Seattle is facing a housing emergency. Journalists write about it and politicians talk about it and yet the situation gets worse by the day. A year later, the mayor's policy has proven to be an abject failure. Housing costs have continued to spiral upwards. It's time for action.
Developers argue that growth management plans are to blame.
Public officials say they feel renters' pain, but that rent control is too hot an issue to take up in the legislature or on the city council. Washington State Apartment Owners Association and other landlord lobbies are powerful campaign contributors whom they do not want to anger. Less talk, more action needed from legislators Every election, Democrats and Republicans alike promise to help working families. Now is the tune to hold them to their campaign rhetoric. Renters have been stripped of their rights to organize and fight for local rent con-trol by a 1982 state law, RCW 35.21.830, initiated by the landlord lobby.