The Seattle City Council’s Renters’ Rights Committee passed three bills providing further protections from evictions and rejected a bevy of amendments from Councilmember Alex Pedersen seeking to weaken the measures. On 3-1 votes, Councilmembers Kshama Sawant, Tammy Morales, and Andrew Lewis defeated amendments and advanced the bills for a full council vote June 7th.
“Well, that was quick,” Pedersen said after his colleagues declined to give him a courtesy second so he could expound upon the rest of his loophole-creating amendments after humoring him on a few.
The three bills each solve a particular gap in tenancy laws that lead to evictions and seek to get ahead of a wave of evictions and displacement expected after the eviction moratorium is rescinded in Seattle. More than 44,000 Seattle tenants are behind on rent after the pandemic disrupted the livelihoods of many, Morales said. The Stay Housed, Stay Healthy coalition (of which The Urbanist is a member) has pushed the City Council and County Council to prevent evictions and roll out more tenant protections. The coalition has been campaigning and rallying support behind the measures.
- Eviction defense – Sponsored by Morales, Sawant, and Lewis, this bill would allow tenants to avoid evictions by declaring a financial hardship from the pandemic.
- School-year eviction ban – Authored by Sawant, this bill would prevent the eviction of households with students, educators, or public school support staff during the school year.
- End of tenancy loophole fix – Sponsored by Sawant and Morales, this bill would expand Just Cause eviction protections to close a loophole that allows landlords to evict tenants at the end of fixed-term leases simply by not offering an extension.
A Princeton Eviction Lab study analyzed different legal approaches in jurisdictions across the country and found eviction protection measures have been effective at stemming the flow of evictions, Route Fifty reported. However, jurisdictions that haven’t responded with new laws are seeing evictions rebound to pre-pandemic levels.
“The impending avalanche of evictions is a systemic issue brought on by generations of disinvestment in communities of color. This is evident by the fact that two-thirds of renters experiencing pandemic-related rent debt are People of Color,” Morales said in a statement. “If we don’t do something to protect these vulnerable renters now, we will face Depression-era levels of homelessness. Our system is already overburdened and underfunded. If even a quarter of renters who currently owe rent debt fall into homelessness, our entire system could collapse.”
