Washington renters breathed a sigh of relief yesterday as Governor Jay Inslee announced a rent freeze lasting two months. The governor also extended the eviction moratorium that he first issued in mid-March to June 4th as well.
“All it took was a pandemic to get rent control in Washington state,” tweeted Devin Silvernail, who founded Be:Seattle, a tenant rights group which hosted a series renter bootcamps (including one with The Urbanist) last year.
Silvernail and other tenant advocates noted that struggling renters will continue accruing debt during the rent freeze and emphasized that more work remained to be done to protect them.
“Didn’t think a pandemic is how we get rent control (temporary *at the moment*), but I know that this is setting stage for stronger tenant protections,” tweeted Xochitl Maykovich, political director with Washington Community Action Network (Washington CAN).
Rent control has been banned in Washington state since 1981, but momentum seems to be swinging in the other direction. Skyrocketing rents over the past decade are a compelling argument in their own right, but pressure also mounted on Washington after our neighbor to the south in Oregon passed rent stabilization in 2019. For a primer on rent control economics read this.
