You can read the article before or after my entry here.
State legislators here in Washington, much like the Seattle City Council and King County Council obviously failed their Econ classes in school. Rent controls serve only to drive landlords out of business. Renters love them, but renters by and large also love to vote in new taxes that cost their landlords more money with increased taxes using the mindset of “I only rent so this new tax won’t affect me.”
Landlords must have the ability to adjust rents up (or rarely down) based on their expenses. If you have rent controls they cannot do this, and then cannot profit from or properly maintain the properties they rent out.
For all of you out there in the world who rent: Stop voting for every new tax and your rents will largely stop increasing at rates of $200-400 a month. Every tax hike inflicted on property owners will come knocking for collection in your next rental renewal period.
Failure to understand basic economics is why our governments are so deeply in debt. Failure to teach basic economics in school is why citizens by and large are also deeply in debt.
If you truly don’t want to pay higher rents, stop voting for crap projects like Sound Transit 3 that increased not only your car tabs, but also property taxes (yes your rent is going up) on all real property with the Sound Transit Regional Tax Authority district.
Lauren Creech's Random Thoughts 
One more thing… Let’s not forget that the state is raising everybody’s tax bills this year to allegedly pay for education. Depending on where you live and how much the property is worth you will see increases of 16 to 27 percent on this year’s property tax bill. If you’re a renter, figure on at least 25% more than the baseline tax being applied to your next lease renewal.
And yes I said allegedly to pay for education because the lottery was supposed to do that way back in the 80’s when Washington voters approved that. Those funds have never paid for education.
LikeLike