Seattle Landlord Sues The City Over Tenant Rules
A Seattle landlord has sued the City of Seattle alleging a number of laws passed in the name of tenant protections in the last few years have financially strapped his affordable housing units, according to the Seattle Times.
The city council has been active the past few years in passing tenant protections such as caps on move-in fees, first qualified applicant rules, eviction rules, lease renewals and tenant screening rules.
Goodman Real Estate, through a subsidiary that owns a 254-unit apartment building near Fourth Avenue South and South Jackson Street, filed the lawsuit, calling for unspecified financial damages and a change to city regulations.
“Our goal is to create the highest level of quality affordable and sustainable housing in downtown Seattle for our residents,” CEO George Petrie said in a statement, “but the city has placed so many restrictions on our ability to do that, it is placing our residents at risk.”
The Seattle Times said the city plans to defend the tenant protections but declined to comment further while the case is ongoing, said City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Tim Robinson.
Goodman’s case comes after a rightward shift at Seattle City Hall and as affordable housing developers sound the alarm about rising operating costs and, in some cases, trouble collecting rent from tenants. Some landlords have set their sights on convincing the city council to loosen or repeal landlord-tenant regulations in response to those challenges.
The lawsuit alleges the tenant protection laws have forced the building to accept tenants who caused safety issues, added new maintenance and security costs, increased tenant and staff turnover, limited evictions and discouraged rent increases that might help cover the increased costs.
The suit claims this is a “taking” of the landlord’s property.
The Seattle Times reports that takings arguments can be difficult to prove in court. Constitutional rules generally “do not require compensation for every decline in the value of a piece of private property,” but a regulation that “deprives an owner of all economically beneficial uses” of their property could amount to a taking, the state Attorney General’s Office wrote in a recent memo to local governments unrelated to this case.
Source: Rental Housing Journal
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