File #: 2019-0423    Version: 1
Type: Motion Status: Lapsed
File created: 10/9/2019 In control: Community, Health and Housing Services Committee
On agenda: Final action: 2/1/2021
Enactment date: Enactment #:
Title: A MOTION requesting the executive to implement a pilot program to assist low-income tenants who are displaced by rent increases in unincorporated King County and to provide an annual evaluation of the program to the King County council.
Sponsors: Larry Gossett, Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Girmay Zahilay
Indexes: Executive, Housing
Attachments: 1. 2019-0407 and 2019-0423 SR Just Cause Evictions and Tenant Relocation Assistance Pilot, 2. ATT_3_Amend 1, 3. ATT_4_Seattle and WA Landlord Tenant Laws, 4. 2019-0423 SR Tenant Relocation Assistance Pilot, 5. ATT_2_Amend 1
Staff: Fathi, Sahar
Drafter
Clerk 10/16/2019
Title
A MOTION requesting the executive to implement a pilot program to assist low-income tenants who are displaced by rent increases in unincorporated King County and to provide an annual evaluation of the program to the King County council.
Body
WHEREAS, a 2019 report by Policy Link and the Center for Popular Democracy states that America is increasingly a renter nation, with a renter majority in its one hundred largest cities, and
WHEREAS, that same report states that today, a full-time minimum-wage worker cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment in ninety-nine percent of counties, about six thousand three hundred people are evicted every day and, in 2016, 1.3 million public schoolchildren were homeless, which is nearly double the number from 2007, and
WHEREAS, Seattle Municipal Code chapter 22.210, which includes the city of Seattle's Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance, Ordinance 115141, which was passed in 1990, requires landlords to pay relocation money to low-income Seattle tenants who are displaced from their units, and
WHEREAS, the fourth recommendation of the regional affordable housing task force's 2018 five-year action plan includes the recommendation to preserve access to affordable homes for renters by supporting tenant protections to increase housing stability and reduce risk of homelessness, and
WHEREAS, the regional affordable housing task force 2018 five-year action plan also states that communities of color and renters are disproportionately likely to be severely cost burdened, paying more than half of their income toward housing costs, and renters are more likely than home owners to be severely cost burdened;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT MOVED by the Council of King County:
A. The council requests that the executive develop and implement a pilot program to assist low-income tenants, as defined by RCW 59.18.440, who are displaced by rent increases in unincorporated King County. As part of this pilot program, the e...

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