Kshama Sawant's Disregard For Real-world Now Threatens Nationwide Democacy

Kshama Sawant is back in the spotlight, this time taking her ideological crusade to the national stage. In a rally held in Michigan, Sawant openly admitted that her goal in supporting Green Party candidate Jill Stein is not to win the presidency, but to deny Kamala Harris the critical battleground state. By effectively working to tip the scales in Donald Trump’s favor, Sawant is demonstrating the same kind of disregard for real-world consequences that Larry Crites highlighted in his 2017 article.

In both cases—then and now—Sawant has shown a pattern of prioritizing her ideological purity over practical solutions, regardless of the potential harm to the very people she claims to advocate for. Just as her rental policies in Seattle drove up costs and reduced affordable housing options, her current efforts could help re-elect a candidate whose policies are diametrically opposed to the progressive values she claims to champion.

This latest development mirrors the 2017 critique in another important way: Sawant's unwillingness to engage with nuance or compromise. Back then, she refused to listen to housing experts warning about the negative impact of her policies. Today, she's ignoring the broader political realities of the 2024 election by focusing solely on defeating Harris, even if it means enabling the very political forces she supposedly stands against. Her actions in both instances demonstrate a dangerous preference for short-term ideological victories over long-term practical outcomes.

How Kshama Sawant is like Donald Trump and How She is Making Our Housing Crisis Worse Originally

Published in July 2017 - Written by Larry Crites | RHAWA Board of Director 

"Neither of them lets facts get in the way of their ideology. Trump's craziness is well-documented. Less so is Sawant's ignorance of the facts. Most of the eight significant new laws in the last 24 months affecting rental housing work directly against the people she is trying to help, but they sound good in a sound bite, so who cares if they restrict access for the less fortunate and drive updrive-up rent for everyone, right? Trump blames immigrants for job issues and crime, while Sawant blames housing providers for the lack of housing. If the base loves it, who cares if it's true? Is trashing the environment really going to bring back coal jobs? Is chasing small landlords out of the business really going to create affordability?

And neither of them will listen to any input from anyone outside their ideologically pure inner circle. Why bother to listen to someone who didn't vote for you, even if they know something about what you are legislating or proposing? (Bob Ferguson obviously knew the law better than Trump's lawyers.) In rental housing, the people who know the business have not only been vilified (another Trump tactic) and shut out of the conversation, but they have been shouted down at public meetings and cut off by Sawant herself as they try to give a reasoned explanation of how the business is different for small landlords versus large ones, etc.

And neither of them will be around when the chaos they sow really starts to have an effect. Trump won't live to see the environmental damage his policies will cause. The fact that small landlords are fleeing the rental business in droves right now is hidden by the surge of new construction. If we wind up with rent control in Seattle, which is likely if the State Senate goes Democratic, it will take 20 years for the full effect of lack of supply to drive the last bits of affordability from the market—and Sawant will be long gone. So why should she care? (See San Francisco as an example of what rent control does for affordability, or check with Venezuela for how price controls work long-term.) So long as Sawant can have people cheering her in public, she is happy to disregard any real work on the real issues of housing affordability.

A few real-world examples of how just one of these new rules—restrictions on deposits—has affected me personally in the last couple of months:

1. I had two PhD students apply to rent an apartment. No job, no alternative income, but huge savings. They offered to pay a year upfront. I had no other applicants, so I wasn't “taking the apartment away from someone else.” But I couldn't accept their offer because it's now illegal, and they didn't qualify based on my income criteria. So I lost tenants, and they lost housing. The city created a lose-lose rule for both of us.  
2.  A teacher and a public schoolpublic-school principal with two young daughters applied for an apartment. They wanted to move into my more affordable unit, closer to their daughters’ school, and save about $1,000 a month. Due to medical bills and the real estate crash, they had both a bankruptcy and a foreclosure. But they had excellent job history and no recent late payments. With flexibility, I could have accepted a larger deposit, which would have helped them improve their financial situation. I bent my own rules and rented to them, but according to city regulations, I could now be accused of discrimination if I don't break my rules every time. Ironic that I put myself at risk of being sued for treating people as anyone would want to be treated.
3. I owned a duplex on First Hill since 1996. A 15-year tenant just moved out, and I spent $45,000 renovating the unit. Now my choice was to rent it and get a $400-$500 deposit (which wouldn't even cover cleaning the 1,600 sq ft unit if the tenant broke the lease) or sell it. I sold. The buyer is an owner-occupant, and this is one more unit lost forever to the rental market.

The bottom line is that ignorant, egotistical leaders who don't care about reality and won't listen to various sides of an issue hurt us all, no matter if they're from the left or right. We need pragmatic, thoughtful, inclusive leaders who seek to solve problems, not assign blame while seeking publicity."

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