Seattle’s Socialist City Council Member Thinks Housing Is a Human Right—Unless it Comes at the Expense of Music Venues

by | Aug 17, 2018

Seattle’s Socialist City Council Member Thinks Housing Is a Human Right—Unless it Comes at the Expense of Music Venues

by | Aug 17, 2018

Wikipedia Commons

Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant favors raising more money for affordable housing, except when she doesn’t.

A few months ago, Sawant was fighting for the “Amazon tax,” a literal tax on jobs that would have raised some $75 million annually to fund affordable housing and services for the homeless. Now, however, the one self-identified socialist on the Seattle City Council is doing her best to kill a proposed downtown building that would provide 442 apartments and $5 million for the city’s affordable housing fund from the project’s developer, the Canadian company Onni.

Sawant is willing to forgo that money because the apartment building would replace a music venue that currently occupies the spot, Seattle’s iconic Showbox. “If we let the Showbox be demolished, then everything else is moot,” Sawant warned Bloomberg last week.

The fight for the Showbox, where performers such as Duke Ellington and Pearl Jam have appeared, began in late July, when it was first reported that Onni’s project would require the venue’s demolition. A petition calling for the preservation of the concert hall netted nearly 100,000 signatures and the endorsement of famous Seattle artists such as Macklemore, Guns and Roses bassist Duff McKagan, and Death Cab for Cutie singer Ben Gibbard. The cause was quickly picked up by Sawant, who introduced legislation last week to declare the Showbox part of the nearby Pike Place Market Historical District, which would essentially kill Onni’s project.

Read the rest at reason.com.

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

libetarian institute longsleeve shirt

Our Books

cb0cb1ef 3fcb 417d 80d8 4eef7bbd8290

Recent Articles

Recent

The Unpopular Truth About Foreign Aid

The Unpopular Truth About Foreign Aid

Editor's note: This article is taken from Libertarian Institute Managing Editor Keith Knight's opening statement from a June 28 debate on Zerohedge with Mike Benz and Cenk Uygur.  When I say American foreign aid, I am generally referring to resources given or lent by...

read more
The Ruse of a Trump-Netanyahu Falling Out

The Ruse of a Trump-Netanyahu Falling Out

Despite dramatic headlines about President Donald Trump’s clashes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the reality is that U.S.-Israel relations remain as robust as ever. To understand why these headlines don’t reflect a true break, one need only consider...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This