AN ORDINANCE relating to housing and displacement mitigation; expanding the information required for submission under the Rental Registration Inspection Ordinance for rental housing units; requiring submission of rental housing-related information; and amending Chapter 22.214 of the Seattle Municipal Code.
No objection. The agenda is indeed adopted will be on in our agenda to reconsideration of Council. Council Bill Vetoed by Mayor Harrell. This is reconsideration of Council Bill 120325 for the clerk. Please read item one into the record. Agenda Item one Constable 120 325 relating to housing and displacement mitigation. Expanding the information required for submission under the Rental Registration Section Ordinance for rental housing units requiring submission of rental housing related information and amending Chapter 20 2.2.1 for sale. Mr. CODE. Thank you. I am calling up the reconsideration of Council Bill 120325 to consider passage of the Bill and the Mayor's veto. On May 31st, 2022, the Seattle City Council passed one to Council Bill 120325. Mayor Harrell subsequently vetoed it on June 10th, 2022. Today will be voted on whether to pass the bill again to override the veto. It takes six votes to pass the bill and override the mayor's veto. Council members received a memo from central staff who received a couple of them last Wednesday outlining the procedure for this vote. Following the comments, I reached the Council bill 1 to 0 325 is now pending before the council. Are there any comments on the bill? Councilor Peterson. Thank you. Council President, I appreciate the co-sponsorship of this bill with Councilmember Morales. And as you mentioned, a majority of the city council approved council bill 120325 to collect basic rental data. City Hall has been lacking for years. Data we need urgently now on the eve of considering massive land use and zoning changes through a required comprehensive plan. As one of the sponsors of the bill, I outlined several reasons to support the bill originally. We need the data to prevent displacement of vulnerable residents. The data is vital before we make these changes to the comprehensive plan that impacts zoning and housing policies. The current census tract data and rental surveys on vacant units lack the vital details on existing rents at specific locations, and we already considered alternatives to this bill. But those alternatives are inadequate. The data can validate affordable benefits of smaller mom and pop landlords. Also in deference to active landlords who expressed concerns about the concept, the bill already included important accommodations. A research university would receive the raw rental data instead of the city government directly. The requirement would sunset in three years, so it was just a temporary bill needed at a crucial time in our decision making. Opponents of the bill then raised concerns about timing and cost. The bill was amended further, which ended up addressing those concerns. The city, the city's executive departments would be in the driver's seat. Nothing would happen until the executive executes a contract with a research university. After a competitive request for proposals and the RFP could help manage the costs. Specifically, the Council adopted was amended to state that effective three months from the date of their excuse me, effective three months from the date the contract described in the subsection is executed. The information that was requested will be submitted later, twice annually. So the timing issue was solved with that. I also want to point out that in between the bill was vetoed and offered additional supports for the bill. And bottom line is, I urge at least one of the four council members who voted against it to join the majority. So this bill becomes law. The additional supports are that rental registries like this are increasingly common in the United States. Seattle is behind. We are not progressive on this issue. Long standing laws requiring rent roles with rental data information already exist in other cities such as New York City. Moreover, many California cities have implemented these programs over the past few years. A 2019 report examined eight rental housing registry programs, including three that already require the rent amount to be provided. A more recent February 2022 news article highlighted that 16 different cities in California are moving ahead with this, not waiting for the state legislature to act. Costs are dramatically lower than what opponents claimed based on the actual experiences of these other cities. The fact that we're simply adding on to an existing housing registry, Seattle's rental registration and inspection ordinance that already enforces the collection of data. And we would be using a competitive request for proposals. The cost to add the collection of research components at CB 120325 could be as low as $125,000 a year. The two departments that should want this data and want us to have this data. They received budget increases last year and the executives required to have this information in doing the comprehensive plan proposals. So this bill would have enabled them to get the data they need and the university that would be chosen via a competitive RFP would be doing the bulk of the work, the data entry, the sorting and the mapping , the existing affordable housing projects, so that we make well-informed decisions. There was a $2 million estimate. That was over the three year period, and it was based on asking one real estate center how much money would they want to do this? And that is not necessarily the best way to get an affordable result. The competitive IRP process would get that resolved. There was also a $5 million estimate that was mentioned, but that was if we were to set up the brio program from scratch. So that was not a reliable estimate. Also, this bill did not charge landlords the cost to run this system. Landlords do pay for the RPO already. There could have been an option to increase that by $4 a unit that would have yielded plenty of funds to run this program. But we didn't choose to do it that way. But we could have. In other words, cost was really not an appropriate rationale to vote against the bill, in my opinion. So bottom line is there are plenty of reasons to support Council 1 to 0 3 to 5 as the majority of our legislative branch already did. So I urge a yes vote again today. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Petersen, before I go to Councilor Morales, who is a co-sponsor, then then it'll be customers to watch. I want to remind the public, when we voted on this on May 31st, the vote was 5 to 4. All right, Councilman Morales. I hear you. Yeah, we go. Sorry about that. It's you, colleagues. And thank you, Councilmember Peterson. I'm proud to have co-sponsored this legislation. And I'm disappointed that the mayor decided to veto a bill that would actually allow us to collect real information on rent trends for the first time ever. As the city continues to become more affordable. We as policymakers need data about our rental market that tell us the rate at which rent is increasing in our city. And we shouldn't be reliant on private, for profit corporations to do that work for us. We know that Seattle isn't affordable, but we don't really know the rate at which rents are skyrocketing right now. We don't. We don't know which units are seeing the biggest increases. We don't know if there is a ceiling to the kind of rent increases that we're seeing right now. My office worked with Councilmember Peterson on this legislation because we believe that it has the potential to provide us at the city with data that we're currently lacking. And it has the potential excuse me. I mean. It has the potential to put a tremendous amount of power into the hands of tenants, shifting the scale towards something more balanced between landlords and tenants. This is an opportunity that tenants in cities with rent roles like Chicago and New York already have. This could mean for tenants that they finally have the ability to make an informed decision and to make a choice between units when they're searching for a new home, something that landlords have been able to do with background checks on tenants for decades. What this means for tenants is that they'll actually know who's hiding behind LLC that owned the LLC, that owned their building. And that means that they can go directly to the person or persons who are responsible for keeping their unit habitable. If repair requests are not being fulfilled. This also means for tenants that they can have data that once and for all definitively shows the need for us to join the rest of the West Coast and pass rent control at the state and the city level. And finally, this means for tenants that we would finally have concrete data that dispels the illusion that private market trickle down economics is the solution to our affordability crisis. Data that could give us the extra push to invest in high quality, abundant, publicly. Owned social housing. So for me, this legislation isn't necessarily about land use decisions that may or may not happen in the next two years. It's about nothing short of giving tenants the opportunity to stay in Seattle, something that we know many of them are losing quickly. I urge my colleagues to vote yes to override this shortsighted veto and to give tenants the opportunities that they deserve. If you can spare Morales customers who want. Thank you. Guns in prison worries, as I said when this first came for a vote to the city council. This bill simply requires landlords to disclose the rent they charge so that policymakers can have accurate, objective data. Be clear. This bill going into effect will not make rental homes more affordable. It will simply collect data. But it is outrageous that the landlord lobby, who claimed to charge affordable rents, have called repeatedly to public comment in the past in opposition, the city having objective data. It would be good to have more data about the rent landlords charge and it is ironic that landlords have simultaneously claimed that they charge low rent and objected to actually disclosing the rent they charge. It is extremely telling that the landlord lobby has joined out in opposition to this bill. Several speakers before and during public comment today said if landlords are not gouging their tenants, why are they so afraid to tell the truth about their rents? And it is frankly scandalous that Mayor Harold chose to use a real veto. Do so brazenly do the bidding of the landlord lobby. More accurate and more complete data will help further confirm what every renter in Seattle already knows that landlords and the predatory real estate markets are gouging renters with totally unconscionable rent hikes. The cost of housing is being set by the greed of speculative banks, private equity funds and rapacious property management corporations rather than what it actually costs to house people. While the real estate barons make billions, working people and the poor are increasingly priced out just to have a roof over their heads or they're being pushed into homelessness . We need to strengthen all. Aspects of renters rights. Including strong citywide rent control and a big increase in the Amazon tax to file and increase expansion of publicly owned social housing. This bill will only provide more accurate and objective data, so if councilmembers do not support it, it would not stop renters from fighting for rent control. However, any councilmember. Who claims to be data driven has. No excuse to oppose this bill. I vote yes to make. Landlords disclose the rent. They charge. Thank you. If you castmembers talent. And finally, we have Councilmember Herbold. Thank you. Just trying to adjust my. There we go. I'm taking the opportunity. To address the need for this sensible data collection legislation. And I, too, am scratching my head over. Why the powerful tool of. A male. Veto would be used for a bill that is really again, it's merely a data collection tool that is really helpful to us as policymakers, whether or not it's on the council side of the of the aisle or on the executive side. I want to just uplift how we've used data in the past, data specifically about displacement to guide our decisions. Back in 2015, that was the first major comprehensive plan update that actually included it for the first time ever a displacement risk analysis. This displacement risk analysis was instrumental to council's deliberations on the mandatory housing affordability reasons, and it helped guide us. On. How to how to use the the ABS zoning tool to add more housing and collect funds to build affordable housing. And it was really, again, a tool that used data that helped drive our decisions. You may recall that. On April 5th, the City Council received. I think, an a really important bit of guidance from the Seattle Planning Commission related specifically to our next major update. And in that memo, they. Wrote that they believe the Seattle Planning Commission believes we should make displacement policies focus of the next comprehensive plan to drop aid to the equitable growth patterns that led portion proportionate displacement of bipoc and low income communities and draw up the comprehensive and expected in 2024 needs to include displacement policies as a central focus of the plan . The city should. Supplement knowledge shared by communities affected by displacement, with improved data tracking of high displacement risk areas and the outcomes of policy actions. I really hope that we can override his veto with a majority +166 councilmembers voting in favor today. And I just want to close out her remarks was saying just a little bit of the call to action from the cities this weekend. They encouraged us by saying, let's catch up with other progressive cities and better understand where all affordable housing is located in Seattle. So we can finally have the detailed data we need to prevent economic displacement as we update our cities policies for a better future. Thank you. Councilmember Herbold, before we go to a vote, Councilmember Peterson, or anything you want to say before I make a few comments? Oh. You're good. Yeah. Okay, so let me read again the instructions and then we'll go to a vote. The City Council will now vote to reconsider passage of Council Bill 120325. And to either override or sustain the mayoral veto. Jerry Roll Call. Council members will vote I or yes to pass the bill and override the mayor's veto. Or vote no not to pass the bill and sustain the veto. If the vote on the motion does not receive six votes, the bill fails and the veto is sustained. If the vote on the motion is six or more favors in favor, the bill passes, the veto is overridden, and all provisions within the bill go into effect. There any other questions, any other procedural questions on the vote before we go? So as a reminder, council members will either vote I to pass the bill and override the mayor's veto or no to not pass the bill and sustain the veto or the clerk. Please call the roll on the passage of Council Bill 120325 and consideration of the Mayoral Veto. Madam Clerk. Council Member. Silent. Yes. Councilmember Strauss. No. Councilmember Herbold? Yes. Councilmember Lewis? Yes. Councilmember Morales. As. Councilmember Nelson. No. Councilmember Peterson. That's. Council president worries? No. Five in favor, three opposed. So the motion fails. Adam Clark. Correct. Okay. So I'm sorry. I was waiting for this. Okay, so the motion fails. The bill does not pass, and the veto is sustained. All right. I got that correct. Let's go to committee reports. Item number two, this matter is mine. Will the clerk please read item two and to the record. Agenda item two. Clip 4314495. Report of the City Clerk on the Certificate of Sufficiency for initiative number 134 concerning approving approval. 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