Everyone should be fed up with eviction being touted as an “epidemic” and as like the subprime crisis. We’re the only ones in the world that have stood up to these claims which are weakly researched by people in the press. I recently took on these two charges at Forbes.

A bogus claim about eviction was used to push really bad legislation in Olympia this year and will likely continue to be cited by the press: “Eviction is the leading cause of homelessness!” No foolin,’ it is not! 

The truth is that eviction is unfortunate, expensive, and infrequent. It just doesn’t happen all that much when one considers how many rental units there are across the country, state, and city. Some people simply can’t accept that if we allowed more housing, price pressures would lessen and tenants would pay lower rents and have more choices. Instead, the problem becomes eviction by racist landlords. Even if that was true, which it is not, it wouldn’t explain rising prices or rising demand for housing. Eviction is an excuse for tenant lawyers to get legislation to help them win their cases.

The answer is and will always be, build more housing or all kinds in every neighborhood for people of all levels of income. Anything else is a distraction for political benefit.