Put down the torches and pitchforks. I think that you are going to find that the general idea that tenants are actually obligated to pay the rent is pretty non-controversial with all non-Communist sectors of society.

"The Rollbacks Would Be Both Very Evil and Very Dumb "

very nice stock photo of what evil and dumb looks like.

I'm not sure there is much evidence that "renter protections" have ever actually made things better for renters? It usually and predictably makes things worse and just leads to anger at "landlords" who are simply acting predictably and consistently with the incentives the "protections" have created. But at least you can rail against landlords!

No reason to be afraid of the progressive base voting against the homeless levies.
They’ll bitch & moan, but will always vote in favor of the levies.
That’s not just true for taxes.
They’ll whine & complain about candidates in various races and even take the ever so brave step of voting uncommitted and shouting about how a someone supports genocide. When push comes to shove, they’ll vote for that very same person just because the right letter follows the name.

"A report from the City Auditor’s office last December found that the decline in properties owned by “mom and pop” landlords did not directly relate to new tenant laws between 2016 and 2022 but rather reflected a nationwide trend."

The Cap Hill Blog had a post about this last month and had a few different notes from the report:

"According to a city survey of landlords, 74% said the city’s regulations were difficult to implement or follow"

"The report also acknowledges that smaller landlords may have a more difficult time meeting standards and face more complaints than larger landlords"

"Another recommendation might be the most significant. “If the City of Seattle wants to preserve single-family and small multi-family property rental housing, it should consider enacting policies that support the continued presence of this type of property in Seattle’s rental market,” the recommendation reads. “When considering such policies, the City should involve stakeholders most impacted by rental housing policies.”

I think most people would read that as onerous regulations have created an undue burden on smaller landlords and are causing them to exit the market. Since Hannah's own reporting makes it sound like some of these regulations are hardly being used (e.g. the eviction moratorium) I'm not sure why there would be opposition to repealing them if it would encourage landlords to stay in the market.

@3 I'm sure your unsupported opinion statement is correct, so I'm left puzzled as to why so many landlords showed up to request these counterproductive "tenant protections" be repealed.

@5 the landlords found the new laws difficult to implement, but ultimately that was not what caused those who left the market to do so. These findings are not inconsistent.

It sounds like there are some renters who are barely functional, and paying rent regularly exceeds their skills:

“To avoid eviction, Oommen encouraged the council to consider funding more rental assistance, as they claimed to be seeing record nonpayment. He also suggested the council pay for some of the ongoing operating costs of affordable housing or resident services staff to help connect tenants to health and community resources. Seiwerath said the council could create a pipeline to put residents into permanent supportive housing, which would likely mean the City would have to pay to bolster that already limited supply.“

Permanent supportive housing is HUGELY expensive, and unsurprisingly, no projected costs related to this ‘pipeline’ are mentioned. Little wonder CM Nelson mentioned “throwing money” immediately afterwards.

@6 That the regs are bad for landlords as well as renters? pretty simple. Well intentioned (maybe...at this point it's reasonable to doubt even good intentions) but stupid and harmful to both.

as an example: there is near universal agreement that rent control doesn't work and just reduces the supply of housing. That doesn't prevent politicians, whether cynically or stupidly, for pushing for it.. But it doesn't work.

Landlords are in retreat. They’re getting out of the business because it is unprofitable, and they can get stuck for months supplying a service for free. That reduces available rental units. When supply shrinks, landlords raise prices to the point where the same demand curve intersects the left shifted supply curve (else there is a shortage). This is microeconomics 101, and principles that have been established for over a century an are not the subject of academic debate (unlike macroeconomics).
But just like the food delivery workers who are sitting around with much less food to deliver, the protectionist policies actually do more harm than good.
As Nikita Khrushchev said:
“Economics is a subject that does not greatly respect one's wishes”

For such an anti-landlord author (and publication) its funny how the ultimate goal is to create the biggest baddest landlord monopoly of them all - the government as the only owner and provider of housing. Look at ANY nation or place doing that and the trade for sometimes absurdly "cheap" rent is 20 year waiting lists, only a few options for type of housing, living in a huge complex of hundreds of units or pound sand, byzantine rules over who can have what housing where and when and of course a thriving black market. Sure in our market you may need to apply a few times if you are looking in a competitive area but it isn't going to take any 20 years to find a place.

The studies referenced claiming LL's were not impacted by these rules were commissioned by the city but executed by the UW sociology department. They did not talk to a single landlord. They mostly avoided looking at what happened to landlords during COVID when unlike ANY other industry government at all levels declared that paying for housing was optional. Sadly some people got a taste of that and have not been able or willing to go back to paying for what everybody else has to. Then shockingly we have an eviction crisis.

One of the findings among these studies that is conveniently left out is that among all the landlords who sold a seattle property and bought another rental property, ONLY 1% bought their replacement property in seattle. If that is not voting with your feet I don't know what is.

The roommate law is top of my list for most damaging but the needless eviction moratoria for "cold" weather and the school year, the payment-plan requirements for move in costs, and yes limiting late fees to an inconsequential amount all increase a landlord's risks. Heck, I've been payment-planned exactly once by a tenant, and they stopped paying anything within 2 months. They were propped up (unbeknownst to me and PM) by a charity with a job and credentials to pass screening but as soon as they got the lease all that support vanished and the person who of course had underlying issues crashed and burned and guess who got stuck holding the bag? ONE real life example.

Another real life example: I sold a duplex in seattle. It had been owner occupied in one unit by me and over my 10 years owning the place I had only 2 tenants. I sold the place because the neighborhood was going over to townhouses but also because this property would need the most RRIO related work if I were to try and rent the lower unit (which was perfectly comfortable and safe for me for 10 years as an owner, but per RRIO was deathly uninhabitable to a renter). It wasn't a condition issue it was a configuration issue. I decided instead to cash out and make that reinvestment move with a new property - in Everett. Seattle laws weren't the ONLY reason I sold that duplex, but they were THE reason I didn't reinvest in seattle.

Hannah...Cathy Moore won with 64% of the vote over the Stranger's candidate. I'm sure she's really worried about your so-call "lefty wrath" in North Seattle. I'm sure the "lefty wrath" will recruit a real winner to challenge Moore next time... someone with lots of "lived experiences."

@9 "Landlords are in retreat. They’re getting out of the business because it is unprofitable"

Good. Fuck landlords. They provide no product or service. The world would be a better place if landlords didn't exist at all.

"That reduces available rental units."

Obvious solution is build more units. Wonder what industry (amongst others) has a vested interest in suppressing overall supply?

@12: "Good. Fuck landlords. They provide no product or service. The world would be a better place if landlords didn't exist at all."

I rented in Pike-Pine for almost twenty years. The landlords I had during that time consistently provided clean, safe, well-maintained residences, in return for payments which were well below market rate for that neighborhood at that time. (Being a quiet, respectful tenant hath its privileges, perhaps?)

As landlords do and will continue to exist, Seattle has a choice: enact laws which support and enable local property owners, or accept that GreyStar and other huge companies will continue to have ever-larger ownership in the local rental market. I understand that working out the unintended consequences of policies you loudly advocate just isn't your thing, but somehow I doubt restricting choice in Seattle's residential opportunities is something you want to support, no matter how inadvertently?

@14 I suspect 1312 is like most of the progressives around here and what they really decry is private property rights. If you look at the true intent of most of these regulations they were designed to drive landlords out of the market leaving the government as the only option and its working. In their minds the only solution is government owned, subsidized housing even though the government has consistently proven to be the worst landlord at all. Remind me again who processes the most evictions of any landlord in the city?

https://seattlemag.com/local-report-reveals-surprisingly-high-eviction-rate-one-seattle-nonprofit/

@13 those landlords "provided" you residences like people who hoarded toilet paper at the start of COVID "provided" it to buyers on eBay.

@14 not private property rights, the commodification of necessities of human life

@15: I disagree. Maintaining a safe property was far more work than keeping extra toilet paper. It included screening applicants for good overall fit to the building’s existing residents, and swiftly evicting residents who caused trouble for the rest of us; I greatly appreciated both services. Seattle seems to have outlawed both now.

Shelter is indeed a ‘necessity of life,’ but there is no corollary which says a person must have shelter available in Seattle. My family and I departed once Seattle no longer delivered good value for our money. Seattle had become one of the most expensive cities in the country, without delivering a better quality of life for our increased cost. We could have stayed, but why pay far more money for far lower quality of life than could be had better — and less expensively — elsewhere?

@16 "It included screening applicants for good overall fit to the building’s existing residents, and swiftly evicting residents who caused trouble for the rest of us"

They screened applicants for good overall ability to pay them, and it's extremely rare for residents to be evicted because they "caused trouble for the rest" of the tenants so I sincerely doubt that happened more than once if at all.

But even assuming that's all true and accurate, are you saying you were paying thousands of dollars per month for that service, not the place to live? And you thought that was a good value?

@17: “…are you saying you were paying thousands of dollars per month…”

No. I never paid that much. (Good, quiet, respectful, long-term tenant and all that.)

“…for that service, not the place to live?”

No, genius, I was paying for both. (Glad I could clear up that point of confusion for you.)

‘…it's extremely rare for residents to be evicted because they "caused trouble for the rest" of the tenants so I sincerely doubt that happened more than once if at all.’

While your supreme confidence in your knowledge of topics you could not possibly have knowledge about does indeed remain one of your defining characteristics, the incident I recall (off the top of my head, well more than a decade later), was of a tenant who repeatedly dumped urine into the alley. The live-in manager told me he’d threatened to evict the guy. Whether he did evict him or not, I either never knew or now cannot recall, but the offensive behavior stopped immediately. Under these wonderful “renter protection” laws Seattle now has, it might’ve taken months or years and a lawsuit.

@18 so in response to me doubting your claim that your landlords were "swiftly evicting residents" (plural) who cause trouble you can provide one anecdote where a manager said he'd threatened to evict a guy but you have no idea whether he ever actually did. Wow you sure showed me.

Serious question: did you tip your landlords or give them Christmas bonuses?

@19: So, you’d be happy with someone dumping urine past your windows? Nothing to complain about there? (Was it you?)

The threat of eviction means nothing if the unruly tenant has good reason not to fear it. Conclude from that what you will.

Tipping wasn’t a practice in that building. As I recall from growing up in New York, annual tipping was for active service staff, e.g. doormen and/or security personnel.

The potential of owner-occupied shared housing to provide abundant affordable rental housing is vast, but increased risks prevent it from coming on the market. It's the housing we've lost the most of and can least afford to lose. This is housing that's already built, but currently vacant. It's invisible because there is no requirement for registration of this kind of rental housing, so don't look for stats to say we're not losing affordable rental housing from small landlords. In Washington State, it's estimated that there are over one million of these affordable housing units that could become rental housing. But don't hold your breath because people with rooms to rent in the homes they own have become understandably leery of becoming small landlords now because it's become risky for them to do so. Many of these people could use the money and the company, but between anti-landlord state rental housing laws and anti-landlord local rental housing laws we're shooting ourselves in the foot by chasing them away from the market. We should exempt this type of housing from rental housing laws completely and create an incentive-based system to onboard these affordable housing providers. When we do, we'll have an abundance of affordable housing.