I’m a landlord and I support Tacoma’s tenant rights initiative. The critics are wrong | Opinion

I own two homes in the Hilltop. My church owns four homes in the Hilltop. As a small landlord and as a person of faith, I support Citizens Initiative No. 1, known as the “Tenant Bill of Rights.”

My family purchased our current home in the Hilltop in 2005 and then purchased a second home to rent out at an affordable rate in 2019. My church purchased its first two homes in 2014 and has since built an affordable housing program of four total homes.

Voting “yes” on Initiative 1 makes both moral and fiscal sense for Tacoma residents, including Tacoma-based small landlords like me. I am one of fewer than 2,600 licensed Tacoma landlords (about 40% of the total) who actually live in our city, according to the city’s database of business licenses. A majority of rental units in Tacoma are owned by outside landlords and wealthy, corporate investors.

These corporate interests are preparing to shower Tacoma voters with negative mailers and ads against Initiative 1, and it seems their strategy is to hide behind small landlords like me and my church.

But they do not speak for us. Unlike wealthy investors who only care about profits, many small local landlords put neighborhood stability and community first.

The Tenant Bill of Rights is one way that Tacoma can be a good neighbor to our roughly 100,000 neighbors who rent their homes. (There are nearly 222,000 people in Tacoma, and 44.4% of Tacoma households are renters, according to recent Census data.) Initiative 1 increases stability and protection for renters so that they can fully invest in putting down roots here in Tacoma as employees, classmates and neighbors.

Given the increased cost of housing and living in Tacoma, many of our neighbors are struggling to keep their homes. In my work with nonprofits, I have known too many stories of children who have come home to find all of their belongings on the street because of eviction, and their families homeless.

Initiative 1 ensures that no one is evicted during cold-weather months, and that students and school employees cannot be evicted during the school year. (This moratorium only applies to folks who are not able to pay their rent; landlords can still evict for a multitude of other reasons.) And Initiative 1 actually incentivizes small landlords to accept low-income renters with housing vouchers like Section 8 because these vouchers come with a guarantee that landlords will receive rental income each month.

Initiative 1 ensures that families can plan and prepare for future changes: They would receive six months’ notice for any increase in rent. This gives families time to make arrangements to absorb the new costs. And if the rent increase is over five percent, then the renter would be offered financial relocation assistance if they have to move because they can’t pay the new rate.

I want to live in a city where my neighbors know they have stable housing and that they’ll be able to fully prepare for financial changes to that housing. This stability is something my family and I count on as homeowners ourselves, and our neighbors deserve no less.

Initiative 1 also makes fiscal sense. As a small landlord, I make money in numerous ways, including rental income, tax breaks and, most significantly, the rising value of the house itself. The value of our second home has increased in value by over $100,000 in the four years that we have owned it, despite soaring interest rates.

Some landlords have expressed concern that Initiative 1 would hurt their businesses due to the prospect of paying relocation assistance. However, because landlords set the rent, the only way they’ll ever have to pay relocation assistance is if they choose to raise the rent over 5% in a six-month period. And when there is a vacancy, the landlord could choose to raise the rent to any amount without a penalty.

Some landlords have also expressed concern that they won’t receive their rent because of the eviction moratoriums detailed above; however, during COVID, we found that small landlords were able to stay in business, even with eviction moratoriums in place.

Many of our housing laws and tax codes were built to incentivize home ownership, and my family and I have benefited from those. I support Initiative 1 because I believe it’s time to strengthen the laws that support our neighbors who rent their homes.

We can be good neighbors and good business owners at the same time.