AN ORDINANCE relating to tenant protections; establishing regulations and enforcement provisions related to residential rent increases on properties that do not meet basic maintenance standards; transferring primary enforcement authority for all sections of Title 22, Subtitle 2 of the Seattle Municipal Code (Housing Code) to the Director of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections; amending the penalty structure for certain violations of the Housing Code; amending Sections 22.202.010, 22.202.050, 22.204.090, 22.206.180, 22.206.220, 22.206.280, and 22.206.305 of the Seattle Municipal Code; and adding a new Section 22.202.080.
The numbers the report of the Affordable Housing Neighborhoods and Finance Committee Agenda Item five Constable 118 678 Relating to tenant protections, establishing regulations and enforcement provisions related to residential rent increases on properties that do not meet basic maintenance standards. The committee recommends the bill passed as amended. All right. I believe Councilmember Sawant will kick us off. Councilmember Burgess would like to go first. Thank you. This is the tenant protection ordinance that we heard substantial testimony about today. This passed unanimously out of committee. And I'm going to defer to Councilmember Sawant, who's the primary sponsor of the legislation. And you got to remember, Burgess, many of you will remember last fall when the courageous tenants of 6511 Rainier Avenue, south of whom Sara was yesterday, fought back against their abusive landlord, Carl Haglund. When they called my office, my staff and I immediately visited the property and saw what the then Department of Planning and Development inspectors later found to be 220 code violations. And in these terrible conditions, the tenants rent were being doubled because the tenants were willing to organize and fight back. The then Councilmember, Legarda and I were able to really highlight the abusive behavior of Carl Haglund at this and other properties owned by him. The tenants at 6511 were able to win an immediate victory for themselves and working with the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections and the mayor's office. This legislation is designed to give tenants and the SDC a little more ability to defend tenants rights in the future. It makes rent increases illegal on properties that have unsafe housing code violations until the landlord gets the property up to code. The bill lays out a process to do that, and tenants should call the DCA, you know, the city's department. You can call my office, the tenants union, to get information on how to file a complaint. We need to be clear. This bill, if it becomes law today, will only give tenants a tool to fight with. Dennis will have at their disposal a law to challenge landlords that are treating them unfairly. But it will require tenants to continue organizing. And most importantly of all, this bill will not stem the tide of skyrocketing rents, such as a rent control law might. There is no substitute for tenant organizing. And I would urge all tenants who are watching this to set up tenant union chapters in their buildings, like many tenants have done already. The Tenants Union of Washington State and the Washington Community Action Network are available to help you learn more about how to organize in your building and help us organize tenants throughout the city. There is no law that by itself can guarantee that no landlord will abuse the power over their tenant. But we need laws to cover loopholes. It's also important to state most small landlords are not not gouging their tenants like Carl Hagelin or like some of the corporate property management companies that see rental housing as just another investment for profit making rather than as somebody's home. If you are a landlord and you are already treating your tenants fairly, then this law should not affect you in any way. Thank you to all the tenant activists, Tenants Union, the Washington Community Action Network, the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections, and the Mayor's Office to Jonathan Grand Council member Herbold and former Councilmember Liccardo, all of whom were instrumental in this. I also want to especially mention I talked to Councilmember former Councilmember Liccardo and he asked me to pass on his congratulations to all the tenant activists who fought for this. I also want to take this opportunity to announce that I have a draft of the next bill for the Tenants Bill of Rights right here with me. This is one of the several both that my office will come out with this summer, and this bill will cap moving fees. It limits the nonrefundable fees that can be charged for moving in to those that are explicitly allowed under state law. Most importantly, if it passes, that bill will require landlords to offer a payment plan for the move in fees and with a companion bill. A payment plan for last month's rent to Washington Community Action Network conducted a poll of tenants and found that paying the cost of moving in can be many people's biggest barrier to find housing . After you've paid your first month last month and security, many people find themselves having to pay over $4,000 to move into a new apartment, not counting all the time, effort and the stress of moving itself. This can this can be totally unaffordable. And this bill will address it. We can continue and will continue to fight for a full fledged tenant bill of rights in this city. And we will continue to build a movement of tenants fighting for their rights, because ultimately that is the only way to ensure that these laws are respected. When I debated the Rental Housing Association recently on a televised interview about the call haggling law, they clearly threatened to sue the city over this law. They claim it was rent control. It is not rent control. And if it was, it would actually have helped a large, you know, all the tenants in the city as opposed to only those living with slumlords. But what the Rental Housing Association said basically amounted to their members want to violate housing code. They refused to fix the violations and they want to raise the rents anyway. If they are so brazen as to bring this to court, we will need all of you to back the courtrooms to make it clear to any judge that the people of Seattle will not tolerate any more attacks on tenants rights. But, you know, there is a point in what the rental housing association folks are saying. The point is we need the ban on rent control to be repealed. Housing should be a human right. And in a city as wealthy as Seattle, there is no excuse that there that so many have to struggle so hard just to have a roof over their head. This girl, Hagelin Bill, if it becomes law, will be a small piece of legislation. But it is a part of our movement, and we will use it to organize and fight for a far larger tenants bill of rights. And as was mentioned earlier, five council members have already voted unanimously in committee. I look forward to this passing, and I believe that activists are holding a celebratory rally right after the vote downstairs . Thank you. Before opening up to comments to my colleagues, a couple of comments of my own I'd like to make thank you to Councilmember Sawant, as well as all of the folks who have been organizing on this issue this past year and folks who have been organizing for in this community around tenants rights for decades, for generations . One of the things that we've heard from from some folks out in the housing provider community is that they need to raise the rents in order to make the repairs. And I think today this council is going to reject that idea. The reliance on rent increases, the reliance the reliance on rent increases in order to finance basic life safety repairs is completely unfair. And if we do end up one day in an in a dispute in the courtroom that Councilmember Sawant points to as as a place to talk about the legality of this of this law, I think our response needs to be to take this issue even further, less about repealing the ban on rent control, which I support. But there is a part of the law that exists today that says you are entitled to a refund of your rent, not a increase. This this measure that that's before us right now is a very small thing to keep a landlord for raising the rent in the case of of of life safety violations. Tenants already are entitled to a reduction in their rent under the warranty of habitability. And, you know, perhaps we might need to look at having our code enforcement department begin to enforce that in that requirement if if this. Is. A continued pushback that we are faced with. So that's a couple of the points I want to make. Another issue that I wanted to flag that came up in committee is the way the way that tenants enforce this. Law. Is when they receive a notice of a rent increase from their landlords, that landlords will now be required to write on the rent increase itself. The fact that they are in exchange for paying the increase in rent, they are entitled to not have a unit that has these housing code violations. I have a concern that that information may need to be translated, and that's something that I'd like to work with our D.C. Department of Constructions and Inspections Department to look at more. What we've found is that a lot of our laws that we have for tenants in Seattle, they are translated into different languages, nine different languages. But those are the notices that we the city. That's the information that we the city provides to tenants that we do not have a standard where notices from landlords to tenants should be offered in appropriate languages. So I think that's something that if if it is indeed true that our ability to enforce these laws are really there self enforced by tenants, then we need to really make sure that tenants are aware of the laws as well, so that if folks have other comments, I'd like to open it up. No other comments. All right. Those in please call the role on the passage of the Bill O'Brien. All right. So, Aunt, I beg your. Burgess i. Gonzalez i. Johnson whereas President Herbold i. Eight in favor and then opposed the bill passage. Congratulations. The bill passes and the chair will sign it. Report of the. I swear, I. Item number six. Agenda item six Constable 118 696 relating to the 2016 budget amending ordinance 124 927 which adopted the 2016 budget, changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels due to changes in city employment compensation and ratifying confirming certain prior acts all by 3/1 vote of the City Council.