News For Reasonable People

A surge in new business formation suggests that the coronavirus pandemic has created a landscape in which entrepreneurs and startups can thrive and new innovations can break ground. “This time has been really fertile. We’ve seen a huge increase in new businesses since the pandemic started,” said Julia Pollak, the chief economist at ZipRecruiter. “There are more opportunities out there.”  Governmen...

Walmart and Kroger raised the price of Abbott's at-home Covid-19 test kit after an agreement with the White House to sell the tests at a reduced price expired, the companies said Tuesday. The BinaxNOW kit, one of the first at-home tests to be authorized by the federal government, was listed on Walmart's website Tuesday for $19.88, up from $14 last month. Kroger listed the tests for $23.9...

When the volunteer-run organization Anything Helps, headed by a man who said he could do homeless encampment outreach better, approached Seattle Public Schools this summer and offered to end an encampment outside Broadview-Thompson K-12, the school district agreed. The district was under pressure from people in the surrounding Bitter Lake neighborhood to remove the 60-plus-person encampment, and h...

From Bob Dylan plugging in his electric guitar for the first time to Super Bowl commercials, there have always been moments in music history when the most die-hard fans will accuse their idols of doing the unthinkable: selling out. But right now ”’selling out” has a new connotation, and it is a boom market for both investors and superstar recording artists. A wave of boomer rock icons are selling...

Santander UK is trying to recoup about $175 million (130 million pounds) that it accidentally transferred to customers on Christmas Day.  A technical error led 75,000 scheduled and one-off payments to be paid twice by the bank's system, The Times of London first reported.  A spokesperson for the bank said that the error had been identified and rectified. The bank will work to recover the dupl...

Inside Sea-Tac airport, it’s still long lines, delays, and tired travelers like Ethan Ford, stranded after another flight cancellation. Data from flightaware.com shows Sea-Tac Airport has seen the world's highest number of incoming and outgoing flights canceled in the world. Amid staffing shortages and these weather conditions, travelers are hoping for some relief “Our bags we’re waiting for...

More than a year after the vaccine was rolled out, new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. have soared to their highest level on record at over 265,000 per day on average, a surge driven largely by the highly contagious omicron variant. New cases per day have more than doubled over the past two weeks, eclipsing the old mark of 250,000, set in mid-January, according to data kept by Johns Hopkins Universi...

They’re writing the book on how to ignite bidding wars. The New York Times is reporting real estate agents are using novels, biographies, and how-tos as ammunition for price battles between pandemic buyers seeking homes with quiet places where one can relax and take in a good read. “Even when I stage a house, I put books in them,” Morgan Munsey, who sells for Compass in Brooklyn and Manhattan, tol...

Weeks after a successful union drive in New York state, workers at a Seattle Starbucks store are moving forward with a unionization effort, bringing the coffee chain’s high-profile labor fight to its hometown. Employees at a Starbucks in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood filed a petition Monday with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to hold a union election on Jan. 10. “We do not see o...

Demand for single-family rental homes is so strong that rents have nowhere to go but up, and they are rising at an increasingly fast pace.  Single-family rents in October were up 10.9% year over year, according to the latest report from CoreLogic. That is three times the 3.2% annual growth seen in October 2020. The jump comes as too much demand meets not enough supply. Vacancy rates on these homes...

A once great American city has become something short of a dystopia, where shop owners sleep with shotguns and citizens must act as police. For seven months, Dylan Carrico Rogers slept in his bike shop with a shotgun. TriTech Bikes, located in the Montavilla neighborhood of northeast Portland, Ore., where Rogers grew up, had been battered by three break-ins, two nearby shootings, and countless ins...

Seattle and Tacoma were among the top 50 most competitive rental markets in 2021, according to an end-of-the-year report from RentCafe, a nationwide internet listing service.   Tacoma cracked the top 10 as the eighth most competitive rental market this year. Vacant apartments stayed on the market for an average of 23 days, the report said, and for every vacant apartment, there was an average of 24...

The city of Portland’s most visible response to gun violence, the installation of traffic barrels in a neighborhood plagued by shootings, isn’t working, data suggests.  911 dispatchers have received a greater number of calls about shootings in the area since the orange barrels were put in place. In October, city commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty ordered the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) to i...

Boeing has suspended its employee vaccine mandate. The company told employees in October they needed to get the COVID-19 vaccine or face being fired. However, Boeing told KOMO News it has since postponed the mandate. “Boeing is committed to maintaining a safe working environment for our employees, and advancing the health and safety of our global workforce,” a Boeing spokesperson said. “As such, w...

The mayor of San Francisco on Friday declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin in an effort to bring down overdose deaths and violent crime in one of the city’s poorest and most drug-infested neighborhoods. Mayor London Breed said at a news conference attended by the police chief and other public health personnel that rapid drug intervention is needed because about two people a day are dying...

The Energy Department on Tuesday announced a rollback of a Trump-era rule that had loosened restrictions on water flow in showerheads. The new rule restores 2013 regulations on how much water can be carried through showerheads. Under the earlier rule, the entire shower was considered under rules restricting flow to 2.5 gallons per minute. The Trump revision changed the definition of “showerhead” t...

At 7:57 am on Thanksgiving morning, I parked my green 2011 Subaru Outback on the northern flank of Mount Tabor and went for a stair run. I left my wallet in the glove compartment and my laptop in my backpack on the back seat. It never occurred to me that they might be imperiled. After all, the houses on the block where I parked are each valued at close to a million dollars. At 9:15, I walked the b...

After eight catalytic converters were stolen from vehicles in their parking lot in recent months, the owners of Aqua Rec’s in Tacoma had enough. They filed a permit with the city of Tacoma to put up an electric fence around their property off Puyallup Avenue. “We didn’t really entertain it seriously until about a month ago because we’ve had multiple break-ins on our employees,” said Josh Shamp, co...

The number of people moving to California has significantly dropped since the pandemic started last year, while the number of people fleeing the state continues to rise, according to a new study.  "I guess I was a little bit surprised to see that entrances had fallen so much. It wasn't so much that we saw it in a particular area. For me, the surprise was that this was a statewide phenome...

Bank of America is suing Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty over credit card debt. Court documents show the bank is seeking more than $16,000 from Hardesty. The bank claims two credit card accounts in her name are in default. Hardesty sent a statement to KATU News. “When I ran for City Council in 2018, like many working people I was reliant on a credit card and built up debt,” she wrote. “...

Bellevue police arrested a man accused of stealing tires from a dealership and attempting to flee from police with his own car still on jacks, according to Bellevue police. A 23-year-old man was arrested Tuesday morning after police responded to a report of theft at a dealership lot. The man is accused of stealing tires off a black Dodge Challenger, then driving across the street and attempting to...

San Francisco mayor London Breed called for more “aggressive” policing in the city on Tuesday to combat smash-and-grab robberies and other crime, over a year after proposing budget cuts to the police department amid a nationwide movement to defund police. “It’s time the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,” Breed said at a press conference at City Ha...

We recently decided not to add neighborhood crime data to Redfin.com. We were considering this because we’re very much focused on answering all the questions people have when they’re considering a home purchase, and we know that one of these questions is whether they’ll feel safe in a given home or neighborhood. But the data available don’t allow us to speak accurately to that question, and given...

The Seattle Police Department staffing emergency continues. The city is one emergency event away from a serious catastrophe. But leaders and the media remain mostly silent. The so-called “HR Unavailable” list has grown considerably as of Dec. 10. This list features officers who are on extended leave and cannot be deployed. Officers only appear on the list after being absent for a minimum of 14 day...

The City of Seattle Office of Economic Development (OED) and Mayor Jenny A. Durkan announced the launch of Seattle Restored—a new program focused on activating vacant commercial storefronts in Downtown Seattle neighborhoods such as Westlake, Belltown, Pioneer Square, and Chinatown-International District (CID). OED is partnering with Seattle Good Business Network,  Shunpike , and real estate broker...