AN ORDINANCE relating to termination of residential rental tenancies; providing a defense to evictions occurring within six months after the termination of the Mayor’s residential eviction moratorium as amended by Resolution 31938; amending Section 22.206.160 of the Seattle Municipal Code; declaring an emergency; and establishing an immediate effective date; all by a 3/4 vote of the City Council.
Agenda Item three Constable 119 784 relating to termination of residential rental tenancies, providing access to evictions expiring within six months after the termination of the marriage residential eviction moratorium as amended by Ordinance Resolution Resolutions one 938 amending Section 22.206160 code declaring an emergency and establishing an immediate effective date all by three fourths of the City Council. Thank you so much. I am going to move to pass council bill 119784. Is there a second second? It's been moved and seconded to pass the bill and so we have several amendments to go through. And so my suggestion is that we go through the amendments first and then we can have a discussion about the bill as amended before we take a final vote on on the bill. So I will go ahead and kick off that conversation to make a motion to amend the Council Bill 119784 as presented on Amendment one on the agenda. Second. It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill. Colleagues, as a sponsor of this amendment, I'll address the amendment first and then we can engage in conversation. Amendment one is a very non-controversial amendment. It is a variation of technical changes. So these amendments would make a grammatical correction revised references to the date of the mayor's eviction moratorium to include a reference to council's amendments in Resolution 31938. And it also adds additional findings showing compliance with Governor's Order 2828. I'm happy to entertain any questions or comments about Amendment One. Hey hereand seen none. I would ask that the clerk please call the role on the adoption of Amendment One. Don't. So the line. By. Strauss. I heard all. I. Whereas. Suarez. I. LEWIS. Hi. Morales. I. Mosquito. I. Peterson. I. President Gonzalez. Hi. Nine in favor and unopposed. The pushing carries and the amendment is adopted. I'm going to go ahead and call on Councilmember Peterson now, who has amendment to. Thank you. Council President So the viewing public right now might not know that. We did talk a bit about this this morning during council briefings. So bear with me as I repeat some of my comments here. But just to set the table for the three amendments that I have today, I really appreciate the council president working really hard on this legislation. Council Bill 119784. I agree. We need to do what we can as a city government to prevent addiction. I'm proud to join with my council colleagues and the mayor to support multiple relief packages and changing regulations to provide relief. This includes funneling millions of additional dollars to an eviction prevention and rental assistance. I also want our compassionate policies to be sustainable. Some constituents, just like the people who called in today, some were in favor of the legislation. Some were opposed to it. And to reconcile these opposing views, I put forward these amendments which which I believe will be helpful for the sustainability in the legislation. I started by considering the approach we took to amend the legislation for our moratorium on evictions during the coldest winter months and then to consider differences with the current COVID crisis. So the First Amendment before us is to exempt small landlords defined as those with four or fewer units. Do I need to move the amendment? Yes, you do. Before we discuss it, if you can say the magic words to put Amendment two in front of us, that'd be great. Yes. I moved to amend Council Bill 119784 as presented on Amendment two on this agenda. Okay. Okay. So it's been moved and seconded to amend the bill. Councilmember Peterson, you can now address Amendment two. So this is similar to this situation when we were considering the winter months ban on evictions or moratorium on evictions. At that time, we heard from lots of landlords who own a couple of units, three units for units who are struggling to pay their mortgages, their property taxes, their property insurance. And they're there. They're opposed to this bill, the ones who are a lot of the ones who have written to us here. And so this exemption would be in the same spirit of what we passed during the winter moratorium. Happy to answer questions. Thank you, Councilmember Peterson. I would just say in response to this, that, as I mentioned during council briefing this morning, I am not supporting Amendment two. And I'd like to talk a little bit more about why. So we know that over 50% of Seattle residents are tenants. These people live in small, medium and large multifamily buildings throughout the city, and many of them are feeling the negative impacts of this public health crisis that has also caused an economic crisis of mass proportions. That economic burden is being felt deeply by low wage workers who now find themselves many for the first time in their lives on the rolls of unemployment. Many of these folks are renters who would benefit from this law in particular. So this amendment, however, as proposed by Councilmember Peterson, would strip many of those renters of the ability to assert this defense if and when they needed it in the six months after the eviction moratorium declared by the mayor is lifted. The intent of this bill is to provide access to an additional eviction defense to as many tenants as possible, regardless of whether the tenant made a choice during better economic times to rent from a corporate landlord or a small landlord. So unfortunately, I believe that this amendment creates too much of a carve out that may result in leaving thousands of renters without access to a meaningful opportunity to prevent their eviction in a court proceeding in the six months after the termination of the mayor's residential eviction moratorium. And for those reasons, I will be voting no on amendment to and would ask my colleagues to join me in voting no on this amendment as well. I just wanted to share those comments with folks before I invited comments from my colleagues. Anyone else want to make a comment? So seek as members talent. Lewis and Herbold. So Converse Floor is yours. Thank you. And I will also be opposing this amendment, which would potentially strip down to the thousands of renters of their protections against eviction, especially in the context of a pandemic and a global recession that is going to be as deep or deeper than the Great Recession. My council office has been contacted by hundreds of renters over the years, and we've seen that the big corporate landlords are far more likely to be responsible or violating renters rights. However, we've also seen that the worst landlords usually divide their properties up into multiple alliances and even have those alliances owned by other LLC and so on to obscure who owns what. This provision makes it very difficult for renters to know if they are protected by the law. Even in the rare cases where the eviction might actually be pursued by a smaller landlord, council members and elected officials need to decide who most need our support. Families who are on the verge of being evicted, losing everything, especially in the context of tens of thousands being in that situation. Many likely becoming homeless as a result, having damaged credit and having debt on their hands, possibly dying. You know, are we going to stand up for them or somebody who owns four or ten or 100 rental homes? I think that's another important point. Who is exactly as my landlord is, is a very subjective issue from their own admission, at one of the two rental organizing townhalls that my office organized in April, we had a small landlord tell us who attended the town hall happily and told us that they had worked with your tenant who has been laid off, and moreover that they proactively approached the tenant to negotiate an agreement that works for both tenant and small landlord. And I would really urge all landlords to negotiate such agreements with tenants and be on the side of tenants and not on the side of big property management, corporations and landlords. Obviously Council member Pearson is choosing to represent landlords and it is unfortunate that the amendment was presented even at the winter evictions moratorium legislation that my office put forward. And it was unfortunate that council members, some council members voted yes on that amendment. That amendment was bad then for renters and this amendment is bad now for renters. Peterson talks about reconciling between the interest of landlords and renters, but this is not a neutral issue. As Jessica Westergren, who's been a member of the City of Seattle Renters Commission, said in public comment today. Now there's somebody who owns multiple buildings of apartments is not the same as a working class renter who is barely getting by and who is now statistically probably likely to have lost their job or their income, even if they haven't lost their job. I do not think we should be making it easier to evict working class tenants. In fact, we should learn from what happened in the wake of the 2007 2008 Great Recession, where nearly 8 million middle class homeowners were stripped of the only equity they ever had. But homeownership has not come back. There's not going to come back any time soon. And so because we can see that crises such as the Great Recession and the recession we're heading into now will, unless we have a movement fighting back, be used not only to, you know, to deny renters and working class people of their rights during this pandemic, but also to extract more from them and extract austerity in different ways. And that is why it's important that we stand against this. I thank you, Councilmember. So for those comments, I'm going to call now on Councilmember Lewis and then I think I had Cousin Herbert also in the queue. So because remember Lewis. Right. You know, I want to say, Councilor Peterson, for bringing this forward for our consideration and appreciate the spirit in which it was introduced. You know, I supported a similar amendment during our discussion of the winter eviction legislation. I think it made sense in the context of that policy and that we were wading into new territory. It was a proactive policy about clear policy preference, and it was we were shaping the first in the nation ordinance to accomplish that policy goal. I think the circumstances are different for a lot of the reasons that Councilmember Gonzales articulated earlier, namely that we have widespread and massive uncertainty over 1.4 million Washingtonians who are on unemployment and have lost their jobs or are facing significant insecurity above and beyond the precarious situation that a lot of folks were in before this. I think given that and given that our policy goals here are different, this is emergency legislation not to be in effect in perpetuity, but to be in effect for a brief period of time. It is designed to make sure that we have folks inside able to remain in place, to not be in a position where they're experiencing homelessness, to make sure they're in a position where they can be isolated for public health reasons, to observe the social distancing and other guidances that the government has applied, and that that certainty in their ability to do that won't be impacted by the uncertainty that an eviction proceeding could introduce into that. And we know that that risk of displacement will persist after the orders are over. We aren't going to come out on the other side of this and then all of a sudden be in a position where the economy will spring back. It's going to be a long and difficult recovery. So a buffer period between the end of the orders and coming back, I think would be appropriate. And I think that exempting such a large number of units would undermine some of the public policy rationales of this emergency legislation. So I'll be voting against this amendment. But I do appreciate the underlying rationale for bringing it forward. I just think that given the scope of what we're focusing on, it's probably not the best approach. And you've got to remember, Lewis council member Herbold is still with us. I am, indeed. Thank you so much. So as a councilmember who in the winter evictions legislation did vote for an exemption for small landlords, I want to speak to the reason why I'm not supporting that now. As Councilmember Lewis just spoke, I think the the what we are the policy and the reason for the policy that we are contemplating right now is very different in light of a health emergency and the impacts on the general public's health. When people are homeless. And then secondly, I want to just sort of have a mea culpa as it relates to my support of this amendment for the winter election or winter evictions legislation. At that time, I was I had conflated Stsci, the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections, rental housing registration program requirements as it relates to small landlords and large landlords. They CCI holds information about the sizes of the number of units in buildings. Nobody holds the information about whether or not somebody is a large or small landlord. So I don't believe there would be a way for a tenant to be able to assert that their landlord was a large or small landlord in exercising this defense. Because not it is not information that the city collects. The information that the city collects relates to the numbers of units in individual buildings for purposes of assessing an inspection fee. And so that, I think, is another another reason to not support this at this time. Thank you. Councilmember Herbold, are there any is there anyone else you'd like to speak? Councilmember Strauss, I see your hand is up, please. Thank you. Council President, Council Member Lewis and Council Member for summarized my thoughts as well. Councilor Peterson, I appreciate you bringing this amendment forward. I did also vote for the amendment on the winter evictions and because that is a permanent policy that is put in place and this policy is temporary in nature. I will not be supporting the amendment and thank my colleagues. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilmember Strauss. Any colleagues, any other comments on this amendment? Councilmember Peterson, it is your amendment. So I like to give the sponsor of the amendment the last word. So if you'd like to give us some last word on your amendment before I call it the vote, please feel free to do so. Sure. I just appreciate the process. I'm glad that I brought it forward. I'm glad that people are able to air their their views on how it is different. And I see that rationale respected as well. I'm ready to call for a vote on the amendment. Thank you. Peterson I want to sort of echo that the sentiments of some of my colleagues who appreciate what was potentially motivating your desire to want to bring Amendment two forward. Obviously, we have a difference of opinion as to as to this particular amendment. But but I appreciate that we can engage in a in a respectful debate about those differences and ultimately move the policy forward still. So thank you so much for for reaching out to me personally and having a conversation with me about the fact that you were bringing forward this amendment in the others and giving me an opportunity to have an offline conversation with you about that. I appreciate that. So at this point, I'm going to ask that the clerk please call the role on the adoption of Amendment two. So want. No. Strauss. They? For Bolt? No. Juarez may. Lewis. Nay. MORALES No. Macheda, though. Peterson. I. President Gonzalez now. One in favor, eight opposed. Thank you, Madam Kirk. The motion fails and the amendment is not adopted. Consumer. Peterson, I know you have another amendment for us to consider, so I'm going to hand it over to you to make the formal amendment or discussion on Amendment three. Excuse me. Yes, Amendment three be. Yes. So I would like. So this amendment is about the either doing good faith efforts to show that the tenant has applied for rent assistance program more with more more flexibility. From the perspective of more flexibility, they simply self-certify. I'd like to move amendment. Three be. And I know that there's a proposed revision from Councilmember Herb that we can discuss in the mix of this. But I'd like to move Amendment three B so we can discuss it. Second. Okay. So it's been moved and seconded to amend the bill with version three excuse me, Amendment three B as described by Councilmember Peterson. And so I'm going to. Because Mr. Peterson, did you want Councilmember Herbold to make remarks before you make yours? I'll I'd like to set the table first, and then I would welcome her revision discussion group. Yes, that's right, Peterson. The floor is yours. On Amendment three B. Thank you. So this this Amendment three B would basically say that the tenant the tenant would have to show or say that they have made a good faith effort to obtain rental assistance from a public, private or nonprofit rental assistance program where they can submit a declaration or certification stating that they have suffered the financial hardship and is therefore unable to pay rent. Let me explain how it got to this. How it got to this point. So, again, was looking at what we did during the winter eviction moratorium weekend, which I which I ended up voting for. There were several amendments to that. There was at that time a what we call a means test. So we basically were saying those who were had no income, low income or moderate income were eligible for that. The winter eviction ban, however, a means test today may not make a lot of sense if somebody was earning 80% of area median income back in 2019 for their tax return there. It may not be now because of the COVID emergency. So the means test was not practical right now. Then the idea was to link it to COVID, a hardship that's occurred. However, the direct link to COVID in terms of the 10% stake in the hardship due to COVID was removed with the substitute version. So that's how I without that, I was looking for a way for the tenant to simply, you know, the whole idea is prevent the eviction. So the idea is to have them seek the financial assistance and rental assistance. All these programs that we've been talking about that that are available. And you simply state that there was a good faith effort to seek that rental assistance in conversations with some folks, including the council president, who wisely pointed out that not everybody is eligible for these programs, there are barriers to these programs for certain certain folks. Then it came to this saying that or simply self certifying that there is financial hardship. So that's how this amendment has evolved. And I think that there's a further evolution here that's about to take place. But Councilmember Herbold proposed provision. Thank you, Councilmember Peterson. I did want to reiterate that this morning I had indicated that I might be willing to support a Self-certification Declaration pass. Initially, I thought that you were intending to revise your amendment in such a fashion that you would bifurcate the requirement just to, in good faith, access, rental assistance from sort of this new option to provide a declaration asserting financial hardship as the reason for the inability to pay a rent. And so when I saw the revised amendment that kept those two things coupled in a sense, in other words, put them in the same amendment, it led me to the conclusion that I couldn't support it because it was it still included the language around the need to access rental assistance as one of the ways to prove financial hardship. And so I know that that that there has been conversations this afternoon about a potential amendment concerning vision for your proposal that might create a is an amendment that would be more palatable to me would have to be one that would allow for a declaration and self-certification, but not require as sort of exhaustion of an administrative remedy to go through the process of showing that you were trying to access rental assistance. So so I appreciate, again, the the intent that you have here to create some sort of requirement on behalf of the tenant to to give assurances that they are, in fact, experiencing financial burden. And I'm going to sort of leave it leave it at that and open it up for additional comments and see if perhaps Councilmember Herbold wants to speak up at this point. You're on mute. Are you inviting my amendment? Council President? Well, I think yes. Sounds like we are. Fantastic. Thank you. I moved to amend version two of Amendment three B. This is the version noted as version three. Perhaps you want to before I read what the the content of the amendment is. Should we check to see if there are any objections to waiving the rules for this amendment as well? Yeah. So so I'm going to I know that, Councilmember Herbold, you have this proposed amendment to the amendment. So in order for us to consider this amendment, the council rules will need to be suspended. If there is no objection, the council rules relating to circulation of amendments 2 hours before the meeting will be suspended. So hearing no objection, the rules are suspended. And now, Councilmember Herbold, you are free to move your amendment that would amend Councilmember Peterson's Amendment three. Be fantastic. Thank you. So I move to amend version two of Amendment three, be it is this is the version referenced as version three. It amends the last subsection two and it deletes the words has applied for or made a good faith effort to obtain rental assistance from a public, private or nonprofit rental assistance program or the tenant. If adopted, this. Subsection two would. Still include a declaration or a self-certification, asserting that the a tenant has suffered financial hardship and is therefore unable to pay rent. Second. It's been moved and seconded to amend Amendment three. B Councilmember Herbold, would you like to speak more to your amendment? Thank you. I really appreciate Councilmember Peterson's bringing both versions of these amendments forward. My my intent in the amendment to that most recent version three B is really just to streamline what it is that we expect a judge to to take a look at and confirm the that the certification being signed is something that a judge can can review. And the disruption in such a certification is is considered perjury, whereas the determination of whether or not somebody has made a good faith effort to obtain rental assistance in projects, a certain amount of of complexity to a judge's decision in this area. And again, this is intended to really streamline and and. Lift the burdens on. On the court for. For making these determinations. Thank you. Got some verbal. Because Mr. Peterson, please. Yes. Thank you. I, I welcome this as a friendly amendment and appreciate how this has evolved by with the conversations. I just wanted to clarify. My intent was it would be. Good faith effort to obtain rental assistance or to submit for her, provide the declaration so they can detect and do either one of those. So there were a couple different paths for them, but I understand the trepidation of some appearance of adding a barrier here, which I do not want to do. So just wanted to clarify that. Thank you for that. Clarify clarification. I really appreciate councilman for her bold your your partnership in advancing this amendment to amendment 3bi think it's a a a good fix that does streamline things. And while I appreciate that Councilmember Peterson's original amendment included the word, or it still made me nervous as to how that would be applied in practice by a judge or how it would be utilized by landlords in eviction proceedings. And so so I think this is a much cleaner approach. And certainly one of the things that they could put into their self-certification or declaration is a representation that they try to access rental assistance and weren't able to secure it. There's a whole host of other things that they can put in that declaration. So I think this is an elegant solution to the the the I think underlying issue that you're trying to resolve. Councilmember Peterson, through your original Amendment three B, for the benefit of my colleagues, we did have a conversation with with the King County Bar Association's Housing Justice Project lawyer and who we heard in public testimony earlier, he indicated in terms of sort of on the ground perspective, having experienced representing tenants in these court proceedings, that that that they believe that this is a good solution and would not present any additional barriers to access the eviction defense and is have confidence that a judge would see a declaration signed under the penalty of perjury as acceptable evidence to be able to support making a case if this defense is asserted in eviction proceedings. So I feel comfortable with that representation and and feel comfortable moving forward with this with this amendment as proposed by Councilmember Herbold. Because. Any questions or comments? Council members want. Thank you. I think that comes from the herbals version. Doesn't mitigate the problematic nature of Councilmember Peterson's original amendment. But I will still be voting no on this amendment because fundamentally, I find it disturbing that. Council members are evoking this idea that, you know, this sort of boogeyman of a bad tenant who is going to skip out on rent. And I'm sure that I mean, I wouldn't say that that never happens because I don't know, maybe it does. But the point is policymaking has to be based on statistical evidence and statistical evidence overwhelmingly, not just mostly, but overwhelmingly shows that evictions, even before this pandemic absolutely target the most vulnerable in our society. The Losing Home report showed that black community members, especially black women and single mom households, were the ones that were most targeted. And I would say just based on that statistical evidence and based on the fact that now vast majorities of working people are going to have job losses and income losses, obviously people who are going to be taken to eviction are those who are suffering and have suffered financial hardship. And the only impact of this amendment is to force people who are already losing everything to go through one more dignity and humiliation. As I said, the amended version does mitigate this, but the effect of it is still a pointless indignity being inflicted on a tenant who is already in dire financial straits. It really literally accomplishes nothing other than being odious towards working people who are already facing the recession. I don't understand why this so-called good faith effort burden is not being put on landlords. So I just for all those reasons, I will be voting no on this amendment. I think you guys remember. So what? Any of my other colleagues. I want to make any comments. Councilmember Strauss. Yes. Just clarifying. We are about to vote on Councilmember Herbold amendment to Councilmember Peterson's amendment. Is that correct? That is correct. You are tracking. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from my colleagues? Okay. So just so you can see the process point, how we voted on the amendment to the amendment, I believe we just voted on the motion to put it on the table. Maybe I'm on. No we we we've moved and seconded to consider Councilmember Herbold amendment to Amendment three B. So we're now going to vote on Councilmember Herbold amendment to Council Member Peterson's amendment, but we haven't yet voted on. Councilmember Peterson's version will be next as amended. Parliamentary procedure is the best. The best. All right, folks. Are there any. Okay. So are there any other comments on the amendment as proposed by Councilmember Herbold? Okay. So let's see. Here I am. Will the clerk please call the roll on the amendment to version two of Amendment three be? Want what. I. Strauss. I. Herbold. I. Juarez. I. Lewis, I. Morales. I. Macheda I. Peterson. I. President Gonzalez, I. Nine in favor, nine opposed. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The motion carries the amendment as adopted, and version two of Amendment three B, as amended, is before the Council. So now, colleagues, we are considering Council Member Peterson's Amendment three B as a met as we just amended it. And so are there any further comments on the amendment as amended? Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and ask that the clerk please call the roll on adoption of Amendment three, be as amended. So on? No. Strauss. Right. Herbold, I. Juarez. I. Lewis. I. Morales now. Macheda. I. Peterson. I. President Gonzalez, I. Seven in favor. Two opposed the motion carries and the amendment is adopted. Okay. So we are going to move now to amendment number four. So I will move to amend Council Bill 119784 as presented on Amendment four on the agenda. Is there a second? It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill. And so Amendment four colleagues is a amendment that would remove that court ordered plans. So we are simply removing the requirement that a judge order a payment plan as the only remedy available if the eviction defense is successfully asserted. We heard again concerns from folks over at the Housing Justice Project about the sheer volume of applications for assistance to the home base funds. And and as a result of sort of the sheer shock of numbers of receiving 7000 applications and really kickback housing projects estimation that they might be able to help 2000. It really created a lot of concern for folks who are providing direct services and that that a payment plan would be realistic in every single case. And so instead of requiring that a payment plan be instituted and potentially creating some kind of inadvertently creating a legal financial obligation, that instead we should allow a judge to continue to have discretion in terms of identifying which remedy would be most appropriate based on the facts of the case if if a defendant is is successful in asserting an eviction defense. And so I think it is more appropriate for us to allow a judge the latitude that they need based on whatever the record is in front of him or her to craft appropriate remedies. A rental payment plan could be one of those, but it could also be something, something entirely different. So. So as a result, I am advancing this amendment to remove that requirement from the substitute bill. I'm happy to take any comments or questions on that particular amendment. Second. Any additional questions or comments on that? All right. Hearing none, I would ask the clerk to please call the role on the adoption of Amendment four. The launch. I. Strauss. I. Though I Juarez. I mean. Lewis. I. Morale is. High. Mesquita. I. Petersen Petersen. By. President Gonzalez. I. Nine in favor and opposed. So much the motion carries and the amendment is adopted. I understand that there is one last amendment is Amendment five and it is sponsored by Councilmember Peterson. So I am going to hand it over to him. Thank you. Council President Yes. Amendment five is a reporting requirement that we would be adding to the bill. So within two months of the effective date of the ordinance, the Seattle Department of Construction Inspection and the Office of Housing will provide a report to City Council on the implementation of this ordinance. And it's you know, the data is hard for them to to gather. However, they're going to come back to us with what they can gather on the eviction statistics, who's using the air defenses. And we'll be able to digest that information and find out the how the ordinance is working while we're in the middle of the six month period. And so I would like to officially move this amendment and to know that Councilmember Herbold will have a similar revision to my amendment, which I welcome. But let me go ahead and move the version to understand. Your options are five. Or we're moving version. Yeah. Moving version to Amendment five a. Right because the previous amendment passed from me. So this will be moving find a. He. Just a sec. Although. Yeah. Pardon me. I'm being told by several staff I should be moving amendment at five feet. Excuse me? I was. I was strategically pausing to give you an opportunity to shuffle through your paper. I do believe it is Amendment five be. Yes. Okay. Is there a second? Second. Okay. It's been moved and seconded to adopt Amendment five B again, Councilmember Herbold, I understand that you have a proposed amendment to this amendment to align the amendment to the Revised Amendment three. I've never said the word amendment more often in my life to consider this amendment. The Council rules will need to be suspended if there is no objection. The council rules relating to circulation of amendments 2 hours before the meeting will be suspended. Hearing no objection. The roles are suspended and councilmember verbal that you may now move your amendment. Right. Well, I think there's a little bit of a misunderstanding. I was not intending to remove an amendment. And. An alternative to Amendment five, given I have some concerns about Amendment five, but. Just based on the fact that I, I understand that I want hold information about what happens in eviction court. They only are they only get involved in these matters if there is a violation of the law. And so people don't call the eye for assistance in court. When there's when there is an eviction. And so I was not planning on supporting this amendment, nor was I planning on offering a an amendment to this amendment, although I recognize that. The script that we've been provided says so. So I think. What? So. So. I think I understand, if I may. Yeah. Just a minute. Just a minute. Because we're entering into parliamentary nightmare land. So I just want to before. Before and I. And I just thought Asha's email as well. I Casmir Peterson So I just want to clarify, Councilmember Ruble did not intend to make an amendment to either version of Councilmember Peterson's amendment. Is that correct? I did not intend to, but I feel obligated because everybody thought I was going. No. So I. Have a script that I could I could, in. Good sportsmanship. Offer the amendment. I do have reservations about the amendment, though. I don't think anybody on the on the in the meeting today is clamoring for for four more amendments. So if you do not wish to advance your amendment, you and that is your call. The difficulty, though, is if a majority of councilmembers do support Councilmember Peterson's amendment, it can't pass without there being a change to it because of our previous amendments. So why don't we have a conversation about Amendment five and then we can sort of assess whether or not there needs to be shifting in terms of your position around introducing an amendment here. So we have also received notice from our very capable council central staffer that we moved the wrong version of the amendment. So I'm going to ask the clerk what our options are if if Councilmember Peterson has already moved version five be what we are required to do under Robert's Rules of order to put that to rest and be able to consider the appropriate version. This is Amelia. The council can decide as a body to withdraw the motion, which is the motion to amend the Council bill to their version five B if they want to withdraw it, as long as it has no objection. Okay. And then from there, if there's no objections, you can move forward with the correct version of the amendment. Kate, is there an objection to withdrawing a proposed amendment? Five. Five. Be hearing no objection. The motion to consider proposed amendment five. B is withdrawn. Councilmember Patron, I'm going to hand it back over to you to make the appropriate. Yes, thank you. Just for the viewing audience to explain. Basically the there were versions A and B, because they were contingent upon what would happen the previous amendment. So it sort of changes the ordering of the ordinance and the lettering and numbering of it. So what I'd like to do is correctly move. Five, a version two and some five. A It's a because we passed the previous amendment I had. So it's we're going to go with a and it's version two because we passed Councilor Herbold revision to my amendment, which removed the reference to seeking a good faith effort to seek rental assistance. So that's why we're moving a version that our central staff circulated, basically just to align us to where we are right now in the process where we're no longer considering the good faith effort to seek rental assistance. That's out. That's why we have version two of five A, which I'm now moving. He's their second. Second. Okay. It's been moved and seconded to consider a proposed Amendment five, a version to Councilmember Peterson. Do you have anything else to add? Yes. So again, this is simply a reporting requirement to have the departments stsci and office housing come back to us with information on how it's being implemented. And they will use the data that's available to them is limited. But I still think that if we are going to pass an ordinance that is making these changes, that it's it's helpful for us to hear how it's going from the departments. Thank you. Okay. And now I'm going to open it up for debate and discussion. So, colleagues, anyone like to comment? Councilman Morales? Yeah, I. I'm nervous about this amendment. I think, you know, this is a this is an emergency time right now. We're talking about protecting people who we all know are experiencing deep financial problems right now with an inability to pay April's rent, probably not able to pay this month's rent or next month. And so there's no question that the protection that this bill is intending to provide is going to be necessary and useful. I think this kind of an amendment really just kind of opens the door to removing the defense of, you know, if it's not used enough, then why are we doing this? I think we will know if this is a useful bill or not. If it gets used and if it doesn't, then we don't need it. But if we do, if people do need it, it's really important that it's there. And I don't know that having a reporting requirement to tell us how much it was used is is a useful. A step to put in place right now. That's all. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Herbold. Thank you. I don't have any objection to the city receiving the information. I think all information is healthy. And I would not presuppose that we are asking for the information because of some. Future intent to argue that we do, we need to use a lot of too much or too little. I think analyzing the impacts of of our our ordinances is a is a good practice. My my concern, though, again, is Sky simply does not have this information. They the superior court in county superior court is the body that would have the information, the filings that tenants make as it relates to the the defenses and the use of this particular address cause. And whether or not a certification was filed, CCI simply does not have that information. And I'd be happy to, you know, to work with the amendment sponsor to try to figure out how we could get this information from from King County Superior Court in the future. But I just don't think that this is a mechanism that's appropriate to put on CCI. I'm just concerned it burdensome to them. Thank you, Councilmember Herbold. I would just add that I think I've heard some of the similar concerns that Councilmember Herbold has heard that again, in in in many instances, we do ask for report back specifically for new policies where where we want to be able to assess the effectiveness of the policy. When you look at our labor standard laws, for example, almost all of them include some level of evaluation of how the law is working or isn't working. And and I've had the benefit of being the sponsor of some of those report back requirements, not because I had an intent to unravel the law in the future or make some argument that the law was being used too often. But frankly, because I think it's helpful information and data to continue to fine tune the policy, to make sure that that those laws are actually meeting the needs of the people that it's intended to to benefit. And so I think in this instance, again, I'm not sure it makes sense to require Stsci to go through the extraordinary effort of monitoring the King County Superior Court eviction proceedings and filings for a period of six months. It's a it's a short lived eviction defense. And and I think that I think that what we're trying to accomplish here is creating maximum access to that. And while I appreciate the desire to want to be able to have some sort of a metric associated to it, I'm just not sure that CCI has that. They, as a fully funded agency, has the capacity to to do this body of work. And I'm not sure that I want them to be investing their limited resources in this body of work when this law is intended to be in place only for a six month period of time after the conclusion of the eviction moratorium, as declared by Mayor Durkan. So that's my position on this particular amendment, and I see that Councilmember Mosqueda has also raised her hand before assures. EU Council President. Thanks to the sponsor for the clarification on what the minutes intended to do. I'm a little torn as well, and I believe that getting the data is important. I heard that there might be follow up conversations to be had about how we can ensure that folks are getting access to these services. One thing that I will note that I thought was missing from the report back, if we were to go down this route, perhaps not through CCI, but through another body. Reporting back to us is how race and ethnicity will be reported. Given the latest numbers that we saw on Friday. We know, for example, that Hispanics are four times more likely to be admitted to the hospital due to COVID and two and a half times more likely to die due to COVID related death. So I think as we think about the protections that we're putting into place under this emergency that is covered as we think about getting feedback about these programs and any future reporting back, I would like to see race and ethnicity reported back. I agree with the council president in that as is probably not necessarily the right body to do this, but I appreciate the spirit in which the amendment was put forward. And if there are to be future conversations, I think, as Councilmember Herbold had indicated, that there are the race and ethnicity element be something that we include as a requirement for reporting back on these various protections due to the disparity that we see and how COVID is affecting various communities. Thank you very much. Thank you. Government was great. And I think I think that the bigger issue that councilmember her boldness flagging is that the city of Seattle does not track any of this information, period , because we don't do we're not in the business of arbitrating being the arbitrators and the findings of fact of eviction defenses. And that is something that is within a different jurisdiction being King County. And we do not currently have any sort of data sharing agreement with them or data sharing plan with them related to that information. And so I suppose that the worry really is, is are we setting up for inherent failure or are we setting them up to require them to expend resources that they may not have accessible to them, to set up a data collection process for a for a defense that's only going to be in existence for six months by definition in the ordinance. Council stressed. Yeah. Thank you. Council president in my I have regular meetings with CCI and while I truly do appreciate the desire for data so that we can create good public policy, I'm not sure that data that is hard to hard to identify for a temporary bill is the best use of time. And I will reiterate to Stsci my request for additional work on the tree ordinance that I made last week. And I will I will be voting no on this bill so as to ensure that they have staff time to create the tree ordinance that I am requesting. Thank you. All righty. Any other comments or questions from my colleagues? All right. So I'm going to go ahead and call for a vote on this particular amendment. So will the clerk please call the roll on adoption of amendment motion time if we version two. And I want to know. Strauss. May. HERBOLD No. That's a tie. HERBOLD They. Thinking Juarez may. Lewis. Thank. MORALES No. Must get to know. Peterson. I. President Gonzalez. No. One in favor eight opposed. He the motion fails and the amendment is not adopted. Okay, colleagues, I think that completes the list of amendments that we have on this particular bill. I want to thank you all for slugging it out with me. I know it's 4:30 p.m., so let's go ahead and move along here. Are there any comments on the bill as amended? Councilmember Lewis. Thank you. Council President I just wanted to make a couple of comments before the vote. I fully intend to vote for this legislation, and I appreciate you for bringing it forward. You know, as one of the two writers on the council, I think it's critical that we extend protection to renters in this time to make sure that we can keep people inside, especially in this time of uncertainty in addition to public health threats. I just want to clarify, too, for the people that commented earlier when we did have public comment that addressed this bill, there there is no city law that's authorizing, condoning or calling for people to not pay their rent. Just because there's a moratorium on evictions does not mean that the city is seeking to condone folks not paying rent, nor is a rent strike, an official city policy. And I think that that's important for members of the public to know this council, for the record, additionally to everyone earlier who was talking about as an alternative to this moratorium, putting money into rent support, as was alluded earlier by Councilmember Herbold and others on this council, has put millions of dollars into rent relief before and during this crisis. With more on the way, rent relief is a criteria or is a priority of this council and continues to be and will continue to be. But we face the problem that we have 1.4 million Washingtonians that are unemployed and that state and federal unemployment and relief has been slow coming. Hard to access. Glitchy websites have been crashing and we are in a period of immense and extreme uncertainty regarding how people are going to immediately make their rent. And it puts a lot of Washingtonians in a position where while they could ordinarily, dependably be able to pay their rent on time, it might take some folks a little bit more time to do it. And while I'm sure that many of the landlords who commented earlier and who have been contacting my office, I'm sure that I completely believe all of their representations that they are exceptional landlords, that they're working with folks to cut them some slack. But we cannot make policy as a city council that is just going to trust that folks that are facing completely unique hardships are not going to be put in a position where they are going to be on the street and in a precarious position during this public health crisis and then later during the slow and circuitous recovery. I did also want to flag to a lot of the landlords who commented earlier. There are a lot of actions that the city and the state has done to help to alleviate the pressures that landlords are facing . And there are delayed payments of property taxes that King County is doing. We have delayed we are delaying payments of the taxes. Given the hardship of the current crisis, the city is delaying utility payments for folks who have who have to pay utilities. All of these things are designed to try to defer some of the costs of landlords. While we know full well that because of the nature of what's happening in the marketplace, some rent may be deferred because people are going to have trouble paying rent or have to wait for relief to come through before they can do it . And I just want to state as the tenant who is currently in a state that has an eviction moratorium, I did pay my rent. I paid my rent because I'm in a position to pay it. I will continue to do it because that's an obligation that I assumed when I signed a lease. I am not refusing to pay merely because there's a moratorium in place, and most of my fellow renters, if they can pay, are in a position to pay, will pay. Renters are professionals. Two of us are. On the Seattle City. Council. Some of us as renters are gig workers who are suffering and are on the margins. Some of us as renters worked in restaurants and have been unemployed for weeks now because that industry has fallen off a cliff. We are not a homogenous group and if we're in a position to pay, we are going to pay. We are not going to hold out purely because we are in a position where there's a rent moratorium and there's a perception that we could we're not going to do that. It's just not something that is going to happen. But we do know that there are going to be lots of people who aren't in a position to pay because they're suffering from these hardships they just enumerated. And we as a council will continue to support, rent support for people to make sure that they have the resources to meet those obligations. We're going to continue to work with our federal and state partners to expand unemployment, to expand relief, to make sure that people. Have the resources to pay their landlords. But I did just want to take this moment to clear up some of those misconceptions, to explain why I'm going to vote for this legislation today and to say that I want to continue to work with everyone who testified publicly before my colleagues on the Council to make sure that we can continue to fight for relief and continue to fight for protections for renters, as well as get through this crisis to make sure that those deferred rent payments not forgiven, but deferred rent payments will be made ultimately when we get on the other side of this. So thank you, Madam President, for bringing this forward, and I will be voting in favor of this legislation. Thank you. Councilmember Lewis. Well-stated. Colleagues, any other comments on the bill as amended? That's what I want. And then Councilmember Strauss and Casper Mosqueda, Councilperson lawyers. Thank you, Brazil Mosquito. I am very happy to vote yes on this legislation as a step towards preventing the deluge of evictions. At the moment, the emergency eviction ban ends. Tens of millions of renters across the country are unable to pay rent because unable. It's not like they are willfully refusing to. They are unable to pay rent because they have lost work hours or even jobs through the COVID emergency and recession. In the first week of April, 31% of renters were unable to pay their rent in full. I have not seen many statistics come out yet, but I'm sure that the crisis faced by renters is continuing, especially in the light of the new data that we've seen that the federal stimulus checks have not reached a majority of working class households who are actually eligible for it. And we know that that problem is translating into the impact on lives of tens of thousands of people, working people in and many of whom are renters in total, the vast majority of whom are renters. And this would mean that tens of thousands of renters in Seattle are unable to pay their rent right now. It would be completely unacceptable for them to be evicted with everything that it entails. As I mentioned earlier, in 2017, according to the Losing Home report, nearly nine out of ten renters who were evicted ended up homeless. Many of them were children. They were disproportionately working class people of color. Four of the evicted tenants in 2017 committed suicide. That is why I arranged strike movement nationwide. As I said, there's hundreds of organizations that are involved in demanding that rent, mortgage and utility payments be suspended or, in other words, canceled during this emergency and also demanding that rents be frozen for the rest of the year, meaning no rent increases for the rest of the year. And as I have mentioned in the past, that online petition that was started by activists in Washington state and now has been signed by over 3 million signatories nationwide. And our statewide petition has been signed by more than 9000 Washingtonians. And it's really interesting to see how something that is politically impossible in one moment becomes commonplace in the next. Only a few months ago, our movement fought for and won the ban on winter evictions. It was a fight in the country, and now cities and states across the country in the context of the pandemic have banned evictions, at least temporarily, and are now extending those rights with legislation like this one that we're going to be voting on. You know, Councilmember Peterson has proudly pointed out the amendment he made in the winter evictions ordinance to exclude renters who supposedly have smaller landlords. But as Councilmember Herbold, thank her for noting this. And as I had noted at that time, unfortunately, the majority of council did not agree with that at that time, which was actually the truth , which is that renters cannot. It is it is virtually impossible for renters to prove that their landlord is a, quote, unquote, small landlord. And. At that time that amendment passed. Unfortunately, the majority of the council voted for it. But now it is important to the majority of the council stood against that. And it's becoming increasingly clear to millions of people that the private market has completely failed to make housing a human right. And socialists have already always pointed out that the private market will not meet human need. But that reality has now magnified by so many orders of magnitude in the impact it has on human misery in the context of the pandemic. And as far as rent strike and the demand of demands of renters are concerned, here is the reality. And this is the better reality. Once the eviction moratoria are lifted, there will. If renters don't fight back, if renters don't get organized, they will face a massive wave of evictions throughout the nation. We saw that, as I said, in the Great Recession with home ownership of middle class households being completely destroyed by the big banks and the big mortgage holders. Already right now, we are seeing big landlords and property managers not complying with existing law. I just got an email from a renter today who said that they had already faced a rent increase from Cornell and Associates, which which is a big property manager in this area, and that is violating the governor's order . So renters are already being forced to fight to end existing law enforcement alone. What will happen when those emergency orders are lifted? And so that is why renters need to get organized. And that is the purpose behind the nationwide strike movement, which, as you know, including hundreds of community organizations and demonstrates organization. And lastly, I will say that in addition to fighting for renters rights, we will need a massive expansion of social housing which cannot be accomplished without progressive revenues. And that is why we really urge the Council to support the Amazon tax proposal by Councilmember Morales and myself. And again, I'm happy to vote yes on this legislation. Thank you, councilmember someone. I think I will need a reminder as to who was next in line. Was it Councilmember Strauss? Yes, Kazmir Strauss. And then Kazmir Mosqueda commerce supporters are. Thank you. Council president. Just wanting to say, you know, this is a crisis, an international pandemic that we are responding to, where we do not we are not conducting life as normally as we did, you know, months ago. And I want to just thank everyone who is participating and looking out for their neighbor, looking out for themselves. When I read Danny West Needs a tale of two landlords. Granted it was regarding commercial landlords. There's a clear difference between people who are living in Seattle and part of our community and folks who are not. And I want to just take a moment to think. Any person, whether you're a landlord or any other business who has looked out for your neighbor and allowed payment plans or not gone through evictions or provided affordable below market rate housing. I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for pitching in. Thank you, Councilmember Strauss. Customer Mosquito. HQ Council President. Just want to offer a note of appreciation for all the work that you've done on this legislation. I know it's been many weeks of stakeholder engagement and we're planning drafts on the legislation. We heard initial feedback from the tenants, advocates and Washington Community Action Network about the legislation related to removing barriers for tenants experiencing economic hardship due to their documentation status, or working in the gig economy where it would be really difficult to prove or provide documentation of financial hardship due to COVID impacting their ability to pay rent. So I really want to appreciate all the work that you've done as the bill's sponsor for incorporating this feedback. This legislation would provide a protection for tenants who are most impacted by the economic effects of COVID during the months when they are most vulnerable for six months and for six months after the civil emergency has lifted. We know that this is just one piece of the puzzle. We also need rent and mortgage forgiveness at the federal level to protect both tenants and small landlords. Rental assistance on a massive scale with federal, state and local support and more investments and dedicated revenue for building affordable housing to make sure everyone is able to stay home and stay healthy. I want to just underscore the point that I think a lot of folks made on that national call last Friday, and I've tried to really hammer home not all landlords are the same. And that is why we know it's important for us to get federal assistance for small landlords, for housing authority entities like the Seattle Housing Authority and King County Housing Authority, and for our nonprofit housing providers. So having that type of assistance from the federal level with support for Representative Ilhan Omar, as Bill is going to be critical and that not all tenants are treated the same. Right now we have statistics from pre-COVID that show that the type of folks that are already experiencing housing discrimination and who are more likely to face eviction are women, are people of color, are immigrants, are the LGBTQ population. And so with COVID, we are wanting to double down on our commitments to protect these already vulnerable populations. I really appreciate the effort that you have put forward into this legislation to work with those stakeholders to move forward, this commitment to lift up our protections for all folks, especially those who are experiencing this type of discrimination even prior to COVID. Thank you so much. Having to vote yes on this bill. Thank you. I appreciate your support. Any other colleagues have comments on the bill ackman. Okay. I will close out debate before we call this and bill to a vote. So, colleagues, the bill we have before us today is and is in direct response to the COVID 19 crisis. When this crisis started to unfold, we saw thousands of workers. And indeed, now we know it's well over a million workers who have abruptly lost their jobs. Workers who are hourly wage earners with the hospitality and tourism industries hit particularly hard in some instances in that hospitality industry in the first week alone. Their unemployment filings went up by over 600% during the month of March. We saw unemployment filings more than double in one week, only for that number to increase by 842% the following week. Last week, the Seattle Times reported that more than one in five, more than one in five Washingtonians have applied for unemployment benefits. And we know this number would be greater if everyone actually could apply. I'm proud of our city interstate for its quick science driven response to contain the spread of the coronavirus and flatten the curve. The declaration of states of emergency and the actions by the mayor and the governor to put moratoriums in place against residential evictions in mid-March will keep many people safe and housed and appreciative to them for those actions that they took. And I'm also appreciative to the Attorney General General's office for doing enforcement. However, we know that the moratoriums will expire at their earliest in sometime in June, and it is unlikely that the civil emergency will be lifted at that same time. Recovery is going to take time and we know our economy will be back in phases, not all at once. And with social distancing protocols, they will it will continue to present issues for whether or not we will come out of this economic crisis quickly or slowly with the likelihood of the moratorium on evictions being lifted before the conclusion of a civil emergency. There is that window of time where many people remain vulnerable if they are particularly impacted by this pandemic. This legislation before us today can help people stay housed, and that is the bottom line. This bill expands on the city's just cause eviction ordinance, similar to the defenses created by that by that ordinance. This legislation creates an additional tool a defense a tenant may utilize in eviction court proceedings. But it is a time limited tool. This bill. Which would cover that period of time between the end of the moratorium during the civil emergency and once the married. If there is the civil emergency over, it will make this tool available to those who need it for a period of six months after that date. This bill is not an extension of moratoriums by the mayor or the governor. In fact, it does not prohibit landlords from taking actions associated with evictions like filing of unlawful detainers, issuing determination notices, or initiating a writ of resolution. I want to make that really clear, because a lot of the testimony that we've been receiving in the public makes it seem as though we are getting rid of all of our landlord tenant laws. And that's just simply not the case. What we are doing is we are enhancing existing landlord tenant laws to benefit tenants who are going to need additional time to get their feet grounded and to be able to continue to dig out of this economic crisis. So I want to make sure that we are rooting our policy in in those real renters stories and who is being impacted by the reality of this economic crisis and and that intersection between that economic crisis and and housing stability. So my office undertook the effort of collecting stories of people who've been impacted by this crisis. Of the people who responded to that story collection exercise, we learned that nearly 64% of the respondents lost their jobs due to this crisis, with many waiting several weeks before unemployment benefits would come in, an additional 18% of the respondents have their hours or income severely reduced as a result of the business closure because of the pandemic. And some tenants share that. While some of their landlords had graciously reduced their rent, most people just didn't understand how they would ever be able to pay the rent on May 1st. And in fact, we've heard some stories of people skipping meals each day to save money for rent, utilities and other expenses. After that, seeing their hours were severely cut. People share with us that they were at risk at losing their health insurance because they'll drop below full time status. People shared with. Best quote. I just don't know. I'm terrified. We just moved into this apartment after escaping from a horrible landlord. Now we're finally somewhere safe, and now we're afraid we're going to lose it already. If we do, we don't know where we'll go. I can't move home. Due to abusive, dangerous family, we feel completely helpless. Another renter shared with us that they live with four people. All of them are out of work due to COVID. Many do not meet the standards for unemployment, and at this time they don't know how they'll make how they pay rent in the month of May. These are real stories from our constituents throughout the city who would see relief potentially out of this law if we were to pass it today. So these these are the these are the stories that we need to root this policy in. And the weekly stories we hear about our state's unemployment system working overtime to keep up means we know tens of thousands in our city are still waiting to get those promised benefits. This legislation ultimately is a way to have more time for people impacted by this crisis to figure things out. These individuals and families will have a longer road to recover from this crisis. And many of us, as counselors articulated by Councilmember Lewis, have been advocating for more rental assistance and additional mortgage relief and a deferral of property taxes to help renters and small landlords alike. And we will continue to work with our state and federal partners on making sure that those needs are met through COVID 19 relief packages. I know I'm committed to doing that. I know that folks on this council are committed to continuing to do that. And with that, I'm really excited about calling of this particular council bill and to a vote. So with that being said, I will ask the clerk, please call the role of passage of the bill as amended. The launch. I. Strauss. All right. Her bones. I. Suarez, I. Lewis. I. Morales. I. Mesquita. I've. Peterson. I. President Gonzalez. I. Nine in favor then opposed. Thank you. Clerk The bill passes as amended and the chair will sign it. And I'd ask that the clerk please the fix my signature to the legislation on behalf. Thank you, colleagues, for that wonderful conversation. I think we're we're we're we're doing something really important for thousands of renters across the city. So thank you so much. Will the clerk please read the short titles of items four through six into the record?