At yet another long meeting Tuesday, the Seattle City Council unanimously voted to ban landlords from charging “junk” fees, a highly anticipated reform championed by tenant advocates. The council also approved a mid-year budget revision which added funds for various city priorities, including universal school meals, services for LGBTQ people, and gun violence prevention.
The junk fees vote was a major win for Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, who had proposed the legislation as part of her affordability agenda.
More than 75 people spoke during public comment Monday, most of them renters throwing support behind the junk fees bill. A smaller group of mostly trans and queer people spoke about the need to help trans people displaced by anti-trans legislation in Republican-controlled states. Also in attendance: a few weird transphobes.
Pet Rent Squashed
Starting in July 2027, the ordinance will prohibit landlords from charging many types of additional fees such as administrative charges or pet rent. It will also require any allowable fees to be included in initial rental listings alongside the base rent.
Prior to the vote, several council members proposed amendments to the bill. Progressives Eddie Lin and Dionne Foster, the bill’s sponsor, proposed two amendments to strengthen enforcement mechanisms by the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections to ensure landlords comply. Both those amendments passed unanimously, 8-0.
Councilmember Maritza Rivera, a landlord who co-owns a townhouse in the Roosevelt neighborhood, recused herself from talking about or voting on the bill in accordance with the City’s ethics rules.
Councilmember Bob Kettle’s three last-minute amendments proved the most unpopular. The first would remove any references to the word “junk” in the legislation, in an apparent effort not to offend landlords—excuse me, “housing providers.” That was shot down 5-3.
Kettle also proposed an amendment to effectively gut the bill’s pet rent prohibitions by allowing landlords to charge $25 per animal per month. Prior to the vote, Kettle changed the exemption to only cover dogs and not cats. His colleagues still voted it down 7-1. His third amendment to allow landlords to automatically enroll tenants in a renters insurance policy, which he said was needed because “insurance is a smart financial literacy move.” It was soundly rejected.
Despite his strike-out, Kettle joined the rest of the council in approving the bill 8-0.
A Drop in the Bucket for Displaced Trans People
The council’s second main order of business was approving a mid-year revision to the city budget. Much of it was a procedural exercise, like formally accepting various state and federal grants.
But it also allowed the City to tweak spending on certain programs based on current revenue projections, and reallocate unused funds. Most of these changes were approved at the council’s August 4 Finance, Native Communities & Tribal Governments Committee meeting.
A big $5 million chunk of this underspent money was given to the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) for its Northgate Commons redevelopment project. At the committee meeting, SHA executive director Rod Brandon said pre-development and demolition costs were far lower than initially expected, allowing the agency to return the money.
Our politicians predictably took to the free money like piranhas, with every council member wanting to secure funds for their priorities.
The majority of the money, $3.6 million, went to funding the compromise deal on universal school meals, which we covered.
Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck proposed a $300,000 sliver of the funds be dedicated to nonprofit service providers serving the LGBTQ community. Gender Justice League, the Seattle trans civil and human rights organization, estimates $2 million is needed to assist trans people who have relocated to Seattle to flee transphobic policies and legislation in Republican-controlled states.
Even though $300,000 is only a fraction of the $2 million advocates had requested, they testified it would make an immediate impact on people’s lives. Josh Freese, the board treasurer of Seattle’s LGBTQ+ Center, said the organization is prepared to receive and utilize the funds immediately.
The amendment drew its own piranhas. Right-wing journalist-turned-influencer Brandi Kruse live-tweeted the meeting from Council chambers, while several Republican politicians, like state senate candidate Jillian England, decried the funding as “discretionary programs for a narrow category of newcomers.”
In response to these transphobic comments, the crowd booed and Rinck told trans people in attendance “you belong in Seattle, I am glad you are here.”
The $1.1 million left over went back to the City’s JumpStart Fund.
To Surveil or Not to Surveil
The council also dipped into the general fund to pay for several public safety priorities.
Councilmember Lin added $500,000 for two neighborhood outreach positions to address public safety issues in the Little Saigon, North Beacon Hill, and North Rainier neighborhoods. The funding source for this staffing wasn’t specified.
At last week’s committee meeting, Council President Joy Hollingsworth had proposed shifting $250,000 from the Seattle Police Department’s CCTV camera fund to nonprofit community violence interrupters. These workers would do direct outreach to youth in Capitol Hill, First Hill, and the Central District in an effort to prevent more tragic violence like last month’s Seattle Center shooting.
Because Mayor Wilson paused the expansion of the SPD surveillance pilot, the money was just going to sit around unspent for the rest of the year. The committee approved the transfer, despite protests from CCTV mega-fan Kettle.
But it appears Kettle’s whining worked. In a 5-4 vote on Tuesday, the council restored the $250,000 to the SPD surveillance pilot, with a stipulation that no new cameras will be installed on Capitol Hill. So that money will remain off-limits even as the City spends down more of its general fund to pay for the new violence intervention program.
That back-and-forth over the CCTV camera funding serves as a small preview of this fall’s tense budget season, in which Seattle is expected to face a $175 million budget deficit. Stay tuned?