Well good afternoon everyone.
Thank you for being here.
I'm Tammy Morales.
I am the Seattle City Council member representing District 2 here in the south end where we are, Beacon Hill.
We're here today to talk about how best to support the 54% of Seattleites who are renters.
I'm excited to be joined by several community members here who are going to talk about why this legislation we're here to discuss is so important to them.
And then afterward I will share some details about what we've got planned for this year.
So first I would like to introduce Tram Tan Larson from the Housing Justice Project.
Oh, Dulce's first.
My mistake.
First, I would like to introduce Dulce Gutierrez Vasquez from El Centro de la Raza, which, if you don't know, is where we are located right now.
Dulce.
Yeah.
My name is Dulce Gutierrez Vasquez, D-U-L-C-E-G-U-T-I-E-R-R-E-Z, Vasquez, V-A-S-Q-U-E-Z.
I'm the executive assistant at El Centro de la Raza.
Muy buenas tardes.
Good afternoon everyone welcome to El Centro de la Raza which we translate as the center for people of all races.
On behalf of our executive director Estela Ortega and the entire El Centro community we want to thank council member Tammy Morales and all the organizers of tonight today's press conference.
We are pleased to stand in support of council member Morales's legislation to ban no-cause lease terminations in the city of Seattle.
We know that the need for better tenant policies developed in collaboration with tenants, advocates, and community organizations is critical to ensure that we protect the most vulnerable members of our community from experiencing eviction and homelessness.
Since the start of the pandemic, El Centro has carried out a significant effort to assist people who have fallen behind in their rent as a result of COVID-19.
Many of the families we have assisted have been part of the immigrant community and they have been laid off or had their hours reduced.
As we know, people working in the restaurant industry and hospitality industry have been hit especially hard with all the closures.
El Centro has raised funds and has also partnered with other organizations such as the Schultz Family Foundation to help people laid off of restaurants to provide funding for food and for emergency assistance for rent.
To date, we have helped over 1,200 families with emergency rental assistance.
And even though El Centro has been able to help this many families, the need is so much greater.
The threat of eviction threatens so many more families once the current moratorium protections end.
Due to the immigration status, many of the families we serve do not receive unemployment or qualify for the stimulus payments.
In order to pay rent, one of the participants, a 70-year-old man, sold his car after his daughter lost her job in June.
This was the primary mode of transportation for his hospital visits.
As an undocumented immigrant, they were not able to receive any of the federal financial support available and are scrambling every month to pay rent.
Another participant was a single mother who was a substitute teacher who stopped working last spring.
Her school-age children were too young to leave at home alone while she worked while she tried to find another job.
during the pandemic.
When we helped her in November, she was thousands of dollars behind in rent and she had no hopes of catching up.
These two families are just examples of some of the many, many families that are going to be, you know, in danger if we don't put protections in place.
They're living in constant fear for what happens to them after the moratorium ends.
We have seen how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exasperated racial disparities.
Black, indigenous, Latino people, and other communities of color have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, both by the percentage of people infected and the devastating economic impact.
In King County, Latinos make up 10% of the population, but have been 22% of positive COVID-19 cases.
Our communities cannot keep holding their breath for each moratorium extension.
It's vital that we support bills that will offer lasting protections.
We wanna thank Council Member Morales and all of those who are working towards protecting vulnerable families from eviction.
Thank you.
Thank you so much Dulce.
Next we're going to hear from Ariana Laureano who is a tenant and wants to share some of her experiences.
Hello, my name is Ariana Laureano.
I'm here to talk a little bit about the dire need for a bill of tenants rights.
I moved to Seattle three years ago hoping to improve my life to find a safe place to be trans and a safe place to live with my disabilities.
I moved here into an abusive housing situation.
I ended up homeless and then in another abusive housing situation.
I was couch surfing Christmas of 2019 and I got housing stability January of 2020, right before the pandemic.
My roommate and I, both coming off the streets, had a terrible time finding any place we could live here in Seattle.
But we eventually found a hovel basement apartment in the University District for $1,700 a month.
I got a job and got off disability a few months before the pandemic hit.
The condition of where I live now is worse than anywhere I ever lived in Detroit at three times the cost.
We pay $1,700 for an apartment with a foundation crack that leaks water into the air.
We have constant black mold, cockroaches, and rats.
The landlord lies about pests to every single new tenant.
The shower head is literally mounted at five foot two, chest height, so we have to shower on our knees, and the hot water only lasts five minutes.
with the showerhead provided.
We still do not have enough hot water to do dishes.
The electrical is unstable and causes surges that cause lights to literally explode.
Only two outlets in the apartment are grounded.
For the first time I used the stove it sparked and caught fire and that is how I found out that we did not have a fire extinguisher.
I had to provide one and if it wasn't for my quick thinking the entire apartment complex would have gone up.
After that, we went without a working oven for a year.
My neighbor doesn't even have a range hood or vent in her kitchen.
We called the rental commissioner and had the place inspected, but it meets our current regulations, and that should tell you how unsafe tenants are.
So then COVID hit our city.
My roommate was sent home from work on catastrophe pay and that's all it took for her to go under.
We struggled and she borrowed from family but still after a few months we fell behind.
I tried to reach a payment plan with him but he wouldn't respond.
He wouldn't hear it.
That's when our landlord started coming over and letting himself into our apartment with no notice, claiming water leaks or electrical problems as an excuse to invade my house at 6 a.m.
when at the time I worked until midnight.
He didn't knock, he didn't call, he just entered multiple times.
He would come over and demand rent and tell us we have a moratorium on evictions, not on paying rent.
as we starved and cut into our meds.
When our lease expired, he messaged us, your lease is up.
When are you leaving?
I would come home to his muddy boot prints on my bedspread.
He hazed us like this for months until one day he walked in on me cleaning my gun.
Then he tried to throw me out for owning a legal firearm.
Once he realized he couldn't do that, he stopped violating my space, but only because he's scared that he would get shot.
He doesn't respect our rights because he knows we can't do anything to stop him.
We got government relief and paid down our debt to him.
Now we're both living paycheck to paycheck, borrowing from family to supplement our income with our credit cards maxed.
I'm back on disability and jobless after job cuts hit my workforce.
One disaster away from living on the streets again.
COVID-19 cut our income in half and put us in over $20,000 in debt.
Because of COVID, nice places are now hundreds of dollars cheaper than my apartment.
Our building is now at 50% capacity and he refuses to lower rent.
When my household brought it up, he threatened to retroactively apply all fees once the pandemic was over.
He told us we should be grateful he isn't applying a month-to-month fee since our lease expired.
He's a small mom-and-pop landlord.
I'm not sure how many LLCs he owns, but I know there are at least four units per LLC, and he owns multiple buildings in Seattle.
He's a millionaire.
My landlord's behavior is encouraged by a system that lacks any accountability for his class.
Our housing market is a brutal arena, and disenfranchised Americans are often the victims of that arena.
Between a solid just-cause protection and a broader tenant's bill of rights, we're establishing a framework of a system that allows disenfranchised Americans to actually stand up for their rights.
And I couldn't be happier about that.
Thank you.
A-R-I-A-N-N-A-L-A-U-R-E-A-N-O, Ariana Laureano.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ariana.
Finally, we're going to hear from Tram Chan-Larsen with the Housing Justice Project.
Hi, my name is Tram Tran Larson.
I'm the Community Engagement Manager with the King County Bar Association's Housing Justice Project.
We're a legal aid clinic that provides free eviction defense for low-income renters in King County.
I'm here today to speak in support of Councilmember Morales' leadership in urging Seattle Council to close the fixed-term loophole and regulate the use of mutual terminations, which have been used to circumvent the city's Just Cause eviction ordinance.
As it stands, landlords are required to provide good cause to terminate a month-to-month tenancy, but renters who have a fixed-term lease aren't protected.
Meaning if your lease is about to expire, your landlord does not need a reason to not renew.
As a result of this, Seattle has the second largest number of no-cause evictions in all of King County, despite being the first to pass Just Cause.
Landlords can easily use this loophole by offering short-term leases, such as three or six months, so they don't have to give a reason when not renewing.
Something that was designed to protect tenants has in fact missed the mark, leaving many vulnerable to discriminatory and retaliatory behaviors.
Tenants should not have to decide between securing an affordable rent amount by signing onto a lease term versus minimizing their risk for prejudice and bias from a landlord that might not like them.
If Seattle wants to continue to be a leader in advocating and implementing stronger tenant protections, this is long overdue and needs to happen quickly.
With the risk of the moratorium not being extended, we are looking at tens of thousands of families and individuals being displaced and put out on the streets if council fails to act.
We know few have gone unscathed by the pandemic, and it has hit black, indigenous, immigrant, and other communities of color most, who were already impacted by gentrification and racist and predatory practices by landlords prior to.
In the 2018 losing home report, we saw that women, specifically black women, were evicted at much higher rates than their white counterparts, despite making up a very small percentage of King County's population.
Similar trends have been seen in H-A-P's 2019 data on eviction filings.
Black folks are still disproportionately represented in evictions.
Access to housing, safe housing and the security of it should not be discarded as a matter of landlord versus tenant rights.
It's a racial justice issue.
The majority of landlords are white and people of color disproportionately face eviction.
Council needs to look at who they are protecting when they are considering whether or not to strengthen renter protections in this city.
Failure to implement stronger protections from a city that boasts its diversity inclusion is hypocritical at best.
Evictions similar to COVID-19 are a public health crisis and should be treated as such.
We should use all measures available to prevent it and protect our communities.
We have an opportunity to really change things and not go back to normal.
Normal didn't work for us, as this pandemic has shown, and normal was never enough for most of us anyway, as BIPOC communities know all too well.
The passage of right to council is a huge victory but as legal aid providers our attorneys can only work within the existing laws.
We're counting on council to mitigate the damage as much as possible by passing protections before the moratorium expires.
I would like to thank council member Morales for not only her work on this but for including members of the community and community groups.
Thank you.
Thank you so much everyone.
Really appreciate you being here.
I do want to thank the neighbors, the advocates who have spoken today.
They're all part of the Stay Housed, Stay Healthy coalition.
And El Centro de la Raza, Arianna, Housing Justice Project, all members who have been working with my office so that we can strengthen protections for tenants.
We are working on what we're going to talk about today, but also other pieces of legislation that will really bring stability into the lives of those who are renting in Seattle.
So we're excited to talk about this.
My office is developing a tenant Bill of Rights this year.
And today I'm unveiling the first piece of legislation that's included in that package.
A simple fix to our city's Just Cause Eviction Ordinance that will ensure tenants, regardless of where they are in their lease term, will be protected from the threat of a no-fault, no-cause eviction.
Seattle renters have been granted some form of just-cause eviction protection since the 1980s, and those protections provide a restricted list of situations in which a tenant can face eviction, and they have been an integral part of keeping thousands of neighbors housed for the past four decades.
But even as this set of protections has been strengthened, we've left one avenue open for protections for tenants to be forced from their homes through no fault of their own.
And that gap in protection allows landlords to refuse a contract without having to provide a reason.
This is a situation that just doesn't align with the values and with the mission of the Seattle City Council in making sure that we're protecting renters.
So the legislation we're announcing today would either offer a lease renewal or a month-to-month contract and would require an offering of one of those at the end of the lease term.
So that finally, after 40 years, Seattle renters would be fully protected from a no-cause lease termination.
We're just trying to close that gap once and for all.
Now, lobbyists will tell you that most enhancements to renter protections make it more difficult for landlords to operate in Seattle, but I would disagree.
I'd argue that this particular legislation actually solidifies what is an industry standard of best practice and provides the same rights to tenants that tenants are afforded in the middle of their lease at the end of their lease as well.
Neither this nor any tenant protection is about making things harder for landlords.
That's not what we're trying to do here.
It's about trying to make life easier and more stable for people in Seattle who rent their homes.
We've seen during COVID that renters' lives are precarious.
Many don't benefit from generational wealth.
In fact, only 26% of black families, only 27% of Latinos in Seattle are homeowners.
a statistic that you can tie directly to our historic racist covenants, our redlining, and other discriminatory housing practices in the city.
And many are also rent burdened.
Prosperity Now's Racial Wealth Divide Study tells us that two out of three black or indigenous renters are rent burdened.
And unlike folks who are lucky enough to own their home, tenants' housing costs contribute to someone else's wealth, not to their own.
What are renters to do when facing an emergency as enormous as the pandemic, let alone when they're facing something as common as being evicted for as little as one month's rent?
This is why together in coalition with community members, with advocates and other organizations, we are developing a Tenants' Bill of Rights, and we're starting now by closing the lease termination gap.
Next, we will bring legislation to protect people who are hit hardest by the pandemic from eviction, and we'll continue throughout the year to revamp the Just Cause Eviction Ordinance so that we meet the needs of tenants in 2021 and beyond.
Again I want to thank our community partners for all of their advocacy and really honored that they've asked me to lead this work at city council.
I'm really happy to be in coalition with organizations and with the thousands of tenants in the city who are looking forward to council acting on keeping them protected.
Thank you all for being here today.
Yes.
What do you think of hearing the story from the lady that rants?
I'm sorry.
What do you think of hearing her story?
Oh, from from Ariana?
Yes.
You know, it is really telling how at risk people in Seattle are who are renting.
You know, we've got some folks who are in very precarious situations, and we need to make sure that they're not just their rights are protected, but that their health and safety is protected by ensuring that all landlords are keeping keeping their rental units safe.
to take place and how it will roll out in terms of whether or not it could be before the eviction order.
So we are planning to bring this in the next couple weeks to full council well to the committee and my hope is that before the end of May it will be passed.
Did I understand correctly that you want to force the landlords to offer either a month-to-month agreement or a longer lease agreement when they finish the right?
Yeah, so right now, when the lease ends, there's no obligation to offer a new lease.
And we're just saying, you know, you can't just evict somebody.
You should offer a month to month or another lease, you know, a long term lease to somebody to offer something rather than just saying this lease is over and you have to go.
Are there any exceptions, please, like if the person needs to sell their property or something like that?
Yeah, I mean, there are always protections for both sides.
And if somebody is selling their property, then they're selling their property.
But the idea is that we want to make sure, if they're not, and that they are going to offer the place to somebody else, then the person who is already living there should not be kicked out of their home.
Any other cities doing this that you know of?
Are there other cities who are?
Yeah I mean we've got this protection you know that has been in place for decades except for this one piece so that's what we're trying to do is address that issue.
And housing has been a big issue in various respects around Seattle.
Why has this loophole continued to exist and why is now along with the pandemic a good time to really try to address it and make sure it's gone?
Yeah, well, that is exactly why, right?
Because we know that when this moratorium ends, there will be thousands of people at risk of getting kicked out.
And through no fault of their own, right?
Nobody expected a pandemic.
Nobody expected that so many people would be losing their jobs, would be losing their income.
People are losing their health insurance because it might be tied to their employer.
So there's a real crisis coming if we don't do something to make sure people are protected.
And we need to address this now before people are really out on the streets.
Can you give us some examples of how this loophole has been used in a discriminatory way?
I'm sorry.
Can you give us some examples of how the loophole has been used in a discriminatory way?
Well, you know, for example, what Ariana is saying, you know, if if a landlord just decides that they don't like you, there is any number of ways that they can try to push you out if they are.
And I do want to be clear that this is about protecting the tenants and making sure that they're remain in stable situations.
And this isn't necessarily about trying to make things harder for landlords.
It is simply saying that we need to make sure folks aren't getting pushed out.
And it is also true that in some situations, there are landlords who decide that they don't like somebody, they want to, for any number of reasons, medical reasons, somebody has a gun, they don't like that.
That's the challenge, is that it is not predictable and we need to make sure that there is some predictability and some security for people who are renting.