Kent tenants seek eviction help from City Council

Tenants are rising up in Kent in an effort to get the City Council to adopt what’s known as a just cause eviction ordinance.

Tenants, community leaders and a Tenants Union of Washington State representative are part of a group that early next year plans to approach the council to approve a new ordinance to give renters protection from landlords who plan to evict them or force them to move without a just cause.

The city of Seattle has a just cause ordinance and many other cities around the country have it, says Jose Camacho, a community organizer with Tenants Union of Washington State, who is working with Kent tenants to get a new law passed. Landlords in Kent can give a 20-day notice to a tenant on a month-to-month lease to move out with no reason needed to end the tenancy.

“What it says is if a landlord wants to terminate someone’s tenancy, it should be for a good reason,” Camacho said during a recent interview. “It’s not to say a landlord is prohibited from evicting someone. If you don’t follow the rules or pay rent on time, it’s not saying the landlord doesn’t have that opportunity, but tenants have a greater chance to remain in their homes if they are following the rules and paying the rent on time.

“It doesn’t allow for added threats of saying, ‘hey you’ve got to go because I don’t feel you are the right tenant.’”

Several tenants of a senior housing complex in Kent met with the Kent Reporter to discuss their concerns. They did not want their names or the housing complex revealed because they fear their landlord might retaliate against them.

“They threaten not to renew your lease and it throws you into a panic,” one tenant said.

“People are scared,” another tenant said. “They are mean, cruel managers who are not fair… .This is whole new breed of managers. They accuse people of things they didn’t do.”

Camacho has heard the tenants’ many complaints.

“Tenants face retaliation if they voice concerns about rent increases or ask for repairs,” he said.

The Rev. Jimmie James, of Kent, a community minister, also has worked with tenants in an effort to get a just cause eviction ordinance adopted.

“It’s not just happening with senior housing but the community at large and especially low income communities,” James said during an interview. “As a minister a lot of people come to me with problems and I’m getting more and more issues of people being threatened to be kicked out of their apartments. I work with a lot of churches as a community minister and one of the growing problems is people are losing their housing because of this lack of just cause issue.”

Tenants said they have discussed the problem with current city council members Brenda Fincher and Dennis Higgins as well as Tina Budell, who won the Nov. 3 election and will join the council in January.

“It’s a difficult and big task but I think it’s very possible when you have folks who are willing to work towards it and even a city council member who wants to help,” Camacho said about achieving the goal of a new ordinance sometime next year.

Fincher supports the movement.

“We’ll need to work out the specifics, but the idea has merit,” Fincher said in an email. “This protects people who have been paying their rent, taking care of the property and not causing problems. This won’t impact evictions for people who haven’t done that.”

Rory O’Sullivan, managing attorney with the King County Bar Association’s Housing Justice Project in Kent, serves in an advisory role to the Kent tenants. He works to help defend people who face eviction notices and knows how the system does or doesn’t work.

He said a property manager might not like people with disabilities or give more eviction notices to Latino residents, so the tenants must move out.

“They know the reasons they are being terminated but it’s really difficult to prove unless you get them on videotape making a racist comment,” O’Sullivan said. “Other people don’t want to speak out about it.”

But he added a just cause eviction helps out.

“The benefit is you don’t have to prove someone is being discriminatory but it’s their duty to show what you have done wrong as a tenant to end your tenancy,” O’Sullivan said. “It should be the burden of the landlord to show you’ve done something wrong rather than the burden of the tenant to show this person is discriminatory when you know that is the real reason.”

One tenant shared a story about how the landlord handled another tenant.

“They let a person of color come in for a year and then they don’t renew their lease with no reason given,” the tenant said.

James wants the council to take action.

“We have a mayor and city council that claims they want to take care of all of its citizens,” James said. “So here is a population of citizens – if they really do care – then there should be no question for the city to address these issues and putting the legs to the talk about housing. The city could take that step by adopting the just cause ordinance.”

Fincher said there’s also the issue of housing costs going up beyond what tenants can afford, so a longer notification period is the difference between homelessness and financial independence – especially for seniors on a fixed income and families working to make ends meet.

She added that almost half of Kent’s residents live in multifamily housing and rents are rising faster than before.

“I can’t speak for the full council, but I believe it’s our job to be proactive with issues like this that impact so many of our residents, before it becomes a much bigger and more expensive problem,” Fincher said.

Camacho said tenants can reach out to him at 206-722-6848, ext. 105 or josec@tenantsunion.org.

“We want to talk to people who have received 20-day notices so we can illustrate the situations people face throughout the city of Kent and discuss the issues and if they believe there is need for just cause,” he said.

Comacho’s confident a solution can be found.

“I think the council has the city’s best interest at heart,” he said. “If a mass amount of people are facing these issues and there’s a possible solution to it – even right up in Seattle – let’s look at that and what matters to the folks who are renting.”