News For Reasonable People

Rent increases are nothing new, but one Tacoma man says he was shocked over the one he is facing, calling it "ruthless." Terrance Parsons has lived at Manitou Park Apartments in South Tacoma for the past five years. He says his rent is around $825 a month, including utilities. "They want to raise it to $1,375," Parsons said. A 60-day notice of the rent increase signed by Landlo...

Portland City Council unanimously voted Wednesday to crack down on street racing, beefing up penalties for those who shut down intersections and roadways and speed around city streets. The ordinance will create two new misdemeanor crimes with which to charge street racers: “unlawful street takeover” and “unlawful staging of street takeover events.” Potential penalties include towed cars, a fine of...

Rent prices for single-family homes in the Seattle metro area have increased 7.7% year over year, according to a new report. The report, released Tuesday by CoreLogic, examined rent prices for single-family homes in June of this year and compared them to rent prices for those homes in June of last year. Across the nation, year-over-year growth in rent prices for those homes was up 7.5%. In June of...

Rent increases are nothing new, but one Tacoma man says he was shocked over the one he is facing, calling it "ruthless." Terrance Parsons has lived at Manitou Park Apartments in South Tacoma for the past five years. He says his rent is around $825 a month, including utilities. "They want to raise it to $1,375," Parsons said. A 60-day notice of the rent increase signed by Landlo...

Portland City Council unanimously voted Wednesday to crack down on street racing, beefing up penalties for those who shut down intersections and roadways and speed around city streets. The ordinance will create two new misdemeanor crimes with which to charge street racers: “unlawful street takeover” and “unlawful staging of street takeover events.” Potential penalties include towed cars, a fine of...

United Airlines has instructed its flight attendants not to use duct tape on disorderly passengers.  John Slater, United's senior vice president of inflight services, sent a memo to flight attendants on Friday telling them to avoid using tape to restrain unruly passengers. "Please remember that there are designated items onboard that may be used in difficult situations, and alternative m...

Last summer, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser played a high-profile role in the protests sweeping America over police killings of Black suspects. She renamed a street Black Lives Matter Plaza and joined thousands of demonstrators there, many shouting what had become the movement’s slogan: “Defund the police!” Earlier this year, the mayor, a Democrat, proposed cutting the police budget and redirectin...

It’s last call in Chinatown, and a crowd spills out of Shake Bar onto Northwest Couch Street—about 200 people stumbling, some looking for electric scooters, women barefoot and carrying their high heels. The clubgoers are met by a heavily armed guard. He stands beneath the Hung Far Low sign, clad in a bulletproof vest and desert-tan tactical pants, with a 9 mm pistol strapped to his leg and an AR-1...

For how steep the run-up was, lumber's plunge has been even more disorienting. Starting its ascent in late October 2020, lumber climbed to a peak of $1,711 over the course of seven months. But it took just 14 weeks to see all those gains erased. The last 14 weeks have seen lumber swiftly give back its gains, with the latest prices - near $500 per thousand board foot - down 70% from its all-ti...

Things were looking pretty good last month for Tai Pan, a downtown Palo Alto restaurant known for its Cantonese dim sum. State officials lifted COVID-19 restrictions at the start of summer, and business was finally picking up again as friends — long parted — were reuniting over good food. The positive outlook was shattered on July 21, however, when Tai Pan received a lawsuit stating that the resta...

Washington’s pandemic response is battering the finances of independent landlords, most of whom haven’t received federal rental aid designed to keep them whole during a nearly year-long eviction ban that has forced some property owners to house tenants for free. The distress is acute for so-called mom-and-pop landlords — those who own fewer than 10 properties, which typically have between one and...

Canberra, Australia’s capital with a population of about 400,000 will likely go into a snap lockdown after it was revealed that there was one new case of COVID-19, according to reports Wednesday night from the country.  "For the sake of your health, your family’s health and for the health of the community, it’s critical that Canberrans take every precaution they can over the coming days,&quot...

On July 1, Melody Deatherage arrived home after work to find a notice of rent increase on her door. She'd been expecting a bump in rent, but this was far beyond what she'd imagined: an increase of over $500 a month, effective Sept. 1. And if Deatherage, 65, refused to sign a lease under those terms, then Hilby Station Apartments would increase her rent again to $2,350 — double what she&a...

They are usually reserved for homebuyers, but bidding wars are becoming more common in the rental home market. Demand for apartment and single-family rentals is surging and outpacing supply. As the economy improves, workers are moving out of shared living situations and looking for their own homes. In addition, the housing market is so expensive right now that many would-be buyers are being priced...

Members of the Seattle City Council had the audacity to blame Seattle Police Department management for the mass exodus of officers from the city. Council President Lorena Gonzalez is running for mayor and looking to avoid blame for the city’s rising crime problems. The surge happened thanks to her leadership as she attempted to dismantle the police department and reimagine it through a fringe, pro...

A new real estate terminology is emerging during a time of racial reckoning as many agents drop biased language.  Browse through home listings today and you'll find terms like "primary bedroom," "dual closets" and "in-law suites" instead of "master bedroom," "his-and-hers closets" and "mother-in-law suites." It's part of a new r...

Skyrocketing response times and SPD staffing shortages were the focus of attention at the Seattle City Council Public Safety Committee meeting. During discussions on the SPD Quarterly Finance and Staffing Report Tuesday, city council addressed SPD staffing levels and reports that response times for certain crimes can take more than 60 minutes to response to. Seattle Police warned this is exactly w...

Gov. Kate Brown, the Oregon Democrat, signed a bill last month with little fanfare that drops the requirement that high school students prove proficiency in reading, writing or math before graduation, a report said. The Oregonian reported that the governor has seemed to avoid discussing Senate Bill 744. Her move to sign the bill was "not public until recently, because her office did not hold...

The deadly TriMet shooting over the past weekend was the city's 56th homicide this year. That means this year is the deadliest Portland has seen in two and a half decades, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive, and there are still four months left until 2022. The Oregonian says there were 55 homicides in 1994. KATU asked police to verify that number, but Portland police were unable to accommo...

A large group of Antifa carrying shields and melee weapons attacked a group of Evangelical Christians congregating for a prayer and worship event at the waterfront in downtown Portland, Ore. Video recorded at the scene showed children and families running away as black-clad Antifa militants tore apart the sound equipment and assaulted attendees with pepper spray and projectiles. The event was anno...

A North Carolina landlord says he is out $24,000 in unpaid rent from his tenants, including one who splurged on three boats and requested a $4,500 heat pump during the pandemic. Buddy Shoup, a property owner near Charlotte, worries that the tab will only grow following the CDC’s recent decision to extend the moratorium on rental evictions until October 3. The suspension of evictions was first impo...

Mayor Lori Lightfoot was given the cold shoulder by CPD rank and file about midnight Saturday at the University of Chicago Medical Center when she approached them on the 7th floor as they grappled with the shootings of two fellow officers. Chicago Police Officer Ella French was shot and killed during a traffic stop Saturday night in West Englewood, while her partner continues to fight for his life...

Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., was ripped by viewers on Thursday after telling CBS News that the police "need" to be defunded, despite shelling out thousands of dollars for her own personal security detail. Bush slept outside the Capitol this week to protest the end of the first eviction moratorium that was put in place because of the coronavirus pandemic. The representative was once homeless he...

NBC is giving advertisers who bought airtime during the Tokyo Olympics extra commercials due to underwhelming ratings for this year’s 2020 Olympic Games, fueled by a pandemic-weary population and backlash against woke athletes protesting the U.S. flag and national anthem. NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua insisted to the Associated Press that the network would still make money on the 2020 Olympics...

New surveillance pictures captured a violent brawl at a homeless encampment in Seattle that ended with one man getting hit and killed as a driver tried to speed away in a car with a 2-week old baby. Two men from the homeless encampment are behind bars facing charges. Charging documents mentioned a car prowler that led a couple to that encampment, looking for their stolen items. Randy, a man stayin...