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Study: Seattle Worker Needs Minimum Wage Of $21.60/Hour To Afford Two-Bedroom Rental
KPLU ^ | 3/24/14 | Ashley Gross

Posted on 03/26/2014 2:29:14 AM PDT by Libloather

Even hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour may not be enough to allow low-wage workers to afford rent in Seattle, according to a new study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The group says a full-time worker in the Seattle-Bellevue metro area needs to earn $21.60 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment. That’s the so-called housing wage that the group calculates. In Washington state, the housing wage is $18.65 per hour.

The group estimated that the worker spends no more than 30 percent of his or her income on rent and utilities. For the price of a two-bedroom apartment in Seattle, the group used $1,123 per month, the fair-market rent estimated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

(Excerpt) Read more at kplu.org ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; US: Washington
KEYWORDS: demagogicparty; minimum; rental; sawant; seattle; wage; washington
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Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has established an advisory committee to examine the idea of raising the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour. Activists, including City Council member Kshama Sawant, have said they plan to collect signatures for a ballot proposition if the city fails to act.

With gas prices soaring, the socialist might as well make it $50 an hour.

1 posted on 03/26/2014 2:29:14 AM PDT by Libloather
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To: Libloather

You raise the hourly wage and the first thing landlords will do is raise the rent.


2 posted on 03/26/2014 2:30:44 AM PDT by Gaffer (Comprehensive Immigration Reform is just another name for Comprehensive Capitulation)
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To: Libloather

Why would a single, full-time worker need a two bedroom apartment in the first place?


3 posted on 03/26/2014 2:53:38 AM PDT by teacherwoes (Alethephobia-fear of hearing the truth)
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To: Libloather

One Meeeeelion Dollars


4 posted on 03/26/2014 3:08:50 AM PDT by Crazieman (Are you naive enough to think VOTING will fix this entrenched system?)
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To: Libloather

Three Seattle workers can rent even easier. Put one in the living room.


5 posted on 03/26/2014 3:15:38 AM PDT by A CA Guy ( God Bless America, God Bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: Libloather

Well heck, just make all landlords lower the rent. Problem solved!
(Since they are using pink unicorn economics anyway....)


6 posted on 03/26/2014 3:15:49 AM PDT by AndrewB (FUBO)
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To: Libloather

Is that with section 8?


7 posted on 03/26/2014 3:18:12 AM PDT by struggle
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To: struggle

Good point; probably an unintended consequence of cheaper rentals being subsidized. So let’s start more all compassionate government action to distort the market. No wonder people are forced into dependence.


8 posted on 03/26/2014 3:23:30 AM PDT by gusopol3
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To: Gaffer

“You raise the hourly wage and the first thing landlords will do is raise the rent.”

And behind curtain “B” we have rent control!

Remember, the solution to market distortions caused by government intervention is always more government intervention.


9 posted on 03/26/2014 3:26:49 AM PDT by Junk Silver
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To: Libloather
I thought the idea was to live in your mom's basement until you acquired some skills, were given responsibility, received a few raises, and could afford a place of your own.
10 posted on 03/26/2014 3:30:21 AM PDT by Sooth2222 ("Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But I repeat myself." M.Twain)
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To: Sooth2222

Guess the best thing for him to do would be to move to something he CAN afford, millions of other people have to do that, why not him?


11 posted on 03/26/2014 3:35:05 AM PDT by DaveA37
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To: Libloather

Logic buys no votes...


12 posted on 03/26/2014 3:43:15 AM PDT by outofsalt (If history teaches us anything it's that history rarely teaches us anything.)
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To: Sooth2222
I thought the idea was to live in your mom's basement until you acquired some skills, were given responsibility, received a few raises, and could afford a place of your own.

That's what I did, and I think most people here. You move out when you have a job which pays enough to get your own place, or you find somebody willing to share a place with you.

13 posted on 03/26/2014 3:49:41 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (You don't notice it's a police state until the police come for you.)
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To: Gaffer

You raise the hourly wage and the first thing landlords will do is raise the rent.


Yep! And then they’ll impose Rent-Control, then Food Price-control and .... then and then, etc.

It’s like they want to become New York City-West.

Such a lovely place back in the Mid-70’s. It really is a shame that the Leftist’s are so attracted to beauty and beautiful places and then they just can’t help themselves; they have to ugly-fie them to match what’ festering inside of them.


14 posted on 03/26/2014 3:50:41 AM PDT by The Working Man
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To: teacherwoes

It is not an issue of need. Is it any one’s business why anyone needs the things that others do?


15 posted on 03/26/2014 3:50:45 AM PDT by mazda77
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To: All

ha.. good luck with all that..


16 posted on 03/26/2014 3:52:16 AM PDT by newnhdad (Our new motto: USA, it was fun while it lasted.)
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To: Libloather

Kshama Sawant is a member of the Socialist Alternative party, the United States section of the British-based Trotskyist international organization the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI). She has referred to herself as a Marxist.[26][38] Sawant has stated that she does not advocate for any system like the “bureaucratic dictatorship” of the former Soviet Union, but for democratic socialism meaning “the society being run democratically in the interest of all working people on the planet, all children - everybody who has needs, and all that being done in an environmentally sustainable manner.”[39]
Involvement with Occupy[edit]
Before running for office, Sawant received attention as an organizer in the local Occupy movement.[1][21] She praised Occupy for putting “class”, “capitalism”, and “socialism” into the political debate.[26] After Occupy Seattle protestors were removed from Westlake Park by order Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, Sawant helped bring them to the Capitol Hill campus of Seattle Central Community College, where they remained for two months.[12] Sawant has joined with other Occupy activists working with local organization to resist home evictions and foreclosures. She was arrested with several other Occupy activists including Dorli Rainey on July 31, 2012 for blocking King County Sheriff’s Deputies from evicting a man from his home.[40]
Economic policies[edit]
Sawant called for large Seattle companies such as Starbucks and Amazon to be unionized in her most recent campaign.[28] In previous campaigns she has advocated the nationalization of large Washington State corporations such as Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon.com[29] and expressed a desire to see privately owned housing in “Millonaire’s Row” in the Capitol Hill neighborhood turned into publically owned shared housing saying, “When things are exquisitely beautiful and rare, they shouldn’t be privately owned.”[41] During an election victory rally for her City Council campaign Sawant criticized Boeing for saying it would move jobs out of state if it couldn’t get wage concessions and tax breaks. She called this “economic terrorism” and said in several speeches if Boeing moved jobs out of state that the workers should take over Boeing facilities and bring them into public ownership. She has said they could be converted into multiple uses, such as production for mass transit.[42][43] She is also a supporter of single-payer health care.[28] Sawant maintains that a socialist economy cannot exist in a single country and must be a global system just as capitalism today is a global system.[44]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshama_Sawant


17 posted on 03/26/2014 4:05:03 AM PDT by ilovesarah2012
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To: Gaffer

She also wants rent control.


18 posted on 03/26/2014 4:05:32 AM PDT by ilovesarah2012
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To: The Working Man; Junk Silver

Yes, that’s likely, and with that comes the landlord’s option of neglecting the property, no maintenance, etc. and then the government cracks down on inspections, etc. and rental property is sold over to condos or something leaving no affordable housing, and the vicious cycle continues.

Nothing government does is good in my opinion.


19 posted on 03/26/2014 4:13:14 AM PDT by Gaffer (Comprehensive Immigration Reform is just another name for Comprehensive Capitulation)
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To: The Working Man
It really is a shame that the Leftist’s are so attracted to beauty and beautiful places and then they just can’t help themselves; they have to ugly-fie them to match what’ festering inside of them.

Lovely way of putting it. That has happened to huge areas of my beloved home state, California. Basic infrastructure is falling apart because liberals couldn't keep themselves from trying to impose "social justice."

20 posted on 03/26/2014 4:19:31 AM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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