Tag: displacement

City Council, Development, Equity

Blaming Blowback on “Disinformation,” Rivera Postpones Vote on Future of Equitable Development Initiative for One Week
Dian Ferguson, director of the Central Area Senior Center, was one of more than 150 people who testified on Tuesday.

By Erica C. Barnett

On Tuesday, the Seattle City Council voted to postpone a vote on Councilmember Maritza Rivera’s last-minute amendment to freeze 2024 funding for the city’s largest anti-displacement program, the seven-year-old Equitable Development Initiative, until next week, ostensibly so that Rivera can “correct disinformation that was irresponsibly given to community about the proposed amendment.”

“I am deeply disappointed that the objective of this amendment has been grossly mischaracterized,” Rivera said, describing her proposal as a mere request for a “status report” from the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development on projects funded by the initiative, which helps pay (among other things) for early-stage development costs and technical assistance for projects proposed by community groups that have limited development experience.

Although Rivera claimed her proviso—a freeze on funding until a later council vote—wouldn’t defund any current EDI projects, she failed to acknowledge the most impactful element of the legislation: In addition to requesting a report on current projects, Rivera’s amendment would require OPCD to spend all the money allocated to the program in previous years, a total of $53.5 million, by September 24.

If that doesn’t happen, according to the text of Rivera’s amendment (below) and the staff analysis attached to the proposal, the council could not hold a vote to lift the proviso and the money for the EDI projects would go back into the general fund, where it could be used to close an estimated $250 million budget deficit.

Because capital projects take years, not months, the effect of the amendment would be to cripple projects that are already underway. “Development projects take time, and if you’re not an experienced developer, it takes longer,” Councilmember Tammy Morales, a longtime EDI supporter, said. “But that doesn’t mean that we withhold funding from your program, so that you can’t continue to execute on your program. It means that we make sure you get what you need to do it right.”

Rivera’s proposal went up online the Friday afternoon before the long Memorial Day weekend, giving representatives from the dozens of community groups that would be impacted by the loss of funding just three days to mobilize against the proposal. On Tuesday, they turned out in numbers, spilling out of council chambers and into the Bertha Knight Landes room on the first floor of City Hall while they waited to speak.

Supporters of EDI, many of them from organizations that participate in the program, made up a large majority of those who testified (the remainder were mostly gig workers who came to ask the council not to cut their wages, a decision the council also decided to punt to a later date.) Speakers described how the program had enabled their organizations to buy property for a future mixed-use development (Quynh Pham, Friends of Little Saigon), make progress toward reopening a legendary International District institution (Karen Akada Sakata, Bush Garden), and renovate a building that serves as an important community gathering space in the Central District (Dian Ferguson, Central Area Senior Center.)

“I actually see the amendment close to being redlining, and we don’t need to go back to times when things were redlined,” Ferguson said. With the help of an EDI grant, she said, her organization “has helped African American communities, BIPOC communities, young people. What we are trying to avoid is displacement.”

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During public comment, Rivera rarely looked up from her computer, even when local elected officials—four members of the Duwamish Tribal Council, including Chairwoman Cecile Hanson—spoke against the proposal.

In a statement after the meeting, Rivera claimed the hundreds of people who wrote emails and testified simply didn’t understand her legislation.  proposal “The amendment does not cut the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) program.does not cut the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) program,” Rivera said. “I am deeply disappointed that the objective of this amendment has been grossly mischaracterized.”

Morales, whose Southeast Seattle district includes the majority of the projects that receive EDI funding, tried to shoot down the delay. “Frankly, if you want to propose legislation that rolls back commitments made to black and brown communities, at least have the courage to stand by your legislation and vote on it, or acknowledge that you made a mistake and withdraw it,” Morales said.

Noting that it can take six or more years for even experienced developers to put together funding to buy a site and build a project, Morales added that she was not surprised that many EDI projects take years. ” Development projects take time, and if you’re not an experienced developer, it takes longer. But that doesn’t mean that we withhold funding from your program so that you can’t continue to execute on your program. It means that we make sure you get what you need to do it right.

Rivera said she plans to reintroduce her amendment at next Monday’s full city council meeting.

Affordability, City Council, Development, Equity

Last-Minute Proposal Could Gut City’s Largest Anti-Displacement Program

By Erica C. Barnett

An anti-displacement program designed to help BIPOC-led community groups develop housing and other projects is on the chopping block.

Late last Friday afternoon, Seattle City Councilmember Maritza Rivera proposed a budget proviso—a restriction on funding—that would prevent the city’s Office of Community Planning and Development (OPCD) from spending $25.3 million allocated for the Equitable Development Initiative in 2024 unless it allocates all the funds that are currently available for the program, around $53.5 million, by September, and provides the council with a detailed analysis of every project funded through EDI.

If those two things don’t happen by the September deadline, the money—most of it ($19.8 million) from the JumpStart payroll tax—would go back into the general fund and could be used to address the projected $250 million 2025 budget shortfall. About 9 percent of JumpStart—a tax on paid by the city’s largest companies on the salaries of their highest-compensated employees—is allocated by law to EDI.

Because it is unlikely that OPCD can allocate all the funds to dozens of projects in various stages of development over the next few months, Rivera’s proviso would effectively gut the program.

The EDI program provides funds to help community groups that have little or no capital development experience with site acquisition or other capital costs that are part of the larger “capital stack” used to fund complex projects, including affordable housing, child care, and community centers; in some cases, the funds help organizations that don’t have a permanent home build capacity and stability so they can grow. If the EDI funds go away, dozens of projects could collapse.

Tammy Morales, who heads the council’s land use committee and , said supporters of EDI were “surprised that there would be such a potentially huge impact on dozens of organizations and projects without notification to anybody. … I don’t know what’s motivating this. All I know is that this would be hugely destabilizing for dozens of projects.”

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Advocates for the anti-displacement initiative have noted that development projects don’t happen in a year; particularly for community groups that may be developing projects for the first time, they can take months or years, which is why the funding for EDI carries forward from year to year. “The nature of development is that sometimes it takes two or three years to get all the financing together,” Morales said.

It’s probably unreasonable, in other words, to expect a community group with no history developing major capital projects–like the Ethiopian Community in Seattle, which has been working for years to develop senior housing on the site of its existing community center on Rainier Ave. S.—to spend its entire EDI allocation right away.

At a meeting of the council’s budget committee earlier this month, Rivera characterized EDI projects as “one-time funding” that might pay for programs that need ongoing funds in future years, creating a funding cliff. “I have questions about what this one-time funding will cover and whether there were any programs being contemplated  this money that would need ongoing funding,” Rivera said.

However, a detailed EDI project list shows that these are generally capital projects, and that the initiative pays for things like site acquisition, planning for capital projects, and construction, as opposed to ongoing programs that require annual funding.

Because EDI is designed to fund projects that address displacement in communities of color, the vast majority of the projects are in Morales’ District 2, which includes all of Southeast Seattle, the most diverse part of the city. There are also a large number of projects in Joy Hollingsworth’s District 3, which includes the historically Black Central District, and Rob Saka’s District 1, which includes all of West Seattle.

Rivera’s district is one of just two council districts (the other is Bob Kettle’s District 1, which includes downtown, Magnolia, and Queen Anne), that does not include a single EDI project.

During the same budget meeting, Rivera complained that OPCD had “consistently rescheduled and delayed” meeting with her to explain EDI. In fact, OPCD director Rico Quirindongo briefed Rivera on EDI individually in her council office on at least two occasions in May, council sign-in sheets confirm. The department also did a full briefing on EDI for the the council’s land use committee, on which Rivera sits, in March. All three of these briefings occurred before last Friday, when Rivera introduced her proviso.

Earlier this year, the council killed another program designed to help community groups prevent displacement by providing density incentives for community groups that develop affordable housing. At the time, Rivera said the city should not provide new housing incentives until the city adopts a final comprehensive plan in the coming year, and suggested (incorrectly) that the city does not know what’s in the housing levy Seattle voters adopted earlier this year.

Mayor Bruce Harrell has been supportive of the EDI program in the past, saying last year that the program “embodies our One Seattle vision, bringing to the forefront innovative community-based programs that increase affordable housing and economic opportunity, and ensure vibrant cultural spaces find permanence in our city.” PubliCola has reached out to the mayor’s office for comment and will update this post if we hear back.

The council is scheduled to vote on Rivera’s amendment at its meeting at 2:00 this afternoon.

Density, Development, discrimination, housing, Mayor Harrell

Mayor’s Office Removed All New Anti-Displacement Proposals from Draft “Anti-Displacement Framework”

By Erica C. Barnett

As Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office prepared to release the proposed 20-year update to the city’s Comprehensive Plan earlier this year, an advisor sent an email to key staffers at the Office of Planning and Community Development, including OPCD director Rico Quirindongo, raising concerns about an “anti-displacement framework” the office submitted to the mayor’s office last year.

OPCD developed the anti-displacement strategy as part of a proposed comprehensive plan update that included significantly more density throughout the city than the plan the mayor eventually released; that plan, as we’ve reported, reluctantly complies with a new state housing law while preserving the city’s exclusionary housing patterns.

The mayor’s office had already deleted sections of OPCD’s proposal “that would suggest some commitment of new dollars or policy pivots that haven’t been vetted” with his office, the staffer wrote, but OPCD still needed to “really beef[…] up” sections of the plan that highlighted the city’s existing anti-displacement interventions, “with a ton more detail (including the millions we [are] spending on these efforts!)”

For example, the staffer wrote, “We should really be talking up our affordable housing investments—I wouldn’t be surprised i[f] Seattle residents are spending more per capita on this than anywhere else in the country.”

When he announced the draft comprehensive plan in March, Harrell said that his experience growing up in the historically redlined Central District “has informed my belief that we need more housing, and we need to be intentional about how and where we grow, addressing the historic harms of exclusionary zoning and embedding concrete anti-displacement strategies every step of the way.”

But a comparison between the 2023 draft of the plan and the version released in March reveals that the mayor effectively vetoed an ambitious plan to combat displacement and replaced it with a list of laws that are already in effect, including the “record high” $970 million housing levy.

The changes aren’t mere trims or cuts. The August draft, which OPCD finalized after four months of community engagement, described itself as “a toolbox for robust anti-displacement strategies needed to achieve equitable growth” and concluded with an appendix titled “Examples of current City anti-displacement tools.”

In the 14-page version Harrell released, that appendix is the plan.

The changes reflect a dramatic shift in the city’s official strategy for addressing displacement through smart planning and investment strategies. Instead of endorsing policy proposals to prevent displacement in the future, the draft plan repeatedly pats the city on the back for policies adopted years or even decades in the past.

For example, OPCD’s draft included five strategies to “Expand Tenant Protections” in the future, such as expanding access to information about vacancies in affordable housing, expanding tenant protections to more people, funding tenant organizing efforts, and paying for short-term rental assistance to prevent evictions.

In contrast, under a section retitled “Protect Tenants,” the framework released in March summarizes existing tenant protections without proposing any new ones. These include the Just Cause Eviction ordinance (1980),  the Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance (1990), the Rental Housing Inspection Ordinance (2010), the Economic Displacement Relocation Ordinance (2021), and the winter and school-year eviction moratoria (2020 and 2021, respectively.)

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Similarly, the unreleased draft suggested the city expand or establish investments in strategies like land banking (buying land for future use), social housing, and right-of-first-refusal laws that would give community-based organizations or tenants the right to buy buildings that house low-income tenants when they go up for sale.

The March proposal eliminates these proposals, instead listing two existing city programs that help homeowners at risk of displacement from historically redlined communities—the Equitable Development Initiative and a density bonus for religious institutions that build affordable housing on their properties, which has been required by state law since 2019.

A spokesperson for OPCD told PubliCola the slimmed-down anti-displacement strategy “reflects many of the existing City policies and programs that were identified, through extensive stakeholder engagement during the summer of 2023, as strategies that collectively play an important and ongoing role in addressing displacement throughout the city.”

“Before assuming new and different policies are needed, the City needs to assess the efficacy of current policies and where there might be gaps. To the extent current policies are effective, the City may want to double down on those,” the spokesperson added.

As with the draft comprehensive plan update released in March, the draft anti-displacement plan avoids discussion the ongoing impacts of explicitly racist past practices like redlining, portraying displacement as the result of market forces rather than ongoing policies the city has the power to change. But market pressures don’t exist in a vacuum, a now-deleted section of the draft plan reads. They are exacerbated by the preservation of “exclusionary zoning” in whiter, wealthier single-family areas, which “limits access for lower-income people and contributes to displacement in other more vulnerable areas as people priced out of these neighborhoods look elsewhere for housing and bid up homes in relatively lower-cost areas”—not in some distant, racist past, but in our present, because of policies in place today.

These deleted sections, which span pages, weren’t just rhetoric; they directly informed city planners’ proposals for the policies they included in the early draft of the plan, including new tenant protections, more apartments all over the city, and “substantial” increases in funding for existing and new anti-displacement strategies. (I’m not referring to the early draft’s pages of historical context, which have been moved to a different part of the plan, but to the sections describing how past discrimination has reverberations in existing city policies.)

A spokesperson for Mayor Harrell’s office pointed out to PubliCola that the draft plan, including the heavily edited anti-displacement strategy, is “not the final plan, and we are still gathering feedback from residents. We see this process as an opportunity to have a conversation with community about how and where our city should grow and will be reviewing every aspect of the plan in the context of the public feedback we receive.”

Based on an earlier round of community feedback, however, there’s little reason to believe the city will change its plan in response to community input now. According to OPCD’s own report on a series of meetings held across the city between November 2022 and February 2023, Seattle residents overwhelmingly said they wanted to see more affordable housing in their neighborhoods, that the city should allow new density, in general, “everywhere” or “spread throughout” the city, and that their favorite thing about where they lived were amenities they could access without leaving the neighborhood, like grocery stores and transit.

Digging into the database of comments, which OPCD links on its website, “density without displacement” is a common theme, with many people identifying the need to allow more housing everywhere while adopting specific strategies to stall displacement in areas that are being rapidly gentrified. OPCD’s original anti-displacement strategy appears to have incorporated many of these concerns by proposing specific policies to address them. But by the time the plan emerged from the mayor’s office, all those proposed policies were gone.

Mayor Harrell

Harrell Announces Grants that Include $800,000 to Private Men’s Club He Chaired for Years

By Erica C. Barnett

On Monday, Mayor Bruce Harrell announced the recipients of 20 financial grants through the Economic Development Initiative, which funds organizations “working on anti-displacement efforts in high displacement risk neighborhoods.” One of the largest grants, totaling almost $800,000, went to the Royal Esquire Club—a private Black men’s club in Columbia City where Harrell was board president for six years.

Mayoral spokesman Jamie Housen told PubliCola on Monday that Harrell resigned from the club in November and was not directly involved in choosing the recipients of the equitable development grants.

“Decisions on which organizations received funding were determined by the community through a competitive community-based process. The mayor had no role in deciding which organizations would receive the awards, and did not receive or score the applications,” Housen said.

Jason Kelly, a spokesman for OPCD, added that “we do a review for potential conflict of interest among EDI advisory board members prior to their participating in the process. Also, the Mayor’s Office reviews the results prior to the announcement to ensure that OPCD and the advisory board followed our established process.”

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The award to the Royal Esquire Club is the fourth largest grant among 20 groups funded through the initiative; the club was one of only eight organizations that received the full amount requested. In contrast, for example, the Tubman Center for Health and Freedom, which is building a South Seattle health center for BIPOC patients, asked for $2 million for property acquisition and received $1 million.

According to a presentation on the awards from the Office of Planning and Community Development, the Royal Esquire Club will use the $800,000 to “support rehabilitation of existing cultural space.” In 2019, according to the group’s most recent IRS filing, the club’s total revenues were $359,000.

An additional 46 applicants did not receive EDI awards from the city. PubliCola has asked OPCD for a copy of the Royal Esquire Club’s grant application, along with the applications of the other award recipients.

Harrell’s longstanding connection to the Royal Esquire Club has been the source of controversy, and a formal ethics complaint, in the past. In 2018, when he was city council president, Harrell intervened in an investigation into wage theft involving five women who worked as servers at the club. When the city’s Office of Labor Standards began looking into the allegations, Harrell contacted the city employee who was investigating the case to remind him that the council and mayor had the power to cut OLS’ budget.  During public council meetings, Harrell called OLS’ investigators “extremely unprofessional” and their treatment of the Royal Esquire Club “horrible,” and sought to add $50,000 to the city’s annual budget for a survey of businesses about how the office had treated them.

According to the eventual settlement, the club had to pay the women about $12,000 in back wages and fines. The Ethics and Elections Commission closed the ethics investigation without a finding.

Business, homelessness, housing

First Hill Fire Displaces Dozens of Very Low-Income Tenants, Shutters Vito’s Restaurant and Lounge
Image via Yelp

By Erica C. Barnett

Dozens of very low-income residents of a subsidized apartment building on First Hill, the Madison Apartments, have been displaced, possibly permanently, by a massive fire that broke out last Sunday night. The five-alarm fire badly damaged the third and fourth stories of the four-story 1902 brick building and forced residents of all 75 studio and one-bedroom units to leave their homes.

A relatively small number of residents have been staying at a temporary shelter run by the Red Cross at Garfield Community Center; the city had no information about where the rest of the residents, who are considered homeless until and unless they find new permanent housing, have gone.

According to Office of Housing (OH) spokeswoman Stephanie Velasco, 38 apartments on the top two floors of the building “sustained fire damage and are uninhabitable. …OH is working with the Seattle Housing Authority to identify new permanent housing options for residents of the third and fourth floors, as they will be unable to re-occupy those units in the near term.” At the moment, no one is supposed to return to their apartments (although some may be doing so against the advice of the city and building management).

Although Velasco said the “current target for [basement, first-, and second-floor] residents to re-occupy some parts of the building is early July,” that could be optimistic. Because of the building’s age, the fire may have exposed asbestos insulation, contaminating apartments with the airborne carcinogen. We’ve asked the city for more information about contamination from asbestos and other hazards.

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Units at the Madison Apartments are subsidized through a number of programs, including federal Housing Choice (AKA) Section 8) vouchers, and are restricted to people making less than half the Seattle area median income, or around $45,000 for a single person.

A spokeswoman for the Seattle Housing Authority, Kerry Coughlin, said SHA is helping displaced residents with Housing Choice vouchers holders to find new apartments through an expedited process.  However, Coughlin added, “That process is all we can ‘expedite.’ We can’t issue new vouchers to residents at the Madison building. If and when we can issue new general purpose vouchers (not restricted to special populations), we draw in order from our wait list.”

In Seattle, rent-restricted and affordable units can be extremely hard to come by; the “affordable” rent for a person making 50 percent of median ranges from $1,123 for a studio to $1,416 for a one-bedroom, including utilities, according to the Office of Housing. Meanwhile, the list to apply for Section 8 vouchers is closed due to excess demand, and people who have vouchers in hand often end up returning them because they can’t find an affordable apartment. Currently, the lottery to get on SHA’s wait list for vouchers is closed; the last time it was open, in 2015, 3,500 households were added to the list.

According to Velasco, SHA is “coordinating with American Red Cross to assist residents with Housing Choice (Section 8) Vouchers, with the intent to help expedite the process of voucher reissuance and relocation for residents needing relocation.” People without vouchers, or who can’t afford market-rate apartments, will have to seek shelter or temporary housing through already overburdened local nonprofits.

“[I]t’s been a heavy, unfortunate week for everyone that lives and works there. We are still assessing the damage and extent of work that needs to be done… in order to reopen.”—Greg Lundgren, co-owner, Vito’s Lounge

Residents at the Madison Apartments were not required to have renters’ insurance.

On the first floor of the building, the longtime First Hill institution Vito’s Restaurant and Lounge is another temporary casualty of the fire. Co-owner Greg Lundgren said the business sustained major water damage from efforts to put out the fire and that it will probably be at least a month, if not longer, before Vito’s can reopen.

“Our electronics were fried, our hood ventilation was cooked in the fire (it runs up through the center of the building and was exposed to the fire on the fifth floor), our ceilings are water damaged and most likely need replacement, and everyday another issue is revealed,” Lundgren said. “We are also focused on our staff, the musicians that we have programmed and support, and try and get better clarity ourselves on the extent of the damage and the road back to operating.”

Vito’s first opened in 1953. It closed in 2009 after a shooting inside the restaurant. In 2010, Lundgren and his business partner, Jeff Scott, bought the bar and reopened it, leaving the interior—with its red vinyl banquettes and taxidermied back-room cougar—largely unchanged.

“[I]t’s been a heavy, unfortunate week for everyone that lives and works there,” Lundgren said. “We are still assessing the damage and extent of work that needs to be done—while we did not see smoke or fire damage, there is extensive water damage, and we have a professional service cleaning, drying and addressing a long list of concerns and work that needs to happen in order to reopen.”

According to the Seattle Fire Department, the fire was “caused by an open flame that tipped over onto a mattress and ignited it. The fire spread to other combustible materials, then burned through the roof and void spaces.”

City Council, Density, Development, housing

Councilmembers Say Better Rent Data Could Help Preserve “Mom-and-Pop,” “Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing”

 

Courtyard of the Pacific Apartments, an example City Councilmember Alex Pedersen cited of "naturally occurring affordable housing"
Courtyard of the Pacific Apartments, an example City Councilmember Alex Pedersen cited of “naturally occurring affordable housing”

By Erica C. Barnett

Until 2017, elected officials (and reporters) hoping to get a handle on the availability and cost of rental housing in Seattle relied on reports from a private company called Dupre+Scott, whose forecasts used cheeky videos and graphics to illustrate market predictions and trends. Since Dupre+Scott shut down, the city has relied on Census tract-level data to assess housing trends, including residential displacement—a blunt, high-level instrument that does not account for differences between adjacent neighborhoods that may be in the same Census tract.

Earlier this week, City Councilmember Alex Pedersen rolled out legislation that would require landlords to submit detailed information about their rental units—including the size of each unit, the rent they charge, and whether a unit is occupied or vacant—to a research university, such as the University of Washington, twice a year and to certify under the city’s Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance (RRIO) that they have done so. The university would analyze the information and submit reports to the city, which would use them to “identify displacement risk” and “inform [the city’s] housing policy,” according to a staff report on the bill.

“My interest,” City Councilmember Sara Nelson continued, “is in making sure that we are not driving small landlords out of the market” by passing too many renter protections that impose new requirements on landlords, such as the “first in time” law that requires landlords to rent to the first qualified applicant.

The context for the proposal is the upcoming update of the city’s Comprehensive Plan, which provides the framework for all city decisions on land use and zoning. The comp plan, for example, could prescribe the creation of more neighborhood business districts, encourage zoning changes to add density in single-family areas, or require future land-use policies that encourage the use of nonmotorized transportation. Or it could encourage policies that protect existing rental units at the expense of new housing, preserve trees by maintaining Seattle’s ban on development in single-family areas, or require full infrastructure buildout (roads, sewers, transit service) before an area can be developed—a ’90s neighborhood planning concept known as “concurrency.”

Pedersen, who has been a vocal opponent of allowing more density outside existing urban villages, said the city needed more accurate rental information to determine where “naturally occurring affordable housing” exists and might be at risk of demolition if the city allows denser housing in more areas. “If additional land-use changes were pursued without first putting into effect displacement prevention laws,” Pedersen said, the city might end up adopting policies that lead to the demolition of “affordable, below-market rental housing on the Ave [in the University District] and throughout our city.” (Pedersen cited the Pacific Apartments, pictured above, as an example of naturally occurring affordable housing. Although the website for the building didn’t have any current listings, a 450-square-foot studio was listed at $1,200 last year).

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“Naturally occurring affordable housing” generally refers to older units that cost less than newer housing nearby. Advocates for laws to protect this type of housing often refer to the “mom-and-pop landlords” who tend to own such older buildings, without regard for the specific challenges faced by renters who live in this kind of housing, which may be less well-maintained than professionally managed buildings.

Thanks to the rental registration ordinance, the city does have some general information about how many rental units are available each year. In 2020, according to the most recent RRIO report, the number of registered units in the city declined by about 14.4 percent, “but the total number of units stayed relatively stable with only a 0.65% decrease.”

“Are landlords selling because they don’t want to comply or because property values have gone through the roof and they can cash in on their property like never before? It’s totally their right and if they are selling their property, that’s their decision. But connecting it to increased renters rights is not appropriate.”—City Councilmember Kshama Sawant

Although the report notes that registrations may have declined for any number of reasons, including landlords not bothering to update their renewals during the pandemic, Councilmember Sara Nelson said the decline in registrations, combined with the relatively small decline in apartments on the market, “indicates to me that it is the small mom-and-pop landlords that are basically taking properties off the market.

“My interest,” Nelson continued, “is in making sure that we are not driving small landlords out of the market” by passing too many renter protections that impose new requirements on landlords, such as the “first in time” law that requires landlords to rent to the first qualified applicant.

Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who said she supported Pedersen’s legislation, pushed back at the idea that landlords were going out of business because of renter protections. “That is a claim by landlords,” she said. “Nobody else is claiming that. The reality is that property values are skyrocketing. Are landlords selling because they don’t want to comply or because property values have gone through the roof and they can cash in on their property like never before? It’s totally their right and if they are selling their property, that’s their decision. But connecting it to increased renters rights is not appropriate.”