Tag Archives: rent

‘Seattle Needs Rent Control Now!’: Sawant brings rent control hearing — and her rent control FAQ — to Capitol Hill

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While Kshama Sawant has been criticized for not being more present in her district while she focuses on issues of national and sometimes international importance, she has regularly brought City Hall into the neighborhoods she represents. This week, the District 3 representative will hold an official Seattle City Council hearing on her proposed rent control legislation to Broadway.

Wednesday night, Sawant’s renters’ rights committee will convene inside Broadway’s All Pilgrims Church for a public hearing on the long-awaited rent control proposal.

“Our legislation—if passed without any amendments in favor of greedy corporate landlords—would limit rent increases to no more than the inflation rate,” Sawant’s office writes in the announcement for the session. “It would cover all rental homes in the city, regardless of type, size, location, or building date. It is a trigger law—it will go into effect as soon as the deeply unjust statewide ban on rent control is lifted.”

CHS reported here on Sawant’s final big push for rent control before she leaves office later this year after a decade on the council after succeeding in two other major legislative efforts that will mark her time leading the district: the $15 minimum wage and the so-called Amazon tax. Continue reading →

✔️ $15/HOUR ✔️ TAX THE RICH ✔️ RENT CONTROL — Sawant ready for last push on Seattle rent control legislation

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A Sawant poster from 2019 made her intentions pretty clear

It is time for the last big push of Kshama Sawant’s decade on the Seattle City Council.

Friday, Sawant will introduce her long-promised Seattle rent control legislation at the morning meeting of her renters’ rights committee.

The proposal would bind rent increases for most housing in the city to inflation.

The District 3 representative for Capitol Hill and the Central District is calling for support for the proposal in the face of what the Socialist Alternative leader says will be opposition from her Democratic council counterparts.

“The eight Democrats on the City Council need to know that if they choose to vote against rent control or undermine it from behind the scenes that there will be hell to pay,” a message sent to supporters Wednesday afternoon reads. Continue reading →

Still fighting for tenants, Sawant proposal would cap Seattle late rent fees at $10

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Kshama Sawant is carrying through on one of her promises to supporters as she announced she would not seek reelection to keep her District 3 seat on the Seattle City Council.

Friday, the chair of the council’s Sustainability and Renters’ Rights Committee will lead debate on her proposed legislation to cap late rent fees at $10 per month. The amount matches a limit put in place for tenants in unincorporated King County in 2021.

“Renters don’t get paid late fees when your landlord delays fixing broken appliances, heating, or mold infestations,” Sawant writes in a message to supporters about the proposed cap. “Renters have to pay rent on time regardless of whether your landlord completed your repairs. Alongside renters’ rights activists, union members, the Stay Housed Stay Healthy coalition, and Socialist Alternative, my office is bringing forward legislation to cap the late fees landlords are allowed to charge their tenants for overdue rent at no more than $10/month.”

A council staff report on the legislative proposal concludes the change won’t cost the city but “potential costs of outreach and enforcement” by the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections were not reflected in the analysis. Continue reading →

To help find more units for people experiencing homelessness to become renters, Regional Homelessness Authority landlord incentive program provides ‘guaranteed rent’ and ‘good tenant’ coaching

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(Image: City of Seattle)

Seattle’s small landlords and those involved with family-owned properties could become a bigger part of solutions to the region’s housing crisis under a new incentive program from the Regional Homelessness Authority designed to make it easier for people without a place to live to rent existing units in the city.

The new package offers private building owners including smaller owners of individual properties incentives including guaranteed rent payment managed by a third party, “good tenant” and “good landlord” coaching to help people transition into the rental environment, and ongoing “human services” support from the authority in exchange for using “alternative screening criteria to promote maximum acceptance of referrals” from the program. Continue reading →

‘Save the Madkin’ — Residents rally to preserve rents as another old but affordable Capitol Hill apartment building changes hands

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(Image: Madkin Tenant Association)

By Elizabeth Turnbull

An E Madison apartment building has become the latest flashpoint in efforts to preserve affordable rents and a push for social housing in the city as residents of The Madkin gathered with advocates outside their homes at 1625 E Madison on Wednesday to protest potential rent hikes that they fear may accompany a sale of the building and to call for support for social housing.

“We’re calling on and urging city leaders to stop this kind of thing that has been happening in the city of Seattle for many years,” Violet Lavatai, the executive director of the Tenants Union of Washington State, said at Wednesday’s press conference. “For-profit owners would come and buy the building, fix it up and then increase the rent, where there is none of the tenants that can afford these rents.”

Backers are hoping to put an initiative on the ballot this fall that would establish a public developer to create more rental housing options in Seattle, powered by public funding, and protected from free market influences, and city and county restrictions.

In the meantime, remaining islands of affordability like the family-owned Madkin are being snapped up. Continue reading →

Seattle is expanding its program to temporarily fill pandemic-emptied commercial spaces with art and more — Capitol Hill might not need it

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A 2016 temporary activation on 11th Ave created the V2 dance and arts venue

By Hannah Saunders

A City of Seattle program created to fill in the city’s commercial spaces left empty by the economic ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic is looking for locations to activate on Capitol Hill — but it might not be needed.

After finding success with Phase 1 of the Seattle Restored program, which works to activate vacant commercial storefronts following COVID-19 related closures, Mayor Bruce Harrell and the Office of Economic Development announced the expansion of the program. The goal of the expansion is to activate 45 vacant commercial storefronts beyond the downtown neighborhoods.

Karissa Braxton, communications director for the City of Seattle, said the program was a success downtown and is hoped to move into other neighborhoods of the city.

But commercial real estate pros say Capitol Hill might not have room for temporary popups and art projects.

Jill Cronauer of Hunters Capital, a boutique real estate company committed to historic preservation and development and owner of nine properties on Capitol Hill, said that demand is strong for space in the neighborhood.

“We’re a lot more open than we were two years ago,” said Cronauer. “I think that Capitol Hill, for all the trauma it endured during the last two years, it was one of the quickest ones [neighborhoods] to bounce back.”

Others apparently agree. The Puget Sound Business Journal reports Seattle brokers are calling competition for Capitol Hill retail space “arguably the fiercest in Seattle.”

Cronauer said the COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted many businesses but landlords and assistance programs helped commercial tenants keep the Capitol Hill commercial landscape intact.

As for the Seattle Restored program expansion, Cronauer said Hunters Capital has not yet become involved, although they’ve been keeping tabs on the 15th Ave E building left open by the abrupt 2021 exit of QFC.

“We would love to see that space activated, but they still hold that lease,” Cronauer said. Continue reading →

A Pike/Pine IPO, Capitol Hill apartment building lined up to be first in Seattle to go public

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(Image: Solis)

Wall Street is near bear territory putting investors on the hunt for stock market alternatives. Would you invest your money in an IPO for a Pike/Pine mixed-use apartment building?

In a first for Seattle and Capitol Hill, the “ultra-luxury, ultra-sustainable” Solis at 13th and Pike is being lined up for an initial public offering.

Why Pike/Pine? Jake Weyerhaeuser, vice president for the Seattle region for Lex Markets and co-founder and CTO Jesse Daugherty say it is because the neighborhood is now home to the kind of people they hope take notice of this new type of investment.

Lex, they say, is “targeting retail investors,” “the same kind of people who would live in this building.”

“It’s an exciting place to be,” Weyerhaeuser said.

Even the challenges of CHOP and the social unrest of 2020 can be a market factor.

“For a neighborhood like Capitol Hill, this investment plays in these nationally known communities,” Weyerhaeuser said. “People have heard of it.” Continue reading →

Seattle City Council weighs changes to COVID-19 rent repayment plan protections — UPDATE

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The Seattle City Council Tuesday afternoon will consider legislation that would amend a Seattle protection for tenants behind on their rent by tying repayment plan requirements to the city’s ongoing COVID-19 civil emergency, not the state’s.

UPDATE: The bill has passed. “Rather than limiting tenants to six months to repay debts accumulated over two years, Council Bill 120305 defines a reasonable repayment plan as one in which debts can be repaid in monthly installments, with no monthly installment exceeding one-third of the tenant’s monthly rent,” an announcement from sponsoring councilmember Dan Strauss’s office reads. “This repayment plan will apply to any rental debts incurred during the City of Seattle’s ongoing COVID-19 civil emergency, or within six-months after the end of the civil emergency.”

The procedural change comes amid legal challenges and will create a new timeline for the protections which require landlords to accept a repayment plan “of rental arrears accrued during or within six months after the termination of the COVID civil emergency.”

Mayor Bruce Harrell has not said what his plans are to terminate the city’s civil emergency, established by Jenny Durkan in March 2020. In February, Harrell decided to end the long string of extensions, bringing an end to the city’s ban on evictions. Continue reading →

As Seattle prepares to lift pandemic eviction ban, mayor says ready to aid renters, small landlords — UPDATE

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Seattle has a plan — or, a date, at least — for ending its pandemic-long restriction on evictions. Mayor Bruce Harrell has announced a two-week extension before a full lifting of the restrictions at the end of February.

As part of the end of the two years of pandemic protections for residential renters and commercial tenants, the city’s Office of Housing will distribute over $25 million in “identified funding to support renters and small landlords, complementing funding being allocated by King County. ” The city will also launch a website “to connect tenants and small landlords to available financial resources, information on rights and protections, and other critical updates needed as the moratoria ends.”

Residential tenants will also have important protections passed by the council in 2020 that will extend eviction restrictions for “at least six months” to renters “who demonstrate enduring financial hardship preventing them from paying rent.”

CHS reported here on the Valentine’s Day deadline, the latest for the ongoing extension of the moratorium. Local governments have begun lifting the bans across the country as some $46 billion in federal emergency rental assistance has trickled into state and local programs to help renters behind on payments.

In Seattle, the estimate in mid 2021 was 60,000 currently behind on rent. More recent estimates put that number closer to 100,000. Continue reading →

With nearly 100,000 behind on rent, Harrell makes Valentine’s Day extension of Seattle’s ban on pandemic evictions

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Mayor Bruce Harrell will extend Seattle’s eviction protections another 30 days into February but the new administration says it wants to do more to inform people about the rules and measure its impact on leases and real estate in the city.

The latest extension protecting residential tenants, businesses, and organizations from eviction during the pandemic will keep the restrictions in place through February 14th.

Saying his administration wants to better understand “the algebra behind it,” Harrell said the next executive order includes the creation of “an advisory group for the mayor composed of tenant advocates and small landlords,” and an evaluation of “Seattle’s intergovernmental coordination in receiving and distributing financial assistance to tenants and small landlords.” Harrell also promised a new online “portal” to provide information to tenants and property owners. Continue reading →