Tacoma leaders are considering whether or not to roll back eviction bans for affordable housing providers. That's in response to landlords’ claims that tenants across the city have stopped paying their rent. The Tacoma City Council is expected to vote on changing the tenant safeguards on Tuesday.
South Sound landlords have asked City Council for more freedom to remove people who are causing problems. But local renter advocates say officials are moving to change these protections too quickly.
Earlier this fall, Miriam Barnett was excited to show off the amenities the YWCA of Pierce County provides at the Dorothy Heigh Apartments, its affordable housing. She was serving as the nonprofit’s interim CEO at the time, but has since stepped down from the position.
In a two-bedroom apartment, Barnett pointed out features the next tenants may enjoy: “Lots of windows, really bright rooms” and the “dishwashers, lots of cabinet space, full-size oven.”
The facility is dedicated to serving locals who are dealing with homelessness or domestic violence. It is decorated with art and has a playground. Residents can also admire a view of Commencement Bay from a rooftop seating area.
Barnett takes a lot of pride in the YWCA’s dedication to providing affordable housing. She was one of the driving forces behind the nonprofit opening the 54-unit apartment building in 2021.
“My goal is that when people unlock the door, it’s the most beautiful place they’ve ever lived,” she said. “That’s how you serve people who don’t have the privileges that you have — you provide them with everything that you would want for your family.”
But the YWCA has faced major challenges since local voters passed an initiative in 2023 that created the Landlord Fairness Code Initiative.
The law established a number of sweeping renter protections, which included requiring property owners to notify tenants twice before raising their rent and mandating that landlords must provide relocation assistance to renters if they increase rent by 5% or more.
It also created a cold-weather eviction ban that bars all landlords from evicting people between Nov. 1 and April 1. The Landlord Fairness Code also restricts landlords from evicting families with children during the school year.
This shields tenants from losing their housing for a large swath of the year. According to Barnett, “the unintended consequence of that is people quit paying rent.” For-profit, nonprofit and public housing providers have all said that they are seeing an increase in tenants not paying rent because of the eviction prohibitions.
“We can’t maintain housing if we don’t have the rent. It’s not free housing,” Barnett said. “If we had known this was coming down the pike, we wouldn’t have built the housing."
The YWCA and other low-income housing providers have joined the Tacoma Housing Authority in calling on city leaders to exempt them from the eviction restrictions. In a written statement, the Tacoma Housing Authority detailed how the loss of this revenue threatened the services these organizations provide.
"If we are forced to continue operating under the Landlord Fairness Code as it currently stands, it will fundamentally alter our ability to build, maintain, and provide affordable housing to those who need it most," the news release stated.
There are also concerns that the city’s tenant protections could decrease the availability of market-rate rentals along with low income housing. A recent survey of over 160 Tacoma landlords conducted by a researcher at The Evergreen State College found that the majority are planning to own or operate less rental properties in the next five years, at least in part because of the Landlord Fairness Code.
Since the code was created by a voter initiative, local officials have not been able to change or repeal the law for two years. However, the grace period is set to expire this month. That has spurred Tacoma District 2 City Councilmember Sarah Rumbaugh to lead an effort to try to change the tenant protections.
“I am concerned that we have a community that is forgetting about accountability. And I hate to use that word, but I don’t want children growing up and thinking you don’t have to pay your rent,” she said.
The Tacoma City Council is considering a number of proposed amendments to the Landlord Fairness Code, including exempting the Tacoma Housing Authority and nonprofit affordable housing providers from the tenant protections entirely.
Officials are also deciding whether to shorten the cold-weather eviction ban and place an income cap on that safeguard. One proposal before the council would only protect tenants who make 120% or less of the area’s median income, adjusted for family size, from being evicted during winter months. It would also exempt smaller private landlords from the cold-weather eviction restriction.
Some of the proposed amendments would align Tacoma’s cold-weather eviction ban with Seattle renter protections, which are less restrictive for landlords.
Rumbaugh wants to finalize changes to the code before the end of the year, saying that affordable housing providers have waited long enough for something to be done about the problems caused by the tenant protections.
“I want us to do something to help our low-income housing providers stay in business and be able to continue to rent to people who are the highest-risk renters and want to create more low-income housing,” Rumbaugh said.
Renter advocates are worried that Rumbaugh and the council are rushing to change the code before new officials elected in November join the council. In January, Anders Ibsen will become the city’s new mayor and Latasha Palmer will be sworn in as an at-large councilmember.
In a news release, the group Tacoma For All said, “We are urging this ‘lame-duck’ Council to slow down and allow Mayor-Elect Ibsen to convene genuine negotiations with tenants at the table.”
Tacoma For All led the effort to create the Landlord Fairness Code. Its co-director, Tyron Moore, believes these safeguards need to be preserved, especially since the policies help people stay off the street.
“I’m sure our tenant protections hurt the bottom line of landlords, and maybe that falls a little bit harder on smaller landlords, he said. “But in the end, when we are talking about very vulnerable sections of our population living paycheck to paycheck, folks facing evictions, yeah, I’m sorry — I’m going to take the side of tenants.”
Moore acknowledges the Tacoma Housing Authority and nonprofit housing providers may need some flexibility to remove people who are causing problems. And while he said delaying evictions for a few months can help prevent homelessness, renter protections like those created by the Landlord Fairness Code are limited.
“We need massively greater numbers of affordable housing, of vouchers, of subsidies, but that’s not immediately an offer,” Moore said. “We’re left with sort of a hard set of choices when you reduce the question to, like, ‘How strong of eviction protections should the city of Tacoma have?’”
According to Moore, before councilmembers make any changes to the Landlord Fairness Code, they need to take more time — and make more of an effort to listen to the concerns of local renters.
Under that umbrella are people like Francis Faye Oak, who lives in an aging, market-rate studio apartment with her daughter and two cats. Oak said since the Landlord Fairness Code went into effect, it has given her and her neighbors some peace of mind.
“A lot of people are afraid of their landlords,” she said. “They’re afraid of being kicked out of their homes. They’re afraid of having to go to the hospital and needing to get surgery and not being able to work for a couple of months and not being able to pay rent.”
Oak said the school year eviction restriction in particular gives families with children a fighting chance. Even though she doesn’t live in affordable housing, Oak doesn’t understand why the city council is considering pulling back protections for people who rely on it.
“Should they be easier to evict than me?" she asked. “No, I don’t think so. At the very base level, these rights should be for all renters.”
Still, Miriam Barnett, the former interim CEO of the YWCA, said that nonprofit and other affordable housing providers need more of a balance between the needs of the landlords and the tenants.
“You can’t just let things go on that are going to harm the [housing] agency,” she said.
According to Barnett, leaving the renter protections the way they are now could result in less low-income housing available for Tacoma residents in the future.
