News Apr 25, 2019 at 9:41 am

"This is the biggest reform to the Residential Landlord-Tenant Act since it was enacted in the 1970s."

Comments

1

“ pushed into a painful cycle of homelessness “

Pretty sure it's the criminality, booze and drugs combined with all the family and friends who are sick of your shit that cause you to wind up in a tent under I5, not missing a rent payment by a week.

But yeah, keep driving up the cost running a rental, that will surely help.

Winding up at Mary’s Place? They are the ones who need our help and will accept it.

2

@1 I have known a number of people who have been homeless at one point in their life of another. Not a single one of them had problems with drugs or alcohol, and the one with mental health issues was doing great on their meds, until they were laid-off after their employer was bought, and they skipped buying meds to pay rent. Every single one of them ended up on the streets because a steady job got outsourced or off-shored.

3

@2 They must have had great family and friends if they weren't willing to take them in during hard times. Nice anecdotes though.

Here's some facts: King County's own lawsuit against opioid maker Purdue Pharma admits that in the county “the majority of the homeless population is addicted to or uses opioids”.

And that's just opioids, not meth, and booze.

I have no problem helping homeless willing to help themselves. That's not what we have under I5 and in the woods in the squalid camps the Big Hobo has encouraged.

5

We need rent control.

6

@1&3: I have a pair of friends that ended up homeless for a while. Neither of them were addicts or alcoholics. She got laid off during the down turn and they lost their house. He had a job but it didn’t pay enough, and she couldn’t find work for a year. They also lost most of their stuff because they couldn’t keep up on the storage fees. WhAT aBoUT FaMiLeee you ask? Her folks were long dead and his had their own struggles and lived far away to boot. So in conclusion, fuck you.

7

@3:

And how do you think most of those people addicted to opioids got hooked in the first place? If you're not sure, ask your doctor...

8

Look folks, our little trolly troll, is quite obviously a child living with his parents, once he grows up and spends some time in the real world,he'll understand.

11

@5 - No, we don't need rent control. Rent control just makes winners out of those who are fortunate enough to already live here and be in a rent-controlled apartment, and losers out of everyone else (i.e. young people, new graduates, newcomers) by suppressing turnover. It does absolutely nothing to address the problem, which is that we have more people who want housing than we have housing units. In fact, by discouraging construction of new rental housing, it makes the problem worse over time.

12

@9- I don't know that this is going to make it any harder for those with lower credit scores etc. to get an apartment. It's not like anyone gets evicted in three days anyway - it takes a good deal of time. Also, someone who is more than three days late more than once or twice is the kind of tenant who is probably also more than 14 days late, so they would end up getting evicted anyway.

What WILL make it harder for marginal tenants to rent apartments are laws like "first in time" or the ban on using criminal background checks. Those laws are certainly spurring us (as well as the other landlords I know) to raise qualifications for tenants. Not being able to use your own discretion about who to rent to forces you to screen out those with less than stellar qualifications.

The other thing that these kind of laws do is to discourage participation in the low end of the market altogether. By owing more expensive rentals a landlord can largely insulate him/herself from issues like non-payment of rent.

13

How typical of leftists to make it harder for businesses to do business. They have all the sympathy for the person who doesn't pay their bills, and none for the landlord who depends on the income to pay THEIR bills. Not every landlord is a big corporation, many are people who own one building, put their time and money into it, and have obligations of their own. They depend on that income. I agree with the person who said this will definitely cause landlords to scrutinize their future tenants more closely, and raise security deposits to cover the cost of those who don't pay on time.


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