Can we finally bury rent control in WA?<\/p>\n
The rent control bill died in the legislature this week, even though Democrats control both houses. The reason is because Democrats — like Senator Mark Mullet of Issaquah — realized landlords would just get out of the rental business, and it would backfire.<\/p>\n
“If you want to lower the price \u2026 isn\u2019t going to help,” Mullet told The Jason Rantz Show<\/a> on KTTH 770 AM. “I think rent control has been looked at from an academic standpoint for several decades and we don’t have any examples of it being successful.”<\/p>\n More from Dave Ross<\/a><\/strong>: Conservative activist earns applause for pledging an \u2018end of Democracy\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n The problem gets worse when you have idealists who say they want to lower rents, but are also determined to discourage development because it leads to climate change.<\/p>\n So how about this: Make it easier to build stuff! Especially in areas that are already developed. If you look at the permit requirements for multi-family developments in King County \u2013 just the information bulletin is 15 pages.<\/p>\n To build one single-family home, you\u2019re looking at five weeks just to screen the application and another 30 weeks to get the necessary permits. For larger buildings, I couldn\u2019t find any time estimates. And when you look at the list of permits, you understand why.<\/p>\n Got a pencil ready?<\/p>\n And of course, your payments for all these things.<\/p>\n No one wants shoddy construction or dead fish, so there must be rules. But the rules need to make sense and should not be used to block development.<\/p>\n I do have a little experience here as part of group of neighbors trying to get permission to protect our property from landslides. It\u2019ll end up taking a year just to get permission. And we\u2019re not even building anything new, just trying to protect what\u2019s there.<\/p>\n The way to end a housing crisis it not to change the rules on rent, but to change the attitude of the gatekeepers. An investor who wants to build a five-story apartment building should be welcomed at the permit office with cake and ice cream. The attitude should be “thank goodness you\u2019re here. How do we make this happen as quickly as possible?”<\/p>\n More from <\/strong>Dave Ross<\/strong><\/a>: Voters can help cull bad politicians from the herd early<\/a><\/p>\n Instead of “why are you trying to kill the fish and destroy the earth?”<\/p>\n If we\u2019re going to rope off huge areas of land to keep them in their natural state \u2013 which I think is a good thing \u2013 then it has to be easier to fill in what\u2019s left.<\/p>\n Listen to Seattle\u2019s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O\u2019Brien weekday mornings from 5-9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n