(Images: Ananya Mishra/CHS)
Capitol Hill’s socialist representative on the Seattle City Council is on a showdown with local Democratic leaders as she brings a vote on rent control in the city to a committee vote this week.
The march to Friday’s legislative battle included a skirmish last week on Broadway at All Pilgrims Church where Kshama Sawant held a rare Wednesday night city council committee meeting beyond City Hall and at an hour “working people” could attend.
Calling soaring rents in Seattle a “brutal reality” and “a burning issue,” Sawant said her push for Seattle rent control in her final months on the council had the support of the now renter-majority city.
“Do ordinary people and specifically renters support rent control? Of course they do,” Sawant said. “They don’t need to be told that their lives suck who they are that the mercy of corporate landlords and they need some policy to protect them.”
The nearly three hour council renters committee session included two hours of public comment on Sawant’s proposed legislation that would tie Seattle rents to inflation and be triggered by any lifting of a statewide ban on capping rents.
In echoes of her past successful campaigns to push forward a $15 minimum wage and the so-called Amazon tax, the committee heard from dozens of Socialist Alternative and Workers Strike Back supporters speaking in favor or the legislation.
Wednesday’s hearing received all the trappings required of an official council session including a broadcast by the Seattle Channel, the ability for councilmembers to attend remotely, and public comment speakers to participate both in person and by phone. Renters rights committee members Tammy Morales and Sara Nelson attended remotely as did non-committee member Lisa Herbold. Sawant said committee members Andrew Lewis and Debora Juarez were unable to attend.
In January, Sawant announced she would not seek reelection as her political group Socialist Alternative is setting its work in District 3 aside to focus on the creation of Workers Strike Back to take on the “Democratic establishment” including the growing ranks of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Not every speaker supported the new movement.
The first to take the mic was roundly booed during his use of the one-minute speaking window to cite multiple studies with evidence that rent control damages supply and can raise rents. Later, another speaker earned another round of booing. “When you make rent capped at the inflation rate, that means real estate cannot be an investment,” he said. “Do you want real estate to not be an investment? Then let’s say that and have a conversation about the consequences about that.”
But most testimony took a shape closer to the minute from one renter new to Seattle. “I have fallen in love with the city in the short time have been here. I think the people here fantastic and everyone in this room is amazing,” a University District renter new to Seattle said. “But the sad fact of the matter is because of the absolutely awful housing crisis and the absolutely despicable actions of a lot of these corporate landlords, there’s a very real possibility that I won’t be in the city next year.”
The hours of comment also included a musical interlude with Mark Taylor-Canfield and his guitar supporting rent control with a “the rents are too damn high” song.
The unusual committee session also included some local perks including banh mi sandwiches provided inside the Broadway church. “So don’t stay hungry,” Sawant said.
Underlying the call for rent control in Sawant’s final months in office is a hard to ignore affordability crisis. Her office points to the U.S. Census Bureau report showing rent climbed nearly 92% in the Seattle area from 2010 to 2020. Sawant’s office says the price-fixing allegations against Seattle landlords using the YieldStar software from RealPage is proof that rent levels are already being centrally managed.
Sawant also points at the Democratic leaders who have failed to lift the statewide ban on rent control that has been in place for 42 years, “longer than many of you have actually been alive.”
“Who is to blame?,” Sawant said Wednesday in comments during a press conference outside the church. “Our rent control bill will be put to a vote.”
In the press conference, Sawant laid the situation on the line as she prepares for Friday’s committee vote showdown with her fellow councilmembers.
“The question is whom will they allow to control rents? Is it going to be rent setting, price setting, or price fixing in interest of the insatiable greed of these millionaires and billionaires,” Sawant asked, “Or is it going to be rent control in the interest of the survival of the majority of our working people?”
The Sustainability and Renters’ Rights Committee is scheduled to vote on the legislation Friday. The meeting begins at 9:30 AM. You can learn more about Sawant’s proposal here.
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She really doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Or she’s just lying. I can hardly tell anymore.
No need! Just make sure that your intellectual opponent is characterized as “insatiably greedy”, a “millionaire and billionaire” and not an “ordinary” person, so your rabid followers react emotionally with boos and shout-downs. Now where have we seen “othering” used for political gain before? I feel like it was recently …
she is a smart woman. She knows exactly what she is doing. Her goal is 100% socialized housing for all, whether you want it or not. She doesn’t care that small housing providers are being driven out and that rent control will accelerate that. Its a feature, not a bug. We are nothing but an inconvenient counterpoint to her greedy corporate megalandlord narrative and an inconvenient provider of affordable housing at no net cost to the rest of society unlike most subsidized housing. If we all sell out there might be incrementally more for-sale homes for a while, or room for more subsidized apartment blocks built on the sites of former duplex, triplex, and fourplex properties, and there will even better be more renters screaming for somebody to do something.
Hopefully, the rest of the council has the courage (not holding my breath) to ignore Sawant’s last publicity stunt. Rent control has been documented over and over to make the problem worse and Washington doesn’t allow rent control.
Rent control has certainly decimated better city’s than ours. Go away sawant the socialist hater.
Not one new apartment building would be built if rental income does not pay for the cost of the land and the construction. No one will develop new housing if they lose money on it.
I’m a renter. I don’t want rent control. Ever.
Now, if you wanna talk about:
– regulating REIT’s abusing yield management software
– an effort to get more of a 50/50 mix of condo’s and rental apartments being built around the new light rail stations (so I can actually get my own home next to a train station), I’m all ears.
Whether there is or isn’t rent control something is wrong when a corporate LL can just give you a $500 rent increase because they feel like it.
Bought any groceries or gasoline lately? We pay the highest in the nation because we voted for the legislation that created the increased rates. Be careful for what you wish for, if you really can’t pay for it. Virtuous laws roll downhill.
Why is that so wrong? Landlords own the property and should be able to charge whatever they want for the right to live there. That is called commerce, and our society is rife with examples of providers of goods and services charging what they think the market will bear. The reality is, landlords who do that will have vacancies because tenants will find other more reasonably priced places to live.
And landlords in Seattle are already required to provide six months notice of any rent increase, so tenants have plenty of opportunity to look for alternative accomodations. As well, tenants vacating after an increase of ten percent or more are entitled to three months rent from the landlord. So, I think these provisions provide enough protection and clearly discourage excessive rent increases. Sawant acts like none of these provisions, or the plethora of other tenant protections she has enacted in the past ten years, are even in place.
Unless your also willing to have a coversation about limitation on property tax there isn’t much you can do here. I know the fun narrative is the greedy landlords swimming in piles of money but that isn’t the reality. My property tax went up 20% last year based on land valuation and this year there will be the mental health levy and most likely the housing levy tacked on. How do you expect landlords to pay these increases without passing it through to renters?
THANK YOU for bringing up the point so few people in Seattle seem to understand;
Raising property taxes to pay for stuff doesn’t just fall at the feet of big business / home owners. Your landlord ALSO has to pay those increased property taxes. If you think they’re not gonna pass through those increased costs of doing business to you, the renter, then I don’t know what to say to you.
Agreed. We have one rental unit in our duplex and our property taxes are now $1400 a MONTH – up from $700 per month eight years ago. Sawant wants us to charge $1000 for a two bedroom two bath on Capitol Hill – but has zero ideas how for any tax relief for small landlords like us. Our tax increases far outpace inflation.
Btw, it sounds good to have your rent tied to inflation – unless it’s going up 7 to 10 percent a year, then you’re looking at $140 to $200 a year and historically, wages do not go up as the same rate as inflation.
Sawant has made it harder for low income renters and renters with poor credit.
Before communist Sawant enacted these laws now making it so difficult to Evict problem OR non-paying tenants, I used to rent to people who had hardships. I never cared about their credit.
But these days no more!! Like most landlords in Seattle now unless you have excellent credit and excellent work history, you can forget getting an apartment from 95% of Lanlords in Seattle.
Nice job Savant.
Even though held off site, that meeting was supposed to be an official city council function right? So it seems like the banners, posters, musical program and all that other pagentry designed as much to discourage those in opposition as to promote the bill would be the city taking sides right? Isn’t that illegal?
I’m a small landlord (9 units) and I reward good tenants by not raising rent during their tenancy. I wait until the tenant moves out then adjust the rent to market value. Not any more – Sawant is forcing me to raise all my current rents now so that I’m not penalized in the future. (Her measure does not allow a vacancy reset). Sawant doesn’t really understand the housing ecosystem at all. She’s a not-too-bright populist, ego driven, blind to important details, and a bit paranoid to boot. I’ll be glad to see her go.
Sure buddy. Lol. Sawant is forcing you to be greedy. Nothing got passed to force you to do anything. So you are lying.
Why don’t you state counter facts instead of name calling. David is not lying. There are two logical responses as a landlord to rent control. Sell or raise rates to market before rent control is enacted. Rent control is proven disaster for all just like communism. Unfortunately the ignorant think communism is a good thing. Move to Russia or China and enjoy.
You are obviously not a landlord, nor have you ever been
.
Nor is James anyone who has ever sold things for a living. You know, the kind of person who runs a business. Someone like that facing price resrrictions in future will raise prices as much as reasonable to establish a higher floor once price controls are in place. Simple logc at work there. Of course James thinks you are greedy if you run your business with a thought of making actual money. It is supposed to be a public service, created to alleviate public suffering, and devoted ro the betterment of mankind, as he defines it. Which is still better than Sawant, who doesn’t think private enterprise should exist at all.
Rent control is a well intentioned policy that completely ignores all academic studies and real world data that show it benefits the few (existing renters) at the cost of the many (future renters + movers). I am a real estate developer so have obvious biases, but our firm would not build in Seattle if this came to pass due to pure economics and superior risk adjusted returns available elsewhere.
Not that you have the answers, but is there an obvious better solution from a developers POV?
Streamlining permitting to speed up development of new housing. Tax incentives to encourage building in more areas of the city. More money for non profits to build affordabke housing. Anyone else have ideas?
This is just Sawant preaching to her knee-jerk supporters. She knows that rent control cannot be passed because it’s not allowed at the state level, and that is very unlikely to happen. Performative-only on her part.
I can hardly wait until we don’t see Sawant in a headline anymore, either here or other media.
Rent control > Tent control. Figure it out.
Wow. Have you read any of the actual data or even the comment section to this piece? Educate yourself.
NYC has incredibly strict Rent Control. They have a tremendous homelessness problem.
I remember I voted for her once because I saw signs up around my neighborhood and was pressed for time and didn’t read up on her. I assumed I wouldn’t agree with everything but it’d be fine if my neighbors thought she was ok. Never doing that again, learned my lesson.
I voted for her the first time around because I thought it would be interesting to have a socialist on the city council pulling the Overton window open a bit wider. I have come to regret this choice, and I will be glad when she finally goes away and finds something useful to do with her time.
Voted for her the first two times. Worst voting mistake I’ve ever made!
Voted for her the first time, major regret now.
Sounds like you, Gizmo, and Maxine have gotten a little older, and wiser, since Sawant’s first run.
If one wants more of something, make it easy to get. If one wants less of something, make it hard to get. The same idea applies to real estate and rental property. If one wants more plentiful and affordable rental property, make it easy for housing providers to supply it, don’t make it more difficult. Adding more and more regulation and rules and then also taking away any profit incentive will result in much less affordable and less rental housing available. The City of Seattle has already lost thousands of rental units as small housing providers flee the hostile market. All this talk about “tenants rights” and organizing cause those with small rental homes or condos just sell their unit instead of risking renting it out. No more cute duplex’s or mother-in-law apartments. Just too risky. The only ones who can afford these risks are huge corporate landowners because of economy of scale. It’s going to be harder and harder to find property owners willing to rent out their houses so unless one can afford to buy, a renter will be forced to rent in a huge building with corporate overlords.
Quite a loudmouth is she.