News For Reasonable People

A rude, cop-hating employee is out of a job at Seattle’s Chocolati Cafe in Wallingford after denying service to a police officer and a trainee. According to the cafe’s owner, the female staffer refused service because of her ideology. Last Tuesday, the pair visited the shop to purchase a box of chocolates but was initially ignored. After finally getting the unidentified female staffer’s attention,...

For the first time in more than 25 years, San Francisco is forecasting that its property tax base will fall -- a decline that reflects the tough straits of the city that is among the hardest hit by the pandemic downturn. That tax base, the real estate values the city uses to calculate taxes, rarely drops even in the worst of times, thanks to a quirk in California law dating back to 1978. Not even...

The mother of a 19-year-old Seattle man fatally shot during last summer’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) has filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the city, alleging officials were negligent in allowing Seattle police to abandon the department’s East Precinct and surrounding area, a decision that invited “lawlessness and … a foreseeable danger” that led to his death. Donnitta Sinclai...

The pandemic hit Seattle's downtown property market hard, which is good news for buyers Could Seattle's downtown property market downturn be a good thing for buyers? Yes, if it means reduced prices — and right now, it does. When the pandemic went from what we all assumed would be a few weeks into months and months, city dwellers took their work-from-home lifestyle away from America'...

As 15 Oregon counties move into extreme risk, restaurants have closed their indoor dining rooms. Kurt Huffman, the owner of Portland restaurant investment company ChefStable, joined KGW's live streaming digital show Sunrise Extra to talk about what what these new restrictions mean for the industry. ChefStable partners with chefs to design, build and operate restaurants. They take care of all...

As millions of renters across America continue to benefit from sweeping protections against eviction during the COVID-19 pandemic, their landlords haven't been so fortunate. According to Bloomberg, nearly $47 billion in rent relief from the Biden Administration has been slow to materialize, forcing "mom-and-pop" landlords into financial hardship - or forced to sell to wealthy invest...

John Helmer III covered the windows of his hat and apparel shop in downtown Portland with fabric every night last summer. By doing so, he hoped to prevent his shop from becoming a target for vandalism while avoiding the cost and eyesore of putting boards over his windows. As protests died down in the fall, Helmer decided those measures were no longer necessary. And earlier in April he noticed an i...

She has no large foundation, headquarters or public website. That makes it easier to dispense money on her own terms — and for others to prey on the vulnerable in her name. Danielle Churchill needed help. She was raising five children in Wollongong, on the Australian coast south of Sydney, and had to cover thousands of dollars in special therapy fees for her 10-year-old son, Lachlan, who has autis...

Joe Rogan attempted to clear the air over his controversial statements suggesting that young people should not get vaccinated for COVID-19. In Thursday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” on Spotify, the hugely popular podcaster maintained that he is not an anti-vaxxer — and he admitted that it “makes sense” for even young, healthy people to get vaccinated in the interests of public health. “I...

America is running out of houses amid a historic housing shortage and record-high selling prices. A recent bank note from Jefferies said the US was short 2.5 million homes, while Freddie Mac put that estimate higher at a shortage of 3.8 million. There are 40% fewer homes on the market than last year, a Black Knight report found. It's bad news for many aspiring homebuyers - but especially for...

California will lose one seat in Congress for the first time in state history, while Texas and Florida are among the states that will see their representation increase, according to population data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Monday that give the first glimpse of the coming decade’s congressional landscape. The new apportionment figures — which use the decennial head count to allocate re...

The risk of being exposed to Covid-19 indoors can be as great at 60 feet as it is at 6 feet in a room where the air is mixed — even when wearing a mask, according to a new study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers who challenge social distancing guidelines adopted across the world. MIT professors Martin Z. Bazant, who teaches chemical engineering and applied mathematics, and John...

Acting Seattle Police Department Chief Adrian Diaz told KOMO News Tuesday that his department is experiencing a staffing crisis as it looks to fill vacant positions that have resulted from officers leaving the agency to pursue jobs with other agencies. According to new data, the agency has shed roughly 200 in-service officers since the beginning of 2019 but Diaz said they currently have 1,080 offi...

Real-estate agent Melissa McHarney was told to make an offer on a house in Durham, North Carolina, for $60,000 over the asking price. She told her client, who was using a government-backed home loan provided by Veterans' Affairs, that it wasn't a smart idea financially. The client told her to do it anyway. "We didn't win," McHarney said. In the end, the seller took the con...

Two people were shot at a homeless encampment in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood Thursday, police said. Police were searching for a suspect described as a man in his mid- to late-20s who possibly fled in a white Dodge sedan, The Seattle Times reported. Police said the person walked into an encampment and opened fire into a car around 8:30 a.m. Thursday. A 28-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man...

Jean Bentley is a retired nurse from St. Paul, Minnesota, who, back in January, picked up a shift at a nearby clinic that was short-staffed for the day. When her shift was over a little after 5 p.m., she walked out to the parking lot to start her car. “And it was just that bhrum, bhrum, bhrum, bhrum, bhrum,” she said, “like you don’t have a muffler.” Support the show 🛍️ Merch - https://Store. Reas...

More than a year into the pandemic, real estate experts say the housing market is hotter than ever, and buyers are left with many challenges to navigate. Jennie Huynh grew up in Portland and bought her first home in November. She and her partner had to make offers on six houses before an offer was accepted in Hillsboro. "Honestly really brutal," Huynh said of the months spent house hunti...

The verdict came in the trial of Derek Chauvin yesterday. He was found guilty on all three counts in the death of George Floyd. But BLM and Antifa folks who claimed that they had been marching for “justice” were still not happy, with many of them calling for the elimination of policing completely. In Portland, they proved with their actions, once again, how much policing is in fact needed. They ca...

Auburn City Council members voted Monday evening to adopt a so-called “tough love” ordinance that would allow police to issue criminal trespass citations and impose fines on homeless people who repeatedly refuse offers of shelter or services from the city that could help get them off the streets. The measure was approved by a 4-3 vote as some council members insisted that threats of incarceration...

An unnamed informant. Plainclothes FBI agents. Tactics typically used in drug cases or serious crimes are being used by police monitoring protests in Portland, according to court records. Activists and civil rights attorneys fear this police surveillance may violate the right to free speech - a risk they worry outweighs any potential benefit. “I think it has a potential chilling impact on First Am...

Moments after a judge read the jury’s verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, the Seattle Police Department released a statement listing the changes it’s made in the past year. SPD described Floyd’s murder as “a watershed moment for America,” stating that real change has sprung from that pain, and noting that the community’s expectations of policing have been made clear. Join your host Sean Reynolds,...

There has been a pile of trash at the corner of Burnside and Northeast 160th Avenue for nearly a year. It has caused a rat infestation and even caught fire at one point, yet the city has said it doesn't meet the criteria for removal. Random items, including a car door and baby items, started piling up months ago and now span nearly half a block, according to Merry Skuse, who lives in an apart...

Seattle city crews on Friday removed a controversial homeless camp that had taken root near a Seattle Public Schools campus on the same day that a proposed amendment to the city charter was modified. City Hall was also abuzz after it was revealed that the Seattle police officer that had previously headed the Navigation Team, which worked to relocate encampments, had resigned after it was found tha...

A new FBI-led task force will work with Portland police to build cases against people responsible for the dire rise in shootings in and around the city. The agreement to create a multi-agency Metro Safe Streets Task Force came after much behind-the-scenes negotiation and a guarantee to set boundaries on the participation of Portland officers. They will be deputized as federal officers but won’t do...

As business leaders and lobbyists were writing Compassion Seattle, a voter initiative to address street homelessness through changes to the city’s charter, Gordon McHenry Jr. agreed to provide input, hoping to improve a document he thought could stoke political discord. And when the campaign went public earlier this month, the United Way of King County executive director provided a statement for t...