Seattle City Council effort to extend moratorium fails; residential evictions to resume next week

After the Seattle City Council declined Tuesday to extend a moratorium, residential evictions will resume in the city next week, though many renter protections remain in place.

Earlier this month, Mayor Bruce Harrell chose to end the city’s COVID-19 emergency ban on residential evictions Feb. 28, after nearly two years, prompting a resolution introduced last week by Councilmember Kshama Sawant that would have extended the moratorium indefinitely, through the end of the city’s overall coronavirus civil emergency order.

The resolution failed 5-3 Tuesday, with Sawant, Councilmember Lisa Herbold and Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda supporting the effort. Council President Debora Juarez and Councilmembers Andrew Lewis, Sara Nelson, Alex Pedersen and Dan Strauss voted against the resolution. Councilmember Tammy Morales was on an excused absence.

A last-minute amendment by Herbold, which would have extended the moratorium through April 30, thus giving council members time find alternatives to address those facing eviction, also failed 5-3, with just Herbold, Mosqueda and Strauss in favor.

“While I could support a moratorium that was connected to a date certain, I do have trouble supporting and voting for a moratorium that is vague in its end date, because I do think that we need to understand what the cliff we are facing is and address it with the resources that are needed,” said Strauss, the only member to support the amendment but not the original resolution.

With no council action Tuesday, the moratorium will end Monday, allowing evictions to resume on March 1 in many cases, though a slew of other council protections passed throughout the pandemic provide some safeguards for renters facing financial burden.

The city still has $25 million of the $59 million allocated for rental assistance in 2021, available for renters and landlords facing financial difficulty during the pandemic. Harrell and multiple council members have recognized rental assistance as the primary defense against an uptick in evictions after the moratorium is lifted.

“The most important thing for me that I’ve been looking at — both for the amendment in front of us that I think, again, strengthens the approach here today and the underlying bill — is making sure that we get all of the rental assistance dollars out the door,” Mosqueda, who supported the amendment and Sawant’s original resolution, said before the vote.

But for the city to resolve unpaid rents, there needs to not only be enough funding but also a concerted effort to distribute the funding, Mosqueda said.

“I want to note that I’ve been reaching out to our state legislative partners, asking for more rental assistance dollars for Seattle and hoping that our state budget and our champions in the state Legislature will help provide dollars to King County that get passed through to our city,” Mosqueda said. “We’ve also been in communication with the [Seattle] Office of Housing to get the remaining rental assistance out the door as fast as possible.”

For those behind on rent or facing eviction on March 1, Juarez — who voted against the amendment and the resolution — noted that the city also has several policies in place that will stop certain evictions.

“When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the city council and the mayor were leaders in passing protections of renters,” Juarez said, noting that the eviction moratorium was enacted by former Mayor Jenny Durkan less than two weeks after the city entered a state of emergency in 2020. “We were one of the first [cities] in the country to understand the gravity of the economic recession, especially for low-income renters.”

While Juarez emphasized that the moratorium was intended to be temporary, she said the protections will make the lifting of the moratorium “as humane as possible.” Among those protections are:

• A winter eviction ban passed in February 2020 which prohibits evictions that would result in tenants having to vacate between Dec. 1 and March 1;
• An ordinance passed in May 2020 that allows tenants to use an inability to pay rent due to financial hardship as a defense against eviction in court for six months after the end of the moratorium;
• An ordinance passed in May 2020 that requires landlords to allow tenants who miss rent payments within six months of the civil emergency order (not the moratorium) ending to repay the owed amount in installments. Tenants who owe one month of rent or less can repay the amount in three monthly installments, while those who between one and two months of rent can pay in five installments and those who owe more than two months can pay over six monthly installments;
• A council bill passed in March 2021 providing the right to legal counsel for Seattle renters facing eviction.