Dear Mister or Madam President,

My name is Liam A. and I live in Seattle, Washington, where we are experiencing a housing crisis. According to our Mayor, Ed Murray, “We are facing our worst housing affordability crisis in decades” (Murray, Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, http://murray.seattle.gov/housing/). A lot of life-time Seattleites - families - cannot afford to live here anymore. Many families are forced to move south to other cities, such as Burien, WA, for example, because it’s a little less expensive to live there. However, the families moving to Burien are displacing families just like they were displaced from Seattle. It’s a never-ending domino effect, and it ruins the so called American Dream.  Stable housing is a basic human right. Something needs to be done to stop this economic segregation. We need to make sure that there is a balance between the free market and rent control. 

Most of the issues in the US are connected with income. Rents have risen but the wages of the middle class have not. One duplex, on the block where I live in my apartment building, is selling for $750,000. Many parents today are single parents and they don’t have enough income to live in Seattle. It takes two incomes to afford a small one-bedroom apartment. I have personal experience of losing a friend to being priced out of their rental due to skyrocketing rent.

It is true that the free market rules, but in reality the investors who own the buildings have the city in their pocket and they can raise rents with impunity. If they wanted to, they could raise the rent up to $100,000,000,000 – the only requirement to do so is to give the tenant 60 days’ notice. Imagine yourself with your single mother or father, in a small pokey apartment making just enough to survive. You and your family are sharing one packet of Ramen noodles because that’s all that they can afford after they pay their rent. And then, one day you come home from public school to find a note on your front door that the rent is going to be increased by $200 more each month. You know what this means, this means that you would have to either start working a job to help your family instead of going to school, or moving away from your home completely, spending money you don’t have (it’s expensive to move). Now think to yourself, which would you pick? This isn’t fiction, this is reality.

Since Seattle Public Schools cut their transportation costs down to the bone, they no longer bus kids to schools to other neighborhoods. This results in kids going to their neighborhood school; so kids are economically segregated because they can only go to their neighborhood school. The poor kids are kept in the poor neighborhoods and the rich kids are kept in the rich neighborhoods. Zero cultural diversity, zero income diversity, and zero educational bonus’ of experiencing life the way it should be - in all of its wondrous diversity.

The housing crisis goes hand-in-hand with income inequality. Everyone’s priced out as rich people move in from other states; middle class families displace even poorer people than themselves. Where does it end? Where do the poorest of the poor go?

In my research I found that, "rising housing costs are leading to displacement of Seattle’s lower-income residents, who are disproportionately people of color." (http://www.underoneroofseattle.com/). Over half of the people who live in Seattle rent their homes. (http://www.seattle.gov/housing/renters). This will lead to only rich people living within the city.

In conclusion, you as President of the United States, can make a change for the better. You can have government control over housing prices. Decent housing should be a basic right. How can children concentrate in school when they are caring for their siblings because their parent(s) took on a third job? How can a child succeed at school, or even concentrate, when their whole family is stressed out about being able to pay the rent? In the Seattle Public Schools district there are 2,370 homeless students. The only way this number will change is if they get housing or if they get displaced out of the school district because their family couldn’t afford the astronomical rent increases. To combat this problem the city can have a rent limit. Also, the city could have more government housing. Lowering the property taxes would also help because owners pass on the tax increases to their tenants.

Something must be done, or something will give, like the family structure.

Most respectively,

Liam A.