Stephanie and good morning, everyone.
Every year, more than 1,200 tenants are evicted by Seattle landlords through court proceedings.
And even in the past year, when there was a COVID eviction moratorium in place that was intended to stem the eviction tide, more than 330 evictions were filed by landlords.
Many more tenants are evicted from their homes when landlords threaten to evict.
They give up trying to fight when they get an eviction notice because they know that the eviction system in Seattle It's completely stacked against them.
This is especially true for our black community renters who are given eviction notices at three times the rate of other tenants.
Once evicted many renters are driven out of Seattle, most end up homeless, close to 90%, in fact, and worse.
The Losing Home Report found that in 2017, four Seattle tenants died by suicide during the eviction process or soon after.
Another died of an accidental overdose the day after the sheriff evicted him, and a sixth tenant who was served with eviction papers died while receiving hospice care.
Every eviction is an act of violence.
An act of violence against the renters who are traumatized and displaced, suddenly forced into daily survival mode.
It is a blow against the children who are forced to move away from schools and friends, and against the adults who are forced away from community and social support systems.
Every eviction adds to our community's misery and suffering.
It displaces working people and accelerates racist gentrification.
Tenants know that the eviction system in Seattle does not work and are advocating for the right to counsel.
They're demanding simply that every tenant get a right to a court hearing with a trained attorney to represent them.
Later today, the city council will be voting on the right to council legislation from my socialist council office and our movement, many of whom are present for this press conference, which would codify this basic right for renters.
Shamefully, it is now clear many Democrats on the council are going to vote to water down this basic legislation by creating exemptions and loopholes by forcing tenants to have to certify that they are poor before they can get legal aid.
As Sochi Mikulich, a long-time tenant advocate and legislative expert, has noted, this sort of mindset, quote, is just about making poor people dance for health, end quote.
And just who would benefit from the loopholes that the Democrats are openly talking about?
According to the eviction lab at Princeton University, despite the pandemic and eviction moratorium, landlords nationally have filed 272,612 evictions since March last year in just the 27 cities that Eviction Lab has been tracking.
Growing evidence shows that more and more evictions are not driven by so-called mom-and-pop landlords struggling to balance their personal checkbooks.
Since the CDC eviction moratoriums took effect last September, evictions by corporate landlords have actually been steadily increasing.
Research by the Private Equity Stakeholders Project, a research and advocacy organization, has tracked nearly 50,000 evictions by corporate landlords in select counties in six states since the beginning of September and found that corporate landlords are responsible for the majority and sometimes overwhelming majority of evictions in some counties.
Seattle is no exception to this.
Major corporate landlords are the main evictors in our city as well.
The most evicting landlord in 2019 was Goodman Real Estate, a corporation with $2.5 billion in property holdings in the U.S. and in Canada.
Other major evictors include regional giant Epic Asset Management and national landlord Konam Management Corporation.
We know legal aid to tenants saves lives.
The Housing Justice Project, whom you'll hear from shortly, has documented that without legal or financial assistance, only 8% of tenants are able to avoid eviction.
With legal assistance, fully 53% of tenants are able to remain in their homes.
And with both legal assistance and financial support, both of which are complements to one another, 85% have avoided eviction and homelessness.
Right to counsel saves money.
The cost of providing legal assistance to tenants is much less than the cost.
In fact, orders of magnitude less than the cost that local and state governments have to bear when people are evicted and become homeless, which includes the added costs of shelters and emergency medical care, food, school, and foster care costs.
One study found that every dollar invested in tenant legal representation in Baltimore, Maryland saved the city and the state $7.
Right to counsel simply gives tenants a fighting chance in court, the opportunity to present their side of the story.
It's up to the judge to decide whether an eviction should proceed and the judge can do so based on all the relevant information.
Politicians should not be able to continue to put their thumbs on the scale in favor of landlords by creating barriers for renters.
Everyone facing the devastation of eviction should have that right through right to counsel with no loopholes or exemptions, no requirements that tenants quote unquote dance for help.
Earlier today my office circulated to the media a powerful joint letter from the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and the National ACLU.
This ACLU letter notes the unjust nature of Seattle's eviction system.
Quote, many tenants without counsel are bewildered and intimidated by the system.
and many lack the ability to participate due to employment, childcare, or transportation reasons.
Consequently, tenants default at high rates.
Landlords count on this imbalance and can file meritless eviction cases with impunity.
Beyond the imbalance of representation, evictions proceed quickly compared to other civil litigation.
Any defenses that are available to a tenant are virtually impossible to prove without a lawyer." The letter further notes that, quote, creating loopholes to or gaps in the right to counsel significantly undermines its efficacy, end quote, and concludes by urging the city council, quote, to reject any such efforts to undermine the efficacy of the right to counsel through such exceptions, end quote. The ACLU letter comes on the heels of a powerful letter signed by 13 organizations, also demanding that the city council reject any limits or barriers to right to counsel, including any barriers like the so-called means testing. One of the groups that signed on to this letter is B-Seattle, and we're joined this morning by Maya Garfinkel, organizing director for B-Seattle and a founding member of the stay house Stay Healthy Coalition, which is having its launch this evening, where I will be speaking as well. Welcome, Maya.
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Maya Garfinkel.
I'm a renter in District 4 and the organizing director of B-Seattle.
As Council Member Sawant said, we're also a member of the Stay House, Stay Healthy Coalition.
When facing an eviction notice and housing court, an estimated 10% of tenants have legal counsel.
Meanwhile, landlords have a lawyer representing them 90% of the time.
We need renters to have quality, free legal counsel to prevent displacement.
We need a strong right to counsel bill without burdensome barriers, which will discourage low-income renters from accessing a lawyer.
The most vulnerable tenants are those in housing court facing eviction.
These proceedings hurt your credit and follow you throughout your life as a renter.
Many facing eviction will also experience houselessness because of it.
13 renter and houseless organizations signed on to a letter urging the council to pass a strong right to counsel bill, and which explained that any form of means testing to access a lawyer would be cumbersome and limiting for renters.
Unlike criminal proceedings, the eviction process is designed to be very quick and can occur in as little as three weeks from the time a tenant misses a rental payment.
Unlike a criminal proceeding, which is much longer and involves multiple court dates, most tenants only have one.
During that court date, the tenant will have to present any defenses to the proceeding or try to settle the matter.
Courts will almost never continue the case and trials are rare throughout Washington State.
At that hearing, a commissioner or judge will determine if the tenant should be evicted, in which case the tenant can be evicted as quickly as one week from that date.
Evictions are life-changing and we should be doing everything we can to keep people housed.
Several cities have passed strong right to counsel bills which prioritize tenants and do not include any forms of barriers to access these services, including San Francisco.
Since San Francisco instituted right to counsel for all renters, 67% of represented tenants are remaining in their homes and the eviction rate has declined by over 10% since implementation.
The city's comptroller found that additionally providing universal access to civil legal services may actually save the city money.
As we know from the losing home report, low income women and predominantly black and Latinx neighborhoods face an increased risk of eviction.
For our public health during and beyond the pandemic, as well as to prevent racist displacement in our city, it is imperative that the city council passes the strongest right to council bill possible.
Right to counsel must exclude barriers for those most in need from accessing these services.
By the time the tenants reach housing court, the system has already failed us.
We need to have quality legal counsel so renters have a fighting chance to stay in their homes.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Maya.
Next, we have Jacob Scheer, an organizer with Real Change and a founding Rack and File union member of the Book Workers Union.
As working people struggling for survival, many Real Change vendors know firsthand the violence and trauma that evictions impose on working people.
Welcome, Jacob.
Good morning.
Thank you so much.
Um, there's just a slight issue with the spine of my last name, just for clarification my last name is spelled sheer SCH EA are.
Thank you.
So my name is Jacob sheer I'm an advocacy organizer for real change.
Thank you again to Councilmember Sawant for her dedication to protecting renters and stopping evictions and for doing truly everything in her power to see that this legislation is passed in the form that it was intended without restrictions or loopholes that landlords can exploit or that prevent people facing eviction from getting immediate help.
I also want to thank the other speakers.
I don't think any of us wanted to be here doing a second press conference.
We wanted to see City Council act with the urgency that this deserves and pass this legislation two weeks ago.
But nevertheless, it's an honor to speak alongside each of you.
The amendment that was introduced at the council meeting on March 15th to delay the passing of tenant right to counsel was introduced by Councilmember Peterson, who didn't even vote the right to legal counsel bill out of the renters rights and sustainability committee.
And I don't think that Councilmember Peterson wants to strengthen this bill as he claims he wants to see it watered down or restricted, or ideally abandoned by other members of council who voted with him.
So make no mistake, this was a cynical ploy to delay this crucial protection for renters, a ploy that has already had consequences.
Every day that Seattle renters do not have right to legal counsel is another day that landlords could continue to use loopholes in our eviction moratorium and throw people out in the street.
And our community at Real Change, as Council Member Sawant noted, needs this protection immediately.
The conversations that we've been having with vendors over the past months demonstrate the speed at which evictions happen and the urgency with which we need counsel to act.
Magdalena, a vendor I spoke with last week, told me about her experience facing eviction last year.
After enduring the trauma of having a sheriff show up at her door to serve her an unexpected eviction notice, a friend was able to put her in touch with free legal counsel through Catholic Community Services.
Magdalena was able to stay in her home and still lives there today.
If Magdalena's landlord had known that she would have had a lawyer, there's a good chance that they would have not even had attempted to evict her.
Landlords know that legal counsel prevents their ability to evict, to raise rent, and to maintain power over tenants, and that is why they are fighting the tooth and nail.
Magdalena's experience is a success story.
A tenant was able to keep her house through legal representation, but it also illustrates how obtaining legal counsel under our current system requires luck and knowing where to turn.
Not every tenant will have a friend who knows where to point them for legal counsel.
The confusion, fear, and trauma that result from facing eviction can mean that many renters simply vacate their homes upon notice of eviction, even if they are legally protected from being forced to do so.
Councilmember Sawant's legislation recognizes that we need the process of connecting tenants facing eviction with legal counsel to be compulsory and immediate.
Real Change expects and demands that City Council stand with our community and tenants and low-income renters all over Seattle in ending the obfuscation and delaying of this crucial legislation and seeing that it is passed this afternoon without restrictions or loopholes.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Jacob.
And next we have Edmund Witter, who is the Managing Director of the Housing Justice Project, SJP, which is a project of the King County Bar Association, providing free legal assistance to renters facing eviction in King County.
The Housing Justice Project attorneys, social workers, and staff are on the front line of the battle against evictions, and every day they see violence and inequity of the eviction system.
Welcome, Edmund.
Thank you council member and thank you so much for pushing this this is long overdue, and I don't want to reiterate what I think Maya and Jacob already said here, but providing.
attorneys for tenants who are facing eviction, I think is a critical need, a long overdue need.
As the council member mentioned, when we are able to work with the tenants, by the mere fact that we have contact with them more times than not, we can keep them housed.
Well, statewide, only about 8% of tenants actually do have access to council, which means that a lot of people are being evicted who, by the mere fact that they just don't have representation, don't have somebody who can help them navigate the system, have somebody who can be able to assert their rights, and have somebody who can be able to help them out to be able to stay housed.
I think this is a critical need here, and I think as Maya even said earlier, is that Washington's way of evicting people is actually a lot quicker than a lot of the other states that have also passed right to counsel, or frankly, just a lot of other states in general.
Most tenants only have one hearing, and that's it.
Even most tenants, when they show up, they only show up thinking that they're going to have to represent themselves.
They are unaware of the fact that there might be some counsel there that we will be able to provide with our capacity being limited.
And so most people don't have the opportunity to be able to apply for counsel in the way they do in a criminal.
There's not a long proceeding.
There's not a long time that they are given.
They, in fact, are evicted pretty quickly.
And oftentimes they are evicted within the same month in which they fell behind on their payment.
That is why actually like a means test or any type of barrier can be a huge problem.
Tenants are not coming with any type of information about their income sources.
And if somebody were to be over income, they're not going to have another opportunity to find private counsel.
And frankly, there's no really private tenant attorneys in the area.
It's not like criminal where you do have a lot of private criminal attorneys that might be available for you.
There's very few people who specialize in this field because most people are evicted for nonpayment of rent.
If you are getting evicted for nonpayment of rent, you probably cannot pay for an attorney on your own because you can't even pay for your own housing at that point.
And I am concerned, really, about the way in which the Gift of Public Funds Clause is being used as an excuse to be able to provide more barriers.
Because there are a number of things that the Supreme Court in our state has upheld under the Gift of Public Funds, including public funding for campaigns.
That is, regardless of your income, we've supported baseball stadiums or public funding for baseball stadiums.
And a Wenatchee locksmith program, where regardless of your income and without any means to us, you can get free locksmith services in the city of Wenatchee.
Yet providing tenant attorneys any time to be able to protect them from being homeless is apparently a gift of public funds in a way that the Washington Supreme Court has never upheld.
And one thing that this council has also done is a couple of years ago they passed a fund that would reimburse landlords for damages in the area when a person is a victim of domestic violence and has to flee the place.
A landlord who applies for that fund does not need to demonstrate that they are low income.
They are immediately just reimbursed in total for their damages that they have incurred during that time.
This attack or this attempt to try to add a means test under this basis or on this legal basis doesn't have any real basis in law.
And frankly, I think it's just being used as an excuse.
And I'm really concerned at the end of the day about what the legal precedent that this council is setting if they pursue this and ultimately what it means for other types of public programs other than just even providing attorneys for tenants who are facing eviction and what it means for these other programs that are pretty fundamental to be able to help those in need in this city.
And thank you to the council member for supporting this.
Thank you so much, Edmund, especially for clarifying why renter advocates and trained attorneys like yourself do not believe that there is any basis in the law for this kind of means testing.
However, non-onerous council members may think that it may be.
It is true that Any means testing is a burden and it is a major obstacle to the most vulnerable seeking and getting the services that they need.
And most importantly, as you said, any law that the city council passes today with any kind of means testing is precedent setting for all the programs that are fundamental for the survival of our community members.
Next, we have Violet Levitae, Executive Director of the Tenants Union of Washington State.
Over the years, Violet has been a steadfast fighter for all renters, and our office has been glad to work alongside the Tenants Union in the fight for renter justice here in Seattle and throughout Washington State.
Welcome, Violet.
Thank you, Councilmember Shamasuma.
I You know, as a housing advocate and a fighter, the tenant union has been in existence.
This will be our 45th year and fighting for these tenant rights is something we were created to do.
I think with this legislation and the pushback that council members have, it's actually in layman's terms saying you have to prove that you're poor.
And I think that's a, and, The most people that are hurt from this kind of legislation are people of color, communities of color, communities of low income.
I think the many years we have talked to tenants who are feeling disparity against all odds, feel like there's no way out.
And when we share with them resources like the Housing Justice Project, I think it's instrumental from what Maya and others have said today.
I'm not going to go over it again, but I do know firsthand what it feels like as a woman of color to get these kind of disparities happening in our community.
I've taken up the fight because I too was actually discriminated against because of being low income at that time and trying to find my way out of um, helping getting counsel and housing justice project had helped me years ago.
And I think this is so instrumental right now, fighting for this legislation is saying, how can we come alongside communities of color and not prove that they are poor to say, we need help highest rate of evictions are communities of color, black people.
And I always say this, I never stopped saying this, that This is part of racism, discriminatory behavior sometimes when you look at council members not wanting to pass legislation that will help people, communities of color.
And I'm here to say, I see it firsthand.
This watering down of legislation would not help anyone.
What it would do is help the landlords.
And I think at this point in time is Putting council members in their seat, their job is to pass legislation to help all, not to help the landlords.
And we're seeing legislation pass over and over where landlords or the rich are protected.
Today, I'm speaking up for communities of color, communities of low income, that this legislation, if you water it down, it's against communities.
And I'm saying this because I see firsthand with our experience with tenants coming into the tenant's union or calling on our hotline, what it does to tenants that do not even speak English.
It would surprise a lot of people that the communities of color that do not speak English, that English is their second language, have also a high rate of eviction because they don't know that there's help in the courts to help them and they will just walk out.
And so they get an eviction on their background.
That's another form of evictions on people's backgrounds.
They can't get a place.
And so how do you, how do families like that survive?
They go on the streets and you can't survive the streets in this day and age.
And we're asking council members today is to pass this legislation, not water it down because watering it down is saying to the communities of color, communities of low income that, you know what, you gotta prove that you're poor.
And we don't want that.
I can go over what everybody has iterated and said today, but at the end of the day is this legislation should not be watered down.
Thank you, council member and all the advocates who are here today to make sure that we push this for communities.
This is a community outcry.
This is another form of, and I'm going to say it, racism and discriminatory behaviors that is in the system that we should be breaking down.
Thank you for your time.
And thank you Council Member Shelma Salon.
Thank you so much, Violet.
And if you look at the statistics, as our community advocates have shown us again and again, it is primarily, as Violet said, communities of color that are affected by eviction filings and evictions.
And so, yes, this is an issue that is related to racism.
And last but not least, we will have Anastasia Shardhart from the UAW 4121, the Union of Academic Student Employees at the University of Washington, and a new member of the Seattle Renters Commission.
As a, oh, I'm sorry, you're not a new member of the Seattle Renters Commission.
We were going to have Sharon Crowley, who was not able to be here from the same union, and we are delighted to have Anastasia here.
So please welcome Anastasia.
Thank you.
So as Council Member Sawant said, I'm Anastasia Shothart.
I'm here as a member of UAW Local 4121, the Union for Academic Student Employees and Postdocs at the University of Washington, and as a member of my union's Housing Justice Work Group.
I'm also here as a Seattle renter in District 5. I want to urge the city council to pass legislation to guarantee that tenants facing eviction will have the right to representation in court without exceptions.
As a union member, I'm part of a democratic organization that gives me and my coworkers the power to improve our terms and conditions of employment.
This puts us on a more even footing with our employers so that we have the power to negotiate for the things we need, better paying benefits, but equally or more importantly, more rights and protections, more respect in our workplaces.
As a tenant, however, I have little recourse against rent increases, poor maintenance and repair standards, unfair charges against my security deposit and eviction if I fall behind on rent.
The right to counsel will be an important step towards equalizing this power imbalance between tenants and landlords.
With this legislation, we would stand on a more even footing and have a stronger ability to hold powerful landlords accountable to our rights and needs.
Well, it's true that we're seeing more hope right now as more people are getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
Public health experts and leaders have affirmed that the pandemic and the restrictions on gatherings and travel are not going away anytime soon.
And too many renters are facing huge bills for back rent and the most vulnerable also work in the service industries that have been hardest hit and will be the slowest to recover.
It's good that the eviction moratorium was extended through the end of June, but it would have been better to extend it through the end of this year.
But we can continue to fight for that.
This extension will give renters and low-wage workers more time to recover financially, and it will give the rent and economic relief programs they need more time to work.
But many will still face the very real threat of eviction.
Powerful landlords will have almost no reason once the moratorium expires to delay serving tenants who are behind on rent with eviction notices.
Studies have shown, including a big study led by one of my fellow UAW members at UW, that eviction is a major driver of homelessness.
This is so dangerous right now, especially during the pandemic.
Renters and low-wage workers face eviction and homelessness through no fault their own.
Many of us were already rent burdened before the pandemic hit.
Over half of my fellow UAW members are rent burdened, and many are severely rent burdened.
Seattle already had a housing shortage before COVID.
The economic and public health emergencies created by this pandemic have only made things worse.
We need real change, and that means addressing the power imbalance that exists between landlords and tenants in the same ways that workers can address the power imbalances between themselves and their employers.
Working people need the right to legal representation with no means testing and no loopholes when their ability to remain housed is threatened by powerful landlords.
This should always be true, and the stakes are particularly high for renters right now who have been deeply affected by economic fallout from the pandemic.
Thank you.
Thank you, Anastasia.
Before we open to the media for questions, I just wanted to close our comments out by saying, by reiterating a point that Jacob correctly made, which is that the delay itself from two weeks ago was a cynically motivated delay because the majority of the council is getting ready to insert loopholes into this law.
And we need to clarify that for over 40 years, and this is a point that Jacob made, for over 40 years, the politicians who have pushed for means testing have been the very politicians who are opposed to the law, to those policies in the first place.
They have defended profits for the rich and have been opposed to any public assistance for poor and working class people.
But when movements force the politicians to concede on the programs themselves, Then the politicians try to squeeze out loopholes on behalf of the rich.
We have seen this again and again, including during the fight for $15, when every politician who was opposed to $15 an hour was forced to vote yes on it, but then they ruthlessly extracted every loophole that they could.
The push for means testing actually goes back a long way, goes back to at least Reaganomics in the neoliberal era, which peddled the myth that public programs like welfare and rental assistance and immigration assistance were abused by well-off people who did not deserve them.
This is a particularly ludicrous claim in the case of eviction defense lawyers because The overwhelming numbers of evictions happen because of inability to pay rent.
And as Edmund Witter from the Housing Justice Project just said, if you have the money to pay for an attorney, you have the money to pay for rent.
So why would you be in eviction court in the first place?
Setting up means testing only makes it easier to dismantle the programs in the future.
One reason why Bill Clinton and the neoliberal Democrats were able to destroy welfare programs is because they were set up with means testing in the first place and were not available universally.
And we see in contrast, despite the number of attacks, relentless attacks from both Republicans and Democrats, social security has endured for almost a century, precisely because it is available for everyone.
And because it is hard for the politicians of the two parties to do divide and rule, it makes it harder for them to dismantle.
And that is why we are all here advocating for the strong legislation that we have put forward through our movement with no means testing and no loopholes.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Sawant, and thank you, panelists, for participating today.
We have about six different newsrooms on the line, so we just want to open it up to them if they have any questions.
Reporters, I believe that you can use the raise your hand function and then we can unmute you if you have a question.
I'm not seeing any immediate questions at this point.
Again, reporters, if you do have a question, you can use, I believe, either the Q&A function or you can raise your hand and we can unmute you to ask that question.
I know we had a lot of participation last week, so it could just be newsrooms tuning in to check to see what's going to be happening before this afternoon's vote.
If that's the case, I mean, certainly we can round back with them, and if they have questions after this press conference or before or after today's vote, you know, we can get the panelists on the line or Council Member Sawant to provide comment.
Council Member Sawant, is there anything else you want to say before we end today's press conference?
Just to thank all city council staff, including communications and technology and also Seattle Channel, all the media for attending and last but not least, all the panelists, not only for attending today's press conference, but for all the work that they're doing in the community to protect the most vulnerable renters.
And I just echo what you said, Stephanie, for the media.
If they have questions either to our office or any of the panelists, they should feel free to reach out to us and we will make sure that the panelists have access to the questions.
Certainly, yes.
Yes, again, we did have some very robust questions last week.
And so it could just be that they are waiting until later this afternoon for that conversation.
But anyways, Just want to thank Seattle channel as well for rolling will ensure that we publish the video this morning and we'll go ahead and share that video with all the panelists as well.
So you have that link.
Thank you again so much, everyone.
We really appreciate your time.