Gender respect troubles grammar. That said, I like their ideas.

@1 "We will note that 'they' has been in consistent use as a singular pronoun since the late 1300s; that the development of singular they mirrors the development of the singular you from the plural you, yet we don’t complain that singular you is ungrammatical; and that regardless of what detractors say, nearly everyone uses the singular they in casual conversation and often in formal writing."

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/singular-nonbinary-they

That said I also like Oliver. Just dying for someone to finally get to try these ideas instead of sticking to the systems that haven't worked but are already here just because the new system might also not work. Seems like a lateral move with the benefit of being novel at worst.

Oliver is the new messiah vs Oliver is Satan reincarnate, GO!

Who is this "they" person? Are you talking about the adult female woman who is the subject of this article?

Nikkita Oliver: a kinder, gentler Kshama Sawant.

"Oliver wants to change zoning laws to allow for building more dense, affordable housing throughout the whole city." Great idea. We have a terrible crisis of affordable housing in the city and region.
"To keep even more people housed, Oliver said they support a rent control measure"
POW!!! Bullet through the head of the first idea. These two ideas are irreconcilable. I eagerly await hearing why I am wrong.

@7 you need to read the fine print. Housing is a human right and rent is theft. All housing that will be built will be through confiscation of personal property and will be owned by the government.

@9: Glad we cleared that up. All should be fine then.

Is the Stranger not taking any responsibility for why Nikkita came in 3rd in the 2017 primary? Do you not think it has anything to do with the fact that the Stranger gave its endorsement to Cary Moon because "Nikkita didn't have the experience" (even though they're a lawyer and an activist)? Most people I know who voted for Cary Moon in the primary did so because of the Stranger endorsement.

They are so tiresome, all of them.

@17: In Strangerland we prefer "Alternative Facts", or believing only that which we wish to believe. Actual objective "facts" are so boring and time consuming to understand and verify. Why bother when your own "facts" are so much more entertaining.

"Right now, Seattle is only building density on 13% of its land. Oliver's opponent, Nelson, wants more housing and more density, too, but only along main transit lines such as the light rail. Oliver supports that strategy but said it won't be enough on its own. Oliver wants to change zoning laws to allow for building more dense, affordable housing throughout the whole city. Currently, over 80% of Seattle land only allows single-family homes."

As @17 noted, these statements are factually incorrect. This is just the start of the problems with Oliver's proposal.

The idea of increasing density within neighborhoods now zoned for SFH seems to have become an article of faith among Seattle's self-appointed radical lefties. From a few years ago, here's Geov Parrish, grinding exactly that same axe:

"...a coalition of developers and climate change-obsessed environmentalists have successfully pushed a develop-at-any-cost approach to increased population and density that ignored existing neighborhood plans. It concentrated development near arterials but left many single-family home neighborhoods nearly untouched." (https://geov.org/gp/?p=980)

Notice how no one ever says anything about how to get all those new residents in and out of those now-teeming neighborhoods? For the lifetime of anyone reading this in 2021, there are not now -- and may never be! -- even any plans to extend grade-separated transit into neighborhoods. Hopes for jetpacks and flying cars notwithstanding, those residents will use surface transit or nothing, and as the latter is our current plan, it means gridlock and resultant lower quality of life, both within those neighborhoods, and across the city.

Meanwhile, Belltown/Regrade/South Lake Union/Capitol Hill/First Hill/International District/Georgetown/SODO have plenty of land available for high-density development, as does much of downtown (goodbye, Showbox!). New residents of those places could walk to much of the city's business and cultural sites, and ride light rail to many others. Their environmental footprints would be tiny compared to cars driving to outer neighborhoods.

And those dismal results would come to pass only if the plan to re-zone SFH neighborhoods succeeded. Any such plan will likely fail, as homeowners in those neighborhoods can easily band together to fight any up-zoning plans. (As older, mostly-white people, they already vote in all elections anyway.) So, back to increasing density in the areas already mentioned. We can do it by design or by default, and the former has a much better chance of success.

Imagine Seattle with no police and Nikkita in charge. Someone is breaking into your apt, eating your food before they murder you...you call 911 and get, "We're sorry, this number has been disconnected due to systemic racism".

Paradise.

@14: "Is the Stranger not taking any responsibility..."

That's pretty much SOP for this place. When was the last time a front-page poster offered a correction? That role has been abandoned to us commenters.

But the situation you describe was more nuanced. The Stranger's official editorial stance was for Moon, yes, but a large dissident group backed Oliver anyway. Then, after the primary, writers here who had backed Oliver suggested the flatly-illegal maneuver of having Oliver run as a write-in candidate -- and having Moon quit the race! After that failed, all of the writers here agreed to back the loser of the general election. (I believe the two factions still blame each other for these losses.)

@21: Well, that would be your fault, wouldn't it, for not having meth' readily and obviously available? It's a natural progression, from giving our public spaces completely over to drug users, to giving all of our private stuff to them as well. (It's already underway, as the piles of bike parts in the homeless encampments attest.)

Building affordable housing makes real sense and Oliver is on the right trajectory here. If you look around Seattle, there are many vacant tracts just asking for development, and this would provide a concrete solution to the pathological process of homelessness and street camping, which is at the very least a quality of life problem, if not a bona fide health issue, what with the lack of proper sanitation facilities. Defunding the police makes sense if you counteract this policy with real improvements in drug treatment and mental health outreach. Pollysexual promises to keep these comments brief and to the point so she doesn't ruin your orgasm by distracting you with digressions and rambling asides.

@23, we can build as much affordable housing as we like. The question is where, and for whom? I addressed the first question @19, above. For the second question, if the proposal is to subsidize persons who contribute to our civic life (artists, students, teachers, office workers, entry-level professionals, etc.), I doubt it would see much opposition, but if the proposal is to house, at our large expense, persons who arrived here already homeless addicts, I imagine that would have far less support from the voters.