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.
In December, 96,000 Seattle-area renters said they were behind on rent, according to a Census Bureau survey.
In addition to residents struggling to keep up with rent payments are dozens of businesses across Capitol Hill that have not been paying landlords through the pandemic. The lifting of the restriction will likely bring a ripple of closures for some of these cases where agreements cannot be pounded out.
In Seattle, laws have been put in place to help protect tenants once the eviction restrictions are lifted including ordinances requiring payment plan options for late rent during or within six months after the city’s COVID-19 state of emergency ends, a “financial hardship” defense for eviction court proceedings, a ban on eviction during winter months, and a ban on evictions during the school year for families and teachers. Some local efforts, meanwhile, are channeling relief funding direct to landlords.
District 3 representative Kshama Sawant has said the ban should continue, calling on the restrictions to remain in place “through to the end of the COVID public health emergency.”
UPDATE 1:07 PM: Monday afternoon, Sawant announced her office will introduce legislation in an attempt to extend the ban. In the announcement, Sawant offered no details of what her legislation will entail and how it would overcome the mayor’s plan to allow the executive-ordered restrictions to end. In 2020, Sawant’s legislation banning evictions during Seattle’s winter months was passed by the council and was allowed to become law by then Mayor Jenny Durkan who opposed the moratorium but chose not to launch a veto fight with the council over the matter.
Harrell’s office said it is continuing to analyze the situation and “evaluate data, improve existing efforts, and seek additional solutions” heading into the lifting of the ban.
“With COVID cases steadily declining, the time has come for the City to move on from the broad approach of the eviction moratoria and instead drive more deliberate and focused efforts to support those most in need,” Harrell said in the announcement.
PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
