State House votes to end eviction moratorium June 30
Washington is poised to become the first state in the country to guarantee legal representation for low-income tenants facing eviction, with Senate Bill 5160 now approved by both chambers after its vote in the House of Representatives Thursday night.
Tenants will need that legal representation, too, because the House’s version of the bill adds a major concession: an amendment sponsored by Rep. Michelle Caldier (R-Port Orchard) that would end the statewide eviction moratorium on June 30.
Caldier’s amendment won the support of a significant number of House Democrats, passing 59-37.
One of them was Rep. Strom Peterson (D-Edmonds), chair of the House Housing, Human Services, and Veterans Committee. While Peterson credited the eviction moratorium with saving thousands of people from homelessness, he urged House Democrats to vote for the amendment.
“Our goal as a chamber, I think our goal as a legislature, our goal with working with the governor’s office, was to find the path out of this eviction moratorium,” Peterson said. “Now it’s incumbent upon us to work together in a bipartisan manner.”
The bill now goes back to the Senate for “concurrence,” a vote on whether the Senate will agree to the House bill’s changes.
One person who will not agree: the bill’s prime sponsor, Sen. Patty Kuderer, D-Bellevue.
“Forcing the eviction moratorium to end on June 30 is misguided and ill-advised,” Kuderer said. “All we have to do is look at the headlines right now about the rising infection rates.”
Kuderer said the hard deadline would jeopardize the off-ramp process set up by the bill, which also requires landlords to engage in mediation through Dispute Resolution Centers (DRCs) before filing for eviction against tenants who are behind on rent.
The DRCs are still hiring and training staff, Kuderer said, and the Office of Civil Legal Aid said they won’t have lawyers contracted and ready to serve all indigent tenants until the fall.
“What it means to me is that thousands of eviction notices will go out on July 1, and the state won’t have the necessary supports in place to help those families stay in their homes,” Kuderer said.
The most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more than 160,000 households in Washington state are behind on rent, and another 413,000 are using credit cards or loans to stay afloat.
If the Senate refuses to accept the House bill’s amendment, it will go back to the House, which will have to decide whether to drop the amendment or force a conference between both houses.
A second amendment, also from Caldier, allocates an additional $7.5 million of federal relief money to landlords whose tenants are behind on rent. That’s in addition to $368 million already committed for the Department of Commerce’s rent assistance program.
Despite these modifications, Caldier ultimately voted against the bill.
Gov. Inslee has been extending the eviction moratorium in three-month chunks since the pandemic began. The bill as passed by the House would take that decision out of his hands.
“The reason the governor had been issuing the moratorium in short time frames was to continually assess the situation, and this takes a tool out of the toolbox for him,” Kuderer said.
The governor’s office declined to comment on the amendment or the status of the eviction moratorium on Friday.
“Legal counsel are still looking at the potential implications of this legislation,” wrote Mike Faulk, deputy communications director for the Governor’s Office.
This story was originally published April 9, 2021 at 2:19 PM with the headline "State House votes to end eviction moratorium June 30."
.jpg)