As housing advocates (and Kara Swisher) have suggested, Microsoft, Amazon, and the rest of these giant corporations need to start ponying up billions of dollars—not millions of dollars—for affordable housing

That's fine and all. I got no problem with a more progressive tax system.

But you know what's free? Legalizing housing. I'm talking accessory dwelling units, duplexes, triplexes, octoplexes. Small apartment buildings like vigintiplex apodments and even quadragintiplexes. I'm talking about letting a 440' building go ahead and build to 600' or 800'.

All it takes is some leadership in the state/county/city legislatures. It doesn't cost anything.

Washington already has one of the lowest eviction rates in the country. Also, eviction laws are not the root cause of homelessness. Lack of short term emergency rental subsidies is.

"Microsoft, Amazon, and the rest of these giant corporations need to start ponying up billions of dollars—not millions of dollars—for affordable housing"

Isn't that what they do by paying their employees who then go out and find housing they can afford?

The thing about these kind of laws is that they are a huge shift in the rights/obligations of the parties to a residential lease. We should at least be honest about that in the discussion-this is not simply a fix to a societal problem that is without cost.

Imagine the howling if someone proposed to change the laws requiring landlords to provide heat and doors that lock were changed to allow a 14- or 21-day grace period.

@4 is EXACTLY right. The only answer to a shortage of housing is to build housing. But the City refuses to let people do so, and the Stranger's readership would prefer to blame landlords for the entire problem.

@2-I could not agree more that short-term emergency rental assistance is a good answer. Let's provide that as a public function, rather than making landlords provide it.

@4: “Too high of wages.... that's what you're mad about.”

Well, more specifically, too high of wages to too many other people — people who don’t write the front-page posts here. This makes the people who do write the front-page posts here mad, because now they can’t live the lifestyle they want on the not-high wages they are paid.

Also, for CM Sawant and any of her followers who may post here, having capitalism provide a multitude of high-paying jobs is a per se violation of their ideology, and they will not change their ideology — not now and not ever, not for any reason. Those jobs, and the companies providing them, therefore become an insulting enemy, one to be attacked relentlessly.