Seattle City Council Sustainability & Renters' Rights Committee 12621

Good afternoon.

This is the regularly scheduled meeting of the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee of the Seattle City Council.

The time is 2.05 p.m.

on Tuesday, January 26, 2021. I am Council Member Kshama Sawant.

Would the clerk, which is Ted Wadron for my office, please call the roll?

Council Member Sawant?

Here.

Councilmember Morales.

Councilmember Juarez.

Councilmember Lewis.

Present.

Councilmember Peterson.

Present.

Three present.

Thank you, Ted, and thank you council members for joining us.

As I shared with some of you earlier, Council Member Morales will be joining us in a few minutes.

And I will note for the record, Council Member Juarez has sent apologies and is excused from today's meeting.

Today the sustainability and renters rights committee will begin by engaging with community members on two key pieces of renters rights legislation that combined if introduced by my office and approved by the city council majority would provide basic rights and security to tens of thousands of renters in our city who are struggling under the dual impact of the COVID pandemic and the capitalist recession.

As those of you who have paid close attention to the agenda would have noticed, the bills have not been introduced formally into the council's calendar.

Today's discussion will be an important discussion.

We have community members, renters, other renters, rights experts, and also our city council central staff here to help us with the discussion.

The fact is, corporate landlords are going to be fiercely opposed to both bills.

In fact, we know that corporate landlords are, as we speak, exerting a lot of pressure on governor and the state legislature to water down or even completely repeal even the existing moratoriums.

So renters who are watching this and also others who want to be part of a social justice movement for renters, homeowners, small businesses, and small landlords should note that if we want to win these bills as law in Seattle, it will require us to build a fighting movement to make sure that we hold the entire city council accountable to ordinary people who are struggling in this unprecedented crisis, not corporate landlords.

So first we will hear from tenants and community organizers on the.

the extending the eviction moratorium at least through the end of the year.

If it fails to do so, then we know the results will be catastrophic.

We're going to go through some of the statistics today in a presentation.

But for tens of thousands of Seattle renters facing the prospect of eviction and homelessness and for everyone in Seattle who will be impacted by the social and economic crisis, that will follow this tsunami of evictions.

And in fact, I would also note that the word tsunami was actually not used first by socialists like myself.

It was, I believe, used in corporate media.

The current eviction moratorium in the city has been extended three months at a time, meaning that renters at risk of eviction, which is now many, many renters, never have the opportunity to catch their breath and focus on getting back on track because the threat of an impending eviction is always around the corner.

It's extremely stressful, as anybody who has rented at any time in their life will know.

In addition to all the other stress and life chaos, that people are facing because of the compounded crises around them.

Thank you to Ali Panucci from Council Central Staff who has been working with us on finding the best options for extending that moratorium.

Second, we will discuss draft legislation guaranteeing the right to counsel for all renters facing eviction in Seattle.

And I would like to thank Council Central Staff member Asha Venkatraman and Edmund Witter from the Housing Justice Project for your help on that legislation.

For that discussion, renters rights legal experts will talk about the impact of having legal representation in eviction court.

Finally, we will have five appointments and reappointments to the City of Seattle Renters Commission.

If the city fails to act, then in the coming year, we could see tens of thousands of evictions disproportionately in communities of color, clogging first the courts, then shelters and streets as tens of thousands of people lose their rental homes And as the statistics show us ominously, this is far from hyperbole.

This is an actual prospect unless real policies are undertaken.

And not just at the city level, but also at the state and federal level.

It would be a human catastrophe in our city on a scale that we haven't seen since the 1930s on top of the brutal economic costs that Seattle would be forced to bear, paying for more shelters, emergency housing and food, health care emergencies, public safety crises, and so on.

And we know these services are already massively overstretched.

In late December, more than 2,000 community members signed a petition Mayor Durkin which was issued by my office demanding a full year extension of her emergency order declaring an eviction moratorium.

Renter organizing succeeded in getting the mayor to extend protections but she only did so for three months through March and we know the kind of anxiety it has So we'll have more of this discussion as we go forward today.

But before we begin those items, we have public comment.

And before we start public comment, I just wanted to acknowledge for the record, we have Council Member Morales here.

Thank you for joining us.

Ted, hello.

So Ted Verdone will be running through the public comment, but I believe I have the names here.

So I would start with the first person who is signed up and present.

It's Irene Stupka.

Each of you will have two minutes.

You will have to press star six to unmute yourself.

I'm sure many of you have heard these instructions before, but Irene, if you're ready.

Um, hello.

Thank you.

Council woman.

Cause I want, I, my name is Irene Stupka.

I wish to speak to council about the extension of the eviction moratorium in Seattle.

I want to thank the Coast Salish people for their stewardship of the lands where we as Seattle residents now live.

Thank you council for figuring out the moratorium to help avoid homelessness.

I'm obliged to be here to ask you to craft better policies than the current moratorium that we have.

Not unlike many urban residents, my family lives in shared housing.

We have roommates.

As it happens, I am the leaseholder.

And so I'm a tenant as well as a landlord.

As a result of the moratorium, I am now indefinitely responsible for housing my roommates.

Some have not been paying rent.

Um, I, it's hard for me to speak in the time that's allotted to explain, uh, the difficulty of being in this complex situation.

I have written to council, uh, so that my council representatives, uh, several times about this issue as the moratorium has been extended, extended.

Um, we have used the two one, one line, um, uh, each of us individually to try to get, um, help with our rent.

Um, I have called the.

legal, um, clinics to get more information about my responsibilities and the restrictions I'm put under, under these circumstances.

Um, and, uh, It, uh, it used to be that we, the paragraph nine of the landlord tenant law allowed us to, uh, change our roommates, but as it is now, um, we're all going to have to move out and the cost can be very high for our small family, which is caused by the moratorium.

I believe that was the end of my time.

You still have a few seconds left.

I got paragraphs left to read.

I will write to you again.

I will write to you again.

OK, thank you, Irene.

And I understand that the scale of the crisis is far more than can be captured in two minutes.

But we appreciate your testimony.

Next, we have Jacob Shear.

Good afternoon.

Hi, my name is Jacob sheer.

Um, and I'm speaking today on behalf of the book workers union, uh, which is an independent rank and file led union that represents the workers of the LA pay book company on Capitol Hill.

Um, we sent fully behind the legislation put forward by council members to want to extend the eviction moratorium through December 31st, 2021. Uh, many of us were laid off from work beginning in March and have had various degrees of success, securing unemployment throughout this crisis.

We know that we're not alone, and with thousands of our neighbors out of work, underemployed, and experiencing housing and income insecurity, an eviction moratorium is the best possible stopgap measure to ensure that tens of thousands of your constituents do not lose their homes and do not have to experience the uncertainty of waiting month to month to know whether or not the moratorium will be extended.

Evictions are cruel and humane, and to continue this process during a global pandemic and unprecedented housing crisis is even more unconscionable.

Please stand with renters and workers and extend the eviction moratorium through December 31st, 2021. Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you, Jacob.

Next we have Ludella, but I don't see her presence.

If she arrives, we will add her to the list.

For now, we have Laura Wright.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Laura Wright.

I'm a resident and community leader in Rainier Beach neighborhood.

And I would also like to address the extension of the eviction moratorium.

As a leader of a non-profit and community partner to Rainier Beach High School and Emerson Elementary we along with our school social workers are getting daily requests for rent and utility assistance.

We have several students that would have liked to share directly with you all today but they were unable to participate.

One student is a primary caretaker for her infant cousin.

And I think this just highlights the burden of the many roles that students are now being forced to manage and navigate due to the pandemic.

Our students, along with trying to learn online, have become primary caretakers and even income earners for their families.

At 14 years old, they're having to support their family's basic needs and are extremely worried about their families becoming evicted from their homes.

I'm now going to directly read a testimony from a freshman student named Kathy.

Living in the South Seattle area known as the South End to most of us my entire life I have grown up in a diverse space.

Eviction isn't an uncommon thing to most families here as the South End is a low income area.

But now with the pandemic people are struggling even more to bring any form of money home and the moratorium can help these families from not only losing their homes but potentially everything they have.

If I'm being honest I think we already have.

We're coming up on a whole year with a moratorium being set in place and I personally think without it Seattle's big homelessness problem would have only gotten bigger since we are a major city.

So many of my friends families are behind on rent and are worried about what is going to happen when they can't pay it back to the landlords.

What's going to happen to us when we can't pay.

We can't forget about our small businesses either.

Whether you're a Seattle native or a newcomer you know that our area is diverse.

If we were to evict our local homes In businesses we wouldn't have the culture we know and love.

I grew up eating and celebrating all things be it.

If my local fuzz shop closes down because they're evicted where will I show my friends my culture and favorite food.

I'm begging you to extend the eviction moratorium till at least the end of the year.

I might only be a freshman in high school but I'm already losing the place and community that I love and call home due to gentrification.

Please don't let me lose even more because of evictions.

Thank you.

We have Ludella Bowen here, so we'll have Ludella speak next.

Are you there, Ludella?

We can't we can't hear you.

Did you press star 6.

OK.

OK.

Can you hear me now.

Yes.

OK.

Greetings to all that are in a meeting to Kusama and Jonathan and all my good friends.

I'm I'm I'm I'm.

Very happy to be here today.

I am a moral supporter of all of those that are, are in the process of being evicted or, uh, going through trying, going through eviction.

I sympathize with you because about a year ago we were in that same position.

And what we did was we, um, we all got together and we organized and, um, we, um, One allowed to talk to the board or somebody we needed to talk to, but we never did give up.

We got a petition going, got just about everybody to sign and they froze our rent for a year.

And thank God another year, this year coming up, our rent did not get an increase.

So I encourage you all to just keep on, uh, doing the necessary things that you need for conviction.

And I'm praying for you.

And Jonathan brought me a petition, and we got, I think I gave him 14, and then I added two more, 16 people that signed to unite with you to, because I believe that more people that sign, you have a better chance to be heard.

And so I encourage you not to give up, just do the necessary things that need to be done.

Don't lose hope.

There's group, there's, There's a strength in numbers.

And I was a caretaker for 26 years, and I know for myself that it's not easy, you know, trying to move someone and all, and especially elderly people, because when they're stabilized, it's not good to move them.

But just continue, and we'll just keep on fighting.

I'll continue to support you as Kshama, who fights real hard for the little man, as I say.

And together, we can win this, OK?

Thank you so much, Ludella.

Wise words of encouragement and specifically of the value of renters, just like workers getting organized.

The example of the Brighton Apartments that Ludella was talking about is quite inspiring, and hopefully we'll be able to share more during the committee.

Next, we have Sonia Ponath.

Hi.

Hi, I'm a working mom of two.

I've been a previous small business owner, a small landlord, a renter, a tech worker, and I empathize with everyone struggling today.

I strongly support council members to want Socialist Alternative and the movement for a foreclosure moratorium in addition to an eviction moratorium, just to protect all working people, homeowners, and landlords.

This pandemic is causing additional pain and suffering that could be avoided with strong action.

by our government officials.

Sadly, that hasn't happened, and now we see those promised $2,000 checks reduced to maybe $1,400, but then maybe possibly less sometime in the future.

Well, we can't wait for that.

We must take action ourselves.

I am calling on the council to take action now by passing Council Member Sawant's legislation to extend the moratorium through at least the end of 2021. We are looking at tens of thousands of evictions, especially in communities of color.

This will likely overwhelm the courts, shelters, and streets if people lose their homes.

Also, I really support the demand to cancel rent and mortgages to ensure that the economic crisis doesn't lead to massive debt and evictions for Seattle renters.

Big banks, Wall Street, and real estate corporations, they should take the burden of the crisis, not the renters, the small landlords, or struggling small businesses.

We cannot rely on big business to do anything but help themselves.

It really does not trickle down.

We must organize ourselves.

I urge struggling small landlords to join our movement because we have way more power together than alone.

So please contact council members who want the office to get involved.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sonia.

And I will echo your call for small landlords who are struggling themselves to pay their mortgages to contact our office and get organized alongside us.

Next, we have Esther John.

Hi, my name is Esther little dove, John, and I'm talking about extending the addiction more addiction moratorium until at least the end of this year.

I've moved five times in the past 35 years, all caused by gentrification.

I was in a spot that white people now saw as valuable.

They moved white people into my domicile and I had, and they had no consideration for where I would land next.

I couldn't land in my neighborhood because the price of a domicile was raised too high.

I've moved farther south every time.

I wonder what I will have to do if the rent goes up now.

I don't have any Seattle alternatives left.

Now some landlords want to displace some tenants because those tenants can't pay the rent due to COVID-19.

There is nowhere for them to go.

There's nowhere for them to relocate.

There's nowhere where rents or mortgages are the same or lower.

If they have children, there's no way to resume school in a new location without bringing some bringing about some terrible disruption given COVID-19.

A lot of my neighbors have been shunted out of work because of COVID-19.

This economic crisis is with us until who knows when.

We won't be able to start paying back loans, credit cards, et cetera, immediately.

So we need to at least an extension until the health crisis is over.

We need to stay in the same place until the COVID-19 crisis is over.

Thanks for listening to me.

Thank you, Esther.

And I would note that Esther Little Dove John will also be joining us in the panel.

And we are looking forward to hearing from her and other panelists.

Next, we have Renee Jewel.

Good day.

My name is Renee Jewel.

And I want to testify to protect renters from mass eviction.

Although I understand property owners need the rightfully due money and many depend on this income, there's currently a shortage in housing for the kind of already high level of homelessness that comes with it.

Perhaps if we put in place, well, then, so that renters can afford free pay, what they owe, that would help.

Right now, the shelters are overflowed every day, and COVID pandemic has left few occupations for those who aspire to turn them their rent-saving power.

Therefore, Like, this one time, I had this dinner party.

I threw this dinner party for my father's law company.

And like, some people came that like, did not RSVP, even though I wrote on the invitation to RSVP.

So I had to like, haul up the kitchen and like, put in more food.

So by the end, it was like, the more, the merrier.

Therefore, I implore the council to postpone evictions during rental obstacles and guarantee us the right to legal counsel.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Katie Gendry.

Hi, my name is Katie.

Thank you, Shama, and advocates for secure housing in Seattle.

Council needs to extend the moratorium on evictions to at least December 2021 to keep people housed.

I yield my time.

Thank you, Katie.

We have two speakers who are listed as not present.

We have Matt Elhart and Rob McVickers.

I don't see them as present.

Given that, unfortunately, we will have to move on.

But Matt and Rob, please, if you're listening, please send us your testimony in writing and we will definitely share it with the rest of the committee members.

So our first agenda, I'll close public comment now.

And our first agenda item is, as I mentioned before, a discussion on extending the eviction moratorium.

So, as I mentioned before, we have several presenters.

I will read each of your names, presenters, and when I read your name, right after that, please come on the microphone and make a brief introduction of yourself for the record with a sentence or two.

First, we have Ariana Laureano.

Hello.

My name's Ariana Laureano.

I'm a renter in the U District in Seattle and an activist.

I work at a medical dispensary.

Happy to be here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Esther Little Dove John.

Esther, are you there?

Welcome back to Esther.

We have Maya Garfinkel.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Maya Garfinkel.

I'm the organizing director at BCATL.

I'm really happy to be here to talk about how important extending the eviction moratorium is.

Thanks.

Lydia Rubenstein.

Hi, I'm Lydia Rubenstein.

I am the Resolve Housing Organizer for the Tenants Union in King County, and I'm excited to be here today.

Thanks.

Thank you, Lydia, and sorry for mispronouncing your last name.

We have Edmund Wetter.

Hi there, committee members, Edmund Witter.

I am the senior managing attorney at the King County Bar Association.

I also run the Housing Justice Project, which provides eviction defense services to tenants in King County.

Thank you.

Jonathan Rosenblum.

Jonathan Rosenblum, community organizer in Council Member Shama Sawant's office.

And Ali Pinochie.

Council members, committee members, Ali Panucci, council central staff.

Thank you.

Thanks for all the introductions.

First, we have Jonathan Rosenblum who will run us through a PowerPoint that will have some really crucial statistics that sort of frame the discussion.

So Jonathan, go ahead.

Hey, thank you very much.

I am going to share screen.

and begin this PowerPoint.

Can you just confirm that we have the first slide up?

Is that visible?

Yes.

Great.

So this is a brief presentation laying some of the factual foundation on why the City Council has to extend the eviction moratorium and establish the tenant right to counsel.

2020 was really tragic for many of us, but really, If you look at the year, it was a tale of two very different worlds, depending on who you were.

If you were at one of the largest companies in the United States, chances are you made a profit and you did very well.

Everybody's heard, I think, that the stock market is at record high.

CEO profits are way up.

But for the vast majority of us, unemployed, precariously employed, and financially on the edge.

And these are two headlines from the same newspaper, The Washington Post, showing the two different worlds that we inhabited this past year.

U.S. billionaires saw their net worth rise by almost $1 trillion between March and October alone.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon, richest man in the world still.

We saw Amazon making record-shattering profits in just the six months Between the start of the pandemic and September, $11.5 billion in profits to that company, while thousands of workers struggled in the warehouses and other workplaces.

Many got COVID, and unfortunately, a number of them died.

And yet, the net worth of the CEO of Amazon went up to $191 billion by the end of this year, up 66% in just the last 10 months of the year.

Amazon wasn't the only company in Seattle that was making lots of money.

Starbucks profits were way up.

Stock prices are much higher than they were before COVID, and the CEO of Starbucks recently told business media, I could not be more pleased with our U.S. sales recovery.

Of course, the picture is very different if you're a barista.

F5, which is also headquartered in Seattle, saw a huge growth in its software revenue during the pandemic.

$300 million in profits last year, and they just bought another software startup for $440 million in cash.

So they have a lot of money on hand, these companies.

Corporate landlords are also doing very well in the 2020 pandemic economy.

And corporate landlords today constitute a majority, about 53% of the housing rental market in the United States.

And we've selected just a couple as examples.

Equity Apartments, which is a very big corporate landlord with 9400 apartments in the Seattle area, registered $700 million in profits in just the first nine months of this year.

And another big company, Essex Property Management, which also is very big in the Seattle area, recorded $473 million in profits.

And I would note that before the pandemic hit, Essex was one of the top evicting landlords in the area.

If you look at the real estate business press, you can see a bit of honesty about what's going on for corporate landlords.

MASH visor reported last fall, Seattle real estate investors are continuing to enjoy great return on investments, right?

And here's a quote that I think is really very important for us to recognize.

Although affordability continues to be an issue for local residents, it does have a positive aspect for Seattle real estate investors.

In other words, renters, are shafted, displaced, gentrified out of their neighborhoods, but that's a good thing for real estate investors.

Purchases of apartments by major corporate landlords continues apace even with the pandemic.

Just in the last couple of months, we've seen two major real estate purchases in the Seattle area.

Deutsche Bank paid $279 million for a huge apartment complex on the east side, Um, and Blackstone made a big purchase of several multifamily apartment buildings in South King County.

Blackstone, you may have heard, is the largest owner of single family rental homes in the United States today, and its CEO is worth more than $21 billion.

How about for the rest of us?

What was 2020 like?

Well, we could probably do a few slides on this, but I just wanted to pick out a few important facts here.

First of all, between March and August, 57 million workers in the United States filed for unemployment.

And we can see in this chart that it had a disproportionate impact on the black community.

In fact, in the middle of 2020, black unemployment was 50 percent higher than white unemployment, the biggest racial gap in unemployment in several years.

There was also a disproportionate impact on women workers.

You may have heard that in December, the economy lost 140,000 net jobs.

All of those were in occupations overwhelmingly occupied by women workers.

And overall, since the pandemic began, women account for 55 percent of the overall net job loss since the start of the pandemic.

Now, we also know nationally before COVID, it was not a pretty picture for working-class people.

Seventy-eight percent of U.S. workers were living paycheck to paycheck just to make ends meet.

Nearly three in four workers reported being in debt, and more than half thought they would always be in debt.

Nearly three in five renters could not even come up with $400 for an emergency expense.

This is before COVID struck.

The Aspen Institute reported last fall that the COVID eviction crisis that is coming could impact 30 to 40 million workers in America – 30 to 40 million people in America at risk of eviction once the current eviction moratoriums end.

Moody's Analytics, which reports to Wall Street, estimated that At the end of 2020, nearly 13 million renters nationally owed an average of $5,400 in back rent.

And as this lawyer advocate notes, the tidal wave is coming.

It's going to be really horrible for people.

We know that stopping evictions is not just an economic justice issue.

It's also a racial justice issue.

Apartmentlist.com reported that at the beginning of this year, 28% of all renters were starting with rent debt.

But if you look behind that number, you can see that black renters are more than twice as likely to be in debt compared to white renters.

And Latino renters and Asian renters also are seeing higher rates of rent debt than white renters.

And you can see on the left side of this chart that rent debt is heavily skewed towards young people.

So the rent debt crisis is particularly acute for young people and in communities of color.

We know that those national statistics also translate down here as well.

In 2018, the Seattle Women's Commission and the King County Bar Association put out a report called Losing Home, which reported that over half of all tenants in eviction filings, this is pre-COVID, over half of all tenants were people of color and over 30% were black tenants.

Now, black tenants constitute about 7% of the population of Seattle.

So you can see disproportionately communities of color, especially black communities, are impacted by the eviction crisis.

The report also demonstrated that most evicted respondents, about close to nine out of 10, became homeless.

So eviction does lead to homelessness, no question about it.

And it also leads to pushing people out of Seattle.

Ultimately, eviction pushed low-income tenants out of Seattle at a very high rate.

So it contributes to accelerating gentrification in our communities.

Now, just to put a fine point on the two different worlds that we occupied in 2020, I just put this chart together that shows the total rent debt, according to Moody's analytics that renters have accumulated this year, is about $70 billion.

And you see that in the green chart on the left.

The total growth in the net worth of Jeff Bezos in the same time period, not his wealth, but the net growth of his wealth, is $79 billion.

And the total net growth of Elon Musk in that same time period is $158 billion.

In other words, either of these gentlemen could write a single check today and wipe out the entire U.S. rental debt.

due to the pandemic.

That gives you a sense of the disparity of wealth that has grown just in the last several months under covid and the capitalist recession.

So what are our demands as a renters movement?

We know that we need to extend the eviction moratorium as we're talking about today, not just through the health crisis, not just once people get vaccinated, but through the end of the economic crisis that will take a long time for working people to dig out of.

Secondly, we need to establish the tenant right to counsel for all tenants facing eviction, regardless of their financial status.

And thirdly, we need to support state and national cancel rent and cancel mortgage movements.

We know that simply pushing evictions out solves the immediate problem, but it does not solve the long-term problem of debt.

And so we need to look at canceling debt for renters, working class homeowners, struggling small businesses and landlords who have lost income due to covid and the economic recession.

Now, I just want to note before I close here that for small landlords, you're probably aware that that if your loan is federally backed, which is close to half of all loans, you have mortgage forbearance and foreclosure moratorium protections from the federal government.

Part of our demand as a movement has to be that private lending institutions extend the same protections to homeowners who have loans with those private institutions.

And ultimately, it's the big banks, the corporate real estate firms, and Wall Street who must pay for the crisis, not working people.

Thanks very much.

That concludes the presentation, and I will stop screen sharing.

Sorry, thank you, Jonathan.

And that was a really informative presentation.

I would, of course, welcome any questions or comments by committee members.

And I also invite the panelists now to participate.

And of course, council members, please feel free to ask questions in any order.

You can ask questions about the presentation later as well.

That's no problem at all.

But I will pause for a second now to see if council members have any questions or comments.

I don't see any requests from council members, so we will go ahead with the panel.

And I would just note before they come on that, as I said before, we do have city council central staff to explain the the draft legislation as they stand, both for the eviction moratorium extension and right to counsel.

But first, we will invite our community member panelists to speak.

And I'm not sure if you all have decided amongst yourself what order you are going to speak on.

Of course, we want to also have a free-flowing discussion.

So I will open it up.

Ariana, did you want to start?

prepared?

If that's all right with you.

Yes.

All right.

Hello, my name is Arianna Laureano.

Again, thank you for letting me share my story and thoughts.

So I moved to Seattle for a place where I didn't have to look over my shoulder, for a place where medical discrimination against trans women is practically unheard of, and where I wouldn't have to carry a firearm so I could exist in peace.

I landed in Seattle, as many trans folks do, into an abusive shared housing situation.

And this then led to homelessness.

During the course of my time homeless in Seattle, I learned a lot about humanity and how our moral boundaries hold up to the weight of poverty, city life, and where our resources go, and how desperately short of resources we are.

When I was getting my life together and going on to do job training, I volunteered at a homeless youth shelter here in the U District.

And the stories I heard pre-pandemic about how desperate the need is and how short on resources we are were tragic.

And no one deserves to be homeless.

And I can tell you that before the pandemic, being forced onto the street was a death sentence.

It destroys your body, it destroys your mind, and it destroys your heart.

The right to legal counsel is a right to defend yourself against that fate.

I know what it's like to be walked over by society and to have no power.

I lived on disability, which is $793 a month for years.

And for years, I was constantly put in situations where I had no power and a landlord was putting me out.

I've lost shelter within a week of paying rent.

I've been helpless to defend myself and had everything I owned taken from me multiple times by landlords and been helpless to stop them.

Just Cause protections, when coupled with the right to legal counsel, gives people a fighting chance and a chance to actually stand up for your rights when they're violated, regardless of your economic standing.

And while it might not be perfect, it does at least start paving the way to Americans with disabilities having a shot at housing justice.

It adds a layer of legal protections to those living in shared housing situations, and it can mitigate and potentially stop abuse from happening.

It can help even the playing field between those with power and the powerless.

And to me, I just wanted to say this is a common sense piece of legislation.

It should be a basic tenants right in our nation.

I really appreciate that, Ariana.

Maybe Maya Garfinkel can go next.

And as I said, council members, please let me know either through video hand wave or through the Zoom raise hand feature if you would like to ask a question or make a comment.

Go ahead, Maya.

Hi, everyone.

Thank you.

I'll just read a short statement that I prepared an organizer with housing justice and anti gentrification organization right to the city.

Explain that the pandemic crisis is an economic crisis that then becomes an eviction crisis.

We didn't create this crisis.

We shouldn't suffer the effects.

It is and has been difficult to adequately represent the depth of this crisis.

We can say that in 2017, almost half of Seattle renters were rent burdened.

We know that nationally tenants who are rent burdened had an average of $10 in savings.

So how do we conceptualize the rent debt in the United States?

U.S. renter households may have as much as $70 billion in rent debt.

I speak with renters who are paying their rent on credit cards and are borrowing from their family members to just barely make rent.

And those are the folks who are paying rent.

Unlawful evictions are occurring.

Many landlords are not doing repairs because tenants are not paying rent.

Landlords are already threatening to evict people and sharing that once the eviction moratorium is over, they will raise the rent so high that people can no longer even begin to afford it.

Renters on this panel and those who have called in know what's happening.

Seattle City Council can't just listen.

We need you to act.

In December of 2020, more than 160,000 people in Washington reported that they had no confidence that they would be able to pay next month's rent.

We elected our representatives and Some are too concerned about certification requirements, while hundreds of thousands of Washington renters have no or little confidence that they will be able to make rent.

This just can't be the priority.

Landlords will always be upset when the city challenges their power.

We need to prioritize housing people and Seattleites' health over landlords' inevitable anger.

We need your priority to be fighting for Seattle renters.

80% of landlords in Seattle who have been surveyed are white.

And in King County, black renters, black women renters are seven times more likely to be evicted as white men.

And as folks have said, this is a racial justice issue.

Keeping people housed during the pandemic will just begin to address the housing crisis in Seattle.

So we need to keep fighting to keep people housed now and always.

And then just one plug, if you're interested in fighting for Seattle renters and building renter power, please come to be Seattle's first workshop of the new year.

It's tomorrow, January 27th at 6pm.

Council Member Swant will also be joining us as well as Ariana.

So yeah, thank you so much.

I'm sure we will come back to you and Ariana with questions and you know, requiring you to give us more input, but that was very useful so far.

Next, could we have Lydia Rubenstein go?

Thank you.

So, I'm Lydia Rubenstein.

I'm the Resolve Housing Organizer with the Tenants Union of Washington.

I hope everyone can hear me all right.

So, first and foremost, passing Councilmember Sawant's eviction moratorium through at least December 2021 is pretty much a basic and necessary first step toward any form of a just recovery in Seattle.

Renters need and deserve housing security for longer than just a few months at a time.

Ensuring everyone can actually stay safely in place in their communities with people they trust at this time is the absolute bare minimum to reduce the spread of COVID and stabilize communities during this crisis.

This moratorium also can't add any more certification requirements for tenants.

These requirements, such as the requirements in the CDC moratorium, are an intense and unnecessary barrier to accessing these protections that you're claiming to offer tenants.

Um, we, there are already people naming the effects of this kind of any type of certification, um, or added barrier, uh, such as the Houston Public Media actually shared that, uh, based on a study of 100 tenants who applied in Harris County, um, 99 of those 100 actually failed the judge's certification, meaning only one person was able to access, uh, the eviction moratorium protections.

Please do not add any barriers for tenants to access these protections during this crisis.

We also know, as I said, this is kind of the first step, or really, you know, a responsive step to housing instability and towards housing justice.

We know passing broader rental protection, such as right to counsel, are the things that allow us to imagine real and legitimate housing security and stability for tenants.

We know that landlords initiate eviction processes are most often represented by lawyers, and the opposite is actually true for tenants, especially for our low-income neighbors and low-income tenants who are fighting tooth and nail every day to just keep and stay in any version of housing, even if that means accepting really mediocre conditions.

We know that only 8% of Washingtonian tenants actually have legal representation in their eviction cases, and this is often why landlords are able to get away with evicting people for amounts of money, such as $2, which is absurd and unethical and deeply irresponsible.

This is why we've got to pass Right to Counsel and we've got to push forth more tenant protections that allow for stability, not just getting people basic needs, you know, right?

So we also know that research shows there's severe and negative emotional tolls that even being threatened or put at risk of evictions take.

It's why we need you to pass it for longer than just a few months.

We know that renters make up more than half of Seattle.

It's your responsibility to fight the legacy of racist and predatory evictions and gentrification in response to times of crisis.

So please pass and support extending the moratorium until December 2021. And look forward to more and long term solutions such as ensuring that tenants can actually recover with little to no debt in response to this COVID-19 crisis.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lydia.

Council Member Morales.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you.

I have a train of thought that may or may not result in several questions, so I'm just going to kind of put it out there.

I know that we have some existing protections right now, theoretically, during COVID, including COVID as a defense against against an eviction, but we know we've all heard stories about people getting pushed out anyway, about landlords threatening and people getting evicted despite the protections that we have in place.

So I'm interested to know if there's any information on how many people have been affected or any information on where they go, what kind of situation they end up finding themselves in.

I'm sure there have been folks who end up homeless, but I'm wondering if there are other what we know about that.

And then the last question I have is how many cases per year might we anticipate?

And what I'm really trying to get at is as we're thinking about establishing something like this, what do we need to be thinking about for budget purposes later this year so that we can start anticipating how we actually get this stood up?

over the course of the year.

And I don't know if those are questions for Asha or who, but those are the questions I have.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Yeah, Asha, Ali, either of you, if you want to respond, and also if our community panelists want to speak to these questions as well, that's most welcome.

Go ahead.

Sure.

with Council Central staff.

For the piece around how many cases we're looking at, I believe the estimate is about 12, and this is specific to the right to counsel piece, but we're looking at about 1,200 cases in terms of the people that go to eviction court.

So that is the estimate for how much council is actually needed for King County.

I'm sorry, for Seattle.

And on your other question, can you remind me?

I'm sorry, I forgot the other one.

So I'm just trying to think what does it mean to fund this option for people to assure people that they will have right to counsel given that there are that many cases a year, which I have to say that's a lot more than I expected you to say.

So thank you for that information.

Sure, yes, and thanks for the refresher.

At this point, the estimate is about $750,000 annually to be able to have the Housing Justice Project staff that many evictions.

Obviously this year's estimate is a little different because of the moratorium Currently, I believe we are funding them at a six, I think it's $605,000.

And so that is the contract for 2021. So depending on if and when the moratorium ends, that might require adding more funds to get us up to the 750,000.

But again, that'll depend primarily on the timing of the moratorium.

Thank you, Asha.

And so, yeah, that would allow that those 1,200, estimated 1,200 people would have somebody with them as they're going through that process.

Thank you.

And actually, after Ali comes in, I would also invite maybe Edmund.

I mean, all panelists are, of course, welcome to speak to these questions.

These are very important questions.

But if Edmund, from the experience of the Housing Justice Project, also wanted to speak, because these are Attorneys who have first-hand experience with tenants experiencing eviction and what a decisive difference it makes having trained legal representation.

I think that would also be useful.

Go ahead, Allie.

Thank you, Councilwoman Swan.

I don't have anything to add to what Asha presented.

Thanks.

OK, thank you.

Edmund, did you want to speak to this?

Yeah, and thank you for, first of all, taking this on.

I think this is a really important issue.

And I wanted to correct one thing.

Our contract with the city is about $200,000, actually, this year, not $600,000.

The one thing is that, just to answer the question, we actually don't really know the scope of this problem, because that 1,200 number is how many filed evictions occurred.

Washington is unique in that it doesn't have a court case get filed until really late.

And so when you compare us to another state, it looks like our numbers might be significantly lower.

But if you go to a place like Maryland, for example, well, Maryland, the landlord can't even demand rent without filing something in court.

So the result is when you look at Baltimore, they have 160,000 rent demands effectively filed in their court.

that then kind of trickle down into a certain number of evictions.

We don't know how many tenants fall behind on their rents every month.

We don't know how many landlords ask them to leave.

And that's the sort of the big unknown.

I will say when we look at our internal numbers of like how many people that we don't include just the file cases, but we look at how many people came to us with a rental problem that starts approaching about 3000 in Seattle.

And that number, again, is just the people who come to us.

So I don't know how many people are out there also who go to other organizations, go to other legal services, or don't really go to anyone.

And I think the other big problem that we have ultimately in this is how do we work with a lot of people who don't show up to court, which has always been the biggest problem.

I think the most vulnerable members we have are the ones who don't show up to our services, don't have contact with other organizations.

And those are the people who have a language barrier.

Those are the tenants who are struggling with a disability, who the first person who actually is the point of contact, unfortunately, is usually the King County Sheriff when they come there to evict them.

And I think a lot of the big kind of crux of all of this is like, this is sort of, I think is really feeding into a lot of our homelessness crisis right now.

And when you think about just our numbers, there's about 11,000 homeless persons on any given night, generally.

But we have a county of two million people.

I mean, that's that's not a ton of people, but we know how visible it is.

We know what a crisis is.

And the fact is, it's just actually it doesn't take a lot of people to be homeless for it to be very visible in your community and to have all of the other problems that come with that and to have basically the crisis and emergency that we've been in.

So even if you have 1,200 people or you have a fraction of that, just adding 1,000 of people to that number is going to cause even bigger crisis, especially now.

It doesn't take a million people to make a crisis.

It actually just takes a couple thousand or even less than that at this point.

This is why this is so critical right here.

And I think when we did that report on losing home a couple years ago with the Seattle Women's Commission, Part of it was just to shine a light on what was going on.

There was evictions that were happening for $10.

We had tenants who would show up on the homelessness desk after they were evicted.

And really, nobody's really counting or following up with those tents to find out where they're going.

And I think it's ultimately, there's a lot of mental health issues that are going unaddressed that are basically being seen in that court and that court is not prepared to handle.

And there's also just a lot of people who are losing their homes for very little bits about amounts of money in the area.

And that is a crisis and it's going to cause further problems.

Thank you, Edmund.

I know Council Member Lewis has raised his hand in Zoom, and I will invite you, Council Member Lewis, in just one second.

And I also haven't forgotten, we have Esther on the panel, and she spoke in public testimony, but not in this discussion yet, and I definitely want to give her some space as well.

But Edmund, thank you so much for, first of all, giving us a little bit of perspective on what numbers we should expect in terms of people who are going to be affected by evictions.

And also, I'm a little.

So, you know, taken aback by the fact that you're only getting $200,000 in funding.

I mean, we fought for and won $605,000.

I don't know if Ted Verdone from my office wanted to comment on it quickly.

Maybe it's something we should ask department staff.

Council Member Swan, if I could just clarify, $605,000 was the amount of appropriation authority approved by the council to fund organizations that provide eviction defense.

services such as the housing justice project.

So we can follow up with the department to figure out, to understand exactly how those contracts have gone out.

And because that was a council add, whether or not there's a delay in modifying contracts, but that was the total amount in the adopted budget for eviction defense.

And we- 605. 605, correct.

Yeah.

Yes, thank you, Ali.

That would be not only useful, but extremely necessary for us to follow up on that, and I would appreciate that.

We'll come back to that in the next committee when we have some answers.

But one thing I'm curious about, Ali, if you could weigh in on this, and if Ted wanted to add, that's also fine.

My understanding was that there's not very many organizations providing this kind of actual legal defense.

tenant support organizations that where tenants go to in terms of, you know, just other inquiries like the tenants union and be Seattle, which do extremely valuable work.

But so if those dollars were allocated for eviction defense, are there other organizations that I'm not aware of?

Well, I know, for example, last year, the Grants of $340,000 in total were issued for eviction defense.

And of that, that was in part for the Housing Justice Project, as well as the Tenant Law Center.

So I know last year, those two organizations were funded.

And I can't tell you off the top of my head what other organizations may have applied or been awarded funds this year.

But that is something we can follow up on, unless, Asha, you had any additional information.

No?

OK.

Those are the two organizations I'm aware of.

Okay, thank you.

And I know Arianna has also raised her hand.

Did you want to speak to this topic before I call on Council Member Lewis?

Arianna, do you want to go ahead?

Mention with regards to Americans with disabilities not showing up to court when they're being evicted that currently Americans with disabilities have no hope to defend themselves in most scenarios.

The best choice when you're faced with an eviction when you have no money and no power and no hope is to just walk away.

And that's what they do.

They leave and they're gone and then they're homeless.

And that's what happens.

Just wanted to share that.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Ariana.

It is extremely important what you said.

Council Member Lewis, go ahead.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

I just want to start by saying I'm really enjoying this conversation and very much support a right to counsel in eviction proceedings.

In doing some research in anticipation of the committee meeting today, I knew that some cities had already enacted a right to council provision.

I didn't know the number of cities that had and the nature of the cities, like that it wasn't just like Berkeley or something that enacted one.

You know, like looking at the list, like Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York City, Newark, there's a pilot program in Houston.

There's one in Boulder, Colorado, San Francisco.

So, I mean, I think this is an emerging national best practice and really excited that we're discussing this and looking forward to voting it in.

This is more a question I wanted to flag.

I think for central staff and in proceeding with this as legislation gets submitted.

One question that I do have in reviewing the statutes in some of the other cities.

Is there is a an eligibility threshold for people to get the representation?

And this was a question that.

Um?

I've been thinking about given the correlation between right to counsel and criminal proceedings, which is based in having a certain qualifying threshold.

I mean, we expect people criminally accused to hire their own lawyers if their income is at such a level.

And a lot of these statutes seem to accommodate or to to be informed by that, but there's a colossal variation, like Cleveland's is 100% of the poverty line is the cutoff, which I think is very restrictive and would be much too broad.

Philadelphia is a little broader at 200% of the poverty line, but I would be interested from central staff and maybe an analysis of how these other cities draw the line, because I would want to make sure that That this policy is inclusive, but I do think it would be important.

For there to be to be a cut off somewhere in the case that there is a.

A person that could afford their own representation much in the same way that we apply.

That same standard and criminal proceedings, which I think is the.

there is a correlation between, we are trying to essentially apply the same right to counsel that is enjoyed in criminal proceedings to these critical eviction proceedings.

But I'd be interested in an analysis of that as we have this conversation, since it looks like there's a lot of variety in where that line is drawn.

And that might also be informed by an analysis of the people who are currently getting evicted, I would expect would be overwhelmingly indigent or closer to the poverty line, particularly for economic evictions, but just kind of flagging some of the information I would want from central staff as we go forward, but.

I'm very excited to support a right to counsel and I appreciate council members who want to bring this forward.

And I think the only regret is we won't be the first one to do it because a lot of other cities have taken the lead, but it's never too soon to adopt that critical protection.

So thank you so much.

Thank you councilmember Lewis and I agree with you.

It's never too soon to do something that will benefit a large portion of our community that is suffering.

I wanted to invite Maya, Lydia, Edmund, all those of you who are directly working with renters and renters like Esther.

and Arianna themselves to respond to this question.

And I know Ted Verdone, who's policy analyst in my office, also would like a chance to respond.

I would just say, Council Member Lewis, in response to what you're saying, I mean, I'm not an expert on tenants, right?

And I don't do the work.

Edmund and Lydia and But just from an economic standpoint, just speaking as an economist, I would say that, I would say two things.

One is this, what you're pointing to, even if it's well intentioned, it's a type of means testing and it ends up negatively affecting the people who would actually qualify even with those, you know, with those guidelines.

but who are also vulnerable for those same reasons and are not able to do it.

So we have to design these kinds of programs which are targeted for the most vulnerable in an opt-out kind of way, not an opt-in kind of way.

In fact, when my office took on the energy committee, we made a huge push and we succeeded in forcing Mayor Murray to do that.

At that time, Mayor Murray to structure the utility discount program for our utility payments as opt out and not opt in.

And it made a huge difference for the simple reason that there's just vast statistical evidence that shows that that makes a huge difference.

Another thing I would say just against statistically speaking, why I think we should not do that is because The people who get eviction notices are overwhelmingly, and dare I say, exclusively people who also would qualify for other programs because they are extremely vulnerable.

I've never heard of, say, an upper middle class person facing an eviction because you don't face eviction because you have other options.

Eviction happens when the renter is completely out of options.

And so that's what I would say as an economist, but I invite Edmund and John, who have raised their hands, and also Ted, if you want to follow up on that.

Please go ahead.

John, do you want to chime in?

Sure.

My name is John Pollack.

I'm the coordinator of the National Coalition for Civil Rights Council.

Just as a reference point, of the seven states that have passed a right, excuse me, of the seven cities that have passed a right to council, three of them, San Francisco, Boulder, and Baltimore, have no income limit for their right to council.

And Cleveland's 100% was the result of a long and protracted battle with the city council, where ultimately they were not really willing to go any further, at least initially.

Their right to counsel not only is 100%.

income threshold, but also requires the family to have children in order to be covered.

So it is a much, much more limited right to counsel than what exists in pretty much all the other jurisdictions.

New York City's limit, which is 200%, there is already a bill pending to double that to 400% because there's a recognition that so many people are falling outside of the 200% threshold in New York City.

And just as one last data point, San Francisco, which has no income limit, did an analysis of who was applying for right to counsel a year into its implementation.

And it found that 85% of those who had gotten counsel were extremely low or low income, 9% were moderate income, and only 6% were above moderate.

And those 6% that were above moderate were probably not far above moderate.

So even though there was no income limit, the vast majority of people who got counsel really needed it.

And I think that's ultimately what generally happens when you have a right to counsel, regardless of the income limit or not.

Yeah, and I will second what John said, and I think also Council Member Sawant's comments, and I think Council Member Luis, it's a really good question.

The one thing I will kind of distinguish this from the criminal context, in criminal context, there's a whole sector called white-collar crime, and we know that crime is something that's committed by people of all classes and all races.

You know, there is a disproportionate impact on specific races and on lower-income persons, but that's really not really the case from what I've seen in an eviction.

I mean, there's no white-collar eviction for the most part.

I've never seen that.

It's a lot of times when people are struggling with evictions it's because of poverty, it's because of those struggles.

And so, in my experience when we've had when we do technically some type of means testing as it is, but it's mostly just a grant to comply with various grants but the reality is we almost never ever have to turn anybody away.

And it's pretty rare that we get somebody who actually does fall above that 200% federal poverty line that we generally use.

And sometimes we'll just take into other exceptions to that.

But the reality is like evictions, like 90% of them are about rents.

And a lot of times what we are trying to do is help somebody navigate the court system to be able to get the benefits and resources that they need.

And they cannot afford an attorney.

I would say just like avoiding trying to have the incest thing the best you can, because it can have a pretty negative effect and ultimately stall out.

And I think it's really ultimately not something that's needed.

Thank you.

Sorry, was somebody going to go over this?

Sorry, this is Ted.

Go ahead, Ted.

They looked at the rates that people have representation, which is a small minority of the time.

This is different counties, and we see King County is higher than other counties, but even King County is less than a quarter of the time people facing evictions have a lawyer present.

But they also looked at this thing called default evictions, and we're gonna talk about that uh, a lot more when, uh, later in this agenda, when, uh, when, uh, Edmund and John present on specifically on the, um, right to, uh, the right to counsel, uh, legislation.

And, um, uh, I know they have presentations put together on that, but, um, there is, um, uh, depending on what year it is, 30%, 50%, 65% of people in eviction court are people who get unlawful detainers.

So people who face eviction wind up getting evicted by default without ever having, you know, going through the full legal process by default because they didn't appear in court or they didn't respond to the paperwork properly or that sort of thing.

all of these people would be people, you know, and this half of people or more would be people who would suddenly become ineligible for legal counsel if they first had to go through a means testing test, because these are people who are evicted by default.

So one of the things that'll be discussed in that second point of the agenda is how to cover this huge swath of renters facing eviction who otherwise default.

Thank you, Ted.

And thank you, Edmund and John as well.

And thank you, Council Member Lewis, for your question.

I think that question is bound to come up sooner or later.

So I appreciate that you added that to the discussion and also appreciate your interest in the legislation.

And I would love to talk to your office offline and see if we can bring this legislation forward.

together, I'm happy to have any of the committee members co-sponsor either of these two bills.

But in the interest of time, I know we have John Pollock only until 3.45, and I know other panelists also have limited time.

I wanted to quickly invite Esther, who hasn't spoken in the discussion yet, and specifically if Esther Little Dove could talk more about the loss that has been faced by the black community.

You have experienced it yourself.

And also after Esther, Arianna, if you can comment on what do you think in terms of what percentage of your neighbors have lost income and if you could just expand on what the crisis looks like on the ground.

But Esther, go ahead, and then Arianna, and then we'll go to John for the right to counsel.

Yes, I'd like to say that my neighbors are all elderly people like myself, and we are all on limited income, and we're just waiting and hoping that the rent won't go up for our apartment building.

It's a It's an apartment building that's owned by the United Church of Christ, but they raised the rent last November.

That was tough on us.

And we're just holding on by our fingernails now.

So what I would like to know is whether the council members who are on this call would like to support the rent, the eviction moratorium because I think that's the most important thing of all is that there should be a moratorium on raising the rent because nobody is going to be able to afford anything more.

So I'm wondering if the council members could comment on the rent moratorium proposal.

Thank you, Esther Little Dove.

As you, I think you know what my position is.

I'm the chair of this committee and we've brought these two draft bills for discussion, but of course, invite council members to weigh in on this question.

In the meanwhile, until I see raised hands on the Zoom, I invite Ariana.

Ariana, if you want to talk about what this crisis looks like for your neighbors.

Yeah, so most of my neighbors are behind on rent.

Of everybody in my building that's behind on rent, I've helped everybody apply for the ERAP when it came through.

I'm the only one that won the lottery.

That whole process took six months.

So the eviction moratorium literally kept us housed while we were looking for assistance.

There's two single mothers with children who are behind rent in our building.

There's three vacancies now.

So it's not a big building.

It's only eight units.

Everybody's behind on rent, three vacancies.

In the U District, it's pretty brutal.

The homeless cities are booming.

I've worked with a lot of homeless folks and a lot of people I'm talking to now, they used to have shelter in Seattle, like they were working before the pandemic.

It's not people who are struggling with drug addiction anymore.

It's people who lost their job because of the policies we passed and the shutdown.

As far as essential workers go, I'm a full-time employee and my roommate's a full-time barista at Starbucks.

I get about 26 hours a week.

right now.

She gets about 20. We're full-time employees.

The companies have done something so they can keep giving us insurance regardless of us not meeting the hours, and they just simply don't have the hours anymore.

Business is brutally slow.

So if you're privileged enough to get a job in the slowly returning service industry, you're not going to get much more than a few hundred dollars a paycheck.

It's pretty brutal.

The thought of just returning things to normal and letting the economy take it, to me, is insanity.

Nobody's going out.

They're terrified of dying from the virus.

And now we have this new strain, and the CDC is estimating that within three months, it's going to be the dominant strain in the nation.

We can't end the eviction moratorium.

It's going to be really bad.

It's already really bad.

Right.

And Arianna, I think you made an important point that a lot of the people who are newly becoming vulnerable, it's because of the economic crisis and COVID.

People who used to have jobs who are now unemployed or underemployed.

And am I right in understanding, Arianna, that you used to be a UFC W21 shops team at PCC?

Yes.

And I think, yes, go ahead.

Sorry, in UFCW 21, there's a huge morality issue, you know, like we've been fighting for basic workers rights from the beginning.

UFCW as a whole union, not just the local chapter, was losing three people a day to the virus at the start of the pandemic.

And there's no universality of workers' protection.

So if you go back to work, you're basically rolling the dice on your life, on whether or not your employer cares about giving you gloves or the things you need to stay safe.

Sorry for interrupting you.

Oh no, absolutely no.

Apologies needed.

Thank you for adding that, Ariana, for giving also a national, nationwide perspective on what's happening to grocery store workers and, you know, the UFCW membership.

And obviously having the union is crucial, but it's also a massive crisis that grocery store workers are shouldering, you know, by themselves along with other frontline workers.

And I think it's important to know, I think it's important you brought this up because the renter crisis doesn't exist by itself somewhere else in the universe.

These are our workers.

These are people who are keeping the rest of us safe because we are able to do stay at home, but they aren't.

And they're also facing the renter crisis.

And it's for them that we're fighting for the eviction moratorium.

So that was a very valuable point of view that you brought in.

And I know other panelists also I'm sure want to speak, but just in the interest of time, if there are no objections, I wanted to invite John and Edmund to go over the Rarity Council presentation.

And there's a reason we're covering these two topics together, because in our minds, they are not separate in the sense that this is crises faced by renters, and it's a package of policies that's needed to start resolving the crisis.

So please go ahead with your presentation.

Thank you.

Great.

Can you see my presentation OK?

Yes.

OK, great.

Thank you.

So it's a pleasure to be here, and I'm really pleased that Seattle is considering this legislation.

we really are seeing an incredible groundswell around this issue.

My organization, the National Coalition for Civil Right to Counsel, has been involved in all of the successful campaigns so far that have established a right.

And I'm just going to talk for just a minute or two about why we do this, and then talk about what's actually happening.

But basically, like, when we talk about the downstream consequence of eviction, like, basically, the first thing we say is, like, everything is a consequence of eviction.

All of your basic human needs can basically be implemented, whether it's access to your children, schools, homelessness, your physical liberty by being arrested, employment loss, health effects, neighborhood effects, your neighborhood being devastated.

These are not theoreticals.

These are all been studied by social scientists.

There's data demonstrating that all of these impacts happen as a result of evictions.

And then, of course, there's the state, county, and city revenue loss from these consequences, potentially.

This is an estimate that was done nationally of the cost of evictions across the country, and it's about $315 billion.

That's what evictions cost us as a country, through all of these costs that are quantified on this particular slide.

And then during COVID, we have additional consequences, which are that basically evictions cause people to double up, increases the spread of infection.

And basically, that's why the CDC said we need to have a moratorium, because we cannot have people being evicted right now.

It's too dangerous.

unsheltered homelessness and doubling up are greatly contributing to spreading COVID.

This is not also theoretical.

There have been studies done by academics in the last few months that have demonstrated and quantified exactly how much evictions actually spread the prevalence of COVID-19 and have also looked at exactly how much mortality it causes, that it's not theoretical that it kills people, that evictions kill people.

They've actually looked at how an increase in the eviction rate actually leads to a certain number of deaths, which is when you see it portrayed that starkly, it really shows you exactly what we're talking about here.

There are also, COVID itself has created just a morass of legal issues.

The federal moratorium has a number of issues legally.

It has exceptions, it has limitations.

It has some things that are subject to interpretation.

Landlords are pressing legal claims in court that tenants do not know how to defend related to the moratorium.

The moratorium is constantly changing.

We expect, actually, the CDC moratorium to change soon, its parameters to change soon, hopefully to get better.

But that, again, will lead to another round of legal questions that come up.

The moratorium's nature in far as what they cover constantly changes.

In Washington State where sometimes you've had city and county and state level moratorium at the same time, expecting a tenant to know what protections apply to them or even actually expecting the courts to understand what law applies at the moment is really asking too much.

This is really the domain of tenant attorneys to keep up with this sort of thing.

And then when courts are holding hearings, the in-person hearings are fraught with due process problems.

A lot of tenants don't have access to the technology to use them.

They don't know how to introduce evidence on Zoom.

The courts have problems with drop connections.

And then when they hold hearings in person, that goes back to the original problem we were trying to avoid in the first place, which is concentrating people in a small indoor space.

So either way, whether it's and this goes to, I think, the councilwoman's point about the moratorium, eviction should not be happening right now.

Right to counsel in some ways is secondary to the fact that the court shouldn't be open at all.

Although, even if they were not open, even if there was a complete moratorium, you would still need a right to counsel because landlords simply file illegal evictions or not file, but they take illegal illegal eviction activity by locking people out, turning off their water and power and so on.

And so you still need counsel to deal with even the situations that happen outside of the courtroom.

You've already heard statistics specific to Seattle and Washington about race, but these are national statistics about how much more this impacts communities of color.

And this data from the census really just shows how often, with the top being black tenants and the bottom being white tenants, how likely they are to say they're not able to pay rent.

The red bars are basically unlikely to pay rent.

And you can see those bars for black tenants nationally are twice as high as they are for white tenants.

So this is, COVID has really made things which were already inequitable even seriously worse.

So where we are right now on right to counsel is we're seeing, you know, really the cresting of this movement.

We have seven jurisdictions which have passed it, which we already talked about.

And this year alone, we have five states already that have introduced statewide legislation, including Washington state, where there was a hearing last week.

Some of these bills we actually have a real chance of passing this year.

So we're really excited about that.

There's also a city level activity and there have been federal bills filed by a number of members of the House and Senate.

We expect more of those bills to happen in 2021. So there's really a lot of interest from the government entities on doing this.

We don't really have time to compare all of the elements of these different bills.

You heard earlier that the eligibility requirements do vary.

They go everywhere from 100% of federal poverty level to no income limit at all.

Some of them cover subsidized tenant terminations, which in our view is essential because if someone's voucher is terminated, that's basically as That is an eviction because without the voucher, they will not be able to stay in their unit.

So those are from our perspective.

Subsidy terminations are evictions.

They need to be covered as well.

They cover different things as far as appeals.

In Baltimore, actually, the bill covers evictions and termination of subsidies or a proceeding that's considered quote functionally equivalent as determined by the provider.

So that's even broader definition.

And you can see some of these were done by ballot, some of them by city.

And the revenue sources generally are done through general revenue, although a few places have done other things.

The tax that was done in Boulder was actually required by state law.

They have a state law that does not allow a ballot initiative that does not create a new source of revenue if it has a revenue impact.

So they had to do it that way.

And as you can see also, how long these are rolled out by and who is responsible for overseeing it is dramatically different from city to city.

There is no kind of one standard.

Tremendous success already from the places that we've seen having a right to counsel.

86% of tenants are staying in their homes in New York City.

That's just a staggering statistic.

The statistic I like almost as much is the fact that eviction filings have dropped by 30%.

That is, quite frankly, because landlords have seen that if they file something that's frivolous, it will be met by an attorney.

It's theoretical that they will be met by an attorney.

They can't file something that is just entirely illegal or wrongful or frivolous.

So we expected that drop, but it's still gratifying to see it.

And default judgments have also dropped.

You've heard a lot about default judgments.

The default judgment rate has dropped by 34% in New York.

So that's really, you know, the results have come very fast and really are proof of the concept of right to counsel.

What we're also really excited about is the judges.

The housing court judges in New York City have said this is not making their jobs harder.

It actually is improving efficiency and fairness from their perspective.

The housing court judges are supportive of the right to counsel now that they've seen what it was.

They were apprehensive a little before it passed, but now that it has passed, they've testified in favor of it.

San Francisco, which has been around a lot shorter, it's only been in effect for a year, has already seen a 10 percent filing decrease and about two-thirds of the tenants are staying at their homes.

So really, we're seeing the results.

San Francisco and New York are the only two jurisdictions that have been implemented long enough to actually have data.

So we don't have data yet from the other jurisdictions, but as we get that, we'll share that.

It's also really great to know that this is just a sampling of some of the cities that are working on right to council right now.

They're everywhere from sort of in the initial planning stages to potentially legislation getting introduced any moment.

And it's as you can see, it's geographically diverse.

It's diverse in terms of red versus blue.

This is really a movement that is taking hold nationally.

Just a couple more things before I close.

In addition to the data that we have from the Right to Counsel, we have data from prior studies that show just how significantly impactful Right to Counsel is.

And this study, the Massachusetts District Court study, which looked at tenants who received full representation compared to those who only got limited assistance, found that those with full representation did twice as well as those who got brief legal advice and assistance from a lawyer.

They needed that lawyer to go through the entire proceeding not just give them some limited scope advice.

And also incredible is that they paid nothing to their landlords on average compared to over $600 that the tenant with tenants who got limited scope representation wound up paying to their landlords.

Other studies in other jurisdictions like DC, it's again, it's the same story.

Tenants without counsel are much more likely to be subjected to a writ, seven times more likely to wind up with an unfavorable consent judgment.

In Minnesota, they found that tenants were four times less likely to use a homeless shelter if they had counsel, got twice as long to move as necessary, and twice as likely to stay in their homes.

There's lots of data like this.

We already know that right-to-counsel works.

It's not a question anymore.

It's only a question of the will.

I don't mean to interrupt your flow, but here in Hennepin County, you're saying that Not only, I mean, in terms of preventing evictions, the pilot found that the tenants who had representation of the tenants who faced evictions twice are as likely to stay in their homes.

But the second bullet point you're talking about is of those tenants who still faced eviction, actually they received twice as long to move out.

Is that what you're saying?

That's correct.

So it's actually helpful having legal representation, even if in the worst case you do get evicted, you get something.

some protection.

The range of benefits that counsel provides is significant.

You know, the kinds of things that attorneys do, obviously, you know, where a tenant wants to remain, that's their principal objective.

But there are other big questions that have to be decided.

If they're going to have to move, how long do they have?

Will the eviction be formally entered onto their record?

That's a major question because that will follow them after their eviction.

It's a major deal if that does stay on their record.

how much rent arrears they're going to be found to have owed the landlord.

That's a civil judgment that can also damage their credit, follow them around for years.

Land attorneys are very successful in dealing with all of those problems.

And yes, in Hennepin, where they had to move, they got twice as long.

And it's important to note that some tenants don't want to stay.

Their housing conditions may be so poor.

that by the time they're contacted by an attorney, they say, look, I just want out of this unit.

At that point, the attorney's job is to ensure that they can have housing stability at the end of the proceeding and that the eviction does as little damage as possible to that tenant.

Without counsel, we know what they'll get.

They'll get a default judgment, and that will really hurt them.

With counsel, they can exit gracefully and also get help applying for rental assistance, transition assistance, whatever it is that they need to help move to their next housing opportunity.

That's what counsel can help with.

And did I hear you say also that having legal counsel can also help determine if or whether or not the eviction goes on your record?

I mean, this is, to me, this is mind blowing, you know, chalk me down as somebody who's a novice here, but I didn't know that that was even an option for renters.

Well, I will say that that's I will have to defer to Edward around that because it's state law dependent on whether or not a particular state allows that sort of block.

But in many states that the eviction can be what's called screened, which basically means it's not formally entered.

There may be an agreement between the landlord and tenant as to what's going to happen.

But that but the actual eviction is not entered as formally on the record.

Yes.

And I'm sure Ed can can speak to whether that's not whether they can actually litigate that here in Washington state or not.

And in Seattle.

But even if it, you know, even if it's not, that's just an example of one of the kinds of things.

There are many things that the attorneys can do.

And I would say also in the era of COVID, I talked about the moratoria and enforcement is extremely important of the moratoria.

That's the thing that council has to do.

But another piece, the rental assistance money that Congress has appropriated, which is $25 billion, of which Washington State's getting a significant piece.

Applying for that rental assistance can be very difficult in getting it in time for the eviction case.

Sometimes legal representation is needed for that.

And where the landlord may say, I'm not going to accept this rental money, if state law says they have to, then the tenant's going to need counsel to ensure that the landlord doesn't illegally refuse to accept rental assistance money.

That's also something Ed can speak to, I'm sure, about how the right to cure works in Washington state, because I don't actually know that off the top of my head.

I mentioned the cost benefit.

There are lots of cost benefit studies that have been done that shows the return on investment.

Baltimore's was just the most recent, which is why I have those numbers here.

But I will also, this statistic also from Baltimore really is stunning, which is that this study found that 80% of tenants had a defense to the eviction, 80%, but only 8% could actually raise it without counsel.

It just goes to show how much their potential there was for the right to counsel before Baltimore passed it.

And you can see the disparity in the representation in Baltimore, 96% versus 1%.

That's not at all unusual.

I'll skip these.

So in the interest of time, I'll end there.

There are lots of cost studies.

I'm happy to share my slide deck with the council so that you have access to all of those statistics.

And I'm also happy to be a resource on all of the, again, we are involved in pretty much all of these efforts on one level or another.

So I'm happy to be a resource for the council as it works on this.

Thank you, John.

I know Council Member Morales has raised her hand, so I will call on you in a minute.

Council Member Morales, did you want to share anything?

Well, I was just, I think John's presentation was very complete.

I think the last thing I really just want to add is kind of what, kind of give you a sense of what actually we do.

And, you know, I think the best way to sort of frame it is a little bit of a quick anecdote.

I had a client recently who was out in West Seattle.

She was an elderly woman.

She was being evicted from an affordable housing unit.

She had been, I had been put in contact with her by her case manager.

And I didn't know anything about her and I started making calling her and then I eventually found that she wasn't able to meet me anywhere understand what was going on.

So I would go to her home and talked with her.

And I went there a couple times to get her to sign a couple of papers, explain things, everything seemed fine.

And then I talked to one of her case managers who told me that she was describing there was a man in a suit who kept coming around to her, that she didn't know who that was.

And what was becoming clear to me is that she had a form of dementia and didn't really recognize what was going on.

Which was important information for me to know, because one, that means that she didn't understand what I was doing, or she just sort of maybe was passing, I think, essentially.

And that's important because that told me a lot about how that court proceeding needed to actually operate.

Here was somebody who actually did not understand that they were being evicted at the end of the day.

And that court was not going to know that.

This person was able to sort of come off as, I don't want to say like passing or normal, but you didn't get a sense that there was anything going wrong when you first talked to her.

So this enabled us to sort of start a process to try to see what we can do to get this court case stayed at least and try to see what services we can provide.

And we have a social worker on our staff.

We have other case managers kind of help with this sort of work.

And it ultimately allows us to steer an eviction away from just having somebody who has dementia become homeless and where there'd be no support for that person.

And that is a lot of what we end up doing.

I mean, whether it's just a simple thing of somebody owes some rent, which oftentimes what we do is connect that person to rent assistance right there in the courthouse.

That's how we can prevent a lot of evictions.

And we know how the right to cure statutes work.

We wrote actually a number of the ones that have been passed over the last couple of years.

And we also can help get that eviction off people's records, which is something you can do in Washington to some extent.

You know, a lot of what we do, though, is problem solving.

You know, it's counterintuitive, but moving to right to counsel is also a way to do what we're seeing in criminal justice circles, which is let's get the legal framework out of these problems.

Let's try to treat them as social problems that we need to solve collectively to try to help each other out.

And that's what ultimately evictions are doing.

But right now, currently, evictions are just, it's a railroad.

It's a quicker proceeding than almost any other type of proceeding you will go through.

It's way quicker than criminal court, anything you would go through there.

And a lot of people are shocked that all of a sudden they find they have one hearing and they lose their whole home and they barely had an opportunity to speak up at that hearing.

And what we are trying to do ultimately is to make sure that that person has adequate representation, that person has somebody who has a fiduciary duty to try to work with that person and make sure that their needs are met.

Because right now, I don't think that court is prepared to handle it, to handle all the problems that are coming through it.

And you need somebody there who's going to be watching out for a lot of the tenants who are going to be otherwise deprived of their homes when it was a very preventable problem.

And I think it's how this is one way that by providing that sort of assistance, that advocacy there, we can really start trying to get at the core of what's going on here, the income inequality, the disadvantages, the racism that's going on.

And we can really try to see if we can start solving these problems and not to have so many people become homeless through this system as it currently is.

Thank you so much, Ed and John.

I personally thought this was an I mean, we obviously heard very powerful renter testimony, but this testimony from yourselves as.

people with legal expertise who've seen how it works in the front lines.

It's extremely powerful, both the statistics and the narratives that you had.

And I know I'm long overdue in inviting Councilman Morales to speak, but just quickly, John, if you could go to your slide in which you mentioned, there's one bullet point that I want to draw attention to about San Francisco, where there isn't any income restriction to access the service and just the effectiveness of that, you know, not having that restriction.

I think it's something really powerful, like 85% of, yeah, that's the one.

I don't know if you wanted to say anything more.

I know you said, talked about it, but I just wanted to note that that's pretty powerful.

In terms of numbers, statistical analysis is extremely useful, and this is really useful.

And despite a lack of an income limit, 85% of those receiving counsel are extremely low or low income, 9% are moderate income, and 6% are just about.

Yeah, I think it's what we suspected would be true.

But when you actually get the data to see it for yourself, I think that the reality is the vast majority of people that go through housing court are poor.

That's just the reality.

And if there are wealthier tenants, they probably are going to opt for private counsel in some cases, because they already have whatever they have.

But basically, what has played out in reality is that they're not seeing that in San Francisco.

I seriously doubt we'll see that in Boulder.

And then conversely, in New York City, where they had a 200% income limit, they are seeing tons of people who are not meeting it and are desperately poor, because New York is so expensive.

And that's true for Seattle as well.

So these income limits, they really do present a very big problem in practice, because you have to raise that limit pretty high to actually meet the reality if you're in a pricier city.

Right.

Thank you so much, John.

Council Member Morris, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I realize that I'm kind of asking questions backwards on the agenda, so my apologies.

But I wonder if we could go back to the moratorium question.

Esther asked, you know, whether we would support it.

And I will say that, you know, as a council, we've already passed some version of an eviction moratorium.

I'm certainly interested in learning more about the intent here or the implementation.

And so I'm wondering, we did get a draft last night, but I'm wondering if I could ask Ali or Asha to kind of walk through the actual legislation that we are considering here so that we can have that conversation.

And I've realized that we're sort of running out of time, but just wanted to ask for that before we continue.

Thank you.

Chair Swartz, should I go ahead and describe?

Yes.

Yes, please.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Committee members, I can briefly walk through the proposal related to eviction moratoriums.

And then if you also want a similar summary of the Right to Council Bill, that would be Asha.

In general, we are working with Council Member Sawant and her staff on a bill that is not yet introduced that would modify the provisions adopted earlier this year through Ordinance 126075. You'll recall that that bill adopted in May of 2020 created a defense to eviction for non-payment of rent during and six months after the end of the mayor's moratorium on residential evictions.

I just want to pause there for a moment because the email I sent last night said it ended, that it went into effect at the end of the civil emergency.

It's actually tied specifically to the emergency order that has been extended several times that imposes a moratorium.

So what this means is that if the moratorium that's currently in place until March 31st terminates, then the tenant or their counsel could raise as a defense in court that They suffered financial hardship due to the COVID crisis, and that would be used as a defense in eviction proceeding similar to other defenses that are made available through the city's Just Cause Ordinance.

As adopted, again, that would remain a defense available to tenants during and six months after the end of the mayor's eviction moratorium if the tenant certifies that they suffered a financial hardship The bill that we were working on with council members to one as it's currently drafted would modify the effective period when this defense can be raised to be the later of December 31st, 2021, or six months after the moratorium terminates and would eliminate the requirement that the tenant must certify they suffered a financial hardship.

So effectively right now with the moratorium in place until March 31st of 2021, If the mayor didn't extend that for an additional period of time via executive order, this defense would be in place through the end of the year.

Without this action, the defense would only be available through September of 2021. I'm happy to take questions.

Thank you, Ali.

I really appreciate that.

I wanted to announce that Councilmember Lewis's office has let us know that Councilmember Lewis will be happy to co-sponsor the right to counsel legislation.

I really appreciated Councilmember Lewis.

That is really welcome news.

Really appreciate your support.

And please let us know about the eviction moratorium bill as well.

And I'm happy to discuss with your staff alongside Central staff and John and Edmund and our tenant advocates also in terms of developing a draft.

Thank you, Ali, for that description.

Ted, if you wanted to add anything, you're welcome to.

as well.

And I would also urge other council members in the spirit of Esther Little Dove John who spoke about the crisis affecting our senior community seniors, if other council members want to announce their co-sponsorship at that this time.

Obviously, you can let me know later, but if you want to announce it now, that would be extremely welcome.

It will be really heartening to the tenants and the tenant advocates to know that you will be supporting this alongside me.

I do see Zoom hands raised by Council Member Lewis and Council Member Morales, I don't know if this is from earlier or if you were planning to speak.

Council Member Lewis, go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just wanted to publicly acknowledge, since you sort of broke the news to the committee, that I'm happy to co-sponsor the Right to Council legislation.

Appreciate you bringing it forward.

I do also want to say that I appreciated the panel talking about the discrepancies in the thresholds and sort of the cutoffs for I agree, it sounds like the best practice is to not implement that policy based on the explanations from the panel.

So I did just want to clarify, I was not necessarily advocating earlier to put that in there, but did want to have a, you know, an analysis, given that there's a wide range of options that are available.

Spread among a lot of the jurisdictions that have done this, and I thought those questions were answered quite well.

And I just wanted to say, I don't I don't think that that would be necessary.

And and since we did just sort of receive the.

The to address the eviction moratorium briefly, because it was addressed by some of the people on the panel.

You know, I've supported all the eviction moratoriums that have come up in the past.

I want to review this proposal with the amount of attention it deserves.

And, you know, I certainly am sympathetic to doing it and would expect to.

But I want to take a look at the proposal that was distributed to the committee in anticipation of of the later action.

But as a renter and someone who has always been a renter, I'm certainly sympathetic and expect to figure out a way to support it.

So I appreciate those comments.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

And yeah, I did not take your question as if you were advocating for any kind of means testing.

I thought your question brought out really important information and insight and statistical evidence from John and Edmund.

And I think that that is something that corporate landlords would push for.

And so it is really important we arm ourselves with sound statistical evidence to show why we should not have means testing.

And I would also say that, in fact, that is precisely why We, meaning tenants and tenant advocates, and based on the information we received in my office, is also advocating that we remove the certification requirement.

And I wanted to invite Maya or Lydia to, if you wanted to contribute more on that question.

And also Edmund, I know we have other agenda items, and we will get to that.

But while we have our panelists here, Edwin, could you talk about what happens?

I mean, what is this eviction by default?

What is happening?

And what are the statistics that the Housing Justice Project has found in terms of default evictions?

And if you could share one or two stories of what happens to people when they get evicted by default.

Yeah, I think this is probably one of the biggest issues that's ultimately even plaguing our right to counsel.

Let me just put it this way.

When we have contact with tenants, we're able to keep them housed at least 56% of the time.

And more likely than not, the person will stay housed when we're working with them.

And that's regardless of screening for the merits of their cases or anything.

We just take anybody who shows up.

But the biggest problem is that almost half of all tenants don't show up to their court hearings.

They don't show up.

They don't make any contact at all with the court or with us.

When we looked at sort of a deep study of Seattle cases from last October, September in 2019, actually, 45% of tenants just didn't show up and they defaulted.

And what happens means either they didn't understand the paperwork, they didn't know they were supposed to respond to the paperwork, which is difficult to do, and what happens is they just get a judgment against them.

They don't have their day in court.

They don't have the right to defend.

There's nobody who's talking to them to find out, well, actually, this is a preventable eviction, whether it's just because there's a strong legal defense against it, or even if somebody just owed a very little bit amount of money, and there was a resource there to help them.

This is a huge problem.

I think this is a problem across the country, frankly, but I think it is pretty noticeable here is that a lot of people don't have a lot of access or don't know how to navigate the court system.

I've heard a story from one of the sheriff deputies who ended up was evicting somebody in Seattle and found that when they went in that So all the eviction paperwork piled up on the counter, the person was bedridden, they had a home outbreak, they didn't speak English, didn't understand what was going on.

And so the person had to be basically dragged, like pulled out by the sheriff.

And this was somebody who was pretty vulnerable, who did not, who possibly we could have prevented eviction, I don't know.

But ultimately, it's a lot of people who just don't have that sort of proactive access or somebody there who's watching it.

You know, and I think this actually comes up even in other contexts.

The Everspring Inn in North Seattle is a good example.

A lot of people are being massively evicted, but it's very hard because nobody's able to sort of say, who's able to stand in and say, I'm going to enforce or protect these people, or I'm sorry, these tenants.

before they get evicted and just try to get an injunction, stop all this activity from happening, because you need somebody who has that sort of advocacy power, that sort of injunctive power, that sort of attorney general style power, who can sort of intervene and make sure people get resources, ultimately, whether it's because they're being illegally thrown out, and there's something wrong going wrong, or something's going wrong in that situation.

Or if it's because you just notice that you see all these cases and you see somebody who's really vulnerable and it seems like something that could be prevented in that individual eviction case, it's a huge problem.

I think it's ultimately like right to counsel, frankly, is going to make a huge dent in helping people stay housed without, I think, really actually incriminating on landlord rights.

Frankly, I think it's ultimately going to be a positive for everyone.

But I still think you have this big problem of how do we get to all the people who aren't showing up?

Thank you.

That was really very useful, informative.

Maya, did you want to speak?

Oh, yeah, I just wanted to echo.

Yeah, just how a lot of the tenants who I work with are pushed to are displaced even before they are like they receive a formal eviction notice.

So they're pressured through harassment or like their landlord isn't making repairs.

in such a chronic way that people elect to leave their home.

So it's not like a formal eviction, but that, yeah, like displacement looks like so many different things because of people not having access to those resources.

And so, yeah, I just want to echo the fact that that's like another reason why having certification requirements would just weaken this so much because even before getting to the point of eviction, people's lack of resources and being pressured by landlords are preventing people from staying in their homes.

So yeah, thanks everyone.

Thank you.

And I think that's a very important point, that even though the certification requirement is not paperwork that requires it's not full fledged means testing, if you will, in which case you actually have to provide proof of income.

But it's still an onerous burden because it's paperwork to show that you you are deserving of that service.

But as the statistics in cities like San Francisco show, actually, The vast majority, if not all of the tenants who will seek these services are people who would have qualified for that service anyway with those restrictions defined.

So I think the evidence that John and Edmund have shared about the right to counsel not having any income restrictions or definitions, I think it is also sort of very much in line with what Maya and Lydia have shared about the need to strike out the certification requirement.

And once again, I wanted to thank Council Member Lewis for announcing his co-sponsorship of the Right to Council bill.

Neither of the bills has been formally introduced yet, but this is definitely impetus to go ahead with the Right to Council measure.

But I would say the moratorium extension and the Right to Council measures go hand in hand because On the one hand, we need the eviction moratorium to be extended for all the reasons that the tenants and advocates have said.

But even with that in place, as John pointed out, landlords could still go to court seeking to evict their tenants.

So it's vital that all the tenants have legal representation to make sure that the eviction moratorium extension is fully enforceable.

That is why we have also organized the committee in a way where both the bills and both the ideas are discussed together.

And I also wanted to, once again, remind everybody, as Mayur shared earlier, 6 p.m.

tomorrow is the B-Seattle event, which is titled Building Tenant Power During the Pandemic, the Eviction Moratorium.

And of course, we are in the days of stay-at-home and Zoom, so this meeting will also be on Zoom.

I'm looking forward to that meeting.

I hate to cut short this discussion.

This was extremely useful.

I hope council members found this extremely useful as well.

But in the interest of time, I will go ahead and express my gratitude to all the panelists.

We will have you back when we discuss the legislation more formally.

We will need your help at that time as well, but this was really great grounding for us for those upcoming committee meetings.

Now I will, if there are no further questions and if there are no objections, I will move to our final agenda item.

which is the five appointments and reappointments to the City of Seattle Renter Commission.

We have the reappointments of Marcy Tate-Lamar, Christiana Obey-Sumner, and Laurie Goff, who have all played a fantastic active role on the Renters Commission in the past.

And we have Shakon Smith from the Department of Neighborhoods here to present their reappointments.

We also have new appointments, Maya Garfinkel, whom you've just heard from, Renters rights advocate would be Seattle and Sharon Crowley who is an activist in her union UAW 4121 and has organized with the union's housing justice work group and I will personally testify to the active role she's played for tenants right in our city and as is customary for new appointees they are here in person online.

I also wanted to recognize and thank Jessica Westgren, who has been a great chair of the City of Seattle Renters Commission, and has kindly agreed to continue in her position beyond the end of her final term to give time for these new appointments.

Thank you, Jessica.

Shakun Smith, would you like to introduce yourself for the record and speak first about the reappointments, and then we will hear from Maya and Sharon?

Yes.

Can everybody hear me?

Okay.

So yeah my name is Shaquan Smith.

I am with the Department of Neighborhoods.

I'm the program manager for the Your Voice Your Choice participatory budgeting program as well as the Seattle Women's Commission's staff liaison.

And yeah in terms of the reappointments as for Marcy Christiana and as well as Lori.

Yes.

I will, yeah, just present to them to get appointed.

They've been a very good part of the commission and they have stayed interested along the way and they want to continue to fight this fight and provide the voices for renters around Seattle.

And I agree that they should stay and be reappointed.

Thank you.

We do want an introduction for the record from Sharon Crowley.

So Sharon, did you want to just quickly introduce yourself?

Sure.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Sharon Crowley.

As Shama said, I'm an organizer and member of UAW Local 4121. And yeah, I'm also a member of our union's housing justice work group.

And we've been really excited to be involved in all of the different kinds of housing justice projects and movements that we have over the past couple of years, and particularly recently, the ones with Shama Salon, including the tax Amazon movement.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sharon.

Maya, you have already introduced yourself for the record.

And I feel silly asking you, why do you want to be on this show?

Because you and Sharon, your work is self-evident, but we will still go ahead and do that.

That will give you an opportunity to talk more about that.

So Maya, if you wanted to go ahead first, and then Sharon, if you want to join later.

Yeah, hi.

Yeah, again, I'm Maya Garfinkel.

I'm the organizing director with Be Seattle.

Um, and I grew up in Northeast Seattle and currently I'm a renter here.

Um, and yeah, and through the work that I've been doing with Be Seattle of kind of just building out some of our workshops and, um, building political education, um, and as well with the cancel rent and mortgages Washington campaign, um, I've, um, I've really seen the depth of the housing crisis as well as the, with the work with tenants, um, that I do.

And yeah, I'm interested in being part of the Runners Commission to just continue the work that y'all are doing to push housing for all to be a priority of the city and stopping regressive tactics to punish unhoused and unstably housed folks.

Yeah, and just being part of building a stronger tenant movement in Seattle.

So I'm really excited to be part of the Runners Commission.

So thanks so much.

Thank you, Maya.

Sharon?

Hi again.

Um, yeah, I also am a renter in Seattle and have been for since 2001, in fact.

Um, and I, uh, have kind of moved all over the city, um, sort of fleeing rent increases.

Um, and over the last, well, particularly since frankly, the financial crisis, um, I've seen rents crank up higher and higher.

I first got really active in our union's housing justice work a couple of years ago, a few years ago now, when we did a housing survey and found that 30 plus percent of our members are rent burdened and over half are severely rent burdened.

It's really a serious problem.

And so, yeah, in the course of that, I've also seen other problems with housing justice beyond just our membership citywide.

And so I am very excited to be on this commission and to hopefully help push for progressive policies to address both the affordable housing shortage, and like Maya said, also the epidemic of evictions and houseless folks around the city and the police sweeping them out of places where they take refuge.

So yeah, I'm very excited to join you all on this commission.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Sharon and Maya, both.

I would just note that it was the City of Seattle Renters Commission that originated the idea for the winter evictions ban, which we were able to win.

Early last year, many of you were part of that struggle.

It was really, really important and it sort of in some ways sort of paved the way for the eviction moratoriums under COVID, which were, of course, you know, then there were massive reasons for why we needed those moratoriums.

One question I would ask is for you as new members of the commission.

Given the rich history of the Renters Commission in advocating for these important policies, would you bring up the two bills that we've been discussing today and we'll come back to later?

Extending the eviction moratorium, removing the certification requirement, and the right to counsel.

Do you think that those are something policies that you would take back to the renters commission and urge that they take a formal position?

Obviously you have to have a meeting and vote on it as members and so on, but that is something that would really provide a real impetus for us to push for them.

Yes, absolutely.

And furthermore, I would want to push for real financial relief for renters who are facing huge back rent debt.

extremely important and Maya if you wanted to add something yeah but absolutely we we my office would greatly look forward to any both policy ideas but also political advocacy from the renters commission on cancelling the debt because that is just a you know it's it's actually an economic bubble waiting to burst.

Yeah I yeah I totally agree and yeah really inspired by you know, efforts of progressive taxation in Seattle to, um, yeah, excited to like think through some of those, um, those options on a city level.

Great.

Uh, did council members have any questions or, um, comments, uh, or anything to share with our, um, nominees for the appointments?

Dr. Morales?

I'll just say thank you.

We voted on 17 commissioners in my committee last week, and I think it's really important that we have people who are such strong advocates in community who are also willing to extend their volunteer time and their advocacy into really helping the city craft policy through these commissions.

So, thank you for your willingness to do that and your willingness to serve the public in this way.

Really appreciate it.

I would echo that.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Any other Council Members would like to speak before I move all the appointments and the appointments to the vote?

And Chacon, of course, if you wanted to add anything, please feel free to do that.

Yeah, the only thing I want to add is, um, it's a necessary question, but it's like you mentioning, I know a lot like a focus for the commission this year is definitely focused on cobit.

I said, how's the impacting renters?

So, just be being aware of that.

And I have questions about this more to the, I guess, council members will want.

There are a few other reappointments that are coming.

I sent them today.

So I just want to keep you guys aware of that.

And also, I did have a question as for Jessica, because we will have our official, we'll have our next meeting this upcoming Monday.

I know with the two appointees coming in, we haven't had a chance to discuss a replacement of the co-chair, because she's our main co-chair.

So I was just wondering, will she automatically be removed from that meeting, or will she still be allowed to stay in her role at least for that day?

so we can find a replacement for our position as a co-chair.

I'm not clear.

I don't know if Ted, if you have more to share.

I don't see why that should be a problem, but thank you for raising that question.

If it requires follow-up, we're happy to do that.

I also don't know for sure, but I assume that if the commission wants that to be the case, and I assume they will, then it'll be fine.

But I don't know legally.

OK, definitely something we can and will follow up on.

I don't see any other council members raising their hand to speak, so I will go ahead and Assuming there's no opposition, move all five appointments as a single vote.

I move appointment 1780, 1781, 1782, 1783, and 1784. If I could get a second.

Thank you.

Ted, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Peterson.

Oh, it looks like he's not on the line.

So three in favor.

Thank you, council members.

So these appointments will move to the city council for a final vote.

I appreciate Jessica, all the reappointments who weren't required to be here, and Sharon and Maya who are new appointments, really looking forward to this.

And as Shakan mentioned, yes, I mean, the Renters Commission's work is even more important now because of the additional challenges with COVID.

I that is the end of the proposed agenda from the committee and unless there are any other comments, which I'm not seeing any.

I will go ahead and once again, thank all the.

community members and community servants who do all the work in the community for their input.

I thank all the committee members, council members for being here and participating in the discussion, especially thanks to Council Member Lewis for agreeing to co-sponsor the right to council legislation, really invite other council members to do the same.

And we will be following up on both of these things and we'll be following up with the Renters Commission as well.

And until then, please everybody stay safe and meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.