City of Tacoma sued over controversial housing initiative aimed at protecting tenants
More than nine months after the passage of a controversial code aimed at protecting tenants’ rights, the city of Tacoma has been named in a new lawsuit.
The Citizen Action Defense Fund (CADF) filed the lawsuit in Pierce County Superior Court, the group announced Tuesday morning. The constitutional-rights nonprofit is representing Tacoma’s North Pearl Street apartment complex, which does business as Westside Estates Apartments at 922 N. Pearl St. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
Jackson Maynard, CADF’s executive director and counsel, told The News Tribune that the Landlord Fairness Code Initiative has been “wreaking havoc on the rental housing market” since it passed nearly a year ago. Maynard alleges the law is unconstitutional.
“It’s bad law and bad policy,” Maynard told The News Tribune. “This is why we have courts. This is why we have constitutional provisions, and we look forward to explaining to the court why this particular measure is bad for renters, bad for housing providers, and bad for the city of Tacoma.”
City spokesperson Maria Lee said via email Tuesday: “We’re reviewing the complaint and have no comment at this time.”
The ballot initiative, which established a “Tenant Bill of Rights,” gave Tacoma renters additional protections under the city’s code, as previously reported by The News Tribune. It requires landlords to help with relocation in cases of 5%-or-more rent increases and bans evictions from November through April, among other provisions.
The citizens’ initiative passed in November 2023 by a “razor-thin margin”: 49.6% to 50.4%, a difference of roughly 400 votes, as noted in the lawsuit. It took effect the following month.
Ann Dorn with Tacoma for All, the group that spearheaded the grassroots initiative, called the lawsuit “baseless.” She told The News Tribune that the courts will ultimately agree it’s a bid to attack tenants’ new rights and the democratic process.
“We’re not surprised to see a lawsuit brought by landlords who are eager to challenge the new law in an effort to preserve what they see as their right to raise rents rapidly without consequences and turn out working families into the streets in the middle of winter,” Dorn said via email.
While many renters and tenants’ rights advocates cheered on the initiative, it has received blowback from developers and local landlords who argue that it goes too far.
Maynard said the lawsuit is aimed at restoring balance to the housing market and ensuring the constitutionality of enacted laws. Although such code changes may be well-meaning, they must also comply with state and federal constitutions, he said.
“Trying to do what you think is the right thing, the wrong way, is still the wrong thing,” Maynard said.
Tenant-law attorney Lauren Romero with Nexus Legal Counsel told The News Tribune that the lawsuit attempts to bypass voters’ will. She added: “From a legal perspective it is absolutely laughable.
“The Landlord Fairness Code was an effort to even the playing field between tenants and landlords, but it hasn’t stripped all power from the landlords by any means,” Romero continued via email. “Evictions are still happening, rents are still as high as ever, and there are people losing housing daily in Pierce County.”
The city of Tacoma said in December that it could not enforce the initiative and that its provisions would instead be enforced exclusively by private rights of action. It’s up to renters to take their landlords to court.
Maynard explained that the city was named in the lawsuit because the “city is the entity that you sue to block enforcement of an ordinance, and so we’ll see how they respond to the complaint.”
The way Maynard sees it, the local government’s refusal to enforce the initiative could mean it recognizes that there are legal problems with it.
Maynard argued that the initiative has resulted in renters being less likely to secure affordable housing as more housing providers or landlords opt to exit the market.
“And that’s going to have an adverse effect on everybody,” he said.
The lawsuit alleges that the initiative features “myriad and often confusing” requirements. It also argues that the initiative has caused financial harm to the plaintiff and infringed on owners’ constitutional freedoms by restricting their “fundamental property right to exclude others from their properties.”
Maynard described the initiative as “a mess, legally.”
“According to the folks we’ve been talking to in Tacoma, it’s really led to some difficulties, and folks either deciding not to continue in the rental market or not to join it at all, and that drives up prices,” he added. “So there’s just a lot in this that’s really problematic.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comments from Ann Dorn of Tacoma for All and attorney Lauren Romero. It has also been updated to clarify that the city has said it cannot enforce the initiative.
This story was originally published August 27, 2024 at 3:05 PM.
