Tacoma deserves a fair vote, but tenants’ rights ballot initiative is no slam dunk | Opinion
Tacoma voters deserve an opportunity to answer the question at hand, honestly, and without the threat of confusion.
A Wednesday ruling by Pierce County Superior Judge Timothy Ashcraft would give them just that — and regardless of how you feel about a citizen’s initiative that, if passed, would add a host of new tenant protections to the city’s rental housing code, there’s no arguing with the logic the judge relied on when making his decision.
Tacoma for All, the coalition of renters’ rights advocates that collected enough signatures to qualify the initiative for the November ballot, has been spot-on in their critiques of the City Council’s response to their effort from the beginning. Most recently, that response included voting to place a competing measure on the same ballot. What’s the nagging legal problem with that, at least in Ashcraft’s opinion? They’d already approved and adopted the rental housing code changes they hoped to put in front of voters as an alternative.
“My vote tonight to put this on the ballot is not to confuse voters. My vote tonight is to give voters a choice,” said Mayor Victoria Woodards during a lengthy July 11 debate just before a majority of her City Council colleagues joined her in support of placing the city’s rental housing code changes on the ballot, as Heidi Groover of the Seattle Times reported.
Tacoma City Council member Catherine Ushka added at the same meeting: “We believe that our proposal will make the greatest progress with the least negative consequences,” adding “the time has come for the people to decide.”
Ultimately, of course, Ashcraft decided it was a bogus maneuver, and he has a point. While the City Council has the authority to place a competing initiative on the ballot — as it did in 2015 in response to a citizen initiative aiming to raise the minimum wage — what council members tried to do this time around wasn’t that at all, even if they’re intentions were pure.
As Ashcraft described, asking residents to choose between what’s already adopted city policy that won’t be changed by their votes and the citizen initiative already on the ballot is “not a true alternative” at all.
You can use the words Ashcraft chose when explaining his ruling, like “misleading and confusing” or you can take it a step further, and be blunt: The City Council wanted to enact meaningful changes to better protect tenants, but they also clearly also believed their way to do it is better, and the move they made clearly undercut the chances of Tacoma for All’s citizens’ initiative.
Here’s the thing: Even if there’s cause for legitimate concern over the potential unintended consequences of Tacoma for All’s initiative — and spoiler: there most certainly is, we’ll get to that in a moment — what the City Council ended up doing was muddying the process laid out in Tacoma’s charter specifically for situations like these.
Let the people vote. Up or down. Nay or yea. That’s how it works — how it’s designed to work. If the city council wants to place a competing measure on the ballot, do it sincerely — not for show or potential deception.
Which brings us to the larger, more important dilemma currently facing voters …
Tacoma for All’s citizen initiative will be on the ballot regardless of what happens from here — be it a city appeal of Ashcraft’s ruling or disgruntled acceptance by local leaders — and the decision it will ask voters to make shouldn’t be taken lightly.
In July, Tacoma’s City Council voted to approve and adopt updates to the city’s rental housing code that doubled the amount of notice landlords must give tenants before a rent increase — from 60 to 120 days — while also limiting late fees and reining in unreasonable screening requirements.
But if approved by voters in November, Tacoma for All’s initiative — which has earned strong local union support and endorsements from influential leaders like Tacoma State Sen. Yasmin Trudeau — will, in Spinal Tap terms, crank things “up to 11.”
Instead of four months’ notice on rent hikes, landlords would be required to provide six. They would also be required to pay relocation assistance to displaced tenants in a number of cases, and barred from evicting tenants in others, particularly evictions of vulnerable people like seniors, service members and families during the school year and cold winter months.
The initiative would also create a tenant and landlord code of conduct, cut late fees a landlord can charge even further — instituting a $10-per-month limit — and establish penalties and mechanisms for city enforcement.
According to supporters, they’re the kind of strong, progressive safeguards Tacoma renters need in times like these.
But are they a good idea? That’s the question.
And will they actually work — by actually helping the people who need it?
Even as a known bleeding heart, I have reservations — and I think voters should, too.
As I’ve written before, you can’t argue with the scene that Tacoma for All and the initiative’s many supporters paint. While the available stats differ to varying degrees, all the numbers underscore the same undeniable problem: Tacoma has a large population of renters, a modest area median income (at best), and rents have increased dramatically dating back to roughly 2016 while income has failed to keep pace.
Something has to give. Something must change.
Still, if we’re being honest, what we need is an entirely different model, one that defines housing as a basic human right — not an opportunity for investment, whether it’s to the benefit of out-of-town profiteers or struggling people who grew up on the rapidly disappearing notion of the traditional American Dream. We’ve turned roofs into money makers and being a landlord into an occupation, and I’m not sure an initiative that bites around the edges, however valiantly, will have the desired effect.
Instead, I worry it will backfire.
The truth is, combining something as essential as housing and cold, hard capitalism puts renters at an inherent disadvantage, and there’s no doubt they deserve more protections than they currently have — even under the city’s new and improved code. But until we face up to the fact that the problem is much bigger than that, it seems worth thinking long and hard about the bad behavior Tacoma for All’s initiative is trying to address — and then considering who is likely to feel the biggest pinch if it passes.
Say you’re a major real estate property investor with holdings in Tacoma and plenty of resources at your disposal. Take, for example, on Hilltop, a historically Black neighborhood where over the past five years 16% of home sales have been made by limited liability companies or limited liability partnerships — a rate 60% higher than the citywide average over the same period. Or, really, take any real estate transaction in recent years where a big-time outfit swooped in and acquired local apartments.
Would the strict requirements mandated under the Tacoma for All initiative change your business? Without a doubt. Would they force you to play by a new, fairer set of rules? Sure. But would they change your end goal, and your ultimate motivation: making the biggest profit possible? Not a chance. It’s why you exist — it’s why you’re here. You’re not packing up and going home or suddenly deciding you’re in it for the simple satisfaction of housing the needy.
Now say you’re one of those average, decent landlords so many people like to talk about, including the ones some outspoken activists sometimes pass off as hyperbole. Believe it or not, they do exist — and they currently provide rental housing people depend on. Can you imagine staring the Tacoma for All citizens’ initiative in the face?
It has to be mildly terrifying. Theoretically, you could find yourself with no ability to evict a tenant for almost half the year. If economic circumstances change, you wouldn’t be able to increase rent for six months, and if your current occupants couldn’t afford it, there’s a decent chance you’d be on the hook for their move.
So what would you do, as a small player in the much larger, dysfunctional capitalist housing market we’ve created?
If you continued to rent your property you’d certainly be highly selective when finding a tenant, wouldn’t you?
Wouldn’t you probably consider selling — and getting out while you could, profit in hand — putting the property on the market for one of those wealthy investors to gobble up or for the highest bidder from Seattle to claim as their new home? Isn’t there a decent chance a valuable unit of rental housing would evaporate in the process?
For most, the current reality is simple: Their home — or whatever small real estate holdings they’re able to hold onto in the end — represents the only financial safety net they’ll have once the chips of their life fall where they may. That’s the way we do it in this country, for better and more often worse. Add in a growing number of greedy vultures in three-piece suits who’ve made housing scarcity good for their bottom line, and you get what we now see every day — more and more regular people falling victim to the viciousness of a system that needs tweaks and adjustments to be salvaged.
Judge Ashcraft was correct in his ruling: Tacoma voters deserve a straightforward say in the matter, and the City Council’s attempt to intervene didn’t help — instead, it just looks bush league and insincere, whether they genuinely wanted voters to have a choice between two paths or not.
With that civic right comes a weighty responsibility, however: Voters should think long and hard about their decision.
The Tacoma for All tenants rights initiative could be an important push in the right direction — a catalyst at a tipping point of change. Sometimes that’s how it goes. Keep punching until the cracks get big enough for the disenfranchised to crawl through or the whole thing crumbles.
Or, it could be something else entirely.
The stakes are high.
This story was originally published August 31, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
