Housing Providers Finally Given a Voice at Seattle City Council

On Wednesday July 10, the Seattle Housing and Human Services Committee, chaired by Councilmember Cathy Moore heard from housing providers about the difficulties they are currently experiencing. After open public testimony, mostly by housing providers with a few tenant advocates, a select panel of housing providers were given the opportunity to address the committee directly.

Community Roots Housing Chief Operating Officer Andrew Oommen and Southeast Effective Development (SEED) Executive Director Michael Seiwerath both talked about the difficulty they are having in maintaining properties, removing problem tenants, and attracting financing. They also stated that unless something changes, Seattle is at risk of losing affordable housing developments and affordable housing developers. Ayda Cader, representing small housing providers, was also included to provide their perspective but was given an extremely limited time to address the committee.

Although the predominant concern was with the broken unlawful detainer process, which the city has little ability to fix, they also highlighted the problems “tenant protections” passed over the last few years have had. First-in-time, the “roommate law” and "Fair Chance Housing" were the top concerns, especially in light of the difficulty removing problem tenants.

As has become the norm, the media including major outlets such as the Seattle Times and the broadcast news channels ignored the housing provider point of view, by not covering the meeting, while The Stranger once again decided to push their false narrative about housing providers and ignore the reality that the policies implemented by the previous council have been devastating to the industry and will make our housing crisis worse.

WMFHA will continue to work with Chair Moore and the Seattle City Council as they consider changes to address the problems created by previous council actions.