Affordable housing is getting harder to find in the Puget Sound area. Rents have skyrocketed, and the cost of an entry-level home has passed six figures. You may have already run into this problem if you don't own a home, or if you have adult children who are looking for housing.

The most common explanation points to the area's growing population, drawn here by the climate, job market, or just plain quality of life. But that's just part of the problem. Changes in America's economy, tax code, and unionization rate, have led to a growing disparity in wealth and income. The richest 1% of the population now own as much wealth as the bottom 90% combined. The purchasing power of the wealthy has crowded out the affordable end of the housing market.

It's no secret that profit-driven developers prefer to build luxury housing. The result is that more of our housing resources and increasingly scarce land are being sold to the "high-end" market--in other words, the rich. The huge palaces built for Bill Gates and his kind are a mockery of the housing problems of working people. But they also worsen the situation by using up available land, and increasing the demand for and price of construction materials.

For renters, who make up 51% of the population in Seattle and 37% in King County, the problem is supply plus demand plus investors plus greed. According to the business papers, apartments are a "hot commodity," and many buildings have changed hands in recent months. When new owners come in, they either raise the rents by hundreds of dollars a month, or convert apartments to condos, evicting the former tenants in the process.

Investors have been spared much of the blame which they richly deserve for the run-up in rents. But there is an antidote to rent-gouging--rent control. A well-designed rent control would moderate rent increases and discourage speculators. Unfortunately, the powerful property owners lobby knows this, and in 1981 got the legislature to pass a bill, without a public vote, prohibiting communities from passing any kind of rent control laws (renters need to get that bill overturned!).

I attended the recent Community Conference on Affordable Housing at the Seattle Center, which was called by Seattle Mayor Schell in response to concerns and criticism raised during elections last fall. Among the eight hundred present were politicians, developers, bankers, low-income housing advocates, and tenants.

The centerpiece of discussion at the conference was a 21-point agenda put forth by Schell--a former developer himself. Many of the proposals would make it easier to build in the city, but wouldn't ensure that the new buildings would be affordable to live in. There were some worthwhile ideas, however, such as using public land for housing, and preserving low-income (Section 8) and moderate-income units.

One focus of the conference was finding ways to allow first-time home buyers to enter the housing market. (Not a surprise, since banks, mortgage companies, builders and realtors were all listed as sponsors of the conference.) Here's where the unions made their pitch.

The AFL-CIO announced that Seattle was one of thirteen cities chosen for its Homeownership Opportunity Program. This program would reduce some loan costs, require only a 3% down payment, and have easier qualifying guidelines, for purchases of homes or condos inside the Seattle city limits. Eligible borrowers are members of unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO, and employees of King County and the City of Seattle. Which is fine, as long as you belong to a union.

Fortunately, there were other non-corporate groups with proposals more challenging to the status quo of real estate profiteering. The Seattle Displacement Coalition advocated a "Right of First Refusal Law," which would allow tenants in low income rental housing to join together to buy their building if the owner decided to sell or demolish it.

Seattle Tenants Union had their own Housing Action Agenda for renters. One of their proposals was a pro-active rental housing inspection program, instead of the current complaint-based system. This would work better to protect tenants and prevent housing from deteriorating. Another proposal would make it illegal to increase rents in buildings with housing code violations. By one estimate, this would delay or stop rent increases in 80% of rental units!

The Tenants Union has a hotline to inform renters about their rights. The phone number is (206) 723-0500. They get about 50 calls a day, so you know there are a lot of landlord problems out there. They could use some volunteer help answering those phones, too.

Market forces and public tolerance of greed have made housing costs burdensome for many. Public law needs to be changed to favor renters instead of investors, to encourage affordable over luxury housing. The labor movement should get more involved in supporting the Tenants Union and other non-profit groups organizing working people to protect this basic human need.

--David Yao. A longer version of this article is also appearing in the newspaper of the American Postal Workers Union.