Skyrocketing rents? How about you live within your means?

Seattle reportedly has the lowest percentage of struggling renters. Some activists find this troubling.

While the rest of the nation has been trending upward in residents spending more and more of their income on rent, Seattle has trended downward when it comes to renters paying more than half of their income on rent. One in four nationally. In Seattle, it’s one in five.

Gene Balk writes:

Since 2005, even as the city’s added more than 29,000 renter households, the number spending at least half their income on rent has declined by nearly 2,000. Such households make up 20 percent of rentals in Seattle, down from 26 percent in 2005, according to census data.

With that sharp decline, Seattle now has the smallest percentage of severely rent-burdened households among major U.S. cities.

Now, we’re told how crazy expensive it is to live in Seattle, but there are a couple truths that should be explained since the folks pushing rent control for ideological and political purposes don’t want to be honest about.

First, the “skyrocketing” rents aren’t happening all across the city of Seattle. Rents are going up at a higher rate in some neighborhoods. The “uncool” neighborhoods (by hipster standards, at least) remain affordable. Activists don’t want to live in Northgate; they want to live on Capitol Hill so they pretend the rent hikes there are happening all across the city.

It is true that rents are going up. I just dispute the claim that they’re skyrocketing in the city.

Second, it it also true that some people are being priced out of the area, which is actually what explains the stat from the census. You’re pushing people out who can’t afford it, so they find housing elsewhere, and they’re no longer paying so much in rent.

Now a lot of folks don’t like that, which I understand. I’d hate to have to move out of a neighborhood I grew up in or felt comfortable in because I couldn’t afford it anymore. But you have to understand that that action is part of the underlying problems that face not just this city, but this entire state and country.

Gene Balk illustrates the problem. He writes:

Imagine paying 70 percent of your income toward housing. It sounds almost impossible.

But that’s what Farah Hirji, who rents an apartment in Ballard, has been doing since December. Hirji has been trying to find a job in marketing, which she considers her career. But in the meantime, she works as a nanny and just about scrapes by. She does what she can to save money, from putting off car repairs to cutting back on groceries.

“And I really don’t have any fun money,” she says.

So why are you living in Ballard? Why are you choosing to live beyond your means? Why are you putting yourself in the position to barely scrape by and not have any “fun money” that you desire? Why on Earth would you choose to pay 70 percent of your income on rent?

Why are we sympathetic to a story like this? This is different than a senior citizen whose lived in a home for 50 years and is all of a sudden getting priced out. We should address that, but if you’re putting yourself into a position where you’re choosing to live in a neighborhood you can’t afford and don’t actually have to live in, why does that make you a victim? You’re not a victim worth fighting for. You’re not a victim of any greater injustice other than you not understanding the basic concept of living within your means.

You can have your fun money and groceries if you were responsible and choose to live in a neighborhood you could afford.

I can’t afford the BMW I want. I’d kill for an M5. But I can’t afford it. That car starts at $112,000.

If I go ahead and try to lease it, would you feel bad for me if I complained day in and day out about how, now, I have to choose between groceries and prescription medication because I just can’t get by? Of course not; you’d laugh me out of the building and you’d be justified to. So why do we bring out experiences like Farah Hirji who is choosing to live outside her means?

We are a country that is actively deciding to live outside our means and instead of correcting that behavior, instead of budgeting, we permit and encourage the irresponsible behavior.

Can’t afford to live in the neighborhood? The activists, instead of saying live within your means, will say, “Well, we’ll push rent control so you can live in that neighborhood! Can’t afford that Netflix account, a pack of cigarettes a day, a couple nights a week of binge drinking and bar hopping? Well, we’ll just raise the minimum wage so you can.”

How’s that acceptable? How do we allow that to happen?

It’s really simple: ideology. Blind loyalty to ideology, even if it is shown not to work. When we talk about our loyalty to our ideology, we have blinders on and we’re not able to see the consequences in context. We just see obstacles and we overcome them with more blind loyalty to ideology. (And this isn’t a Democrat problem; Republicans do this too – some are blindly loyal to abstinence programs, for example, when the best education is a well rounded one.)

If you’re going to make a fuss about “skyrocketing” rents, perhaps you should first ask yourself if you’re bringing some of the pain on yourself.