(Image: Andrew Grant Houston for Seattle Mayor)
A Seattle conservative radio show host’s attempt to take on mayoral candidate and Capitol Hill apartment resident Andrew Grant Houston over unpaid rent has backfired.
Pundit Jason Rantz targeted the “divest SPD” candidate with an article based on email from Houston’s landlord detailing more than $20,000 in back rent at the unnamed Capitol Hill building Houston calls home.
The gist: Houston’s campaign has raised more than $400,000 for his longshot bid for the mayor’s office largely from the success of its efforts to collect Democracy Vouchers while the candidate has reportedly failed to pay rent.
The unpaid rent is just as likely to garner support for Houston as it is scorn. Turns out, Houston is a lot like thousands of other renters in Seattle who have struggled to make ends meet.
“Ace is one of an estimated 200,000 Washingtonians behind on their rents, in totals over $1 billion,” the campaign said in a statement. “Ace is the only candidate in this race who doesn’t own a home, and who has a stark contrast in personal wealth as compared to every other leading candidate (some in the millions).”
Seattle’s moratorium on evictions put in place to protect tenants during the COVID-19 crisis is set to continue through at least September. Officials believe somewhere around 200,000 households are behind on rent across the state with more than a third of those in King County. Programs including the county’s Eviction Prevention and Rental Assistance Program are hoped to be able to help with $145 million in federal funds destined to help cover some of that rent with landlords large and small.
New laws have also been put in place to help protect tenants once the eviction restrictions are lifted including ordinances requiring payment plan options for late rent during or within six months after the city’s COVID-19 state of emergency ends, a “financial hardship” defense for eviction court proceedings, and a ban on eviction during winter months.
CHS reported on the candidate’s entry in the mayoral race here earlier this year and talked with the queer, Latinx, and Black architect and staffer from City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda’s office about working on the Pike/Pine Urban Neighborhood Council and on the board of Futurewise, a local nonprofit focused on land use policy. In our Q&A this week with the leading mayoral candidates, Houston said lifting “the apartment ban citywide”and creating a developer displacement mitigation fee are campaign priorities.
The candidate’s apartment unit is one of hundreds around Capitol Hill managed by Redside Partners, a Hill-based real estate company. Craig Swanson of Redside said he could not confirm who communicated with Rantz about the situation but said details in the report about the rent situation were true.
“We’re trying to get folks who owe rent to pay rent,” Swanson said. “It certainly is frustrating. There are people who are trying to game the system. Andrew Grant Houston would be one of them.”
Houston’s campaign manager, meanwhile, says the candidate had no income outside of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance between April and December of last year. “The only extra money he had was from community donations to support the social media reporting he did on the protests and council meetings,” the campaign’s statement reads.
Meanwhile, a key element skipped over in the attempt to out Houston’s status as a tenant might also be part of the genesis for more programs like Democracy Vouchers and the goal of opening up the political playing field to a greater diversity of candidates. While the vouchers can help power a campaign and pay for things like utility pole flyers and 30-second commercials, they can’t, yet, be used to pay for things like living expenses and rent. But efforts to level the playing field might need to be expanded if Seattle truly wants to include candidates who can’t afford to quit their “day job” to run for office. Maybe the use of Democracy Vouchers should be expanded. If so, future candidates like Andrew Grant Houston will have Jason Rantz to thank.
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Kind of reminds me of an old song:
“He can’t even run his own life, I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine.”
Plus, I thought he was a city hall staffer?
Oh gawd, yes you are correct.
Gross misunderstanding of AGH’s life. Nice try. He runs his life just fine.
Except for the part about paying rent and holding down a job?
Fulfilling one’s obligations is about more than just dollars and cents. It’s about honesty and integrity. It’s the sign of good character. Failure to do so outside of extreme hardship, and failure to make any kind of plan to rectify the situation, is a character flaw. Full stop.
Houston is lesser, as a human being, for having done this.
I knew this guy was a fraud when I worked with him and he steered architecture products into the grounds one after another. He was fired. He’s even more of a fraud by welching on rent as an able-bodied, sound of mind, professional license-holding architect with multiple college degrees simply choosing not to work in a booming market. If he is elected as mayor, I will be moving out of Seattle before he makes this city’s problems worse.
Not making rent is something that was bound to happen for people in the food service industry or other things heavily affected by COVID. Just deciding you no longer want to pay isn’t one of those reasons.
He’s an architect and had a job at city hall too.
Also I don’t think you have to worry about him getting elected. Guy won’t get 5% of the vote.
Careful. Sawant was considered ridiculous and unqualified once. Houston appeals to the same demographic.
At least Sawant has her personal financial life in order.
Sure. She married a Microsoftie, they didn’t need her income. Plus now she’s a big time international Socialist, she rakes in hundreds of thousands a year in donations.
Ol’ Ace here probably wants his piece of that sweet sweet Socialist lucre.
“Jerry, you KNOW I’ve always wanted to pretend to be an architect!”
Didn’t George also profess to Jerry that it “isn’t a lie if you believe it?” Hahahaha
Can’t both be true? That:
He’s been a staffer for Mosqueda since the beginning of the pandemic, from what I understand. Does she not pay a living wage? Or is it not a real job? Something doesn’t add up.
If not, why is he living in a $1700 a month capitol hill apartment? If you don’t have a steady income that lets you afford that, there are other options.
I know lots of people with very low incomes that live in the area – they live with roommates, or some live in rent-subsidized apartments (still fairly pricey though). They all seem far more responsible than AGH.
He has not worked for Mosqueda since May. She does not endorse him.
Right, and yet all the media outlets last week parroted a study that claimed that nobody on minimum wage could possibly afford to rent, using a 2 bedroom apartment as a metric? I call horseshnitz. At $15/hr, working a full time schedule, that’s $31,200, and the common metric for allowable income devoted to housing is 30%, which comes down to $780 a month. There are LOADS of studios available within a reasonable commute from Seattle. No, people, society can’t afford to give you the right to live in a 2 bedroom apartment in the center of a booming real estate market on one income, that’s ridiculous. You might just need to commute a little bit, or get a f&$#ing roommate. It’s more than possible to get by and the progressive metrics actually define this. I moved to Seattle in 2000, worked minimum wage jobs and lived in a “cheap” studio for $525 a month. It was less than half the pay and 2/3 the rent of today. Wasn’t easy, but I figured it out. Getting pretty sick of the unwarranted entitlement in this city. Truly unreal.
Please provide listings for $780/mo with vacancies. Zillow and other services start at $1100 for actual vacancies.
Which calculations led you to $31,200/year for a minimum wage worker?
Also, minimum wage workers aren’t exempt from taxes, so pre-tax income isn’t an accurate way to estimate how much money is available to spend on rent.
Can you name one person you know who works full time for minimum wage and lives in a fancy 2 bedroom apartment in the middle of Seattle in 2021? Because I’ve never met that person and I’ve lived here since I was 9.
He could get a Roommate to if he can’t afford the rent
Without commenting on the specifics of Ace’s situation, the author’s suggestion that democracy vouchers use be expanded to include paying the candidates rent and other expenses is ludicrous. These funds come from property taxes, paid by you and me. Do we really want those funds used to pay for candidates rent, food, internet, etc? How about demonstrating you can support yourself before you run for the highest office in the city?
>> “These funds come from property taxes, paid by you and me”
…but not by those who don’t pay their rent. The irony.
Really? What percentage of local businesses require proof that you’ve paid your rent before you are allowed to make a purchase?
Why is it ok to stop paying rent while you are still employed?
There is a difference between not being able to find work and not wanting to work. For Ace, it appears he was doing the latter. There were very few layoffs during the Covid-19 pandemic last year in the architecture community. Many residential firms were hiring to keep up with the growing number of private residential projects people wanted last year. Ace may have not been able to find work for his own business, but there were plenty of job openings at firms where he could have found gainful employment. Instead, he used the pandemic as an excuse to not work, and not pay his bills with the hope that the state or some other entity will forgive or pay his back rent. This is not only lazy but takes that rental assistance and those resources from others who desperately need it much more. Ace is not someone who is fighting for the underserved and voiceless in our community. Ace is just spewing keywords and phrases of the ‘woke’ which has attracted a following but he has no experience or skills to accomplish any of his agenda. Seattle needs better.
Yup – exactly – any architect could find work it was a building boom- he’s not qualified to run a city government with over 10000 employees
It’s not like he hasn’t had a a job that paid enough to cover rent, pathetic and completely unsurprising at the same time.
He is a fraud and a scammer… I notice he didn’t report the $20,000 rent debt on his F1 disclosure.. isn’t that perjury??
Dude can’t hold a job, so he’s running for one. It’s a scam only someone with a giant ego would dare to try.
Kudos to journalist Jason Rantz for actually doing some investigative journalism in this town. Being $20K behind in paying for an essential like housing is likely only the tip of the iceberg. Not qualified in personal finance means absolutely not qualified to handle the public’s finances.
The only Rantz journalism that I have ever approved.
Seriously – whatever your views on his politics, please recognize that being mayor means being in essence the CEO of an organization with a 6.5 billion dollar budget. That is 6,500 times one million dollars! It is a lot of money and also employs approximately 10,000 people. In other words, there are leadership and management skills required. Is there a scintilla of evidence that he demonstrates the character and/or experience and/or judgment to take on this task? Can we for a minute risk this? It is indeed telling that a licensed architect would elect to not work when ample work in his field is available including during the pandemic, not meet his contractual obligations to his landlord, yet think he is up to the task of mayor?
While we are at it, what might it say about the judgment and character of that other candidate Lorena Gonzalez who owes between 25-99K to the IRS and is paying in drips and drabs of about 200 a month while having a BMW car payment of 575 a month? And she reportedly defaulted on over 100K in student loans. How many people do you know with IRS liens and how many did so inadvertently vs. knowingly not paying taxes when they earned the cash. And then how many would buy a costly car when they could manage with the sort of older and used cars that people trying to live within their means do? Does she really warrant a pass and ignoring this? I imagine a whole lot of people who like her believe in taxing people to pay for needs and services to others. Yet she herself is a tax scofflaw and possibly a cheat. We have choices for mayor who don’t stiff people. Consider one of them.
Exactly – Lorena also unqualified
Based on the comments in this thread it doesn’t sound like it backfired at all. People are fed up with activists who say one thing while doing the complete opposite in their own lives. Based on recent polling Ace has no shot getting through the primary yet he was the undisputed winner of the democracy voucher funding so what does that really say about the program? Sounds like taxpayers funded a candidate that had no business running in the first place. Glad my tax dollars were used for that instead of things the entire city could enjoy.
I read the article waiting to see where it “backfired” but never found anything. Seems like the author actually amplified the fact that Ace doesn’t pay rent.
How exactly do you “amplify not paying rent” when your only justification is that you choose not to?
No, it’s not ok.
He has a paying job; he’s doing this because “he can”
So telling his employment is through Seattle’s city council (Mosqueda).
Damn Justin, you went from Curious Disciple to High Priest of the Church of Woke in like, less than a year. You might’ve saved a little bit of face by calling it a Community Post by one of “Ace”’s campaign staffers instead of committing yourself to the byline here. The unhinged idea that the right mixture of identities and buzzwords somehow supersede very real transgressions pertaining to holding public office is losing steam. It sounds cute and edgy on Twitter, though.
1: Is this a news article, or an editorial?
2: In what sense did the article about Houston’s refusal to pay his obligations “backfire”?
You’ve got to be kidding right? I know Seattle has gone downhill but surely they can’t have sunk this low. He has had donations pouring in and still refuses to pay rent. His unemployment bonus paid enough for him to pay rent in the first place, he’s just abusing the system and making himself a victim. I can’t believe how stupid everyone has gotten.