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Testimonials from Tenants: Justin
My first memory of The Madkin was when I ran into my friend Jeremy on a lunch break at the Central Coop back when I was working at Group Health, and he invited me over to hang out.
He and his roommate, our mutual friend Atticus, were making Kombucha in the kitchen, and at some point their friend Jack Wilson, emerged from the old dumbwaiter door in the wall playing guitar. At that moment I just thought “This place is awesome!”
In late 2009 I moved in with Jeremy as my roommate, and I’ve lived here ever since then.
The Madkin is a place I love for a multitude of reasons: the beautiful old architecture, living in a building that also is home to many of my friends, knowing that my rent was going to an owner who was long time Central District resident instead of some heartless real estate corporation, and having a rent that said owner kept affordable, with only very modest and infrequent increases over the years to keep up with property taxes and maintenance.
That last point has been particularly important to me and other tenants here, not just because the below market rate is generally good for us financially and allows us to stay in the city, but because myself and many current and former tenants in the building are or have been involved in Seattle’s many creative communities.
The Madkin’s low rent was one factor that helped me when I quit my day job back in 2012 and started my freelance video post production business. I’ve been running that business for 10 years now ,although there have been some rough patches. The roughest of course has been the COVID-19 pandemic.
I was lucky that I had a job that was already 90% work from home, but my roommate moved out right when lockdown began as a precautionary measure. Ever since, I’ve been paying the full rent of my 2 bedroom apartment, but I was only able to absorb that cost because of the Madkin’s affordable rent. I shudder to think what would’ve happened if I was living in one of the many overpriced apartments in the city.
But it’s not just me making movies in the building. Albums have been recorded here by the bands Rat Queen, Temple Canyon, and His Many Colored Fruit, and the Madkin is home to Grammy winning musician Blu Meadows. A former comedian roommate of mine started a monthly show in 2013 called TheTiny Baby Talk Show, in which he recruited me to play ridiculous villains. The show’s audience grew with each successive show, and in 2015 we performed at Bumbershoot, something I honestly never thought I would get to do.
Seattle is known for its art & music, and places like the Madkin foster people in those communities. But increasingly it seems that this reputation is less and less a tangible vibrant reality, and more so a marketing gimmick for new so-called “luxury” apartments.
You can’t just monoculture a city by catering to rich people with tech jobs and not expect things to fall apart. People in arts communities (and indeed anyone not in the tech sector) cannot succeed by creating work and starting businesses if they have to always ‘run to stand still’ to keep up with what has become, in most of the city, an outrageous – and considering the rise in homelessness – a frankly immoral cost of living.
I hope that whoever buys the building keeps these things in mind and proceeds thoughtfully, and doesn’t treat us merely as a resource to be exploited.