SEATTLE — Hundreds of people filled Seattle's Town Hall Monday night, clapping for and at times against rent control.
Councilmember Kshama Sawant and councilmember Nick Licata used the event as an opportunity to push for rent control, which is currently against the law in Washington.
Smart Growth Seattle Director Roger Valdez and state Rep. Matt Manweller said rent control would not work.
“Build more housing,” Valdez said. “It’s that simple.”
They warned that developers would not have the incentive to build as many apartment units and accused the council of cracking down hard on micro-housing with new rules.
“We talk about apodments, boo, hiss, as if somehow because you don’t want to live there, no one else should be allowed to live there,” Manweller said.
“We need rent regulations and an expansion of tenant rights,” Sawant said. “We need to confront the question—what are we doing to make sure rents remain affordable? What we mean by rent control is a policy whereby landlords can still make profits, but we won’t have the kind of skyrocketing rents that end up evicting people.”
Kathy Heffernan said just before New Year’s, she got the notice that rent on her West Seattle two-bedroom apartment was skyrocketing.
“My particular rent was raised from $1,000 to $2,300,” she said.
She moved out in March.
“We need a mass grassroots movement to make Seattle affordable,” she said.
Others in the audience, like Teejay VanSlyke, said they need to see more data.
“I’m not anti-rent control,” he said. “I’m very pro-Socialist policies. I’m just not sure if this one works.”
Manweller, a Republican, doesn’t believe there are the votes in the legislature to make the change—and not just on his side of the aisle.
“I don’t think you could get half of the Democratic caucus to vote for a repeal of rent control,” he said.
This spring, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray echoed some of the same, saying he proposed rent control 18 years ago when he was a part of the state legislature.
“I know it’s possible to get difficult things done, but rent control was one that never even got out of hearing, much less out of committee, and that’s when the Democrats controlled it,” Murray said in April.
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