Thank you so much, Stephanie, and a real appreciation for all the staff from the city council communications and technology who are helping us today.
And thank you so much to the media who are here and thank you to all our speakers.
Today, the city council will vote on two bills from my office to defend renters from eviction.
The first will guarantee the right to counsel for any renter facing eviction.
My office and community organizers and eviction defense experts have been fighting for this for several years and I'm excited to bring it to a vote today.
Three years ago, the people's budget movement, and our office won the first city of Seattle funding for eviction defense.
just enough to fund one eviction defense attorney.
The following year, we doubled that.
And then last fall, we won $605,000, almost enough to guarantee counsel to any renter facing eviction in Seattle.
Today's legislation on right to counsel commits the city to fully fund eviction defense so any renter facing eviction has legal counsel regardless of ability to pay, just like you have the right to an attorney if you are charged with a crime.
And this is absolutely crucial for renters in order to get a fair hearing.
Nationally, as the ACLU has reported, only 10% of renters have attorneys and eviction court, compared to 90% of landlords.
Imagine going up against a behemoth like Goodman Real Estate, which is a good example, because it's the multinational corporation that makes over $2 billion, that has over $2.5 billion in real estate assets and made over a billion dollars in net income last year, and also happens to be Seattle's most evicting landlord.
Imagine being alone in eviction court going up against Goodman Real Estate's attorneys.
This bill would not end evictions but it will make it far less likely that renters are evicted without just cause.
and far more likely that renters who can remain in their homes with a little support will get connected with the help they need.
The Housing Justice Project, which Seattle contracts with to provide renters with legal support, do phenomenal work, and they have proven results, which they will talk about today.
Around the country, in cities with right to counsel, the results have been absolutely stunning.
Many more renters are able to remain housed.
Fewer people become homeless.
In fact, fewer people are even sent to eviction court because landlords know that they will not succeed in an illegal and unjust eviction.
The bill that council will vote on today guarantees the right to counsel for all.
Renters are not asked to submit to any humiliating means testing just to get a fair hearing in court.
Means testing is systematically used to have a chilling effect on people taking advantage of social services that they are actually qualified for.
We do not need a means test for people in eviction court.
We know they need support precisely because they are in eviction court, because they have run out of options at that point.
Cities that have means testing lose renters that would actually qualify.
And even when renters go through the checks to be represented, it wastes the time that eviction defense attorneys could instead be using to work on the eviction defense itself.
Again, this bill will not prevent evictions, but it does play a big role in addressing the staggering power imbalance in eviction court.
However, we also need to be clear we need to do everything in our power at this point to prevent people from being pushed into eviction court in the first place.
I want to stress that the right to counsel will not be an excuse for the mayor and the governor to end the eviction moratorium.
The COVID emergency is far from over and the economic impact of the emergency will last even longer.
If the moratorium ends at the end of this month, 16 days from today, as it is currently scheduled to do, thousands of Seattleites will face eviction.
Thousands more will become homeless, overflowing shelters, parks, and underpasses.
This would be a human catastrophe and would be totally unacceptable.
I thank the 47 labor, community, immigrant rights, indigenous rights, homeless advocacy organizations who sent a joint letter recently to Mayor Durkin, urging her to extend the moratorium to the end of this year.
As the 47 organizations say in their letter, we need to, quote, prevent a massive wave of eviction filings, causing many tenants to self-evict because they are afraid, do not understand their rights, or don't want to fight in court, end quote.
To quote further from the letter, quote, small businesses and nonprofits are struggling too.
It will be quite a while before restaurants are allowed to operate at full capacity and many small retail and service businesses have had to close temporarily.
The eviction moratorium provides security for businesses and nonprofits to work out deals with their landlords to get through the pandemic.
This is not the time to take that security away.
Extending the city's eviction moratorium to the end of this year will give tenants time and stability, enabling more renters and small businesses to get caught up on rent and allowing rental assistance programs time to work." End quote. This is why my office also has a resolution on the agenda of today's city council meeting demanding the governor and the mayor extend the eviction moratorium to the end of this year. Renters need the peace of mind to know they have until the end of this year, at least, to get back on their feet. And even then, we know it will be an enormous struggle for many. But now, in the middle of the COVID emergency, ending the moratorium would be disastrous. In this press event, we will hear from national and local experts on the right to counsel and from renter advocates about the importance of extending the eviction moratorium to the end of this year. So I would like to invite our first speaker, John Pollock, from the National Coalition for a Civic Right to Counsel. Welcome, John.
Thank you.
I cannot seem to start my video, but hopefully you can hear me OK.
I'm going to.
Take a few minutes to just go through some really key points and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all today.
I'm really going to just hit on a few key points, which is why we pursue the right to counsel, where the movement is currently and what effect we've seen from it as council members want just refer to the most important perspective from our from our movement is that when we talk about right to counsel and housing court, we're talking about every single basic community consequence that's potentially important to people being implicated with an eviction.
Homelessness causes just a cascade of potential crises for families, but families can also lose child custody, their children's school can be disrupted.
there can be job loss, there can be serious health effects.
In other words, losing your home is, in some cases, just the start of everything else that potentially stems from an eviction.
The impact is across the board, and these are not theoretical impacts.
They've been studied and quantified by social scientists to show exactly how bad these problems are.
And during COVID, It's also been demonstrated that basically the evictions are increasing the spread of COVID and increasing mortality.
There have been now three significant studies to show this, which is why the CDC enacted a moratorium in the first place.
In particular, it's been quantified that even a small increase in the eviction rate creates a quantifiable number of increased deaths from COVID.
So this is when we're talking about eviction, we're literally talking about a matter of life and death.
These numbers actually went from a race equity standpoint, which is another extremely important reason why this should be done.
These numbers from Washington state show renter confidence and ability to pay rent.
And in the top chart, you see Latinx tenants in the bottom, you see white tenants, and you can see that red bar.
which is little confidence in being able to pay rent, is much higher for Latinx tenants than it is for white tenants.
So we're still seeing that race equity, even with things starting to flow with rental assistance and other things, we're still seeing a gigantic race equity gap in terms of people's ability to pay rent.
And then there's all this increased need for counsel during the pandemic because of all the legal complexity that's happened.
The moratoria themselves are very complex.
They constantly change.
They're interlayered.
As landlords have sued the moratoria, that's created a lot of new legal questions that even lawyers are struggling to answer.
There are problems with the in-person hearings and with the remote hearings.
Tenants do not know how to use Zoom or do not have access to the technology to participate where courts are holding hearings that way.
And rental assistance, which is so critical to the solution, many tends to having trouble acquiring that rental assistance without legal assistance and making sure that the courts don't evict them while they're trying to apply for and secure rental assistance.
So with that as the justification, where we are basically with right to counsel is this is really a moment, a seminal moment for the movement, far from deterring the movement COVID has essentially lit a fire under the movement, and we've seen cities, even during COVID, pass a right to counsel, in addition to the media really making this priority focus.
We have seven cities now with the right to counsel, including two that passed it just during COVID itself, both Boulder and Baltimore.
There are now eight states that have legislation pending, including Washington State, to advance the right to counsel.
Many of those bills have already had a hearing.
the, and then some are still coming, and there's also this work at the federal level.
It is important to say that, you know, Washington State passing a right to counsel would not eliminate the need for Seattle to have one for a number of reasons, including the fact that Washington's bill is income limited, which Seattle's proposed legislation is not.
So that effort, while we are supporting it, of course, does not end the need in Seattle.
And then the widespread interest, you know, from other cities and states across the country shows this is not just the East Coast and West Coast, this is a growing movement with widespread support across the country.
The proof is also in the pudding.
We've known for a long time that right to counsel and representation are successful, but when you see statistics like this coming out of the cities that have a right, it really makes you understand why this is such a priority.
86% of tenants remaining in their homes who are represented in New York City and eviction filing rate dropping by 30%, Those are game-changing numbers, and that's why we do what we do to make this happen.
We also like the fact that while judges have sometimes worried about the impact on the courts, New York City judges have testified, in fact, it has not made things worse for them.
It's actually improved their ability to get their jobs done and actually do so in a way that provides due process.
That fear has not proven to be founded.
San Francisco, which was the second city to pass a right to counsel, has seen two-thirds of the tenants represented staying in their homes.
and a decrease in the filing rate by 10% in just one year.
And also of note is that despite the fact that San Francisco's bill or ordinance has no income limit at all, that would not withstanding the vast majority of people who take advantage of it are still extremely low or low income.
So it really shows that who is in housing court are people really in need.
And Cleveland, which is our most recent data, 93% of those who are represented are avoiding an eviction or a voluntary move.
That's in just six months of the program that started in the summer.
Just a couple of other quick points that are worth noting.
Council members want referred to avoidance of homeless shelters.
The data in Minnesota specifically showed that the tenants who were represented were four times less likely to wind up in the shelter.
That backs up years of data showing that eviction avoids homelessness, but that data has been proven in other jurisdictions as well.
And representation can lower the amount of rent arrears that tenants are expected to pay because those arrears have a very significant impact on tenants' credit going forward.
Tenants also have their eviction records screened at a far higher rate, their evictions kept off the record at a far higher rate when they have representation than when they don't.
The last thing I'm going to say is from a cost perspective, the cost of evictions is incalculable.
This projection, which was 315 billion nationally, is only of the particular cost that you see enumerated here.
It does not get to things like job loss or other things that could not be quantified by this study.
But even so, $315 billion in losses nationally shows what the city and state have to lose when they don't act.
We've had these cost studies repeatedly show that investing in right-to-council, the study in Baltimore of 5.7 million investment would cause a $35.6 million return to the city and state.
Baltimore has since passed a right-to-council in part After seeing these numbers, and those numbers have been repeated elsewhere, you know, numerous times that every time the investment and right to counsel will save net save millions of dollars and in New York City's case, hundreds of millions of dollars.
We know that this is right from a race equity perspective, from a moral perspective, from an emergency perspective, from a justice perspective, and it makes financial sense.
It should be done for all of those reasons.
So I'm happy to answer any questions, and I look forward to Seattle joining the ranks of cities that have taken this important step.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, John.
Those are absolutely powerful numbers.
And if we have council members who often talk about being data-driven, then if they're actually going to be data-driven, then there is just a no-brainer kind of case to pass the strongest possible right to counsel law.
Our next speaker is Julissa Sanchez from the Tenants Union of Washington State.
Welcome, Julissa.
Good morning, everyone.
It is a good day for housing justice.
Thank you for inviting me and for everyone being here.
I want to start off with language justice or language access is a huge barrier to justice.
Notices are often in English and often misunderstood and intimidating to immigrant refugee communities with limited English.
Marginalized communities are often left with little to no resources when presenting their case against an eviction and.
As you may know, I work with tenants day in and day out, mostly who are immigrants and English limited speakers who are taken advantage of in certain cases.
If I was not present at their eviction court, and this was before covid, they would not have any advocacy, not even an interpreter.
leaving them vulnerable and intimidated and ill-guided with wrongfully evicted.
And as we saw the presentation just now, how Latinx tenants are affected at a much higher rate in evictions and then the way that evictions literally ruin lives.
As a tenants rights advocate, as we speak, With the moratorium I see how landlords use the cell or move out as a loophole in retaliation to a big tenants for being behind on rent and case studies have proved, like the one we see how evictions are racist sexist, and they ruin lives.
There is definitely a power imbalance when tenants and landlords, when landlords show up with their lawyers to the hearings and low income undocumented and limited English speaking tenants cannot afford counsel or don't know where to get the resources for a free or low cost counsel.
So the right to counsel is essential to deconstruct structural racism.
And Seattle is a city that is leading housing justice in the state of Washington.
The right to counsel passing in the city of Seattle would make Seattle a champion again for tenants rights and lead the way as the state is getting ready to vote on the bill on this bill.
Thank you for your listeners.
Thank you for your time and your consideration.
Thank you, Julissa.
And it's really important to emphasize why this is especially crucial, this law, and the eviction moratorium is especially crucial to communities of color.
Before I call on the next speaker, I wanted to share a statement from Council Member Morales, who along with Council Member Lewis, has co-sponsored my legislation to write to council, and who was unable to be here this morning.
I want to start by saying one thing unequivocally.
All tenants deserve a right to counsel.
That shouldn't be contingent on a public health emergency income number of properties owned by their landlords or by any other means testing.
Prior to the pandemic, tenants faced tough odds in eviction court if they didn't have legal representation.
Limited resources were used to help as many tenants as possible to find pro bono representation, which, for those lucky enough to know about programs like the Housing Justice Project, meant the difference between remaining housed and creating a plan to live out of their car on a friend's couch or in a shelter after being evicted.
Right to counsel doesn't just give tenants better odds in courts.
It also helps tenants and landlords negotiate and come to an understanding rather than an eviction.
It is something that needs to be built into the process now to provide aid to countless people in the future.
Evictions hang over the heads of every tenant.
What if I lose my job or have a medical emergency?
That worry is in the back of every tenant's mind, no matter where they live or who they are.
That is a fundamental problem with our current system.
And it's why I worked with Council Member Sawant to create the nation's first winter eviction ban.
It's why my office fought and won eviction forgiveness for anyone seeking housing after the pandemic who had this misfortune of even just going to court over an eviction.
This is why I have sponsored other measures proposed by council colleagues.
It is also why I am proud to co-sponsor right to counsel legislation alongside Councilmember Lewis and Councilmember Sawa.
As the pandemic has stretched on, so have the worries for many tenants who, once the moratorium is over and the civil emergency is behind us, will be facing a mountain of debt and life on the street.
This is why, in the absence of total rent and mortgage cancellation, tenants need a right to counsel when facing eviction.
They deserve to be on a level playing field with their landlord.
People fighting for their jobs and for their lives should, at the minimum, be able to expect help fighting to keep a roof over their heads.
I'll end by saying this.
The landlord-tenant relationship is severely lopsided.
This system that we work within is not favorable to tenants.
However, this right-to-counsel legislation goes a long way toward putting tenants and landlords on equal footing.
It gives folks a fighting chance to stay housed and stay healthy.
That is why I am proud to co-sponsor this legislation, end quote.
Thank you to Council Member Morales for sending that statement.
Our next speaker is Edmund Witter from the Housing Justice Project.
Thank you.
For some reason, I'm not able to start my video either.
But thank you, Council Member, for taking the lead on this.
And thank you for the prior speakers who I think really eloquently I indicated why this is so badly needed.
And eviction defense is a lot about restoring humanity into this process and really rebalancing what is, I think, so, you know, not facing, or they necessarily built for, to help them.
There are, including rentals, an order is not looking, well, it's obviously not looking to help the tenant and the landlord has their own agenda.
And a lot of what we do when has a program in Seattle and in throughout King County is helping ensure that somebody stays housed and with a lot of the recent legal changes that have happened in this state in the last couple of years, we've really been able to sort of change the tide and more times than not, we're able to keep somebody house at this point.
Right now, we have a really strong investment in resources in this state, fortunately.
We have about roughly $150 to $200 million in rental assistance just in this area alone.
And there is no reason why somebody should be getting evicted right now, period.
And we have so many people who are vulnerable at this point, so many people who are struggling, and we need to make sure that they can stay housed.
what the right to counsel will do will be able to ensure that no tenant who comes to court is going to be evicted at all.
And that we can make sure that those tenants who are eligible and should be receiving rental assistance, which frankly is almost everyone at this point, are going to actually get it.
And they're not going to be evicted at this point.
And this is also another just kind of curves back into.
We have a system here in Washington that is so quick in terms of its eviction process, especially compared to the other states that I think john Pollack mentioned and.
When we add a means test on top of that, which is apparently being considered by some, that is creating a huge barrier.
And I want to be clear about, it's not clear what even means testing means.
Does a tenant have to show up to court with proof of income?
Do they have to have all this documentation to be able to qualify for any service?
Because the reality is when in a way in eviction court works is you get one hearing and that's it.
You just show up and you don't have any other time really typically before you even would be able to know that you have to bring in that documentation.
And sometimes it'd show up just a day before they're actually going to be evicted because they call the sheriff and the sheriff says, go to court and you're going to have to stop it.
They're not going to be in a position to be able to bring proof of income.
It's not clear what that actually means.
And it just is a barrier.
And the reality is eviction is something we know happens to people because of poverty.
And it's not something that happens to all classes, because frankly, the wealthy don't get evicted.
This is a problem that happens to low-income persons.
This happens to people who are struggling.
And adding a means test is asking someone to prove their poverty, and it's a time when they are stressed out, and they are about to lose almost everything that they have.
And this is really important now, regardless of the state bill.
By no means is that state bill guaranteed.
The funding is frankly not even guaranteed anyways in that bill.
And there's no reason there's not a steady source of funding in the long term for that.
So the city's action now is critical.
I think this is the right time.
I think this is the right time right now to be able to start this process, to be able to start affording and leveling the playing field for tenants who are facing housing loss.
And I really commend the council for taking this up now.
And this is probably more urgent than ever.
Thank you so much admin from the housing justice project and also for clarifying that the means test is going to be problematic for the very people who need the service because the wealthy don't get evicted and as admin has been quoted by the Capitol Hill Seattle blog.
who published a really important article on this bill that is coming up for a vote.
Just to quote from the article, over 4,500 evictions are filed in King County each year, but that's just a fraction of the overall, according to Edmund Witter, because tenants, daunted by the paperwork, and the possibility of having an eviction on their record will often see eviction notices and just move.
This is exactly what the letter from the 47 organization is talking about when they say, you know, tenants often just end up self-evicting when they get eviction notices because correctly and understandably, they are daunted by the prospect of having to go to court and they just move.
And in fact, if they can't find another apartment that is affordable, then they end up moving in with family, couch surfing, and often just becoming homeless.
And that's why it is also important to extend the eviction moratorium to the end of this year.
Next, we have Sharon Crowley from the Seattle Renters Commission and who's also a member of UAW 4121, the union that represents graduate students and postdocs at the UW campus.
Welcome, Sharon.
Thanks so much, Shama.
I'm really happy to be here.
As Shama said, I'm Sharon Crowley, and I'm here to speak today as an organizer, as a union member, and as a Seattle renter, and as a newly appointed member of the Seattle Renters Commission.
I'm here to urge the city council to pass these measures to extend the eviction moratorium to at least the end of this year.
I would love to see it even go further than that, and to guarantee that tenants facing eviction will have the right to representation in court As a union member, I have seen and experienced the power that comes from workers organizing and standing in solidarity with each other.
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 pay and benefits, but equally or more importantly than those things, more rights and protections, more respect in our workplaces.
As a union member, I'm part of a democratic organization with the power to affect my terms and conditions of employment.
As a tenant, I have experienced the opposite.
As a tenant, I live at the mercy of my landlord with little recourse against mistreatment, rent increases, poor maintenance and repair standards, unfair charges, and ultimately with eviction if for some reason I fall behind on my rent.
One of the reasons I sought to join the Seattle Renters Commission is to find ways of addressing this power imbalance that tenants face, like I can in my workplace, and to hold powerful landlords accountable to the rights and needs of their tenants.
The right to counsel is one important step toward equalizing this power imbalance.
It's true that we are seeing more reasons for hope right now as the rate of infections falls and the availability of vaccinations is increasing.
However, as many experts and authorities have affirmed quite clearly, the pandemic and the restrictions on gatherings and travel, the economic pain, these are not going away anytime soon.
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 slowest to recover.
These two measures are critical needs and we need both at once.
If we allow the eviction moratorium to expire before renters and low-wage workers are able to recover financially, before the rent and economic relief programs they need have had the time to work, they will face the very real and imminent prospect of eviction.
Powerful landlords have little to no reason currently to delay serving tenants who are behind on rent with eviction notices.
Studies have shown, including a big study that was completed here in Seattle at the UW, driven by one of my fellow 4-1-2-1 members, in fact, that eviction is a major driver of homelessness.
This is particularly dangerous right now during the pandemic.
Renters are facing eviction and homelessness through no fault of their own.
Many of us were already rent burdened before the pandemic hit and that problem has only been made worse by the economic and public health emergencies that we're facing because of the pandemic.
We need real change and that means addressing this power imbalance that exists between landlords and tenants in the same ways that workers can address the power imbalances between themselves and their employers.
We need the moratorium extension to protect people against eviction, and we need to ensure that people have legal representation when their ability to remain housed is threatened by powerful landlords.
This should always be true, but it's especially urgent now.
The stakes are high, and they will continue to be high for renters who have been most deeply affected by the public and economic health crises brought about by the COVID pandemic.
Thank you.
I really appreciate Sharon likening the need for a right to counsel for renters to the need for workers to have a union because there is such a deep power imbalance between the bosses and the workers.
Similarly, a deep power imbalance between corporate landlords who are the most evicting landlords and tenants.
And this is only the beginning of addressing that power imbalance, the right to counsel and the eviction moratorium extension are the bare minimum that we need.
We now have Jacob Schurter, real change organizer and Book Workers Union member.
Welcome, Jacob.
Hi, thank you so much.
My name is Jacob share I'm an advocacy organizer for real change.
I just want to start by thanking Councilmember someone in our office for doing the work to get this really crucial legislation to where it is, as well as to all the community organizations and housing and tenant activists have worked really tirelessly on behalf of renters and low income residents to try to meet the need of this really unprecedented moment.
I'm speaking today on behalf of real change and our vendors who have experienced really tremendous challenges over the past year of the pandemic.
The pandemic forced real change to stop production of physical papers and halt in person sales for nearly four months, and you know for our vendors this meant not only a huge loss of community but also a really devastating financial hit.
And sales have continued to be down throughout the pandemic.
And while our readers and greater community have stepped up to soften the financial blow, the economic stress and uncertainty that our vendors experience every day has only been exacerbated by the pandemic.
And real change serves a population, you know, who even prior to the pandemic faced really constant housing precarity.
Our vendors live in RVs and homeless encampments, tiny house villages, low income and subsidized housing, as well as on the streets of one of the richest cities in the world.
Many of our vendors have struggled for years to get into stable housing, and several have experienced eviction firsthand.
Eviction is harmful and traumatizing, and it is something that our vendors carry with them long after they are forced out of their homes and into uncertainty and quite often homelessness.
We demand that city council and the mayor's office take every step necessary to keep our vendors and all low-income and housing insecure community members in their homes.
To not use every tool at our disposal is unconscionable.
We need to ensure that all tenants have right to legal counsel.
No one should be without a lawyer when navigating the legal system, especially when what's at stake is a roof over your head.
This is a straightforward and clear-cut measure we can take right now to immediately prevent our homelessness crisis from deepening, and we must take it.
But we also know that we can't stop there.
We need to recognize evictions for what they are, deplorable, inhumane, and dehumanizing, and a practice that exacerbates suffering and leads directly to homelessness.
We know that evictions are also inherently sexist and racist, with women and people of color disproportionately represented.
We must start with an eviction moratorium through at least the end of the year, recognizing that COVID-19 and the economic devastation it has brought will continue to impact Seattle, and in particular its most vulnerable communities, for the foreseeable future.
We need our council members to make this crisis head-on.
This is not the time for half measures or pragmatic solutions.
We need City Council to meet the immediate material needs of thousands of their constituents and commit to keeping people in their homes.
This should be a really easy decision for each council member.
Ensure tenants' right to legal counsel and institute an eviction moratorium through the end of 2021. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Jacob, for drawing the extremely clear and unfortunate link between evictions and homelessness and for calling evictions what they are, deplorable, inhuman, and dehumanizing, and a traumatic event that affects women and people of color disproportionately.
And I wholeheartedly agree that this is not the time for the council to enact half measures and so-called pragmatic solutions.
We need actual measures that will address the problems that people are facing.
Last but not least, we have Shirley Henderson, who is a Seattle small business owner.
Welcome, Shirley.
Thank you so much, Councilmember Sawant, and to all the activists who have put so much work into putting forward this legislation.
As Councilmember Sawant mentioned, I'm one of the owners of Squirrel Chop, which is a queer-run coffee shop, hair salon in the Central District, a neighborhood that was hit hard with the housing crisis before the pandemic.
I'm here in support of this legislation without loopholes and the extension of the eviction moratorium until the end of 2021 because many of us small business owners are also struggling renters or struggling homeowners.
Small businesses are the cornerstones in our communities, they're gathering hubs, they're the cultural centers, and when thriving are often the indicators of a healthy thriving city.
Now due to the pandemic thousands of small businesses across Seattle have closed in the last year and 60 percent of those that have closed have done so permanently.
This flood of closures not only affects small business owners but also staff.
As others have talked about the service sector which is dominated by small business in this city has been hit really hard by the pandemic and our workers are paying a huge price.
On top of this, we also see that the gender and racial inequity of job loss in the last year.
Pandemic-related layoffs struck earliest and hardest in sectors where Black workers were already overrepresented.
That includes food service and lodging, as well as personal service, such as hair salons.
We've also seen the gender imbalance in the pandemic-related job losses as the service industry is also dominated by women.
It's a grim situation for those of us who are not major corporations with ample reserves to wait out this crisis.
So many small businesses aren't bringing in income due to being closed and are relying on the patchwork of grants and loans just to hold on to their brick and mortar.
So paying rent becomes an extreme burden and in some cases just plain impossible.
And for our workers who are struggling to stay afloat on unemployment many have had to pay their rent using credit cards or just having rent pile up.
Now it is more important than ever to protect our communities from the onslaught of evictions that are sure to come without protection in place.
A majority of these evictions as Shama mentioned coming from major corporations like Goodman Real Estate.
We know from the 2018 report Losing Homes that in Seattle 87.5 percent of tenants evicted in 2017 ended up homeless and some even died.
The right to counsel laws reduce human misery and suffering.
As John's statistics pointed out so pointedly, in cities that have right-to-council laws in place, evictions have plummeted, and in fact, landlords are filing fewer evictions.
I stand today with these renters, rights activists, union members, and community leaders, and council members, and demanding that the city protect its citizens.
And additionally, to reiterate what Edmund said, council members should not use the state's legislation on right to counsel as a way to ignore this important legislation.
First and foremost, the state has not passed its legislation yet.
And secondly, the state's version of right to counsel is full of insidious loopholes, as John already mentioned.
If we pass a strong protection here in Seattle, it will light the fire for the state to follow in our footsteps.
Thank you so much, and I'm proud to be here standing with you all today.
Okay, I believe that that was our last speaker.
We're going to be able to take some questions right now, although I should warn people that we need to be leaving shortly because Council Member Sean Musil-Wong has to attend Council briefings at 9.30 this morning.
So to take questions, I believe reporters on the call should be able to use the Q&A function, or they also have their hand raised.
So for example, I saw David Croman with his hand raised.
I'm not sure if IT is able to unmute him, or perhaps he can use the Q&A function, but let's try that.
David it looks like you're able to unmute yourself and ask a question.
Yeah can you hear me.
Yes we can.
Go ahead.
Yeah I'm just curious.
The estimate is $750,000 for Seattle's right to council.
San Francisco spends considerably more than that.
I'm curious if Council Member Swann if you think that $750,000 is enough and if if that's a proper apples to apples comparison between Seattle and San Francisco.
I'm happy to provide a response.
But before I go, I wanted to give a chance to Ed Ritter if you wanted to say something about it, Ed.
Yeah, I'm happy to respond to that.
One thing I'll note is the reason why Washington, I think it does cost a lot less here is because, frankly, being a renter is a lot worse here than it is in San Francisco.
In San Francisco, there is a right to a trial.
They typically do have jury trials out there.
And it's a much more prolonged process.
So in comparison, Washington, a lot of times a tenant shows up to court and they essentially are being represented for two hours and the whole entire eviction process happens in 10 minutes.
There's no prolonged process, there's no discovery, there's no a lot of the added sort of protections that tenants have in other states.
And the reason why I think it would be so much less expensive to do it here is just because of that, just even that alone.
Not to mention the regulations and the laws are very different.
There's a lot more complexity in a place like New York City or California.
And cost of living is not something to be overlooked either.
It is significantly different.
Seattle is expensive, but it's certainly not the Bay Area.
So the reality is, though, is that Seattle, I think, actually, we can do quite a bit.
I mean, part of it is that up until about two years ago, until the council members started raising the issue, there was no funding whatsoever for this work at all.
And since then, we've worked with Lean Times.
I mean, frankly, at the Bar Association, we have, as a profession, really tried to invest and try to fill in this gap.
But there's a limit to that.
And I think actually what we have created a system where we are at least able to work under a lean budget, frankly, and be able to provide a lot of representation.
And I think the council member also indicated this is not going to be a complete solution for the problem of evictions in the city.
There are still a lot of gaps that I think also other policy changes that still need to be made to be able to address that fact.
But we actually can do I think pretty comfortably and I say I'm probably the person who should be the most concerned if it's a low estimate of how much it is.
It's actually feel pretty comfortable that this will actually be a huge game changer and our ability to provide quality representation to tenants, be able to provide ongoing assistance, ensure people stay housed, and to make sure that they are not ultimately going to be evicted.
The comparison to other states, though, is I think just actually missing that, for one, the laws are just so different out here.
And we have, frankly, a much quicker process that I think actually should be something that gets talked about a little bit more.
And for that alone, that is why it's just going to be so much less expensive, because attorneys here, when they represent a tenant, are not going to be representing them for weeks or months.
Frankly, it's two hours.
And that's a huge problem in and of itself, is that a lot of times someone's housing is decided so quickly.
There are longer cases, but most of the time, it tends to be pretty short.
Nonetheless, we make do with what we got.
We still are able to keep people housed now, I think, with some of the legal changes in the last couple of years.
But there is a bigger discussion here.
And that ultimately, though, does make it less expensive to be able to provide this kind of system, which, frankly, makes you ask, well, why have we not done it before?
I would just add to that excellent response from admin in giving the background between why this is different from other states is also just a point admin ended on, which is that we should have done this, the city council should have done this before we were on the city council.
starting in 2014 but as Edmund correctly pointed out, there was no funding for eviction defense attorneys until our people's budget movement started fighting for it three years ago and we started and we actually fought for more than the rest of the city council, all Democrats were willing to We were able to get our foot in the door, and now we've seen the results.
We've seen results from other cities.
And unlike $15 an hour, we are not leading the way here.
Other cities have already passed right to council, especially San Francisco, which is a comparable city in many different ways.
has passed a strong measure without loopholes which shows the impact.
One point I'll add to the question of numbers and how much it will cost is also that this needs to be put in place because we've seen from other cities that actually once it's in place, landlords file fewer evictions than they used to once they know that they have an attorney to face and not a vulnerable tenant.
So I think that's another variable that is going to come into play from what we've heard from eviction defense experts.
Also, related to the size of the city budget, this is a negligible commitment, even if the estimate turns out to be somewhat higher than $750,000.
It will still be negligible compared to two things.
One, compared to the Seattle Police Department budget this number estimate is approximately one-fifth of one percent of the Seattle Police Department budget.
That should put it that number in perspective and furthermore as far as the question from Mr. Croman about you know is this enough or will it be more I think ultimately we have to see it from the standpoint of what will it cost the city if we didn't have eviction defense guaranteed to all tenants?
Because that's, I think that's the real question.
What is the opportunity cost of not doing eviction defense?
It's all the resources the city ends up spending for people who become homeless.
And the reason this is an important point is because as we saw from the losing home report from the Seattle Women's Commission and the King County Bar Association and the housing justice project is that nearly nine out of 10 evictions result in people becoming homeless.
So if you I would like to look at the amount of money that it costs the city.
The back of the envelope estimates from the city Council and central staff have found that it would cost the city $4.9 million per year to provide homeless services to people who otherwise could remain housed with the bare minimum measures.
Right to Council and the other help that they need to remain housed, which is a very small thing in return.
for them not having to go through the trauma of homelessness and for the city to not have to spend on the homelessness measures, which we know is simply not keeping up, keeping pace with the amount of homelessness that we face in the city.
So I think eviction defense has to be looked at from that standpoint as well.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
Thank you, Komen, for that question.
And thank you, Council Member Sawant and Edmund, for that response.
For any other press on the call, we have time for maybe about one or two more questions.
You can use the raise hand feature and then we can unmute you.
If you have any questions related to the press conference.
I see Natalie Graham is next.
If we can have her be, there we go.
And Natalie, I think you can unmute yourself.
Oh yeah, can you guys hear me?
Yes, we can, go ahead.
Yeah, my question is for Council Member Sawant.
Council Member Sawant, do you anticipate any other council members watering down this bill with amendments this afternoon?
It's really positive that we have had Council Member Lewis and Council Member Morales both co-sponsoring and then both voting with me in the Sustainability and Renter's Rights Committee that I chair.
for the strong right to counsel bill that we have right now without loopholes.
However, we have seen every time that our movement and my office brings in legislation that supports renters, workers, the most vulnerable community members like immigrant community, people of color communities, LGBTQ community, we see that Democrats on the council often bring in loopholes, and I would not be surprised if there was an attempt at loopholes which is precisely why we are having this press conference, and it is precisely why it is so crucial that so many organizations are weighing in today's press conference is glimpse into how broad and deep the support is for a strong right to counsel bill without loopholes and also how strong the support is for the eviction moratorium resolution urging the mayor and the governor to extend it to the end of this year.
And as far as the even broader community support is concerned, just ordinary people speaking up, we have now have had 500 community members sending a letter to the city council saying, please pass the resolution on eviction moratorium, extending it to December 31st, and please pass right to council without loopholes.
So as far as hearing from the community, as far as being data-driven is concerned, we have checked all the boxes.
It is very, very clear based on all the information we have from other cities and from Seattle itself, how evictions affect ordinary people and our most vulnerable community members.
I think council members have all the data at hand.
Now, despite all of this, if they introduce loopholes, it will reveal that they don't really stand with renters and ordinary people, but that they're really doing the bidding of corporate landlords, no matter what they say.
I mean, the rhetoric will not match the loopholes, but at the same time, I think it is crucial that everybody pay attention to this.
that we have a good turnout for public comment at 2 p.m.
in City Hall.
Sign up at 12 noon if you're watching this, and make sure that your voice is heard by the City Council, that we don't want any loopholes.
All right, thank you.
Our next question comes from Joshua McNichols.
I believe you are able to unmute yourself.
Go ahead.
Thank you, and I apologize if this was answered before I had to join this a little late.
I understand that the attorneys provide the services, at least currently pro bono.
So can you help me understand what the money is used for specifically?
Edmond, did you want to go ahead?
Yeah, sure.
I'll answer it.
So thanks for the question.
So what we use for the currently we have about 120 volunteers at the Housing Justice Project.
We also have eight staff attorneys who provide it for the entire county.
So we don't just represent Seattle, we do the entire county at two different locations.
And the pro bono volunteers, you know, sometimes some will volunteer once a week, others volunteer once a month, once others, you know, every few months.
And so The extent to which somebody is even actively involved really tends to vary, but we primarily have to, especially for the more difficult cases, rely on our staff attorneys to be able to field that.
Well, there's about 4500 filings a year.
You know, there is a high number of people who don't show up to those, but we still have to field about between, you know, 2,000 to 3,000 cases, give or take every year for people who are filing who are in an eviction process.
You know, the ones we have pretty straightforward cases that I think somebody who maybe volunteers on occasion is going to be able to provide quality adequate representation.
But when you have more difficult cases that involve more complex areas of law or like right now where you have the law that's just constantly changing all the time or a need to be able to file appeals, for example, we tend to rely on our staff attorneys to be able to do that for the entire county.
So what the money would actually go to would be help building up that support staff.
So that staffing, so the staff attorneys to be able to provide quality representation, because the legal professions like the medical profession, if you have a heart issue, you don't go to a neurosurgeon, you go to somebody who has a specialty in the actual area that you're practicing in.
And so what we need to do is be able to hire attorneys who specialize in housing law and landlord tenant issues to be able to provide adequate representation.
And while we do rely on a lot of pro bono attorneys right now, they definitely, there's a certain extent to which a pro bono attorney just cannot be really counted on to be able to provide the extensive representation that might be needed or the intensive representation, depending on the issue that's involved in it.
So having some type of specialization, be able to hire staff that's going to be able to specialize is pretty critical at this point.
Thank you.
And I would just add to that that we, as Edmund earlier pointed out, we won funding for attorneys this year, but that needs to be guaranteed for the future.
Renters should not have to struggle every November during the people's budget movement to maybe have eviction defense the following year.
If the city council decides to vote yes on that measure during the budget vote, you know, it should be guaranteed every year.
Wonderful.
I believe that was our last question.
And I think that's all we have time for today.
So I just want to thank everyone once again for being on this call and attending this press conference.
Thank you to the speakers for their wonderful comments this morning.
Finally, just want to let the media know that after this, we will be sending a recording of this press conference, as well as pull up slides and presentation and the coalition letters.
So you can expect that on your inbox.
Councilor Suran, any last comments?
I just wanted to acknowledge, which I forgot to do earlier, which is that in addition to the letter from the 47 community and labor organizations urging the mayor to extend the eviction moratorium to December 31st, we also got a separate letter, the council got a separate letter from LGBTQ allyship, which is a nonprofit organization that represents the needs of LGBTQ community members, also urging the mayor to extend the moratorium to December 31st of this year, at least.
Wonderful, thank you.
Okay, folks, I think that's about it for this morning.
Thank you again, everyone, for participating today.