I have been a landlord. And while landlords are among the least popular people in our culture and economy, somebody has to manage rental properties. Just imagine inviting 25, 60, or 100 strangers onto a property you are financially responsible for. Life happens. Parties happen. Noise happens. Abandoned furniture happens. Tragedy happens. And yes, sometimes, costs from operations and pressures from investors mean rents have to go up. And all this is true even for non-profit affordable housing like the 25 units I managed.

No landlord I know is asking for sympathy or for renters or the media to feel sorry for them. But rather, it seems to make sense, if we’re going to try to deal with housing prices to understand the role of building managers and owners and how they can be part of the solution. However, recently, the Seattle Weekly published an article written as a letter to a landlord. You can read the whole thing here. It is, in a word, sensationalistic.

A colleague of mine and a landlord, Brian Robinson,  wrote what I consider to be a perfect balancing response. Robinson writes about the challenges of dealing with tenants who aren’t just rowdy college kids or people behind on their rent, but people with a myriad of issues including addiction, mental illness, and lack of resources. Landlords aren’t the people equipped to handle these complex situations, and our fraying social safety net means, often, when evicted these people become homeless, a threat to themselves and others. Robinson writes,

Extreme stories like Bill and John’s make up only a small part of our housing-affordability problem. Thousands of other renters who are not homeless or suicidal are finding themselves unable to keep up with the increasing cost of housing. They are forced to work second jobs, take in roommates, downsize their accommodations, or make other sacrifices to their quality of life that should not be necessary in a region as prosperous as ours. Many find themselves in situations like yours, where a building is sold and rents suddenly adjusted up to market value.

All of this is only going to get worse as wages continue to climb in the city. People will be able to pay more for apartments, outbidding each other and driving prices up. This will be true at both ends of the rent scale as minimum wages see a sharp increase and more high-salary tech jobs are created.

Generally speaking, landlords and building owners are as compassionate as any other group of people. And in my case, when we had a tenant similarly self-destruct in her unit, we had no choice but to evict. And we tried to address the real issues with a cross disciplinary team from multiple public agencies. Nothing worked. And as damages to the unit reached thousands of dollars, it meant our budget for repairs for other units was being drained. Our troubled tenant wasn’t just hurting herself and her family, but she was also hurting 24 other families. And they were doing their best to keep up with their rents.

What makes me livid when I read articles like the one written by the author of the original Weekly cover story, is that it doesn’t take into account the many, many background issues going on in such a complicated case. As I’ve said before, greed is a character trait not a business model. And rather than assessing blame, we need to work together to solve problems. Making it harder to build and manage rental housing doesn’t solve the human problems faced by many people in our city who are renters. And for those who simply are struggling to make ends meet it simply makes doing that more difficult. If we are going to assess blame though, Robinson points out where it lies.

If we want this growth to happen, tenants citywide should consider taking a stand against Seattle’s vocal and entrenched constituency of neighborhood preservationists. Many of these groups oppose growth and increased density because it changes the experience and character of neighborhoods for existing residents. Our housing shortage is too severe to be constrained by nostalgia. We need to ask existing residents of the city to do their part by accommodating minor inconveniences like parking, new crowds, or unfamiliar construction on their streets in order to have enough housing to accommodate everybody.