Pierce County eviction rate is rising. Did Tacoma ‘Tenant Bill of Rights' make an impact?

Yahoo

29-01-2025

Eviction rates in Pierce County are on the rise again after a lull during the pandemic when renter protections were in place, court records show, rising to the highest level since 2018.
A year after Tacoma residents narrowly approved some of the most comprehensive renter protections in the Pacific Northwest, it's hard to tell if those protections have impacted the Pierce County eviction rate significantly. The county doesn't track eviction filing data by city or address. A group of tenant and landlord advocates is working to analyze Initiative 1's impacts on tenants and landlords, with results expected later this year.
Pierce County landlords filed 3,366 unlawful detainer cases in 2024 as of Dec. 10. That number was 2,862 in 2023; 1,981 in 2022; 535 in 2021; 717 in 2020; 2,641 in 2019 and 3,026 in 2018, according to data collected by the Pierce County Superior Court Clerk's Office. A breakdown of the data by month shows the rate of eviction filings rose almost every month of 2024.
Housing providers were on track to file more evictions last year than any other time in state history, according to the Eviction Research Network, which analyzed data collected between January and November 2024.
Supporters of Tacoma for All's Initiative 1, also referred to as the 'Tenant Bill of Rights' or the 'Landlord Fairness Code,' said without city-specific data it's hard to measure the initiative's impacts. Anecdotally, Lauren Romero, a contract attorney for Tacoma for All's new Tenant Legal Aid initiative, said the measure has helped her clients stay in their homes longer and encouraged more tenants to work with their landlords to resolve issues rather than go through eviction proceedings.
Some local housing providers and property managers said the measure harmed small landlords financially and encouraged more to leave the market or raise rents to stay profitable.
Both tenant advocates and property managers agreed that government officials need to find more comprehensive solutions to address the affordable-housing crisis in Pierce County and rising rates of homelessness. They cited government-funded rental assistance as one such solution.
As of July 1, 2024, Pierce County had a population of 928,696, according to the most recent census. Of the 375,765 housing units in Pierce County, 64.8% of them were occupied by home owners and 35.2% were occupied by renters between 2019 and 2023. The average cost of rental housing was $1,941 a month in 2024, according to the Zillow Observed Rent Index.
About 44% of the 222,906 people living in Tacoma live in rental housing, according to the census. The average price of rental housing in Tacoma was $1,739 in a month as of 2024, according to the Zillow Observed Rent Index.
Based on population, there are about 326,975 peeple living in rental housing in Pierce County and 98,079 in Tacoma. Renters in Tacoma make up about 30% of those living in rental housing in the county.
As previously reported by The News Tribune, at least 111,511 new units of housing need to be built in Pierce County by 2044 to keep up with population growth. Tacoma needs at least 46% more housing by 2044, and there is an acute need for affordable housing for moderate, low, very low and extremely low-income households, as well as emergency housing, emergency shelters and permanent supportive housing.
County-wide 37% of all households are cost-burdened or extremely cost-burdened, meaning residents spend more than 30% of their income on housing, according to Pierce County data. That's one of the highest percentages in the state, on par with King County.
Shortly after Initiative 1 passed in November 2023, the late News Tribune columnist and opinion editor Matt Driscoll and Michael Mirra, who led the Tacoma Housing Authority for 17 years, came together to form study group to examine the impacts of the measure. A group of about 19 volunteers — including Tacoma for All members, landlord representatives, Tacoma Housing Authority, lawyers, a faculty member of UW Tacoma, city staff and county staff — has continued to meet regularly, Mirra said.
The group's goal is to gather information about how Initiation 1 has impacted tenants and local landlords, investor portfolios and housing development, he said. Two surveys — one for tenants and one for landlords and developers — are expected to be available to the public in the next couple of weeks, Mirra said.
Per the city of Tacoma's charter, the City Council cannot amend or repeal an ordinance enacted by the vote of the people for two years after it passes. The main goal of the study group is to gather data and provide information to the council when it discusses keeping or modifying the ordinance later this fall, Mirra said.
'The ordinance is a notable change in the rules governing our residential rental market,' he said. 'There are a lot of interests entwined in those changes — from tenants, who the ordinance protects from evictions. Those who share the landlords' interest in evicting troublesome neighbors, more and more who are prohibited from evicting people for not paying the rent for almost half the year, in an ordinance that makes no distinction between inability to pay and unwillingness to pay.'
The group's progress was slowed when Driscoll passed away unexpectedly in July 2024 and the original UW faculty member left the project due to health issues, Mirra said. The surveys had been expected to go out in October, he said. Other challenges for the group have been a lack of funding and finding and analyzing data on evictions filed within Tacoma city limits.
'We're hoping the survey will round out what we are hearing' anecdotally about Initiative 1's impacts, Mirra said.
Housing providers and tenant advocates say there are many reasons the Pierce County eviction rate is rising. Among them is the gradual lifting of state and local pandemic protections, the supply of housing not keeping up with demand and more people being unable to afford rent.
Romero has a background in civil legal aid and eviction defense and works to help Tacoma tenants fight evictions. She worked on cases in Pierce County and unincorporated areas from September 2022 through April 2024.
In the fall of 2022, Romero said, she knew a wave of evictions was coming because wages were stagnating, tenant protections and moratoriums put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic were being lifted, stimulus checks were ending and many landlords were waiting to evict.
'Everybody knew it was coming,' Romero said. 'We just had a tidal wave of evictions.'
Romero said protections listed in Initiative 1 — like bans on winter and school year evictions from November through April and relocation assistance for rent increases of 5% or more — have leveled the power imbalance between Tacoma landlords and tenants and encouraged more private attorneys to take on eviction cases. Romero said she didn't expect the initiative to meaningfully change the eviction rate county-wide.
'There was a significant slowdown of [filings in] Tacoma city limits specifically. But then Pierce County at large was around the same rate that we had been seeing,' she said. 'It's really sad you can't get Tacoma-specific numbers.'
Zev Cook, who helped lead Tacoma for All's grassroots campaign to pass Initiative 1, said it was never the organization's goal to stop evictions 'on any meaningful level' but rather delay evictions for residents living in the most 'critical circumstances' and build a housing-justice movement that focuses on tenants.
Cook said although Tacoma tenants now have more protections against eviction and access to relocation assistance in some cases, meaningful change in Pierce County can't happen 'until we have a housing policy in Washington state that puts people and affordability first.'
As housing prices and rent increase in Washington, like many other places in the nation, Cook said salaries aren't keeping up and housing policy often favors for-profit developers who want to turn a profit by increasing rent. According to the city of Tacoma, roughly 77% of the jobs in Tacoma don't pay enough for a single worker to be able to comfortably afford housing on their own.
'We can pass these middle housing bills that open up development restrictions. I think that more density is generally a good thing. But the fact is, these policies and middle-housing bills and opening up zoning isn't going to solve the housing crisis and isn't going to result in the amount of housing that we really need built in the state of Washington,' Cook said. 'There's a long road ahead to being able to fight for and win housing as a human right for all Tacomans and Washingtonians. That's something that we are committed to.'
Sean Flynn is executive director and board president of the Rental Housing Association of Washington. Flynn argues measures like Initiative 1 worsen the housing crisis in Pierce County because they don't promote the development of new housing units or provide direct rental assistance to tenants. Instead, Flynn said, as a result of restrictions on landlords, more builders are deciding not to build in places like Tacoma, which in turn will decrease supply and increase prices.
'If you want people to stay in their housing unit, you need to help them either find the proper housing unit for them to be in, or you need to subsidize their rent,' he said. 'Most people don't pay their rent because they don't have the money. It's not rocket science. If you have the money, you pay the rent. Making it harder to evict them doesn't change the fact that they don't have the money.'
Flynn pushed back on the 'unfair, frankly unfounded and mean' narrative that housing providers are plotting to evict people, saying that no landlord wants to go through the process of hiring a lawyer and evicting a tenant. Housing providers are constantly trying to reduce risk and want to find tenants who are responsible and can pay their rent on time so the landlord can pay their own mortgages, taxes and bills, he said.
Most of the 6,000 statewide members of the Washington Rental Housing Association are small housing providers who live within 30 minutes of their units, Flynn said. Although landlords have good relationships and outcomes with their tenants in a 'super majority' of cases, Flynn said, the risk of being stuck with a bad tenant who isn't paying rent for months and treats the property poorly can be enough to motivate small landlords to leave the market altogether.
'I passionately believe that small housing providers add to the fabric of our cities and communities and to the state of Washington as a whole, that we shouldn't just have large pension funds providing housing in our state,' he said. 'The more risk that we put on our small housing providers, the more that leave, that gap in the market either doesn't get filled or is filled by large [corporations].'
Corey Hjalseth lives in Tacoma and rents out three single-family residences and a detached accessory dwelling unit on his property. A life-long Democrat, Hjalseth said he sympathizes with seniors on a fixed income and people who can't pay their rent but said that shouldn't come 'on the backs of independent housing providers to help them.'
Under Initiative 1, Tacoma landlords must provide relocation assistance to tenants who would rather relocate than pay a 5% rent increase. If a notified rent increase is over 7.5%, landlords must pay relocation assistance equal to two and a half months of rent. If the rent increase is over 10%, the landlord must pay the tenant three months of rent to relocate.
Hjalseth said although he and his wife bought their properties as an investment for their retirement, he tries to keep rent slightly below market rate. In order to reduce risk and ensure he can make a profit, Hjalseth said, he's had to raise rent by 4.5% each year. Since Initiative 1 passed, Hjalseth said, he's known of small housing providers who have sold their rental units rather than take on the risk, removing the units from the rental market and contributing to higher home prices. It's something he's considering, too.
'This is one of the states in the country that has skyrocketed in housing, both to purchase and to rent, and so we do have a problem,' he said. 'It's a supply-and-demand issue. And I applaud our new governor's focus on wanting to build [200,000] homes over the next four years — I think that's a great start. Trying to streamline local permit bureaucracy so that we can get builders building way faster, that's also a great start. But to artificially cap rents and have small, independent housing providers bear the brunt of that is not only unfair, but it's been proven economically to not work.'
Studies into the effectiveness of capping rental prices have shown that rent control appears to help affordability and reduce displacement for current tenants in the short run, but in the long run it can decrease affordability, fuel gentrification and result in other negative consequences on the surrounding neighborhoods, according to a 2018 Brookings research article. Brookings is a nonprofit organization that conducts in-depth, nonpartisan research to improve policy and governance. Tenants who live in rent-controlled apartments might not choose to move in the future despite changes in their household size, and landlords might not invest in maintenance because they can't recoup investment costs by raising rents, the article said.
Both Flynn and Hjalseth said government-sponsored housing vouchers to help tenants afford rent could be a better solution. Broker, property manager and chair of the Tacoma Housing Authority's Landlord Advisory Board Mark Melsness told The News Tribune he agrees.
Melsness said he has been involved in the Tacoma-Pierce County rental industry for more than 30 years, and his company Spinnaker Property Management oversees more than 1,000 homes, a variety of apartments and houses with rents ranging from $890 to $6,000 a month.
Since the passage of Initiative 1, Melsness said, anecdotally he's seen more Tacoma tenants be denied housing as landlords put greater scrutiny on rental applications in an effort to reduce risk. Melsness said he's also heard the rare story of tenants going months without paying rent, leaving their landlord unable to evict them based on the limitations in Initiative 1.
Those who can't pay rent not only end up with poor credit history but might end up owing money to a collection agency, both of which could make it harder to find housing in the future, Melsness said.
'Let's keep people in housing. Let's find a way to keep them in housing because it's cheaper than it is to cycle them back out into rapid rehousing,' he said. 'I think [Tacoma for All and landlords] want the same thing. We want to have great balance, so that the renter knows it's going to be safe and it's going to be clean and maintained and that if there's a problem, it's taken care of, and the housing provider is getting paid on time, and if there's an issue, it's reported and damages aren't continued.'
Editor's note: The Pierce County Superior Court collects eviction filing data county-wide, not by city. Due to a misunderstanding with the Pierce County Superior Court Clerk'sOffice, a previous article — which has since been deleted — incorrectly analyzed eviction data as related to the city of Tacoma.