WA does have one of the lowest eviction rates in the country. Be honest a 3 day notice to
Pay rent does not allow the tenant to be kicked out in 3 days.

"We've long known that eviction is a leading cause of homelessness"

lol what?

If you search "Seattle DCI Information for Tenants" you will find a very informative document that outlines in clear language what the rules governing the landlord / tenant relationship are, for both city and state laws. Mr. Smith does not paint a very accurate picture of how things actually work in the real world. If you are a renter in Seattle, you should have received this when you signed your lease. In my opinion, it is not a terribly unfair or unbalanced set of rules, but both tenant groups and landlord groups would argue vehemently against that idea. I have been a mom and pop rental property owner for many years. In than time I have found it necessary to evict only one tenant. It is a very expensive and time consuming process, and not undertaken for trivial reasons. The eviction plus damages left me $10,000 in the hole. And no, the evicted tenants did not pay my legal costs, since you can't squeeze blood from a turnip. I am skeptical that any widow and orphans have been cast into the streets for a minor tardiness in their rent.

"Eviction is the leading cause of homelessness" is like saying "velocity is a leading cause of car crashes."

Piggybacking on @3- we rent out the first house we bought. It has been a 'break even at best' proposition for 10 years. It is actually very difficult to evict a bad renter. The laws may or may not be different, but in practice it is tough.

When I say 'bad renter' I don't mean someone who is late on a payment now and then, or who had a loud party one time. I mean the lady who refused to take her dog outside, so there was so much urine soaked into the floorboards that we had to cut out most of a floor, down to the framing.

What David said. There will be fewer and fewer small time, independent landlords as more of them decide there are too many items, too many boxes to check, just too many hoops to jump through to manage the rental. The risk of minor oversight (oops forgot that voter registration info) and being fined will drive more to seek professional property managers. Most charge about 8% of the monthly rent and they are not going to eat that cost.

A rental agreement is a contract between the parties, and both have to hold up their ends. Tenants who don't pay the rent are not doing so, and there has to be a way to deal with it. Having said that, @9 is right - no landlord in his right mind would evict someone over $49. IIRC, a number of the evictions recently featured in the press were from Seattle Housing Authority apartments, not private landlords.

And the 14 day provision is not going to kill anyone, although those who have pointed out that the 3-day rule means nothing like evicting someone in 3 days are right. It will take WAY longer than that. Thankfully I've not had to evict anyone yet - it sounds like a nightmare even under current laws.

The just-cause eviction provision is another matter, however. This puts 100% of the control over when that relationship ends in the tenants' hands, and the landlord essentially loses control over when his property will become vacant. This is a major reason why I and other landlords I know generally don't allow month-to-month tenancies. For example, vacancies in the winter are much harder to fill and you wind up with a vacancy for a month or two that you would not have had in summer. That is lost income that has to be made up (which means the rent will probably rise).

Similarly the first-in-time law (which hopefully will not go into effect). If you can't use your judgment as to whom to rent to, requirements are going to go way up and more marginal tenants will never get a chance.

The general effect of a lot of these laws is that landlords protect themselves however they can - that might mean raising credit score requirements or other qualifications. It is also a hell of an incentive not to own cheap apartments at all, as that end of the market is where most of these issues arise. That is certainly not good for rental affordability in town.

Some facts for the Stranger to chew on:

"The Low Income Housing Institute had one of the highest eviction rates among
landlords who brought more than one case."

The majority of people evicted by LIHI owed between $100 and $500 in back rent.

From "Losing Home", pg. 41; see also, Table 16, pg. 42.

This bill was written for and by attorneys who want to sue landlords. Whomever wrote this article is obviously lying and making thinks up. No landlord wants to spend the time and stress and money evicting someone, if a landlord evicted someone for 100 dollars, it wasn't about the 100 dollars, and the soonest a landlord can get someone out is about 1 month.