In a move that is sure to perplex any unbiased observer, the city of Seattle is seeking to shut down a website that would allow tenants to bid on homes that are available for purchase.
The website makes it possible for potential homeowners to find affordable housing in a city that has been beset by high housing costs; however, some city council members are paranoid that the new site could in some way, shape or form conflict with current housing laws.
The city council has officially banned the use of the bidding websites for a year while the council studies the sites to make sure that they would approve of all the activity taking place on them. In turn, one of the websites in question is now suing the city council in order to be allowed to operate in the city. The Pacific Legal Foundation, the firm representing the website, noted that the city is sure to have a very hard time explaining its censorship efforts in court given the fact that the plaintiffs have not engaged in any illegal or unethical behavior.
As a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation accurately noted, banning a website is usually a last-resort measure for sites that are clearly engaging in behavior that is harmful to people in the local area. It is not a tactic commonly used by American cities to regulate business websites that offer services the city council doesn’t like.
Unfortunately, Seattle has a long history of making rules and regulations that make it difficult or even impossible for landlords to find decent tenants. In 2017, the city drew up an ordinance that required landlords to rent their properties to the first applicant that submitted a valid application, denying landlords the opportunity to carefully consider a number of potential tenants and choose the one that they wanted in their home. Furious landlords took the city to court and a judge sided with them, making it clear to city council members that landlords could engage in “unconscious bias” and select their own tenants for their own properties.
Instead of learning their lesson, city council members took matters one step further and forbade landlords from looking into a potential tenant’s criminal history. The move would make it impossible for landlords to find out if a potential tenant had committed serious crimes, posed a danger to the local community or had a history of engaging in shady financial behavior. Once again, landlords who would prefer to avoid renting their homes, apartments and/or condos to dangerous criminals have taken the city to court and the case is pending.
The latest move against home bidding sites is yet another virtue-signaling law created by a city council that clearly doesn’t think local residents have the mental capabilities to purchase homes without government interference. The new sites have the potential to help people who haven’t been able to buy a home up until this point to do so. By offering important benefits such as affordable application fees, a streamlined application process and crowd-sourced funding for people who find it difficult to afford costly security deposits, the sites provide valuable solutions for a city battling with chronic high housing costs. However, all the important benefits don’t seem to mean much to city council members who think it is far more important to battle any subconscious bias that residents may have than it is to make it easy for law-abiding citizens to purchase their own homes if they so desire.
It is a good thing these outrageous laws are being promptly challenged and in at least some instances removed from the books. The government should not have the right to force landlords to rent their homes to undesirable tenants. It also shouldn’t have the right to interfere with legal, ethical businesses activities on the grounds that it might be politically incorrect in some way.
By challenging these laws, the plaintiffs are doing the entire country a favor in deterring other city councils from following in Seattle’s footsteps. Without court intervention, bureaucrats across the country would be empowered to tell businesses and individual citizens alike who to associate with, what to buy and not buy and who they could and could not do business with.
~ Conservative Zone
WE THE PEOPLE’ HAVE THE POWER OF OUR VOICES AND OUR VOTES TO VOTE OUT COME NOV 2018,THE ENTIRE LYING CORRUPT, TREASONOUS, DEMOCRAT PARTY, VOTE TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN AND TO END ALL CORRUPTION IN WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT END THE WASHINGTON PEDOPHILE CARTELS
did any one in the Seattle area stop to think that most of your gov officials came from california???? stop and think about it where did all that lib creap come from???
Brenda The main problem with voting out the entire Democratic party is that much of the republican party is just as useless as the liberals are,so it would be necessary to vote out the rino’s as well,which will take a few years to do,the key is to remove the incentives such as insider trading,free medical,hughs retirement plans for these crooked politicians,its not possible to come to Washington and be paid 172 thousand a year and in a few years they are millionaires rolling in the dough,even Truman said you can’t get rich in politics unless you are crooked,this should tell us something,but I understand your meaning,but can we find people who are any better to run the Government than we have now,the problem is their ideology where the means justifies the end and there anti-God mentality plus there ability to lie with a straight face.
The people of seattle voted these dirtbag, leftist, demoTRASH libtards into office — now DEAL WITH IT — FOOLS !!!!! Any large city that is ruled by demoSCUM is in a state of demise. It is up to the voters to get them out of office and put someone in there who has NOT lost touch with reality.
Republicans have no inherent claim to virtue. Otherwise, as you noted, the voters chose the government that so belabors them.
both are correct. it is the duty of the people to pay attention to what politicians say when campaigning and what they do once in office. If they end up being like the rinos in the house and senate, they should be voted out next election or impeached and removed immediately. This doesn’t happen because too many voters are not that intelligent, don’t pay attention, and believe the mainstream media.
Just more morons on city governments. Why do you vote for these people?
I’m afraid that many times those candidates are wolves donning sheep’s clothing and, after elected, show their true colors. It’s getting harder to tell the good from the bad with the suppression of correct information within the various medias these days.
Jon The Constitution is at fault when it was allowed to remove any religious test to Politicians,I’m not talking about whether you are Christian or Baptist or what denomination a person may be,I’m speaking of a biblical world view,I need to know what they really believe and how they actually live their lives,do they just talk a show or do they back their talk up with righteous actions,if they are thieve,liars,Homosexuals and adulterers in their private lives,then we don’t need them in office,the test for a wolf in the clothing of sheep is their righteous action on a daily basis,or as the Bible puts it,you shall know them by their fruit,if their fruit is rotten,then the whole tree will be rotten,its a matter of where their roots are located,a person with a worldly world view can not produce good fruit,reguardless of party or religion.
Besides being more than a little unconstitutional, Seattle’s attempt to shut down any website is absolutely against existing trade law. The owners of such sites need to relocate their home offices out of the city and make certain the servers are located elsewhere. Then, just continue business as usual and let the city TRY to shut them down. If I owned such a site, it would absolutely ignore their “law and let them bear the expense of trying to sue me and ignore any ruling from a local court that’s in their back pocket. What can they do?
The people on the City Council need to be outted. Where do they live and while they’re at it, where do/did they send their children to school? Social/libs like to talk the talk, but usually approach things differently with their own lives. The insanity to continue until they are removed via the ballot box. Being good socialists, where are the plans to provide adequate housing for the victims of the evil capitalist system? Go to Russia or any of the former USSR satelllites for examples on how to house people.
Winston Churchill said “if you’re not a liberal at age 20, you have no heart. but if you’re not a conservative by age 40, you have no brain”. Like other “tech cities” Seattle has attracted hordes of “twenty somethings” and millenials who are long on “education”, but short on real-world life and experience. To make matters worse, many of them are not long out of the cloistered world of academia, and it’s liberal/socialist indoctrination machine, where they were bombarded with the concept that the United States is an inherently unfair, uncaring, selfish society dedicated to the exploitation of the underclass. Their solution is he redistribution of wealth through taxation ans government regulation and edicts.
Bt Churchill’s definition, I’ve never had a heart.
However, if you think about it, taxation is merely state-sanctioned robbery. Think about it – robbery is the taking of money or material goods by threat of force or duress. Taxation is the taking of money under threat of force (law enforcement response) or durecc (imprisonment.) Sure – we (theoretically) get some ROI for our tax dollars – but we shell out far too many dollars, to fun far too many nonsensical programmes and studies. A favourite was some-odd million to figure out how Peruvian homosexual men contract AIDS. Well, Hell – I can tell you that one! Unprotected serum contact, same way anyone else contracts AIDS! Spending that money was somehwere between “joke” and “waste” on the utility scale.
For stuff like /that/, we are forced to pay taxes. If we cut out nonsensical b***s*** like that, we could probably cut the tax bite by half – and still have enough leftover money to service the Public Debt and start making that number SMALLER (finally!)
This reminds me of the city of Huntington Beach, CA. The city council voted to impose a ban on grocery bags. If you needed a bag you had to pay 10 cents per bag. The next election those fools were voted out of office and the new city council repealed the bag law. Seattle residents need to pull their heads out and get rid of the loons that are running Seattle in to the ground. It can happen.
Not just Huntington Beach – it’s pretty much all of California now. Not that it bothers me overmuch – been using reusable bags for years.
Still, kinda makes one wondre why they couldn’t have just come up with a /biodegradale/ plastic for the bags, so they’d break down on their one, y’know?
Of course, the /retailer/ has to pay for the bags, but the /government/ get the whole dime-per-bag. Go figure.. (At least, that’s how it worked when I got the notice some years ago – and I was a MAIL-ORDER business with ZERO walk-in customers! I still got the card, printed in four languages, on what felt like 90# stock. Colossal waste of money – and if they had it printed in four languages, it’s a cinch they had it available in 20 or 30 more!
NYC, Mexifornia, now Seattle, its the Dumbascrap Party way. Common sense out the window…
The Godless, Satan worshiping, power-mad, NWO-elitist ghouls will not be happy until they have all of “US” living in chicken coop size dwellings while they continue to reside in walled-off, palatial, front gated estates! WTFU!
Not at all surprising.
The influx of Southern Californians, who are carriers of the “Liberal Plague”, one of the most insidious diseases of all time, has clearly infected the people of that community. Just like cancer, it has to be eradicated before it kills the host!
I was born and raised in Seattle, I’m 70 now. Seattle has gone to He – -,This is what happens when you elect the wrong people into office. My grandmother would be turning in her grave if she knew what happening in Seattle now.
Kinda makes you wonder what would happen to the Seattle City Council if everyone else left and took their tax money with them, y’know?
Who would ever want to live in Seattle?
Seattle,it’s a nasty, vile city that is full of sick perverts etc……… stay away from it…….