For the last year, Councilmember Cathy Moore has been working on legislation to rewrite some of the city’s landlord-tenant laws — a much-anticipated suite of bills that could loosen restrictions on evictions and tenant screening and which have managed to roil the city’s politics even before seeing the light of day.
Moore’s announcement earlier this week that she would step down from her position seemingly threw into question that effort’s future.
But representatives of nonprofit housing organizations are determined to push the legislation forward and believe there’s still a path to changing the city’s current regulations. In fact, conversations about the legislation had shifted away from Moore even before she announced her July resignation.
The timing will be tight. The council will go on recess in August. When it returns, the council will spend most of its time passing a budget that must close a $150 million hole. The legislation, which many expect to be transmitted by Mayor Bruce Harrell and sponsored by Councilmember Mark Solomon, is certain to be politically fraught and will likely need several committee meetings before getting a full vote.
Making matters more complicated is the partial reset that comes with moving legislation from one councilmember to another.
Solomon said he’s begun meeting with both housing providers and renters in an effort to find what works for everyone, but that there’s still no legislation ready to go.
“Everything is still under consideration,” he said.
Seattle has one of the lengthiest lists of tenant laws in the country. Enacted in pieces by previous councils, the laws limit evictions, restricts landlords’ abilities to pick and choose tenants, require relocation assistance for those priced out by sizable rent hikes, mandate advanced notice for rent increases and more.
For-profit landlords chafed at the rules from the beginning. But over the last several years, the charge to rewrite or repeal some of the laws has been led primarily by nonprofit affordable housing providers.
Many affordable housing buildings in the city have struggled post-pandemic, particularly as federal and local rent assistance has fallen away. As costs for maintenance, insurance and security have increased, rent collections have fallen, forcing many to dip into reserves and seek help from the city.
Although not unanimous within the provider world, some have partially blamed the city’s laws. One, GRE Development, unsuccessfully sued the city to try to force a rollback.
The Housing Development Consortium, an advocacy organization for nonprofit providers, has taken up the effort and for months has worked closely with Moore’s office to draft something.
But the legislative effort stalled. Parties had agreed to propose repealing the city’s “roommate ordinance,” requiring landlords to allow new roommates or family into their buildings, and to rewrite the ban on wintertime evictions to exclude those deemed to be willingly withholding rent.
There was disagreement, however, on whether to roll back the city’s “right of first refusal” law requiring landlords to offer a new lease to existing tenants unless there is just cause not to.
Moore insisted the law be repealed, while Patience Malaba, executive director of the Housing Development Consortium, insisted it remain.
The consortium is “committed” to advancing legislation and securing new funding for providers, Malaba said. But “our collaboration with Councilmember Moore had paused over differences in the scope and scale of proposed changes to policy,” she said.
The proposed changes to tenant law in Seattle have been an open secret in city government and long expected. Despite housing providers’ insistence that the proposals are minor and beneficial to most of their tenants, the mere whisper of a rollback has charged council chambers.
The city got a preview of what is likely to come during the debate over proposed changes to the city’s ethics laws, proposed by Moore. Although framed to enfranchise more voters, the effort to allow members to vote on matters where they might have a financial interest was assumed by activists, including former Councilmember Kshama Sawant, to be a precursor to the landlord-tenant changes. As small landlords, Councilmembers Solomon and Maritza Rivera would be unlikely to vote on matters concerning tenant regulation under current rules.
Moore pulled the legislation for lack of support. A week later, she announced she was resigning.
A spokesperson for Harrell declined to comment on pending legislation. In an earlier interview, Andrew Myerberg, the mayor’s chief innovation officer, said Harrell feels strongly about preserving certain tenant laws, including the city’s fair housing laws and mandates that landlords rent to the first qualified tenant, but said the office is still in the process of talking with stakeholders.
Solomon acknowledged the window for legislation is narrow and couldn’t guarantee anything would pass before his temporary term ends this fall.
In the meantime, Solomon said he is no longer a landlord: the in-home unit he used to rent is now being occupied by his stepdaughter.
