The Housing Development Consortium (HDC), a powerful landlord lobby of united nonprofit and for-profit developers, is working with Mayor Bruce Harrell and the City Council on their legislative wishlist, according to a slide deck sent to The Stranger. The landlord lobby’s long-rumored “policy matrix,” seeks to significantly limit the protection of the winter and school year eviction moratoriums, raise the $10 late fee cap to $50, repeal the 2019 roommate law, cut the six-month rental increase notice requirement to four months and just two in some cases, and implement other policies that favor landlords. 

“Here in Seattle, providers are grappling with escalating operational costs, rising insurance premiums, and mounting arrears from the pandemic’s lingering economic impacts,” says HDC Executive Director Patience Malaba. “These challenges are not confined to subsidized housing providers; they affect the entire housing ecosystem. Without bold actions to stabilize and sustain the sector, the risk of further destabilization is high, and tenants will ultimately bear the brunt of this collapse.

Malaba continues, “The policy changes we propose aim to strike a careful balance between supporting providers’ ability to sustain housing operations while protecting renters and addressing systemic inequities. We will alongside reform be advocating for targeted rental assistance, reforming legislation to improve housing stability, and ensuring practical solutions that serve the entire housing ecosystem.”

Housing advocates, who did not wish to go on the record at this time, warn not to be suckered by the “kinder face” of nonprofit landlords in HDC — they are aligned with for-profit landlords to make it easier to make people homeless.

The Seattle City Council, which lurched rightward after the 2023 election, first hinted at repealing tenants’ rights this summer when Community Roots Housing and Southeast Effective Development (SEED) gave a presentation about the woes of affordable housing developers. As I reported in July, the nonprofit developers did not explicitly call for rollbacks to any of the City’s modest protections. Instead, the nonprofits complained about the eviction backlog and asked for more resources for the tenant to pay their overdue rent or for courts to expedite the eviction of problematic tenants, potentially leading to homelessness.

At the time, The Stranger clowned on Council President Sara Nelson for hearing what she wanted to hear from the presentation and from private landlords at public comment — repeal renters rights. And at the time, Nelson had been presumptuous based on the public conversations with HDC members. But now, according to the slide deck from last week, the nonprofit developers appear to have drunk the Kool-Aid, advocating with for-profit developers to implement policies that simply punish tenants without actually unclogging the eviction backlog.

Even if you accept the premise that the government should make it easier for landlords to make people homeless, these reforms do not achieve that end. 

HDC wants the moratoriums to only cover evictions for non-payment for tenants who can prove they lost their income. “Rather than blanket moratoria,” HDC wrote, “the city should invest in a robust rental assistance program for tenants without income, experiencing financial hardship, or are cost burdened.”

As I previously reported, the winter and school year evictions do not bottleneck the eviction process. The Housing Justice Project (HJP), which represents low-income tenants in court as part of the right-to-counsel law, does not use these defenses very often, rather finding errors in landlord paperwork. Skill issue. 

HDC’s proposal to price late fees at 3% of rent with a cap at $50 might put a few extra dollars in a landlord’s wallet, but renters overwhelmingly pay their rent in full and on time anyway. HDC claimed in their slide deck that “reasonable late fees foster timely payment habits and incentivize for tenants to stay current on rent.” Citations needed. 

HDC is also pushing to shorten the notice landlords must provide before raising rents. As it stands, landlords must give tenants six months’ notice before increasing the rent. HDC’s landlord wishlist would shorten that to 2 months or 4 months for increases above 8%. In the case of an 8% increase, HDC would allow tenants to break their lease with a 30 day notice. How generous! 

It is unclear how giving tenants less notice for price hikes would ease the eviction backlog unless the landlords also allowed greater flexibility for breaking leases. Sticking tenants with higher rent and less time to find a better paying job or rework their budget seems like a recipe for eviction.

But what’s their answer for preventing evictions? A cash grab. HDC wrote, “The city should establish a rental assistance program for tenants without income. Funding could come from the Housing Levy homelessness prevention program which was allocated $30 million, targeted to the [Office of Housing] portfolio.”

So, the City, already strapped for cash, should let landlords nickel and dime their tenants with late fees,  increase rent with less notice, and, to add insult to injury, punch holes in the last line of defense tenants have between the warmth of their apartment and the cold, cold streets. Cool!

According to the slide deck, HDC is expected to “move forward” legislation this month. That seems like too quick of a turn around — the year’s basically over, the council will likely focus on appointing a new member, and Nelson may seek to weaken the Ethics Code first, which could hamper the landed council members’ ability to vote against the interest of renters.

Council Member Cathy Moore, the Chair of the Homelessness and Human Services Committee, says she plans to meet with HDC to hear more about these proposals and will have more to share after that meeting. For now, her offices says, “she believes changes are needed in order to ensure housing providers, across the spectrum, are able to continue to offer safe housing.”

Harrell’s office says he is “interested in working with affordable housing providers on commonsense solutions to ensure their long-term stability and the health and safety of their residents.”

Hannah Krieg is a staff writer at The Stranger covering everything that goes down at Seattle City Hall. Importantly, she is a Libra. She is also The Stranger's resident Gen Z writer, with an affinity for...

11 replies on “Landlord Lobby Wishlist Leaked”

  1. I wish we could have an honest conversation on some of the ordinances passed by the previous council. There was little or no data that supported many of them other than landlords/business bad and renters/workers good. In some cases they were first of their kind in the country. If you want to try things you need to be open to the concept they may not work or have unintended consequences and should be repealed. Instead we get TS who treats every ordinance that came out of that period as akin to being handed down from Mt Sinai and is thus carved in stone for all time. As Hannah has noted several times, many of these defenses/policies are little used however there is ample evidence they are causing friction for housing providers as they are unable to obtain financing for projects or have trouble meeting the operating costs of the building. They should be repealed absent compelling data they are doing anything to help.

  2. Its amazing how the stranger can make such a reasonable, realistic set of refinements to clearly failing regulations that are driving out of business even NONprofit housing providers – thus forcing them to do the unthinkable of aligning their interested with market rate providers in demanding the ability to manage their own properties and control who lives in them.

    If I understand correctly right now seattle’s rule on rent increases is a 10% increase triggers the punitive relocation fine and tenant’s right to break the lease. SO if I read this right they are dropping the percentiage to 8% for the right to break lease. Thats more favorable to tenants. This in exchange for modest inflation-tracking increases not needing over half a year of planning. How evil.

    The winter (and school year) moratoria are both a ridiculous joke. If they are so infrequently used they would not be missed. They are only used as HJP stated when their normal strategy of avoiding the actual merits of the case (which they know they will LOSE 95% of the time) and instead deploying ever increasingly complicated bureaurcratic and procedural minefields fails. That is effectivley malpractice and they should all be disbarred. If the landlord substantially complies with the process then the suit should be tried. No delays.

    So why is LL’s proposal to build a tenant assistance fund using public money so terrible? Stranger and Lefties in general are always demanding more subsidized housing. This would just be more of the same. No, the real problem here is it might take from some other, probalby less effective part of the subsidized housing industrial complex, and the system would be more fair to private landlords stuck with un-evictable, nonpaying tenants.

    Finally, yes most tenants pay rent on time. There are some however that chronically do not, for no good reason. A $10 late fee is barely more than a latte and won’t convince somebody with $2000 rent to pay on time if it is more convenient for them to procrastinate however long they feel like it. $50 isn’t much better, but it may at least cover the cost of serving the notice.

    We’ve had these far left rules long enough to see that they are undeniably causing severe problems for housinig providers, even the formerly gold-starred by the left nonprofits. I welcome them over to the evil empire where we can all work to repeal or refine some of these laws so that they are fair to everybody.

  3. I have a friend who is a local entertainer and one of the most generous people you will ever meet. This person rented a room in their home to a hateful person who refused to pay rent, refused to leave, and threatened to sue. It took about two years to get rid of that person, in part because all of the well-intended protections that we put in during Covid.

    My friend is not wealthy. Not only did they miss out on the rental income for two years, they had to spend money on an attorney who helped them get rid of the horrible tenant. There are horrible landlords out there, but there are also really rotten tenants.

  4. HDC are far from problem landlords. As far as I can tell they are actually who we want developing new housing. I’m pro-tenant on principle but willing to hear out this group as opposed to the massive for-profits or Jaskaran Singhs of the world

  6. For all the “YIMBY” we are, policymakers lost sight of the fact that housing suppliers are also landlords. There is a place for reasonable protections, but we’re operating in a very dysfunctional rental market that favors some bad apples. I open to hearing what the champions of low income housing have to say.

  8. Progressive think if the punish and make it very risky to provide housing, housing will be become plentiful and affordable.

    The harsh reality: Seattle lost over 10,000 affordable mom-and-pop rental units in just 2022 alone. Those units have been sold to 1) developers and turned into the $900K townhouse and 2) sold to owner occupants

    The loss is housing has been fill by new, expensive Corporate/Wall Street landlords. So, if you’re excited about paying $3,000/month for a ‘urban one bedroom’ that’s 500SF–keep buying The Strangers absolute bullshit.

    The Stranger is screwing over renters, big time.

  9. housing-as-commodity’s

    a Failed relic of late-

    stage capitalism

    kinda like cars

    big oil & our

    Biosphere’s

    last gasps

    we’re at a pivot point

    with a Golden Huckster

    at the Helm a Bird Flu just

    Waiting to fully Take Off and

    (maybe) Wipe Out America. who

    knows, perhaps a paradigm-shifting

    Catastrophe or Two’s all’s we really Needed

    NOT gonna Welcome it,

    just the same, thnx.

  11. That UW sociology study from fall 2023 is such a sad, biased piece of ideological malarkey. The sociologists got wildly creative and came up with their own “novel data,” completely ignoring the city’s rental registration database. No peer review. No economists or real estate researchers … or god forbid any landlords … involved. Meanwhile, the City Audit confirmed the losses and that the majority of people who removed rentals from Seattle (sold or otherwise repurposed property, especially for small-scale rentals) did so because of Seattle’s regulations. Very clear survey data.

    Doesn’t work well to rely on ECB’s hot takes. She’s writing to her own narrative. No curiosity or balance. Doesn’t pay the bills nearly as well as crowd-funding amped-up moral high horses and division.

    If Seattle wants to expand diversity and affordability of rental housing, housing advocates (and activist rags like The Stranger) will need to accept that working pragmatically with housing operators is part of the solution. Jamming fingers in ears and proclaiming demonizing political narratives isn’t solving things.

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