The Dialogue: What Readers Think About Luxury Apartments Offering Freebies as Move-In Incentives

“Come on. Amazon REALLY wants to spy on you.”

The Carson, a 385-unit apartment complex in Slabtown, is offering six weeks of free rent to prospective tenants. They also get an Amazon Echo. (Justin Katigbak)
By WW Staff

Last week, WW wrote about luxury apartment owners using an approach to attract new renters: offering move-in freebies like Amazon gift cards, Visa check cards, six weeks free rent and yearlong health club memberships ("Free Rent," WW, Aug. 15, 2018). Here's how readers weighed in.

Bobby Benson, via Facebook: "Or you know, they could build housing that people could afford and forget about the perks. Just a thought."

PostMichael McKeeism, via Facebook: "What a brilliant idea: build unaffordable housing and then bribe potential residents with gift cards that transfer wealth to a company largely responsible for its home city's housing crisis."

Bryan W. Pohl, via Facebook: "$1,350 a month actually sounds fairly reasonable."

Willis, via wweek.com: "Developers—and the politicians they buy—are total scumbags."

TallTortoise, via wweek.com: "Wow, it's almost exactly like making money is at direct odds with the goal of actually providing housing for people and that's not the way we should be doing things!"

Raina Edmonds, via Facebook: "They're giving free rent for a couple months and other incentives to new people who move into my overpriced older apartments AND raising my rent at the same time."

Gum_ball_death, via wweek.com: "Pretty sure that Portland has been called 'San Fran 2.0' for at least three or four years now."

Chris Browning, via Facebook: "Losers. How about building more affordable housing instead."

Firegod, via wweek.com: "If the current situation illustrates anything, it is how truly poor the free market actually works in situations like real estate. At this point, the only way rents get more affordable is if Portland either becomes undesirable again (one can dream) or the developers and banks take big losses because they all tried to serve the same market segment."

Cathy, via Twitter: "Come on. Amazon REALLY wants to spy on you."

Correction

An Aug. 5 story on a federal lawsuit over state benefits quoted a woman named Aimee Arango, who said she raised six children without the support of her husband. She testified to her version of events in court filings. Arango's ex-husband, Gabriel Arango, disputes her version of events. He says he lived with and supported the children while working as a mechanic. WW regrets not obtaining his side of the story.

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