Housing & Human Services Committee 2282024

I'm Cathy Moore, Chair of the Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Present.

Council Member Saka?

Here.

Council Member Wu?

Present.

Vice Chair Morales?

Here.

Chair Moore?

Present.

There are five present.

Thank you.

If there is no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

So thank you everyone for being here today for the February 28th meeting of the Housing and Human Services Committee.

On today's agenda we have one item for briefing and discussion.

We will be hearing an introductory presentation to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections with respect to an overview of the rental regulations.

SDCI reports mostly to the Land Use Committee with the exception that anything related to the rental program reports to this committee.

With that introduction, we will now move to public comment.

So at this time, we will open the hybrid public comment period.

Madam Clerk, how many speakers are registered?

We have...

Five speakers remote and one in, one present.

One in person, okay.

One person, in person, yes.

All right, all right.

If you would, the public comment period will be moderated in the following manner as instructed by the clerk.

The public comment period for this meeting is up to 20 minutes and each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

Pursuant to council rule 610, this committee meeting will broadcast members of the public in council chambers during public comment period.

The clerk will call on two speakers at a time.

We will start with speakers in chambers and then move to online speakers.

We will call on speakers in the order in which registered.

If you have not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of this public comment period by adding your name to the public comment sheet at the front of council chambers or to speak remotely to To speak remotely, you can go to the council's website at seattle.gov slash council.

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once a speaker's name is called, the staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of you have been muted will be the remote speaker's cue that it's their turn to speak.

And the speaker must press star six to begin speaking.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item you are addressing.

As a reminder, the public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda or within the purview of the Housing and Human Services Committee.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once you hear the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comment.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once remote speakers have completed their public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed in the agenda.

The regular public comment period for this committee meeting is now open.

We will begin with in-person speakers first in the order they signed up.

Then we will move on to online public commenters in the order they are registered.

For remote public commenters, please remember to press star six before speaking.

All right, let's call our first speaker, please.

Angie Gerald.

Good morning.

Is this one working?

Yes, proceed.

We have the clock on.

Good morning.

My name is Angie, and I'm a small landlord from Ballard and a member of Seattle Grassroots Landlords.

We have over 700 people in our Facebook group and network with others throughout the city, providing rental housing via single family and shared houses, ADUs, duplexes and triplexes, and small apartment buildings.

I want to highlight some key points about today's rental program presentation.

Number one, these programs and policies were created without any housing provider collaboration.

For a decade, City Council has passed a tsunami of laws and budget items with many flaws and unintended consequences.

Number two, these programs and policies were enacted without adequate budget in place.

Experimental, fast-changing policies take a lot of hours to start up and to maintain.

Number three, there are state and federal laws that govern rental housing and housing discrimination.

It's not required that Seattle have its own distinct set of laws.

Protections exist at higher levels of government and those laws continue to expand and evolve.

Number four, Seattle has experienced a steep decline in small housing providers.

According to Rio data between 2018 and 2022, Seattle lost 14% of small rental properties.

Number five, Seattle's fast-changing regulations play a large role in the decline of rental options in our city.

In the 2023 City Auditors Survey of landlords who removed properties, 74% say the rules are too burdensome or difficult to implement, and 67% cited regulations as a direct cause.

Only 1% of those who removed registered rental indicated that they purchased another within the city.

As you listen to today's presentation, please keep in mind the legislative approaches that spun up this system deserve fresh governance in considering scope, costs and outcomes.

If Seattle's goals are rental housing, abundance and diversity designed for that.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we can now move to remote speakers, please.

Up next, we have Charlotte Thistle followed by Tom Friedman.

You can press star six.

Hello, I'm Charlotte.

I already did.

I'll do it again.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Go ahead.

Wonderful.

I'm Charlotte Thistle.

I'm a single mom.

I own one house in District 2 that I rent rooms in.

I'm also a founding member of Seattle Grassroots Landlords.

In 2021, I and some of our other members met with Councilmember Morales to discuss the problems of harassment in rental housing.

This is a very personal issue for me as I had a residence.

who began sending sexually inappropriate and threatening messages to me and other female residents.

I later learned this person was under an extreme risk protection order due to his past behavior.

On one occasion, he brandished a knife in front of me and my then eight year old daughter.

Fortunately for us, by involving his family and social workers, I was able to negotiate a voluntary agreement for ending his residency here.

because due to the eviction prevention measures enacted by the former city council, it would have been extremely difficult for me to have evicted him, if even possible at all.

The former city council took extreme measures in the name of tenant protections, which have in fact endangered tenants and property owners alike.

I've created a six minute YouTube video explaining the problems of harassment in rental housing and why it's so difficult to legally evict someone, even when they're harassing others.

And I propose a simple solution.

I've sent a link to every city council member's inbox this morning with this video.

I hope you can find time to watch it and address the serious issue.

And I am available for further discussion and to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next, we have Tom Friedman, followed by William Zimmerman.

Mr. Friedman?

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Yeah, thanks.

My name is Tom Friedman.

My wife and I have two single-family homes in Seattle we've had for many years.

We keep the rents on the lower end of the market rates, and we usually had excellent tenants, one of them being there for over 12 years.

We're the very definition of mom-and-pop landlords.

Let me start by saying the previous council established a renter's commission.

What's really needed is a rental commission that brings all stakeholders to the table to advise the city on rental issues and policy.

Now, I have several concerns about some of the owner's laws the city passed in the last few years.

The first-in-time rule requires the landlord to rent to the first qualified applicant.

I think a big reason we have long-staying tenants is that as a small mom-and-pop landlord, we've developed a positive relationship with our tenants.

Based on that experience, we're very concerned that the FIT law will force us to rent to someone we may not have a good rapport with just because they have the wherewithal to get an application in quickly.

Let me put it in terms of something I think you can all relate to.

You've all recently hired staff for your office.

What if you're required to hire the first applicant who meets all the requirements?

No need to waste time for interviews during which you can get to know the person better.

You wouldn't like that and we don't either.

It's simply not fair to have a roommate law that allows tenants to move their family members, move in their family members, as well as a friend or partner's family.

What's the rationale for that?

Then the $10 late fee provides absolutely no incentive to pay rent on time.

Without the rent, landlords will not be able to cover their expenses that allow them to provide this housing to others.

And lastly, we've never had to evict a tenant.

Rents allow landlords to cover their costs and provide housing.

So expect a small landlord with a few rentals to go nine months without getting rent.

Rather, the city, state, and fed should provide rent subsidies so that renters can pay the rent like food stamps do to help cover the cost of food.

Thank you for your time today.

Thank you.

Up next is Charlotte Thistle followed by.

Oh I'm sorry.

Oh I'm sorry.

William Zimmerman followed by Kate Martin.

Good morning.

My name is William Zimmerman.

I'd like to talk about notice requirements in Seattle.

The right of first refusal requires landlords to officially serve a renewal offer to tenants every year.

This means that every year, the landlord is required to physically print out a copy of the renewal for each tenant, drive to the tenant's residence, post those copies on the door if all adult tenants do not answer the door, and then mail another copy to each individual tenant.

This makes sense if the tenant does not have regular access to a computer or phone.

I understand the need to make sure that tenants are aware of their options, but for the vast majority of tenants that do have access to a computer or phone, and that regularly communicate with their landlord over the internet, this requirement is wasteful.

Even if the landlord is currently talking with the tenant about the renewal over email, the law still requires them to go officially serve that renewal offer between 60 and 90 days, whether the tenant wants multiple copies printed and posted on their door or not.

This is a real cost.

It is expensive and wasteful to print something that the tenant will end up signing over the internet anyway.

And it is expensive and polluting to drive across town and contribute to Seattle's congestion to hand deliver a letter that could have just as easily been emailed.

Seattle law should not leave behind those that do not have access to the internet.

And if tenants request physical letters, then the landlord should be required to oblige.

But for the vast majority of tenants that don't want their landlord knocking on their door to deliver a piece of paper, they should be able to use the internet.

I urge you to relax the rules around serving notice in the municipal code, or at least give tenants the option to opt into electronic delivery when signing their lease.

The point of the right of first refusal was to protect tenants from being arbitrarily kicked out of their homes, not to waste paper and gas.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next is Kate Martin, followed by David Haynes.

Good morning council members.

My name is Kate Martin and I'm calling specifically to appeal to you to consider the idea of owner occupied rental housing being mostly exempt from the onerous rules that are happening.

I'm a senior citizen.

I own a home that I share with six other people.

I've been sharing my home for 15 years.

During the eviction moratorium, it was a complete disaster what I went through.

The fear that I had to live through was absolutely untenable.

What I'm asking from you is to please consider exemptions for owner-occupied rental housing to extend not just the single-family housing, but to daddos, ADUs, duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes.

If you included these in the exemptions for owner-occupied rental housing, we would have an abundance of housing available.

Just in our state of Washington, there's 2 million rooms that could be rented to renters, but people have reasons for not wanting to do it, and I want us to reduce those risks.

If we can reduce the risk for owner-occupied rental housing for those landlords, we can make it both affordable to rent, because frankly, Owner-occupied housing is some of the most affordable rentals that we have in our city.

We can reduce the risk for the landlord, and we can make it more affordable to own homes.

When people today with the cost of owning a home and what the mortgage rates are, they need to have renters, but they don't need to take risk in the very homes that they live in.

It's one thing when you're a remote landlord and you've got a property and it doesn't really affect your reality to have people that might be problematic that needs to be exited out of the housing.

It doesn't really affect you when it's remote.

But when you actually live on site with people, it's really important to keep things working and getting everybody working together.

I hope you will contact me to include these voices of owner-occupied rental housing, and I appreciate your consideration of these ideas.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Up next is David Haynes, followed by Fidencio Velasco in person.

Mr. Haynes.

Hi, David Haynes.

Thank you.

Don't side with greedy mini-Trumps of Seattle, padding the cost of housing, draining the future equity of renters kept oppressed, paycheck to paycheck, needing a better choice in housing without the delousing from landlords and banks, artificially inflating property values, devaluing human values.

all because of a handful of greedy banks dominating Chamber of Commerce agenda to keep workers debt servicing a police state economy as if we're still in the slave master misinterpretation of neoliberal conservative deregulations.

We need to have a better standard of construction and inspection based on 21st century first world quality housing and not 20th century watered down building codes If you move into a new building or an old building and discover false advertised remorse and flawed obsolete designs and building, you should be allowed to file a grievance and if proven, get a renegotiation deduction on your double, triple mortgaged rental.

That's like oppressing the lifeblood of the working class and No offense, but some of these sharecropper rental speculators get to subhuman mistreat their tenants like a second-class citizen who deserve more rights than their abuse to continue ripping off the working classes if they got to get rich padding the cost of their house payment, keeping everybody rentaled instead of house-owned with real equity, the proper interpretation of equity.

We need to have a legislative priority for the banks from the chamber of commerce to begin prioritizing 21st century first world quality homes buildings schools and libraries with a robust floor plan to give us a spit space spray reprieve from the obsolete flawed real estate

Thank you.

Our next speaker?

The next speaker is Fidencio Velasco, and that is the last registered speaker.

I think we actually had one other person sign up.

No, there's another person.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Good morning.

My name is Fidencio Velasco.

I'm a business representative for the Carpenters Union here in Seattle, Washington.

Some of you I've met through video conferencing.

And first and foremost, congratulations.

And thank you for doing what you do for the city of Seattle.

My apologies.

There it goes.

I've reached out, I'm new to the area.

I'm not a resident of the city of Seattle, but I represent 485 members that live in the city of Seattle.

I represent 10,000 members that live in the North and South combined.

I bet if I looked at that number 10 years ago, we'd probably have a lot more members that lived in the city of Seattle.

And I just wanted to thank Director Torkelson, for the quick response.

I know that housing is a huge issue in the city of Seattle.

It's not only a huge issue here, but like you, we have things that we're working on and that's labor standards within the community, making sure that the workers that build these houses could afford to live.

I believe that a union carpenter shouldn't have to live in an affordable housing.

You know, it's a respectable career.

Not saying that there's not all of them are respectable careers, but union carpenters used to be able to buy houses in the city of Seattle and every year more and more.

And I just wanted to thank you, director, for setting up that meeting.

And I'd like to talk to some of you.

I'm new to the area and I'm trying to meet some of the council members.

And that's my comment.

And let's tackle this problem and put some labor standards in these multi-housing projects.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Okay, that's it.

All right.

That was the last registered speaker.

Okay.

All right.

So that concludes public comment.

Thank you very much.

We will now move on to the first item on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read the first item, agenda item into the record?

Agenda Agenda item number one, introduction to Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, overview of rental programs for briefing and discussion.

Great.

Well, thank you.

So today we are honored to have with us Director Nathan Torgelson of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections and his team to walk us through the rental program work of their department.

So without further ado, I'll turn it over to you.

Great.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

I will go ahead and have Jeff Talent introduce himself and also Maureen Rote, who is online.

Jeff Talent.

I'm the Rental Programs Manager in SDCI.

Hello.

Good morning.

My name is Maureen Rote.

I'm the Manager of the Property Owner and Tenant Assistance Team at SDCI.

Good morning.

Great.

So Council Member Moore, I just wanted to thank you for inviting us to your committee to talk about our rental programs and regulations.

We obviously administer a variety of landlord-tenant programs and regulations, and we also work in partnership with the Office of Civil Rights, who's also responsible for some of the landlord-tenant issues.

if we could bring up the slides.

Do you need any help with that?

No.

Great, thank you very much.

So just very quickly, SDCI's vision is to set the standard for awesome local government service.

And we are helping people build a safe, livable, and inclusive Seattle.

And you can see on the slideshow our values, which we take very seriously.

And just wanted to stress that the first value you see is equity, which is really important in dealing with landlord and tenant issues.

So a quick overview of our department.

We have 482 employees.

Our 2024 adopted budget is $118 million, and you can just see some of the statistics.

Every day, we are helping a lot of landlords and tenants, and we are issuing a lot of permits.

All right, it comes over to me now.

So we've got a lot packed into this presentation, and I'm planning to only kind of go over some of the high points of these slides, but have them available as a resource and inform any questions you may have.

All right, thank you.

So, first off, we are probably the principal regulatory department in the arena of landlord-tenant issues, but there are quite a few other departments that touch on landlord-tenant issues, and we work closely with all of them.

Most notably, as Nathan mentioned, the Office for Civil Rights, they have a regulatory role in fair housing, and we work quite closely with them, also with the utilities and helping promote some of their programs for...

like efficiencies in multifamily buildings and other departments.

So housing conditions is sort of the first area to touch on here.

So we've got two programs that deal with the physical conditions in rental housing.

So is it safe?

Is it properly maintained?

First is the Housing and Building Maintenance Code.

That's our long-standing complaint-based program that is code-based and describes what a properly maintained rental unit should look like.

Second is our rental registration and inspection ordinance that's been around for about 10 years now.

Um, that's, um, something like an operating license for rental housing.

So rental property owners are required to get a rental registration from the city and then have periodic inspections.

Those are chosen at random every five to 10 years and in multifamily properties, a selection of units on those properties.

And that's to periodically ensure that they're maintaining those properties properly.

So the next big area that we work in is rent and fee regulations.

So these touch on notice requirements, how much notice you need to get for a different kind of event like a rent increase, also caps on fees and such.

And this is where a lot of our work comes in, where we hear from a tenant that they got a notice that they're unsure about.

We look at it.

If it's not complying with the city codes, we'll give the landlord a call, work with them to get the notice corrected so the tenant gets proper notice and the landlord can avoid a situation where they may get caught with an improper notice later on.

I think that's it.

Eviction protections is a big area here, although we don't have much of a role directly in eviction.

So where we do have work is the Just Cause Eviction Ordinance, and this is a significant piece of city legislation for tenant protections.

It has 16 just causes, 16 reasons why you can evict a tenant.

The notion behind this is It prevents arbitrary evictions, but also creates a path for proper evictions.

Common things or understandable things like failure to pay rent or threat to health and safety, those are explicitly allowed under this.

Other situations where you can give a tenant more notice, it gives that.

If an owner wants to sell or move into their property, it requires extra time, extra notice to the tenant to give them more time to figure out their next steps.

Other big areas in evictions, like in the courts themselves, we don't get involved, except to the extent that we fund the Right to Counsel program that the city adopted into law.

The state also requires Right to Counsel now, so we're sort of a funding partner with that, funding that program.

Otherwise, there's a couple of defenses to eviction that are written into city law.

A prohibition on school year evictions, except for some situations, and a prohibition on winter evictions, except for some situations.

Those are both enforced by the courts in eviction procedures.

We don't get too involved in that, except maybe to warn a landlord, hey, you may have a problem with that if you do get into an eviction situation.

Relocation assistance.

We've got kind of three flavors of this here.

Tenant relocation assistance, TRAO is what it's called.

We like to use acronyms sometimes.

TRAO is for tenants displaced by redevelopment.

And that gives them two things.

All tenants in the building get time up to almost six months of early notice.

Hey, this property is going to be redeveloped.

You need to start thinking about your next steps.

and it gives money to low income tenants and the city pays for half of that.

Economic displacement relocation assistance is for large rent increases and it provides assistance to low income tenants.

And then we have a couple types of emergency or other relocation assistance, which are usually triggered by actions or inaction of the landlord where a tenant has to move through no fault of their own, like an emergency situation caused by the landlord and the tenant needs to get out right away.

Just to add a point, so TREO happens when you have redevelopment in the city, you may have existing housing that's demolished to make way for a larger multifamily project.

So housing discrimination, again, this is Office for Civil Rights area, so we're not gonna speak much to it, but they are working in the space of discrimination, fair housing, barriers to housing, especially for people with criminal background checks.

And they do that through complaint-based enforcement, also testing, and then policy and education.

We see a lot of overlapping cases, so we work closely with them.

If we get a call from a tenant, try and figure out whose department has it, or maybe both of us.

And we also work very closely with them on education and outreach, both to landlords and tenants.

So speaking of outreach, we've invested quite a bit in outreach.

We have a website that is written for both tenants and landlords, so the first thing you see is a door for each of those audiences, and it's designed to speak to those audiences in a way that works for them.

We have landlord trainings.

They were put on hold for quite a bit of the pandemic, but we're back in business and very excited about that.

We've got four planned in 2024, and the first one is March 20th.

And that's up on the city's events calendar with some registration information if people are interested.

And we'll make announcements as the subsequent ones over the course of the year.

We have a renter's handbook.

It's a resource that's required to be provided to tenants when they move in and then periodically electronically updated.

It's translated into 14 languages.

It's one of our key resources to help take this complex set of regulations and make it understandable to the renter and landlord community.

One of the side effects benefits of the Rio program was a database of landlord email addresses.

So we were able to create a landlord newsletter with over 19,000 unique landlords and property owners, and we can get information out to them.

So changes in city policy, landlord trainings, information on utility discounts or utility programs that they may want, quite a bit of communication during the pandemic when landlord tenant laws and the eviction moratorium were sort of all uncertain.

And then we do quite a bit of trainings, partner trainings, community events.

We're kind of getting back in business this year, but in the past, out at home fairs, Seattle Housing Authority fairs, food banks, we have a tent we can take out and set up a table and provide information.

And then grants, we provide grants to community organizations with a special emphasis on BIPOC-led and serving organizations who are reaching customers who we may not reach ourselves.

So a little bit about how customers approach us.

So we have two main points of entry, mainly the renting in Seattle phone line.

And that's where a tenant can call or a landlord can call with questions or information on landlord tenant laws or issues or to make a complaint.

We track everything that comes into that system.

We do need to be really upfront that we are struggling with workload, and you'll see that on the next slide.

And so we have a triage model.

The calls come in.

We have a call center that takes them.

They answer the questions that they can right away.

But landlord tenant issues are complex.

And so we often need to pass it on to a specialist.

So customers can face a wait after they call in before they get a call back.

And we've put in a triage model because we're so busy.

So we call people with urgent issues back first.

So if it's a lockout, an emergency, we deal with time sensitive issues second.

And general advice, questions like that, that can take a while for us to get back to people depending on workload.

But we do track every call, and we make sure that we know who called, and we try and refer them to other resources if there are things we don't think we'll get to right away.

I will touch just back one.

On the Rio, we do have a second line for Rio customers, rental registration customers.

I'm not going to go into that a lot.

That's very specialized for landlords that need help renewing their rental registration or scheduling an inspection with us.

So on this issue of workload and how we're managing that, you can see we've had quite a bit coming into us.

So 2023 numbers were 17,000 calls on housing issues and landlord-tenant issues.

It was a 40% increase over the year before.

Of those, 6,400 of those had to be referred to an inspector or a specialist for follow-up.

And 9,000 of those were RIO customers with questions about registration, inspections.

Notably, we had 341 enforcement cases, and so I think that's a sign of success, that of those 6,400 calls that went to a specialist, they got on the phone, they looked at the situation, they figured out whether a violation had occurred, they got on the phone with the landlord, they got voluntary compliance, right?

They said, hey, this is, you know, trying to do this respectfully, problem solving.

Hey, this is what the law says.

Let's work together to get this corrected so the tenant gets the right notice and you can solve this problem.

So it's only in cases where somebody really doesn't want to address this problem through that coaching and that voluntary enforcement process that we get into these 341 enforcement cases.

A FEW OTHER NUMBERS FOR YOU THERE.

ON THE TRAIL PROGRAM, HOUSEHOLDS DISPLACED BY DEVELOPMENT, 668. 90 HOUSEHOLDS GOT THE EMERGENCY RELOCATION ASSISTANCE.

AND THEN WE HAVE OUR RIO REGISTRATION NUMBERS THERE FOR YOU.

I KNOW THERE'S BEEN A LOT OF QUESTIONS ABOUT THOSE.

YOU'LL SEE AN ANNUAL REPORT FROM US ABOUT RIO IN THE NEXT MONTH OR SO.

AND YOU'LL SEE THAT RIO REGISTRATIONS ARE UP A LITTLE BIT THIS YEAR, NOT MUCH, BUT A LITTLE BIT and units are up quite a bit, and that's not a surprise.

We're seeing quite a bit of construction of large multifamily properties in the city.

So 2024 priorities, a big part of our work right now is just keeping up and meeting customer needs with that large increase and high volume of work coming in.

We're working to bring on more staff.

We're improving response times.

We've already made some headway.

We've got a lot more to do.

We're working to improve efficiencies in that intake process, trying to get more calls answered right away instead of having to get handed off to a specialist.

Another big area of work for us is harmonization of the city and state landlord tenant laws.

So the state has moved very quickly over the last few years.

And most of what we do now, the state also does.

So we're very much in alignment with the state law, but they didn't write things exactly the same way as us.

So some of this might be kind of wonky, but we've got to get in there and try and say things in a compatible way with the state in our own city codes.

We got some TREO and EDRA.

Those are the Relocation Assistance Program process improvements we've been working on.

Some are already in place.

For instance, we have a new online portal for developers to apply for their TREO license and get service more quickly rather than calling our phone line.

Like I said earlier, we're excited.

We're back doing quite a bit more outreach to landlords and tenants this year.

And then you may have seen we have an audit of the RIO program that came out in December.

I think we agree with everything that was in that audit.

There were no surprises to us.

We've already been working on some of these, and we've got more work to do there.

So that's it for our presentation.

We're happy to answer questions.

Just wanted to add two other important points.

In December, SDCI and SDOT opened up a joint information desk on the fourth floor of the Seattle Municipal Tower.

That's also a way that landlords or tenants can come in and ask questions to staff.

That was a really important addition to our services.

We know that there are some people who don't wanna contact our staff virtually or on the telephone.

We have many tenants out there that don't have technology resources, so they can actually come into the Seattle Municipal Tower and talk to staff.

Also, Jeff mentioned that the state has passed new landlord tenant regulations, and I believe there are still some things that are being considered in the state legislature this year.

So as soon as the session is over, we will take a fresh look at that.

and harmonization with our local regulations.

Great.

Well, thank you very much for that.

Colleagues, are there any questions?

I think Council Member Wu, you had a question?

Yes, I have a few, but I'll try to keep it brief.

I'm glad to hear that there is an in-person service desk where people can actually go and get their questions answered.

I think that's something we were missing during the pandemic, but great to hear it's back up.

My question is, I'm curious about your budget and specifically what's allocated in the budget towards landlord-tenant staff and services.

BOY, THAT'S KIND OF A TRICKY QUESTION.

WE CAN GET YOU SOME FIRM NUMBERS LATER ON AS A FOLLOW-UP.

WE HAVE, I'D SAY IT'S ABOUT 20 PEOPLE TOTAL, AND ALMOST ALL OF OUR FUNDING GOES TO STAFF, AND THEN WE HAVE SEPARATE FUNDING FOR SOME GRANTS TO PARTNERS.

SO, YOU KNOW, I THINK WE'RE IN THE FEW MILLION DOLLARS ANNUALLY FOR SUPPORTING THAT STAFF.

I SAY IT GETS A LITTLE CONFUSING BECAUSE THE RIO PROGRAM IS FEE SUPPORTED, SO WE HAVE TO INCLUDE THAT IN THERE IN THAT makes it a little tricky.

And we have people doing blended work.

So like our inspectors that are doing general fund supported housing, building maintenance inspections are also doing RIO supported, RIO fee supported inspections.

So I'm sorry, I'm making it very complicated because it kind of is, but we'll follow up with some firm numbers for you.

All right.

Most of my questions are based around that.

So I'll wait for that information.

Thank you.

Do you have more questions or no?

Okay.

Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Director Torrelson, for a really insightful overview presentation here.

Also glad to hear that we have a customer service desk open and operational and functional for our various renter programs.

The same thing to the extent it doesn't already exist today.

I know it existed before the pandemic, but we need to also make sure that we have a similar capability for permitting, for the permitting process.

But in any event, just curious to hear kind of how we're approaching and benchmarking against what the city is doing in the area of, you know, rental protections.

It's an evolving landscape, it sounds like.

Indeed, the state legislature is currently considering a number of items legislatively.

But we'd just be curious to learn a little bit more about what we're doing here in Seattle, how it compares to other jurisdictions across the state, and then more broadly how it compares to what the state currently has in place today.

And as I understand it, unless you tell me otherwise, you know, the city is free to, the state establishes the floor, not the ceiling.

And so the state is, or the city is therefore free to, to, add enhanced protections via ordinance, which I think in many cases makes a lot of sense here in Seattle.

But just be, again, curious at a high level to better understand some of the harmonization, if you will, currently or lack thereof in how, again, what we have here in place in Seattle compares and is in harmony or diverges with what's in other jurisdictions in the state.

Yeah, so I think what we're seeing now is the state has largely caught up with us.

So they've got a just cause eviction ordinance now.

They have earlier notice requirements for rent increases than they used to.

So a lot of the city's protections that were more protective, the state has recently caught up with.

And that's where we're talking about harmonization and wanting to adapt ourselves to how the state has changed.

And then there are a few areas where we are more protective, like more notice for a rent increase in Seattle versus the state.

I believe it's 90 days for the state and 180 days in Seattle.

So there's some policy choices that the council has made in the past.

Am I getting to the...

I think your question about pure cities and other cities in the state, because the state has come up to the place we are, now most other cities are there in the state.

A handful of our neighboring cities have also adopted their own enhanced tenant protections.

Again, mostly very similar to ours in alignment with ours.

We'd be happy to follow up with you for more detailed information if that's of interest to you.

And after this legislative session is over, we'll have to take a look if we're gonna need to amend any of our city landlord tenant laws to be consistent with the state.

Obviously we can adopt additional regulations, but what we want to avoid is if we're inconsistent as far as our regulations aren't exactly in sync with the state.

Got it.

Yeah, it makes perfect, yeah.

As a lawyer, I understand, and that makes perfect sense.

But can I ask, so what are some of the challenges?

I'm glad to hear we have a, it sounds like we have a good, there's always opportunities for improvement, but a good engagement model with renters and landlords even.

But what are some of the challenges that you're hearing with implementation for a lot of these programs?

And how are you thinking about remediation?

Yeah, well, we certainly hear about challenges from landlords and tenants about where they feel like the regulations fall short.

We offer advice and have along the way as our regulations have evolved here in the city.

For example, we have a small landlord.

We did some small landlord stakeholder work a year or so ago and submitted a report to council with some ideas for improving support for small landlords.

We can send that to you if you'd like as a follow-up, make sure you can see that.

And we're always happy to participate in discussions about other policy changes and help inform them with what we're seeing and hearing.

I think one of the other challenges obviously is every department in the city has limited resources and a lot of our resources that go to help tenants and landlords is our general fund.

And general fund makes up 9% of our budget at SDCI.

The vast majority of our budget is permit fee revenue and goes to helping process permits and the enforcement and construction inspections.

Thank you.

Any other questions from colleagues?

Okay, thank you.

I had some additional questions.

I was wondering if you could tell us how much of the budget is spent to housing justice project for the renter defense program?

Yeah, last year's contract was $1.1 million.

And this year's contract has not been let yet.

We're still working through the budget process to get those contracts out the door.

And in that contract, do you set out the terms of what the expectations are, or is that just that they will run a renter's defense?

Yeah, so we do, for this and our other tenant services contracts, we do a request for proposals each year.

We take proposals, we have a rating panel that scores them against criteria and then makes funding decisions.

on the right to counsel.

It's basically provide the service to tenants who need the financial support.

Describe to us, you know, how you're doing that evaluation to see who needs it and give us reporting on how many people you've served, cost per client, that sort of thing.

So we have that information because I've been working on this recently trying to get it through the approval process here.

I think last year, Housing Justice Project was spending a little less than $1,000 per tenant served.

$1,000 per tenant?

Yeah, served, a little bit less than that.

Okay, and was that mandated through the state, or was that a decision of the city to create that funding source?

So the city wrote right to council into city ordinances a couple years ago and funded it.

Since then, this is another example of where the state has caught up with the city and there's now statewide right to counsel and the state is funding it.

So we in the state together are funding right to counsel in the city of Seattle and the state is funding it outside of Seattle.

Okay, so we could ask the state to fund it instead of the city?

I SUPPOSE WE COULD.

I THINK THAT'S ONE OF THE QUESTIONS WE HAVE FOR THE STATE IS HOW ARE YOU FUNDING IT?

WHAT SHARE SHOULD WE BE PAYING?

WHAT SHARE SHOULD THE STATE BE SAYING?

PAYING THE ENABLING LEGISLATION FOR THE CITY IS JUST SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT THAN WHAT THE STATE SAYS.

SO SORT OF THE POINT OF INTERVENTION AND MAYBE THE AMOUNT OF DEFENSE IS A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT.

AND I'M STILL TRYING TO ACTUALLY ISOLATE WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IS SO WE CAN INFORM FUTURE BUDGET REQUESTS.

Okay, I think it'd be worth having a conversation since the state has made it a mandated obligation.

They should be paying for it given our budget situation.

I just have a few questions and I'll get to you.

I'm also curious about the economic displacement relocation assistance.

So I know that that's paid up front by the city and then collected afterward from the property owner.

My question is what happens if the tenant winds up not moving and the money's already been paid out by the landlord?

That is a struggle in the policy.

We've been trying to implement the program in a way where the decisions about eligibility and moving out are made before the payment goes out the door so that we can avoid that.

We may have had one or two situations where that's happened.

Our ability to recollect from a already, by definition, low-income tenant is very challenging.

I'd say with this new program, we haven't quite worked that out yet.

So you have situations where the money's paid out by the landlord, tenant doesn't move, and you're not able to recollect from the tenant?

Well, I should say the money's been paid out by the city.

We would never keep a landlord's money if the tenant was ineligible.

For instance, if it was overturned on appeal.

So the city would eat that amount of money.

Okay.

Okay.

Just another, no, ADRA was canceled, generated legislation, and the workload from ADRA has been much greater than we anticipated.

There are a variety of landlords that have been raising rents more than 10% a year.

Okay.

And I note that that money is available to people earning up to 80% of the AMI, so that would be over $70,000, correct?

If somebody's making over $70,000, they'd be entitled to up to three months of rent.

I don't remember the AMI numbers exactly, but that sounds about right.

Okay, thank you.

And then I guess my last question would be, does the office bring forth legislation on behalf of renters through the renters commission?

Uh, no, um, I don't, I can't think of an example where we have, we do work with the renters commission somewhat, like probably once or twice a year ago and like give them a briefing on what we're doing and how any new regulations, but not a lot of close work with the renters commission.

Um, we've done very little department generated executive generated legislation in the landlord tenant area that we have done has all been our department working with colleagues and other departments and up through the mayor's office.

Okay, thank you.

Council President Nelson.

I have several questions, but first I just wanted to follow up on your line of questioning.

You mentioned that, I think that you said that the Housing Justice Project was receiving $1.5 million in 2023, is that correct?

1.1.

1.1, what is the budget for that organization in 2024?

Like I said, we have not issued, we have not released our grant funding yet.

Their request was for something like 1.5 and we're planning to fund it at more or less level funding.

At least that was the decision of our review panel.

We're still waiting for the final decision making through the finance process.

Okay, when was it required that the state also pay for right to counsel?

I believe it was two years ago.

We haven't asked Maureen to chime in much, but Maureen, if you're on the phone there and you remember that exactly, that would be helpful.

I am here.

They did pass right to counsel in 2022. It was actually shortly after the city of Seattle passed its ordinance mandating right to counsel for city residents.

Okay, well, I think that Chair Moore did have a good idea, which was maybe to re-examine what the breakdown of what we pay versus the state.

But anyway, so on to my questions.

What other service providers do you contract with?

How much are those contracts in 2024?

And what do they pay for it?

SO WE HAVE AN ADDITIONAL ABOUT $1.4 MILLION IN OTHER GRANT FUNDS, AND THOSE WE'VE BEEN WORKING ON GETTING OUT THE DOOR.

WE GOT THE PERMISSION TO GET THOSE OUT.

I'M NOT GOING TO REMEMBER THE FULL LIST OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD, AND WE'LL BE HAPPY TO PROVIDE THAT TO YOU ALONG WITH THE AMOUNTS, BUT OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD, TENANTS UNION, SOLID GROUND, CATHOLIC COMMUNITY SERVICES, Via Comunitaria, who's doing work in South Park.

Somali Community Center.

There's a handful of others.

We'll get you the full list.

Our approach, our desire is to have some of the larger kind of long-standing organizations like Solid Ground and help support their tenants hotline and tenants union, and then also bring in some of these smaller organizations that reach communities of renters that our department doesn't necessarily easily reach.

So that's why we have organizations like Via Comunitaria doing education outreach in South Park.

I think that, thank you.

Then I should add, there was an additional, council added an additional $1 million last year for rent assistance.

So different than, so the grants I already spoke about are education, outreach, casework, The additional funding that council appropriated was for rent assistance at the point of eviction, which is a point where if you have some rent assistance funds, you can kind of quickly solve an eviction situation headed off.

And so we have a million dollars for that.

That's not gone out the door yet.

We just finished reviewing proposals for that.

Right.

So that would be an additional...

one million for basically lawyers because it's not it it's for to mitigate uh an eviction notice right yeah it has to be tied to eviction defense like is it for lawyers i don't know who the staff people who are that are actually evaluating and helping get the money out the door but it is tied to the eviction defense process for sure so we're talking about probably around four million total I think it's about 3.5 total.

If you add that, it was two point, so about a million for eviction defense, a little bit more, 1.1, 2.4, 2.5 for the other education outreach casework services, and then that additional million dollars for rent assistance.

Are we paying any money for direct rental assistance to keep people from getting, so that they can actually stay in their units?

Yeah, well, so I think, well, that $1 million is for that, to head off an eviction, so it's at the point of eviction.

I mean, like cash to the renter?

Well, it gives money to the landlord to solve the non-payment eviction.

Okay.

If you want to go further up the line, people before they get to a point in an eviction, there are other programs.

I think they're mostly out of the Human Services Department.

We don't work closely with them.

And then there's a lot of private nonprofits that are out there doing those kinds of services.

Okay.

I'm drilling in on this because there was my first budget season.

I was balking at the...

at the $3.5 or $4 million that would go not to direct assistance to help people actually stay housed, but rather to staff that would then defend or try to mitigate eviction.

And I always believe that direct rental assistance is better because it actually keeps people in their home versus waiting until there's a dispute over an eviction.

We wrote the rent assistance million dollars.

We wrote that request for proposals to solicit for very low overhead, most money going directly to tenants in need of rent assistance.

Okay.

And we ranked proposals based on that.

Going back to the EDRA, or maybe you say EDRA, but the Economic Displacement Program.

I can't remember what the RA is for.

How much has the city paid out for that program or you can just tell me in 2023 and how many dedicated staff do you have?

I don't remember the payouts for 2023. It was 90 customers.

Maureen, do you remember the amount we've paid out last year?

If you give me just a second, I can pull that number.

That's the benefit of being online.

And I do appreciate the committee's accommodation of my need to be remote today.

So if you give me just a second, I can give you the number that was paid out in 2023 total for EDRA.

And then for staff, it's turned out to be about two and a half FTE.

I mean, we divide this among more people, but we've been tracking our time and it's been about two and a half people to manage that work.

Like Nathan said, it's been quite a bit more than we expected.

That's what I've heard also.

And it is, I think that I learned that in the context of talking about your permitting struggles and that this program is in competition with your staff time for some of the other things that you used to, straight up permitting assistance, et cetera.

So I'm thinking about this program while that number is being looked for because the hearing examiner reports to my committee, governance committee, and I didn't.

And one point that Mr. Bansal made was that the proportion of cases that the hearing examiner is dealing with regarding the EDRA program has skyrocketed.

Well, basically, they used to have pretty much only...

not only, but the vast majority of their work was on MUPS, right?

And now it's negotiating these very, very complex cases.

So that's where their staffing is going over there in their time.

And so that's why I was asking about your staffing as well.

We've had a surprising amount of appeals and I appreciate the hearing examiner's dilemma.

Also, that's part of why it's taking more staff time than we anticipated, because our staff have to be there for those appeals as well.

Got it.

Should I just keep filibustering here?

Yes, that would be perfect.

Speaking to the appeals situation, we did have quite a number something over 40 percent of our determinations were appealed.

And in more than 85% of those cases, the department's determination was upheld.

And maybe you should describe a little bit about what this program is.

My understanding is that if there is a rent increase that the tenant cannot afford and they choose to move out, then the city pays for a portion of their move out costs or their new rent or deposit or something.

It has sort of three things.

It has to be a rent increase of 10% or more.

The tenant has to decide that they can't afford that and they want to move out.

And they have to be low income, that is income below 80% AMI.

And what kind of criteria do you look at when you think about whether or not they can afford it?

Are you going on the 30% of income or household income, which is- No, I mean, we're looking at total-

INCOME PER HOUSEHOLD, AND NOT TO GET TOO COMPLICATED, BUT THERE CAN BE MULTIPLE HOUSEHOLDS IN A UNIT OR A HOUSE, BUT IT'S 80% PER HOUSEHOLD.

SO WE'RE LOOKING AT THAT HOUSEHOLD'S TOTAL INCOME FROM ALL SOURCES, DOING AN EVALUATION, VERIFYING IT, CHECKING IT AGAINST THE AREA MEDIAN INCOME STATISTICS BASED ON NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN THE HOUSEHOLD, AND THAT'S WHERE WE MAKE OUR APPROVALS ON.

I'll let somebody else have some turn here.

Council Member Saka.

All right.

Well, thank you, Madam Chair.

Question in response to something that you all brought up.

And you mentioned that workload is a challenge and which I totally understand.

And it is a challenge that it sounds like you all have many people in organizations across the city are sharing as well.

And so myself included, it's fundamentally a resourcing issue or lack thereof.

And look, I would love, I have three amazing, dedicated, talented staff, and I would love to hire three more if I could pay them fairly.

And, you know, that way we could, we ship about one newsletter per week currently.

We could probably do one a day.

Quick update.

We have good engagement and opening rates of those.

We could probably do one a day.

We could probably, you know, double or triple the amount of events that we organize.

And we're doing, I feel like, a decent job in my office right now of, you know, asking appropriate questions to, you know, departments and organizations You know, working with our central staff colleagues and being very curious and exercising our oversight function so we could probably, you know, annoy some people more if we had more staff.

But where I'm going is that's a perennial challenge.

It's an evergreen one.

And so resources by their very nature are finite.

And, you know, so I would...

I share that, workload is a challenge.

And one of our principles in our office is people first, people always.

And so that's why instead of shifting the focus from More resources, more resources.

We need to instead address the systems deficiencies, address how we can best improve our processes, how we can better employ technology and automation to streamline and simplify.

And so against that backdrop, how are you all thinking about doing those things within the context of your 2024 priorities?

Which, by the way, I think is going to be more important now more than ever.

So just be curious to learn how you're thinking about those things.

So, Council Member Saka, I really appreciate those comments.

Obviously, we are always looking for ways to better reach out to our tenants and landlords.

The information desk in the Seattle Municipal Tower is a great example where we have many tenants who don't have technology resources, and they appreciate the opportunity to come in and talk to staff directly about that.

We have to constantly prioritize, as Mr. Tallent mentioned, those issues that are the most urgent.

When we have tenants that are in danger of losing their housing, those issues get the highest priority.

Obviously, that's a crucial issue.

I think Mr. Tallent can also address some of the other areas where we're looking for increased efficiencies, but I really appreciate that question.

We very much appreciate, you know, we're working in a resource-constrained environment, and process improvements, efficiencies are sometimes part of what we need to do to get the work done.

So like Nathan mentioned, I mean, just putting in that triage model, that was a big step for us so we could make sure we got the urgent situations.

They weren't backed up behind an earlier first-come, first-served model.

Like I mentioned, we put in a new portal for developers who are applying for trail licenses.

They had to go through our phone system like everybody else before.

That was kind of inefficient, not very helpful.

So we were excited that we got that stood up.

And we're looking at some similar improvements for the rest of our intake process.

I mean, we are working with an intake process, a call center that was built.

Well, I've been here for 11 years and it was well in place before me.

So maybe 20 years ago.

Our department has been moving to some other technology like chat-based Zendesk, so we're looking at that for our intake.

This all takes some time, but it's stuff that we take seriously and are working on.

The auditor's report helped shine a light on some challenges we've had with our automation and our Rio program where we're doing You know 30,000 customer interactions a year so we're working on some proposals to improve that it system that was built 10 years ago it's it's time for a refresh there so we're working on all those fronts kind of all the time small fixes bigger fixes in the pipeline so.

I think the synchronization of the legislation that came out of the state and will be coming out of the state with the city regulations will help reduce confusion for landlords and for tenants.

And notice that Maureen wrote from our staff also has her hand up, so may have some additional comments.

I do.

Thank you, Nathan.

I just wanted to speak to Councilmember Saka's question regarding staff resources.

and give a little perspective on the slide that Director Torgelson showed at the beginning of the presentation with the overall number of people in our department.

A lot of the regulations that we're talking about today are specific to landlord-tenant law.

We talked about the fact that there's technical assistance and education that we've really put a priority on, particularly for our smaller landlords in the city, but also to tenants who have questions about the code.

We've talked about investigation and enforcement.

That's where we investigate.

There is a code violation.

We work to get that voluntary compliance, but in the event we can't, then we move to a violation.

That becomes a much more involved process.

We talked about relocation assistance, three different avenues for relocation assistance, the tenant relocation assistance program through development, the economic displacement relocation assistance for people who are effectively economically evicted with a 10 percent or more rent increase.

And we spoke about emergency relocation where habitability and poor conditions in the household warrant the closure of that property because it just isn't safe.

For all of those things that I just mentioned, we have a staff of nine people who work on those issues.

And with respect to, you know, the workload that's coming in, a lot of what has added to that workload as Director Torgelson pointed out, is the fact that we do have this lack of harmony.

The regulations are complex, and we are working to ensure that everyone understands those regulations.

So when we talk about the overall department, I just want the committee to understand that for almost everything we've discussed today, we are talking about my team, property owner and tenant assistance that handles education, enforcement, investigation, and administration of those relocation assistance programs.

I also wanted to get back to Council President Moore's question on economic displacement and those numbers.

So in 2023, for applications received in 2023, the Department, well, the landlords actually, but ultimately the Department initially paid out $376,000.

376,188 was our number for 2023. And that encompassed 87 eligible households in the city that received relocation assistance through that program.

DIRECTOR RIVERA- Thank you for that.

What did you mean by you said that the city paid it but then the landlord paid it.

So can you clarify that.

DIRECTOR RANKINSON- So in some circumstances the way the timeline is written in the code in some circumstances the city has to pay out the money before we receive the payment from the landlord.

because the code requires a relatively fast turnaround time between when the eligibility determination is made by my team, the landlords are informed of that determination, and then the tenants are entitled to receive that relocation check in a relatively short turnaround time.

For the most part, to what Mr. Talent said earlier, we really do try to ensure that those payments that are going out the door are payments that are not subject to an appeal where our determination might be overturned.

And then we work to collect that payment from the owners in a relatively short timeframe.

So, it all comes down to the timeline.

Marietta Robinson- Thanks.

Marietta Robinson- Hi, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Thanks for being here and for providing a rundown of all that you do.

And I think it is important what Maureen noted that a lot of the work of her division in particular is about eviction prevention.

And I think it's important to kind of zoom out from this sort of technical conversation and really remember that I don't think of eviction prevention work of the city as in competition with the other work that the department does for permitting.

That work is about making sure that we have more housing projects underway, that we're able to provide more affordable housing for our neighbors.

It's critical that we address our housing shortage with the work that you do there.

And it is equally critical that we prevent eviction in this city in any way that we can.

And if it means supporting the organizations and supporting the work of keeping people in their homes, that is also critical work.

We hear a lot about the charter requirements for public safety, and we've been talking for the last year about public safety and homelessness and the issues in our city with people who can't afford to live here anymore.

And what we also know is that for every hundred dollars that rent goes up in this city, I think it's 10% increases homelessness.

So these things are all connected.

We have an obligation to try to address all of them.

And it does take resource.

And we know that that is a challenge, particularly for the next few years.

But it doesn't mean that we pull back on the critical work of keeping people in their homes.

And whether it is the city or the organizations that we contract with to provide legal assistance or it's paying landlords directly when a tenant can't pay it.

The goal is to make sure that we're not increasing homelessness, that we're not increasing displacement in the city, that we're keeping kids in their houses so that they're not sleeping in cars in the grocery store and doing their homework.

These are the stories that I've heard from my constituents.

when they can't stay in their homes.

So this is critically important work.

I think paying nine staff people in a city of 11, 12,000 employees to help keep people in their homes is a small price to pay.

there is certainly work that we can probably do on these regulations to streamline them, to make them easier, to support landlords in understanding why this work is important.

But I think it is a mistake for us to start to go down a path of trying to roll back what is really important eviction prevention work in the city and um i hope that that's not what i'm hearing but i just want to say i think it is really important for us to continue doing this work in some way so thank you chair all right thank you councilmember wu

Yes, thank you for that.

That brought a question to my mind.

In one of your slides, I believe it's number five, who is involved when Seattle, and you list here five departments.

I'm curious, how do you interact with Office of Housing, DON, utilities, civil rights?

construction inspection, I'm just trying to get a clear view of your entire portfolio in relations to all these organizations and how each contribute in one way or another.

And what I know there is a possibility to see the budgets for each department and how they contribute to landlord tenant.

assistance.

Yeah, I think so.

Office for Civil Rights is probably the only other one that has staff directly involved in in civil rights enforcement for in landlord tenant issues.

The other departments, we're working with their policy people or their outreach people that they would have anyway who are already doing that work.

But for instance, with the utilities, it's, hey, we're going to have a landlord training coming up.

do you want to have a table there to promote low flow toilets, right?

Or we're sending out one of our quarterly newsletters to the landlord community.

Do you want to put a blurb in about one of your efficiency programs?

So that's the kind of work we're doing there.

Office with housing, you know, they don't do much directly in the landlord tenant space, but they have a portfolio of properties that are landlords.

And so we work through them with that community as well.

Is that getting to your question?

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Did you have a question?

Are you gonna give closing comments?

If you have a question, I'm not.

Nope.

Okay.

I do.

Sure.

I mean, it's a statement.

Sorry.

Go ahead.

All right.

So I totally agree with Council Member Morales about the need to keep people housed and the fact that our city is becoming more and more unaffordable.

And so, and I think that we agree that on how to fix that in some ways and, and, In the past, we've agreed on we need to build more housing, so make it less expensive and faster to build more housing in general.

And then I have always said we have to retain our existing housing.

And the Rio numbers have suggested in the past, I think it was in 2022 or 23, I can't remember which report it was, but there were 14% less registrations for projects from one to 20 units.

And so these are the small low-rise zone or single-family homes, and these are generally below market rate units that people can afford.

And so I am really concerned about that loss.

And there's dispute about, well, what happened if they're not on the list?

Then what happened to them?

Are they still operating or not?

But the point is that we are, I believe, losing affordable housing when landlords choose not to continue renting their properties in town and either have sell it for redevelopment or Airbnb it or something like that.

And in March of last year, I had a round table discussion with small mom and pop landlords to talk about what's going on with how they do business in the city because as small business owners, that was under my purview.

And they did show me that with the number of recent new laws just in Seattle from 2017 to 2022. There were 20 new Seattle laws in the past six years.

Compare that to six from 1973 to 2016. The cumulative impact of all these different regulations is making it more difficult for small landlords and even large landlords to continue renting.

And so that is something that I hope that this committee will continue to look at.

Here's just basically.

the list that was presented in my committee last year by the folks that spoke.

So this is really important information.

I think that we all want to, again, keep costs of housing down.

And so how do we get there?

That is my mission.

So thank you very much for taking on some of this.

Okay.

And Jeff, I don't know if you want to expand on this more, but that council did give us a statement of legislative intent looking at a small landlord study, which we delivered to council that looked at some of those very issues.

Yeah, I think we'll be happy to provide it to you again.

We submitted it last year, so we'll make sure you have it again, but had a number of recommendations or ideas for supporting small landlords and sort of addresses the...

I mean, I think it is true we are losing small rental properties for sure.

The data was a little uncertain during the pandemic when we had some...

data problems but now uh it seems pretty clear we've been losing with a slight upturn here this year which was that's what the end of the year numbers looked like and we'll be providing those to you soon and council member morales i really appreciate your big picture comments about how all these issues are interrelated in the work we do every day at sdci and our permitting process is definitely part of that as we look at increasing the housing supply that's not the only part of the equation but an important part of the equation and we are working really hard to make permitting for 100% affordable housing projects much more efficient within our system and also the multifamily tax exemption program I know is of great interest to the council and does provide some lower rent units for renters.

Well, thank you very much.

Yeah, I just wanted to echo some of those comments.

I mean, I think obviously the goal here is to keep people, is to build enough housing so that we don't have the epidemic of homelessness that we are experiencing.

So we need to build more housing, obviously, and we need to build affordable housing.

And in my opinion, affordable housing is really 50 to 60% AMI.

I think the county stats show that that 0 to 30 and 50 to 60 is where the greatest need is.

And so I'm certainly committed as chair of this committee to making sure that that happens and looking at MHA and MFTE as ways to create that affordable housing.

We also need to look at what we're doing with our shelters.

And as I serve on the governing board with RHA, I'm also wanting to make sure that that organization operates efficiently and reviewing coordinated entry, and so there are not so many obstacles to getting people housed quickly.

Additionally, it is important that we As a lawyer, I certainly support the right to counsel.

At the same time, we are looking at a $250 million-plus budget deficit, and if the state has mandated something, the state ought to be contributing significantly to that.

We have budget realities to be mindful of.

You do important work.

It's a lot of work for nine people to do.

Perhaps there are ways to make it more streamlined Additionally, though, I think it's important to note that we are in an ecosystem.

It is not landlords versus tenants.

I was a tenant for most of my adult life.

I only became a homeowner in my late 50s.

I also became, at one point, I was a landlord when my mother died.

became sick, and came to live with us, and then eventually went into assisted living.

We rented out her house so she could pay for the care she needed.

She's since passed, and I'm no longer a landlord.

So I come at this from a perspective of having really been in all of those roles, and they are all important roles.

I have had landlords that were wonderful.

I've had landlords that were horrible.

I have seen places that are unhabitable and have not been able to really utilize the protections.

And then I've seen tenants who have really been savvy and who have been able to effectively manipulate the system.

So I think we just need to approach this as our goal is to make sure that everybody has habitable, affordable housing and to work together in partnership and to look at the laws and where they provide obstacles, unintended obstacles to that.

And so this is not meant to be antagonistic or us or them, but to view it as a holistic, we are working in partnership.

And I don't think we've necessarily worked in partnership to date.

let's try to change the dialogue and come at it from a perspective of good faith and a recognition that on both sides, the law can be improved dramatically and benefit all of us as a community.

So I'm going to stop my soapbox comments, but thank you so much for the presentation and for your willingness to engage in this discussion with us and for being here today and the work that you and all of your staff do.

Thank you again.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, unless there's any comments for the good of the order, I think that will conclude our committee meeting today.

It is 1051, and we are now in recess.

Thank you.

Thank you.