Free Republic

With slews of tent encampments in a fast-growing city flush with tech-sector cash, it’s tough questioning Seattle’s serious problem with homelessness and affordable housing. But an unprecedented new city law — forbidding landlords from checking into potential renters’ criminal past — is very much in dispute and setting up a closely-watched court battle. Landlords argue their free speech, property rights and possibly their safety is being jeopardized by a law that forces them to close their eyes to relevant public information about possible tenants. They’re backed by landlord groups and background screeners who call the ordinance a perilous precedent. The...

Privacy Violation: A Massachusetts landlord has asked a Harvard University graduate student to move out of her apartment after her roommates pilfered through her belongings and found her legally-owned handguns. As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the student, Leyla Pirnie, says that Dave Lewis, president of Avid Management, asked her to move because now her roomies feel “uncomfortable” knowing there are guns about. “Since it’s clear that Leyla wants to keep her firearms, it would be best for all parties if she finds another place to live,” he told the website in an email.

A Massachusetts landlord told a Harvard University graduate student that he wanted her to move out of her apartment because her legally owned firearms made some of her roommates uncomfortable. "Since it's clear that Leyla wants to keep her firearms, it would be best for all parties if she finds another place to live," Dave Lewis, president of Avid Management, said in an email to the household obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The request that the student, Leyla Pirnie, move out came after her roommates searched her room while she was not home and found her firearms. That prompted...

White woman who confronted her black neighbor at St. Louis condo building defends herself against accusations of racism and says she was just concerned for her safety Hilary Brooke Thornton, 32, was filmed blocking D'Arreion Toles, 24, from entering the St. Louis loft building where they live Thornton was fired from her job as a luxury realtor after the footage went viral Toles said he was coming home from work on Friday night when the confrontation took place Thornton, who was holding her dog on a leash, demanded to know what apartment he lived in She has since denied that...

So in light of Delta's stance on the NRA AND the fact that they transported March for Our Dems protestors for FREE, I am cancelling my flight to Maine in late August.

A lawsuit in Seattle pits some fundamental rights against each other — it’s civil rights that ban discrimination, and property rights that allow owners to decide what to do with their homes and land. The issue is with a new law that requires landlords to rent to tenants on a “first come, first served” basis. The goal is to make sure all renters are treated equally. But the landlords who are suing say the program is a bureaucratic nightmare and unconstitutional. Critics say it’s all about the survival of the fastest, but supporters say it levels the playing field for...

Rental Cars Can Steal Phone Data Like Contacts and Text Messages http://fortune.com/2016/09/01/rental-cars-data-theft/ Tech Internet of Things Watch Out That Your Rental Car Doesn't Steal Your Phone Data By: Jeff John Roberts September 1, 2016, 10:51 AM  Watch out how you connect to cars. Here’s something to think about the next time you plug your phone into a rental car: The vehicle may be slurping up and recording all sorts of data, including your location, personal contacts, and even your text messages and web browsing. That warning comes via a Federal Trade Commission blog post this week, which highlights a downside...

FORT HUACHUCA — The Directorate of Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation is facing a more than $500,000 cut to recreation programs starting Oct. 1. As a result, DFMWR had to make tough and potentially unpopular decisions to rebalance its assets and make every dollar count. Up to this point, some recreation programs have been subsidized. This is no longer possible and passing along the costs associated with these services is prohibitive, especially within Outdoor Recreation. Outdoor Recreation and the Sportsman's Center will continue all services with the exception of arms rental and ammunition sales, which will end Aug. 28.

But after losing his job, he wondered if they were going to be able to afford their condo. So he started looking into using his house as a short-term rental. Zaatari applied for a Type 2 license, which is for residential rentals the owner doesn’t claim as his or her main dwelling, or homestead, according to city regulations. In November 2015, the Austin City Council placed a temporary moratorium on new licenses for Type 2 short-term rentals. In February, the City Council voted 9-2 to amend the law and implement new regulations for those rentals, including a ban on them...

OWNING your own house is as much the Australian dream as the American dream, and it's one that feels increasingly out of reach for many. But when one user on Quora pondered whether it was ultimately better to rent or own your own home, blogger and investor James Altucher penned this highly controversial response: I am sick of me writing about this. Do you ever get sick of yourself? I am sick of me. But every day I see more propaganda about the American Dream of owning the home. I see codewords a $15 trillion dollar industry uses to hypnotise...

Is it just me or does it seem to me that inthe last 10 years maybe longer that the overwhelming pressure in society is to become a "rental" based economy vs. an "ownership" economy? We see this everywhere, from local businessees offering leasing options for people wanting to buy items like TV's, Furniture, and Appliances, to propsals being made in government to collect "taxes" on miles drven on cars. Over a hundred years ago, Property taxes were the first step to establishing the idea that one doesn't even truly own the land under thier own feet that they may have...

Even hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour may not be enough to allow low-wage workers to afford rent in Seattle, according to a new study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The group says a full-time worker in the Seattle-Bellevue metro area needs to earn $21.60 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment. That’s the so-called housing wage that the group calculates. In Washington state, the housing wage is $18.65 per hour. The group estimated that the worker spends no more than 30 percent of his or her income on rent and utilities. For the price of...

Milwaukee Ald. Jim Bohl is under investigation for allegedly causing a landlord to get hit with a slew of code violations after he refused to evict two sex offenders from a property in the alderman's district. Investigators from the district attorney's office believe Bohl then had the landlord's records falsely wiped clean after the landlord said he had broken a state housing contract for the offenders. The landlord, in fact, did not break that contract. The investigation is revealed in a search warrant that seeks phone and email records of Bohl; his aide Todd Peterson; Department of Neighborhood Services inspector...

Israeli customers of the global car rental agency "SixT" have expressed their surprise and anger at the company's decision to unilaterally erase Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights from its maps of Israel. Information gathered by Arutz Sheva reveals that the company's European branches made the decision to take the politically-charged step, which effectively takes sides in the as-yet unresolved dispute between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. A number of customers contacted Arutz Sheva after carrging out their transactions in Israel through the company's Israeli branch, "Shlomo Sixt," only to find upon arriving in Europe that the company had erased...

As the White House first announced in March, Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Mexico and Costa Rica later this week. The trip is billed as "an important opportunity to reinforce the deep cultural, familial, and economic ties that so many Americans share with Mexico and Central America." And at yesterday’s White House press conference, the president stated that he is "very much looking forward to taking the trip down to Mexico" this week. But the trip won’t exactly be cheap for taxpayers, assuming the costs mirror those incurred by the American taxpayers for President Obama's last trip to Mexico,...

I need some Freeper advice. I own a home with a garden rental apartment. My tenant is a nice person who pays her rent on time. She has a dog I like and he is allowed free reign to use the yard. I often go out and play with him. The dog loves to play under a lawn sprinkler and he does it for hours at a time. No problem. She often brings her friends' dogs to play in the yard with hers. Again, no problem. Unfortunately, she often leaves his little gifts in the yard for two or three...

NEW YORK — Bank of America says it has begun a pilot program offering some of its mortgage customers who are facing foreclosure a chance to stay in their homes by becoming renters instead of owners. The "Mortgage to Lease" program, which was launched this week, will be available to fewer than 1,000 BofA customers selected by the bank in test markets in Arizona, Nevada and New York. Participants will transfer their home's title to the bank, which will then forgive the outstanding mortgage debt. In exchange, they will be able to lease their home for up to three years...

Suspected Iranian Blew Off His Own Leg In A Botched Terror Attack In Bangkok Robert JohnsonFeburary 14, 2012 One day after bombs targeting Israeli embassy staff went off in India and Georgia, another botched attack played out this morning in Bangkok. Through several reports, the incident appears to have played out something like this: Saeib Morabi, a suspected Iranian, was fleeing an explosion that rocked through his rented home in central Bangkok. While he was on the road looking for transportation, another explosion went off "on a nearby road." When Morabi finally managed to flag down a cab, the driver...

Legislature Approves Renter Smoking Ban Updated: Monday, 15 Aug 2011, 7:12 PM PDT Published : Monday, 15 Aug 2011, 7:12 PM PDT Sacramento - Landlords will be able to ban smoking on their properties, including inside rental units, if Gov. Jerry Brown signs a bill sent to him by the state Senate. Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of Los Angeles says his bill is designed to give families more smoke-free options. He says 86 percent of Californians don't smoke, yet smoke-free multifamily housing remains comparatively rare.

It’s an idea so beautiful in its simplicity and so perfectly targeted to cure one of our biggest national headaches that many readers will be slapping their foreheads in one of those, “I could have had a V-8″ moments. The housing market is still in the tank and the government has been forced to foreclose on countless properties which now sit vacant, generating no tax revenue. The nation’s coffers are running dry and we have to tackle our debt problem. But nobody wants to raise taxes. What to do?Why, you kill two birds with one stone, of course! We’ll let...