It’s Time to Defend Yourself. Will you?
Two things amaze me about the Seattle City Council’s proposed ban on evictions; first, that it is happening at all, and second, the slack response from the real estate community. Now, for sure, I’ve had a spike in interest in what we can do to stop this. Can we fight it in court? How can I help? But there seems to be a kind of numbness out there and a general lack of urgency about what this means. I’ll talk about both briefly.
The Council is now functioning in what I’d call “Glitter Globe Mode;” it’s as if they live in their own little novelty version of the city sealed in plastic and from reality. Getting evicted is traumatic. People who are evicted are “victims.” It’s as if the Council was talking about car accidents, robbery, or lightening strikes. Eviction, in their mind, has absolutely nothing to do with lease violations or non-payment of rent. The view is that anyone who owns property beyond their own housing unit, has “extra” property. It simply is unfair, maybe even criminal to make other people pay to use that to live in.
Second, on LinkedIn, I saw a person from the real estate community, someone I respect, praising Representative Nicole Macri’s proposed legislation to make it easier to build backyard cottages. He seemed annoyed, put off, when I reminded him and people on the thread of his post, that that same legislator was in the midst of seriously complicating tenant-landlord law. I pointed out that even if what Macri was proposing suddenly enabled lots of people to build DADUs, the other legislation she is proposing, and the reckless legislation being proposed by the Seattle City Council, would make it impossible for these people to become landlords.
If you’re reading this and you make your living from real estate transactions, housing management, or building housing of any kind, your world is under attack. If you don’t think so, maybe we need to have a hear to heart talk. This isn’t something that is happening to someone else, it’s happening to you. I understand if you don’t own or operate rental housing. I get that you’re afraid of what’s going to happen to your permits. I know that you don’t want to be part of controversy. But if you don’t get involved in the effort to oppose these kinds of incremental infringements on the value exchange between people in the housing market, soon it will be your business that is being mandated to forgive debt, pay fees, fines, taxes, and requirements about who lives where, how much they pay (if anything), and how long they can stay there.
The goal of socialists is clear: the elimination of private property. In it’s simplest sense, that’s what socialism is. People must be willing to hand over their private property for the public benefit as defined by people who are in government. Is that what you want? Are you prepared for regulation that generally is based on making sure buildings are seismically sound, fire proof, and safe to inhabit expanding into determining how much money you make? Will investors continue to back your projects if you can’t promise them that you’ll get paid so they get paid back for lending you money?
Oh, and if you’re reading this and you’re worried about the “eviction epidemic,” don’t. There isn’t one. Yes, there are evictions happening during this period of cold weather. But if the City Council really cared about people getting evicted into homelessness they’d realize that it is a manageable problem. There were 558 removals during the whole of 2017 out of 174,000 rental units (a number used by Sawant in the hearing), or about .3 percent of rental households. There are millions of dollars set aside at the United Way to do just this work. Yes, evictions are traumatic but there are resources available to help avoid homelessness after eviction.
And if you’re not in Seattle, think again about believing this isn’t going to happen in your community. The City of Oakland just joined Minneapolis in banning credit checks for housing. Cincinnati just required deposit insurance rather than cash security deposits. Rent control is being talked about almost everywhere, and the false narrative of the “eviction epidemic” is fanning the fires of a wider effort to commandeer private property for public use.
We’ll keep doing what we can against this as long as we can. But we aren’t the juggernaut that other side says we are. Most large scale property owners, the “corporate landlords” believe they can absorb this onslaught; many of them will snap up what gets sold by smaller fish that can’t survive anymore, making the reality of “corporate housing” a reality, and thus a further rationale for more regulation and destructive infringements on people’s ability to make a living providing housing.
As I keep saying, there two things you can do. First, donate to keep us going. We were the only organization at the hearing last week on the eviction ban. We’re trying to expand our reach to help others across the state and country. It’s online, and it’s easy.
Second, you can send a message to the Seattle City Council by going to our petition page. We’ve made this easy too. Don’t regret, months or years from now when the next “compassionate” rule or regulation passes threatens your ability to provide for your family. The time is now, the day is today. Don’t regret this moment because you did nothing. The link is here: http://www.seattleforgrowth.org/eviction-ban-not-compassionate-not-needed-not-legal/
