“These ballot initiatives are becoming prolific.”
So observed the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce on February 12th, the day after the special election. The Chamber was not pleased with the results. After all, its attempts to bamboozle Seattle voters with a fake alternative to Prop 1A failed miserably. Now some of its wealthiest members are on the hook for taxes that will help to fund social housing in Seattle. But that’s not all:
“In addition to Prop 1A, over the last couple of elections we have seen minimum wage increases in Burien, Tukwila, Renton and Everett all by initiative. Tacoma passed a tenant protection initiative,” the Chamber’s newsletter reads.
It’s true. People are getting serious about using the initiative process to advance bold, popular policies that corporate-aligned elected officials won’t pass themselves. And it’s working. This is democracy in action, and it holds an important and timely lesson for Mayor Bruce Harrell and the Seattle City Council: If they’re thinking of rolling back tenant protection laws in this majority-renter city, as has been rumored repeatedly over the past year, they should think again.
In fact, it was renters’ need for stable housing that kicked off the recent spate of successful citizen’s initiatives. Back in 2019, the Washington Community Action Network organized with renters in Federal Way, gathered signatures, and won “good cause” eviction protections against stiff opposition from the landlord lobby. The Transit Riders Union drew inspiration from that victory and, in 2022, led an initiative to raise the minimum wage in Tukwila, winning with an astounding 83% of the vote. That set off a chain reaction, inspiring minimum wage initiatives in Renton, Bellingham, Everett, and Burien. At the same time, House Our Neighbors steered to victory through two measures creating and funding social housing in Seattle. And in Tacoma, as the Chamber noted, voters passed a “landlord fairness code” in 2023. Success is contagious.
Moreover, these initiatives won on the ballot despite attempts to subvert them by big business and landlord groups — and sometimes by local officials. In Tacoma, the city council passed a weak tenant protection law to make the more robust citizen’s initiative appear unnecessary; Burien’s city council tried a similar ploy with the minimum wage. Last year in Everett, the Washington Hospitality Association, having just failed to convince Renton voters to reject a minimum wage increase, paid for a competing initiative that would have excluded more workers and counted tips and medical benefits against the higher wage. And in Seattle, the Chamber lobbied the city council to put alternative Prop 1B on the ballot. But every time, the people won.
Back to Seattle’s renter protections. Over the past fifteen years, rents in our city have climbed much faster than inflation or wages. That has driven increasing housing insecurity, evictions, and homelessness. Unlike Vienna, Paris, and other cities with strong social housing sectors, the vast majority of Seattle renters are at the mercy of the private market. And unlike many U.S. cities and several states, Washington doesn’t (yet) have rent stabilization or control – and it prohibits local jurisdictions from regulating rents. Therefore, renters and their advocates have focused on passing other laws to provide stability and prevent landlords from taking advantage of vulnerable tenants. And they’ve had many successes – until now.
After the 2023 city council elections cemented a new conservative-leaning majority, landlord groups smelled an opportunity. They set their sights on many of Seattle’s landmark renter protections: our $10 cap on late fees; 6-months’ notice of rent increases; protections against winter evictions and evictions of families during the school year; the right to a lease renewal unless a landlord has a good reason not to offer one; relocation assistance for very large rent increases; the right to live with a family member; and more. Since last year, rumors have circulated that Councilmember Cathy Moore plans to introduce legislation that would weaken or repeal these protections, as well as eliminate the Renters’ Commission. (As Chair of the Housing Committee, Moore has failed to confirm appointments to this commission for over a year, despite nominees waiting in the wings.)
The success of recent citizen initiatives in Seattle and other cities should cause Moore and Mayor Harrell to think twice before going down this road. Tenant groups and their allies could well decide that another ballot measure is their best bet. After all, the powerhouse grassroots organizations that provided the “boots on the ground” behind many of these initiatives – Washington CAN, House Our Neighbors, the Transit Riders Union, the Seattle Democratic Socialists of America, and 350 Seattle, among others – are all members of the Stay Housed Stay Healthy coalition, which championed the renter protections won in the past four years.
And there are plenty of ways a citizen’s initiative could not just reaffirm but strengthen Seattle’s existing renter protection laws. It could, for example, ban rental “junk fees,” as has been proposed by a Bellingham council member. It could ban rental price fixing, as San Francisco recently did. It could ban deceptive practices. And it could establish more meaningful penalties for violations, as currently there are rarely any consequences for landlords who take advantage of their tenants and don’t follow the laws.
What should Councilmember Moore and Mayor Harrell do to avoid this outcome? At a minimum, they need to lift the cloud of secrecy. Tenants and their advocates must be included in any discussions of changes to Seattle’s renter protection laws. To the extent that there are legitimate challenges prompting the push – like the crisis in the affordable housing sector – all the affordable housing providers need to be at the table, not just the handful who, we believe mistakenly, think that making evictions easier is a meaningful solution to their problems. When low-income housing is a revolving door to homelessness, no one wins.
In other words, our elected leaders need to conduct a responsible stakeholder process. The outcome could be a more limited set of tweaks to the laws, paired with a housing stabilization fund and other supports to address the challenges affordable housing providers and their tenants are facing without increasing housing insecurity, evictions, and homelessness across Seattle’s entire rental market.
The upshot? Mayor Harrell and the city council should be very careful about championing any kind of “landlord wish list.” There are a lot more renters in Seattle than there are landlords. If Tacoma, a city where only 43% of households rent, passed a “landlord fairness code” over fierce opposition from the landlord lobby and city leadership, you can bet majority-renter Seattle would, too.
Katie Wilson, General Secretary of the Transit Riders Union, Campaign Manager for Raise the Wage Tukwila and Raise the Wage Burien.
Tiffani McCoy, Co-Executive Director of House Our Neighbors, Campaign Manager for I-135 to create the Seattle Social Housing Developer and Prop 1A which funds the Seattle Social Housing Developer.
