Seattle, WA
New pandemic-era law caps rental backpay installments to 1/3 of rent in Seattle
The brand new regulation comes about two months after the town’s eviction moratorium was allowed to run out.
SEATTLE — The Seattle Metropolis Council handed one other ordinance Tuesday, altering the foundations for landlords accumulating late hire from tenants impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ordinance, put forth by Councilmember Dan Strauss, adjusts earlier measures put into place by the council within the early days of the pandemic.
The brand new guidelines require landlords to cap reimbursement installments at one-third of the tenant’s hire, provide a “cheap schedule” for the tenant to pay again what hire they owe and develop the hire lined to incorporate not solely the time of the town’s civil emergency but additionally six months after it involves an finish.
Below the earlier ordinance handed in Could 2020, renters solely had as much as six months to repay late hire and it solely lined the interval throughout Washington state’s public well being emergency.
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“The preliminary reimbursement plan requirement we adopted was primarily based on a two-month pandemic – this regulation updates our protections to replicate a two-plus yr pandemic. These adjustments will cut back confusion concerning the protections that exist and can permit landlords to be made complete whereas lowering evictions,” Strauss mentioned in a press release.
Whereas neither Strauss nor the laws provides any particulars on what a “cheap” reimbursement schedule is, the laws does require landlords to supply an affordable reimbursement plan and provides tenants two weeks to just accept.
If the owner doesn’t make this provide or doesn’t permit the tenant two weeks to just accept, the tenant can increase this as a protection in eviction court docket.
The ordinance handed the council by a 7-1 vote, with Councilmember Sara Nelson the one one to vote in opposition.
Her opposition stemmed from what she mentioned was an absence of enter from landlords in addition to concern that the brand new guidelines would lengthen the deadline for reimbursement and power small landlords to permit their properties to fall into disrepair.
“I am simply involved about prolonging the time that these small landlords must get that cash to keep up their properties and add further uncertainty about when which may occur,” Nelson mentioned simply earlier than the vote Tuesday.
In March, a part of the town’s guidelines to stop pandemic-caused evictions was struck down by the Washington State Courtroom of Appeals.
The rule that allowed tenants to make use of the pandemic as an eviction protection six months after the town’s moratorium ended, which occurred on Feb. 28, was struck down as a result of it “deprives the landlords of their property curiosity with out due course of by not affording them the chance to check the veracity of a tenant’s self-certification of economic hardship.”
Days earlier than the moratorium expired, the council voted on a proposal to increase it, however it failed 5-3. Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell mentioned it was troublesome to inform what number of renters have been really benefitting from the moratorium.
In the meantime, a current examine confirmed that almost half of renters who’re individuals of shade within the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue space aren’t assured of their skill to pay hire.
The brand new Seattle ordinance now heads to Harrell’s desk for his signature.
