In her Thursday announcement that she will not seek a fourth term representing District 3 on the Seattle City Council, a resolute Kshama Sawant warned “the corporate establishment in Seattle” not to “rush to mix their martinis just yet” — “We are not done here,” she said.
Friday, her first day as a lame duck council member begins with the Sustainability and Renters’ Rights Committee she leads discussing legislation that would cap late fees for overdue rents.
There is no draft of the proposal included in Friday’s agenda but speakers are scheduled to include Devin Glaser of the Tenant Law Center and Kate Rubin of Be:Seattle.
Recent progress has been made by tenant rights groups in winning caps in areas around Seattle including capping late fees at $10 in Burien and a cap at 1.5% of the monthly rent in both Kenmore and Redmond.
CORRECTION: There is no statewide cap on the fees. In our original post, CHS mistakenly posted reference to a Washington statute capping late fees… on storage facilities. The much more costly fees on late rent have no such protection.
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍
We should have had rent increases capped at 5% a year since the 90s. Look around you. Figure it out.
Yeah screw future residents, I got here first!
Are mortgage interest rates capped?
Are mortgage late fees capped for your landlord, when you’re late?
Are property taxes capped?
Are insurance rates capped?
Are water and sewer, and garbage rates capped?
Are all landlords rich?
Landlords sure are richer than their tenants. If they don’t want to deal with all those things you mentioned, then weigh the pros and cons before becoming a landlord. But all of them did though and went ahead. Should all investments be promised with no losses?
Yea, totally! The government has an obligation to control these things to perpetuate a functioning society.
I cannot imagine how much worse off we would have been with a 5% rental increase cap since the 90s. New builds would be drastically lower than they ended up being, and you’d have a tiny number of people with cheap housing and a huge number of people with no housing.
Some people simply do not understand basic economic principles, and sadly, these people vote.
Then the government can build a lot more subsidized housing like they do in many developed countries. Units are small but affordable.
All you have to do is look around you to see what unregulated capitalism does to a society. Is the solution socialism? Not really.. Is the solution unregulated capitalism? Obviously not literally look around you.
I think they fully understand… They are just greedy and don’t wanna pay, that’s why they fight for it because it’s a good deal for them.
Yea, trying to not be homeless is “greedy”. Spoken like a true american patriot.
I’m sure others had worse but when my old building wanted to charge me $500/month more to renew so I had to move, yeah they should not be allowed to gouge that much. Odd enough the same units are less now probably because everyone moved and they couldn’t fill units. Hahah
That’s how it’s supposed to work. If the landlords want to be a**holes about it, you either pay or leave. Then they feel pain if the market won’t bear their new higher asking price.
Sadly means you have to move, though.
There should be a cap on lame duck Councilwoman Sawant’s ability to make any new proposals. Her scorched earth approach will just need to be undone by the Council after she’s long gone, nothing but a bitter memory to D3’s long term residents.
Great point – Sawant’s Rental Laws have hurt those it was intended to help.
Go away Sawant.
She’s had a cap on her projects from day 1. She hasn’t achieved a single meaningful thing in all her time on city council. I’m not worried about her achieving anything between now and the glorious end. Enjoy your martini!
Sawant needs to go away
Far, far away
Bye. You won’t be missed.