Seattle Eviction Ban: Are We Headed To The End Of Private Property Rentals? – Forbes

In this Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019 photo, a campaign poster for Seattle City Council incumbent ... [+] candidate Kshama Sawant is posted outside her campaign headquarters in Seattle. Seven of the nine Seattle City Council seats are up for grabs in next month's election, where retail giant Amazon has made unprecedented donations totaling $1.5 million to a political action committee that's supporting a slate of candidates perceived to be friendlier to business. Among the company's top targets is Sawant, a fierce critic of Amazon, who is running against Egan Orion in the District 3 race. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Ive spoken and written often in the last year or so about the steady, persistent, and insidious efforts underway across the country to erode the business of private rental property. That last sentence sounds like I am a conspiracy theorist, pushing a narrative that someday private rental property wont exist and the only place to rent an apartment will be from the government or non-profits. Sometimes I doubt it myself until I see things like the request from Seattles Renters Commission to ban evictions during the winter.

But wait a minute. Wouldnt banning evictions be a compassionate thing to do? The Commission says in its letter,

During winter in Seattle, temperatures regularly fall into the 30s overnight and, according to All Home King Countys Count Us In report for 2019, forty-one percent of homeless neighbors sleep outside every night with an additional nineteen percent sleeping in vehicles.

The Commission cites a French example, the Trve hivernale, or winter truce which bans evictions from November 1 through April 1 every year. But think about that for a moment. That would mean evictions would be banned for almost half the year. And the Commissions letter leads anyone reading to ask, well, why do we allow evictions at all since cold is just one of a myriad of bad things a person faces when they sleep outside.

Lets go back to what I call the slow, steady, and insidious nature of efforts to decommodify housing in the United States. I wrote about a book, In Defense of Housing, that suggests housing should not be bought and sold. In essence, the argument that housing is a human right, makes buying and selling housing like buying and selling bandages at the scene of accident, immoral and exploitative. Is the Commission and other advocates of these sorts of measures really urging compassion or something else.

Consider the fact that actual removals from multifamily housing in Seattle are very infrequent, so infrequent that they barely register on the dashboard of housing problems.

Not very many households end up evicted in Seattle

Out of the thousands of units of rental households less than 1 percent in 2017 had an eviction action filed and even fewer, just under 600 were actually removed. If we just divide that number by 12 and multiply by 5 for the winter months, we get just 243 actual evictions. How many of those households end up forced to sleep outside? We have no idea because the City nor anyone else actually tracks what happens to households once they are removed. You can read a full response to the supposed eviction epidemic in Seattle in the Losing Perspective response.

What happens in France is that eviction season begins in April, and all the evictions in the country are simply stayed until that date and then the removals begin. Also, in France there are exception for people who have a place to go, including shelters and other housing options. France also provides insurance for lost rent during the period.

In a letter I sent to the City I point out that if the Commission is truly interested in addressing this issue with compassion, they could provide $1000 a month for housing for 250 households who might be removed over a five month period at a cost of about $1,250,000. Or they might consider asking Amazon, a local company that just spent $1,500,000 on trying to oust the citys socialist Councilmember, Kshama Sawant to pay for this assistance. Amazons efficiency in delivering products to doorsteps all over the planet is inversely matched by their clumsy efforts at doing politics; they also barged into a local battle over evictions and ended up having to back off their support. Sawant, of course, supports the winter ban on evictions.

Whats happening here is not compassion but a power and property grab. Once such a moratorium is in place, why not just keep it in place forever. Im sure the same people that wrote the letter would nod their heads at that idea. The logical conclusion of banning screening of tenants (including credit checks in Minneapolis), controlling what can be collected in rent, and then banning evictions is exactly the outcome I am cautioning against in the opening paragraph: the end of private rentals.

There is also one little stumbling block, though, on our way to the socialist paradise: the United States Constitution. The Fifth Amendment doesnt allow the taking of private property without due process and compensation. But Im sure we can just put a moratorium on that too.

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Seattle Eviction Ban: Are We Headed To The End Of Private Property Rentals? - Forbes