost needs to fall on the taxpayers of the city in general, not the minority who own rental property.

73

No, Alaskan with no motor coordination, mechanical aptitude, or survival skills, I put that there because I help the old Japanese lady who spends a handful of hours nearby after getting out of bed for a reason with what I can.

Not the imaginary kill the bees, either.

74

@52 what about the ones who went to work young, now get paid pennies fixing bridges and potholes for the state so people with those advanced degrees can make it to work and invent... A new app I guess? Something equally unimportant I'm sure.

75

I used to do apartment maintenance for 4 different Thrive properties between Cap Hill & the Central District & I can echo a lot of what the survey had to say. When the company came to the obvious conclusion that noone wanted to rent a kitchen-less studio for $1000/month or more they sold of their holdings & didn’t tell any of the tenants so when it came time to pay their rent online none of them went trough, thrive stopped answering their phones for days, & it was half a month b4 the new property company came in & introduced themselves.

77

@73

First off, nice job with the quotes. Housing IS necessary, you smarmy dope.

But I actually agree with you, the private sector has proven that is hasn't been able to deal with this crisis successfully. Too bad we tried implementing taxes, and look how that turned out?

78

@76

I don't know for sure how much of a transplant I count as anymore considering I've been here for almost 20 years, but if you'd like to shoot me I'll be in the Jack in the Box parking lot at 85th and Aurora at 5 PM today if you'd like to give it a try.

79

“It's not as though there's anything worth doing that can ONLY be done by corporation”

You typed that into iPhone/tablet/laptop made at the commune did you?

Love your people think people died under communism because of executions and veil leaders rather than the system itself which fails to even feed its population. Eating rats in Caracas is the symptom.

80

AMEN @ 16.. THANK YOU!! VERY WELL SAID..
Plus, Screw "If you can't afford to live in the city, you shouldn't live here,, " nonsense! This is my home. Where I am from, part of who I am as a whole. Now all of a sudden, some richy bitchy (probably from California) transplants, telling us, Seattle Natives, we don't have the right to live here?!,, Well, F$%K U!! Get out of my city. I am tired of the new, Greedy Seattle thing going on lately. This is not what The PNW, is all about. This is not Seattle. We need to take back our city. Period.. C'mon Seattle Natives!? Let's turn this b&$ch around!?? Operation; Seattle gets her Soul back!☺
"If you don’t make the money, why do you have the right to live in the city." 
This is such a bullshit derailing tactic.

All the noise about affordable housing and displacement is about people that ALREADY LIVE HERE.

No one is talking about wannabe transplants complaining about how expensive their first Seattle apartment will be.

We're arguing that Seattle's current residents should have some reasonable expectation that they won't be forced to move out of the city because their current landlord noticed that demand for housing in Seattle is skyrocketing and figured they could raise their profit margin on your apartment through the roof.

To repurpose @13's car analogy, this is like if you were leasing a Honda, and the dealership decided to increase your lease payment by 30%, and when you complained, they told you to take the bus.

81

“C'mon Seattle Natives!”

Who, the Duwamish? They’ve occupied Victor Steinrueck Park I think.

82

@15 is incorrect stating large landlords are the RHAWA's largest funders. It is the small independent 1-4 unit landlords which provide the majority of the orgs funding. Also the RHAWA has consistently tried to work with SCC on housing issues and have been shut out of the conversation.

83

It seems like the thing this survey actually revealed is that a large percentage of Seattle landlords are sociopaths.

84

52, you nailed it. I've been thinking a lot lately about that Grasshopper and the Ant fable because I've been fixing up my fixer-upper condo for 22 years and it is finally quite comfy and nice even though its not in a trendy part of town. My modest life is starting to look pretty good to a few of my friends who retired early and have more mortgage on an oversized house than they can afford. So both are scrambling to adapt to being in their 60s and short on cash.

Neither will rent out a room, neither wants to work for the man. I feel bad for them but one ant cannot support a bunch of ornamental and useless grasshoppers.

86

I've seen the phrase "a nice source of retirement income" so many times that I almost don't question it anymore, but boy howdy is it ever doing work.

What the phrase is hiding is the fact that the landlords aren't doing any labor at all, or generating new any "new wealth," (in economist terms) they're just collecting a stream of money from existing capital.

"Source of retirement income" describes an investment, not a job.

"Good source of retirement income" describes an investment with lower risk than the average investment, and higher rate of return than average.

So let's turn this "rights" question around:

Why should landlords have any right to low investment risk and high investment returns in Seattle?

If landlords don't like increasing risks or declining returns, shouldn't they just move to some other city, instead of acting like they're entitled to "good" sources of investment income inside Seattle? Nobody has any "right" to realize high returns at low risk wherever they want to, do they?

87

@10, the comment wasn’t directed at you or me. That comment was directed at the neighbors. Because nobody in that neighbourhood wants an apartment building built next door driving the land value down

88

50-wait, you think Stalin was "democratically elected"? Hitler, in theory, could claim to be democratically elected(though his party didn't come close to winning a parliamentary majority and actually LOST a few seats in the last election before Hitler shut democracy down). but STALIN? Where on earth did you get that idea?

89

84: No human being is ornamental and useless. Trying to get rich isn't the only valid purpose in life. Why is it so important to you to devalue people?

90

And this song is the best response to the smug, dismissive "Ant and the Grasshopper" thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Y52qmPNVcvk

91

Ex landlord here, as of last month. Tenant gone, unit just about ready to be listed. 2 bedroom, 2 full bath that rented for the affordable rate of $1000 a month. No longer will I be reviled on the one hand, and considered an idiot by others for setting the rent that low (can't win either way, am I greedy like everyone says or an idiot? So hard to keep track.). The last straw for me had nothing to do with money, and everything to do with the fact the city wants landlords to function as a parent or teacher substitute. I didn't forgo having kids only to find myself in the position of being LEGALLY required to tell someone else's ADULT CHILD how to fucking register to vote now that they've moved! What kind of idiot signs a legally binding, multi-page contract (a lease), can hold down a job to pay rent, yet CANNOT GOOGLE "how to register to vote in my location"???????

The fact that the city has such a dim view of the capabilities of its citizens is an insult I am shocked so many people don't seem to notice.

92

Was a Landlord, sold 2 houses in 2018.
I rented all units below local market rates since '94 w/ bare minimum + cashflow. Rented to and got to know a LOT of cool peoplw, many of which got pregnant and moved to bigger digs.
I can see the logic, but the logic is flawed.

If you liked how your neighborhood WAS, and you support the City Council's moves, don't act surprised when your 'hood' turns funky & you can't afford to move... anywhere.
We sold to a developer who w/ neighbor's home can go from 4 units w/ 7 parking to 10 apts or 34 pods... w/ zero parking required.
There goes the neighborhood, and here we go out of Fremont w/ 28 years worth of earnings. And we so totally loved it there.
Time to start somewhere else.
This city mimics Trump. No consistency, no long term plan, capricious policies, changes for the sake of change, & new rules that get overturned.
I really thought Seattle was smarter than this.
A good time to get out of this market.
-Retired and looking for a new neighborhood.

93

"If you liked how your neighborhood WAS, and you support the City Council's moves, don't act surprised when your 'hood' turns funky & you can't afford to move... anywhere. "

EXCET THIS ALREADY FUCKING HAPPENED, AND BEFORE THE CITY COUNCIL DID ANYTHING AT ALL.

All these doomsday warnings come across as a bit fishy when you take stock of things and realize that doomsday is already here.

94

@91-wouldn't want any potential Kshama voters to miss out, would we? Better help them figure out how to register.

95

Just bring back mandatory bussing. That got people leaving Seattle in the thousands. Rent will go down. If you don't know what I am talking about you are a newbie.

96

91: It's not that big a deal to make sure your tenants know how and where to register to vote and when the deadlines are. Public announcements about those things are woefully insufficient. Why does it bother you to simply provide an easy-to-provide public service?

97

Why does it bother you to simply provide an easy-to-provide public service?

I have much better questions. If current, taxpayer-funded systems are woefully insuffcient, shouldn't THAT be an issue, since we all pay for it? Do you LIKE paying into 'woefully insufficient' systems?

Why DOESN'T it bother YOU that Seattle politicians think tenants are utterly incapable of a task that is simpler than reading and understanding a lease? I just Googled "How to register to vote in WA State" - voila, easy to understand results that even a high school dropout could understand - IN MERE SECONDS. Are you really going to try and convince me the average renter in Seattle, probably quite familiar with the internet, can't do that? Why doesn't it bother YOU to be treated as if your IQ was barely sufficient to carry out what you yourself call 'easy to provide'?

Do you not see how Seattle leaders think of their tenant constituents as barley capable children?

Go to Google. Type in "How to register to vote in WA state" - and get back to me with how very difficult that was. Take a couple of days to recover from the trauma of the effort, and make a better argument for why your LANDLORD should be the one to do that for you. If that task was just too much for you, high rents are the least of your problems.

98

@96- It's not that it is that big a deal by itself. But it's got nothing to do with the landlord-tenant relationship. All of the other stuff we have to give tenants pertains to the property: mold handouts, lead paint disclosure, landlord-tenant laws, parking addendum (whether it's ridiculous or not is beside the point). I agree that they should get that stuff - in particular everyone being aware of the legal relationship is a good thing. But voter registration is different. It was clear that this was an attempt by the council to register a particular group to vote in order to increase their influence, on the assumption that they represent a certain socioeconomic class. I note that the Council has never even suggested that home buyers (or persons leasing BMWs, or joining the yacht club etc.) be provided with information re voting. Why do you think that is?

and @97 is right. If you are smart enough to fill out a ballot and get it in the envelope properly, you are more than smart enough to look up how to vote.

99

"The vast majority of landlord respondents (89 percent) chose none of the goals. Not one of the goals had support from more than 1 percent of respondents."

HAHA Math is hard....

100

dvs99: Thanks; you get it. To add to my rant above: I think assisting renters with registering to vote is a great thing for a tenant's PARENTS to get involved in. I. Am. Not. Your. Mother. Because. You. Live. In. My. Property. Call mommy or daddy if you have issues navigating the world.

And don't get me started on how anyone who spent 12 years in a public school system should be able to manage voter registration. If not - then their school system failed them miserably, and they should take that issue back to their sorry ass teachers, not ME.

101

@100- to be clear, I think that EVERYONE should be registered to vote and it ought to be automatic. I have no desire to see any particular group under-represented. I just don't see that landlords need to start becoming all-purpose social service providers.

102

@101 huh? Why on earth would your post give me the idea that you desire certain people should be under-represented? You must have omitted something.

I think voter registration for tenants would be better linked to the Post Office and the change of address process. You plug in your new address, and PRESTO - if it changes your district a window pops up (on your device or at the post office itself) and you are given the opportunity to register right there.


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