I am so glad I sold my rental property in the CD!

‘Now, HJP does cite these laws as a last-resort defense when a household has no other option, but “not often enough such that a landlord the size of LIHI should be going under,” Witter said.’

The issue wasn’t LIHI “going under,” but rather LIHI’s ability to build more low-income housing, as another source in the story snidely confirmed:

‘“How dare they claim that they ‘advocate for just housing policies’ and then advocate for removing renter protections in order for them to grow their portfolio,” Rubin said in a message to The Stranger.’

The Stranger constantly tells readers Seattle has a “housing crisis.” Well, if Lee is correct, then Seattle has a choice between updating the eviction moratorium, or building fewer low-income housing units. Yelling at “the real estate industry,” for supposedly having “bought the current Council,” does nothing to address the issue Lee described.

The Stranger really should begin to understand the hard political choices involved in providing low-income housing for an increasingly crowded and expensive city. Blaming anyone it happens not to like, and demanding ‘the rich pay their fair share,’ (whatever those eternally-undefined terms actually mean) has never built a single house, and never will.

@1 and I'm sure the person who bought your property was so glad they bought it. your comment is mostly irrelevant without any details. you were first to post though. yay!

Like @2 pointed out, folks like Rubin are part of the problem. The “portfolio” LIHI is trying to grow is affordable housing - that the market is not building. Progressives just can’t tell the difference between progress and purity (they would rather have nothing).

Good luck passing that social housing funding if these idiots continue to purge moderates.

I sold both my duplexes in the CD because of the new laws. I took a lot of pride in making sure all my units were nice. One is getting torn down. The other raised rents 40 percent. Keep passing those laws and see how hard it will be to get an apartment. How was the law not set up so that those with means can’t just decide not to pay rent? Just dumb.

or maybe when you have the head of one of the largest affordable housing organizations in the city telling you there is a problem with the policy, then just maybe the policy really isn't that good. I know this may be shocking but a lot of the legislation that came out of the office of the former representative from D3 wasn't vetted or tested, it was purely ideologically based (in this case landlords bad).

I have yet to meet a landlord, large or small, that wasn't a total piece of shit. Yet, we allow people like this to lord over people's lives and security every day.

Or, to put this another way, "Major Non-Profit Housing Provider with Years of Experience in Serving Low-Income Populations (unlike the City Council) Advises City that Policy is Counter-Productive." LIHI is hardly the Snidely Whiplash of landlords.

@7 to paraphrase the
late great hst 'the Scum
(and pvt eqty!) also rises.'

End housing-as-Commodity
hell, end the Commodifcation
of every single human Necessity

just Three people
own as Much as
Half of the US

someone's
gotta Give.

@7
I’ve rented from both good and bad landlords. Even the bad ones will warm a bit when they know their tenants take care of the place. I always told them, it was their house, but it was my home.
That being said, I’m glad I own now instead of rent. I can do what I want.

Teachers and school employees are among the most securely employed people in the city. Somebody explain to me why they should be exempt from eviction. They would pretty much have to CHOOSE to not pay rent, or explictly break lease terms to be put at any risk at all.

Why should any landlord have to provide free housing forever for somebody with kids? (all HJP has to do is delay - their specialty - from mid june through september every year) How is that fair? How does that encourage more rental housing?

How about this instead of the winter ban - An eviction can be adjudicated and granted at any time, but actual removal may be delayed if outside temperatures are dangerous AND the person(s) being evicted have not either 1) obtained new housing or 2) been offered shelter services.

Make no mistake these bans are ideological, made by people who would just assume ban all evictions for any reason forever d**n the consequences. LIHI and real estate industry is right to be asking for review and moderation of these ordinances.

@11 try building a deck without paying the city first.

@10 wikipedia says the top 10% has 43% of USA wealth. your top-3 claim appears to come from a 2017 guardian article.

In any case, a thought exercise. Lets say you find a magic wand that takes ALL the wealth of the top 10% and redistributes it evenly to the bottom 50%. Per yahoo finance article top 10% has average wealth of $859K. so lets say 1M to make round numbers. giving that evenly to bottom 50% means everybody gets about 200K each.

Will that make a difference to many in that group? sure. but this is a one time payment. So it would best be spent on things like debt reduction, down payment on homes, higher education or trade school, or bootstrapping retirement savings. It WONT pay for social housing for all, it WONT cover free healthcare, It WONT cover free higher education for all, It WONT save people who have inadequate retirement income. and so on.

In the meantime, we've wiped out amazon, microsoft, spacex, tesla, and thousands of other businesses held privately or in shares owned by the top 10%. The investor class is gone. So the economy would crash.

There would likely also be a spate of inflation as inevitably many who got that 200K windfall tried to go on a spending spree.