Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Just because you can’t pay your mortgage is no reason not to give you a mortgage. That was the thinking behind CRA and it caused the housing crisis that tanked the economy for the last 10 years.
Seeing how well that worked, Social Justice Warriors in Seattle are expanding the plan. Just because you can’t pay your rent is no reason not to rent to you.
I confidently predict a shortage of rental housing will afflict Seattle within the next five years, and the cause will be a complete mystery.
Coming soon to a local government near you . . . .
Calling Alondra Cano…
The new law, an outgrowth of Mayor Ed Murray’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) task force, will now officially ban discrimination against prospective tenants who use alternative forms of income to pay rent, such as social security, disability, child support, or unemployment — an expansion of protections that already exist for tenants who are paying for housing with federal Section 8 vouchers.
Forcing property owners to accept reprobates, bums, moochers and wards of the state guarantees the housing stock will be headed for the toilet. No one is going to spend a dime to maintain a property that they don’t see a profit on, or one that is continually being trashed. Over a decade or so, all such properties will change hands several times until they end up with people who specialize in making a profit out of housing scumbags. Make it impossible for people to buy their way clear of scumbag neighbors, and pretty soon all you have in the city will be scumbags.
That is never a good thing for the city, or even for scumbags.
I enjoy the part about “discriminating” against those who are Section 8. Fact of the matter is that every landlord is free to accept or reject Section 8 vouchers–the law/regulation only requires that he do it consistently. My in-laws have had huge problems because some of the properties they own are really appropriate to people who are pretty down and out–e.g. Section 8.
And as Swiftee notes, landlords often have very good reasons to discriminate against people on these “alternative forms of income”. For example, Social Security disability rolls skyrocketed in 2008 and 2009 as the economy imploded and people couldn’t find work–and hence people who had been able to work settled on whatever ailments they had to find money.
Smart move, but not something that says “good renter” to a landlord.
So that’s how Seattle will solve their homeless problem! Pure genius!