Seattle landlord deals with violent tenants while eviction stays in court

SEATTLE— During his time as a landlord in Seattle, Osho Berman said tenants have vandalized their apartments, attacked their neighbors and even threatened to kill him, but he has no effective way to get them out of his building.

A combination of Seattle’s tenant protection laws and the court’s backlog of eviction cases has left him powerless to act, Berman said, and he feels as if he has lost control of his own property. Even worse, it could endanger the rest of the tenants in his building.

“My biggest frustration right now is my inability to control dangerous or disruptive tenants,” Berman said.

When he first started, Berman hoped to provide some stability for low-income people who wanted to get back on their feet but faced obstacles and needed housing that other landlords wouldn’t provide. He said his initial intentions have failed badly in recent years.

“It’s just a nightmare in Seattle. It’s just an absolutely lawless mess and we’re just done with it,” Berman said. “We are literally stuck with it in our buildings. We can’t get rid of them and in many cases they are dangerous to other tenants.”

Berman recently sold an apartment complex in north Seattle where many of the problems occurred. A tenant stabbed another tenant’s guest there with a screwdriver and then started a fight in the parking lot. Berman couldn’t get him removed from the building.

The tenant was given a taxpayer-funded attorney to fight the eviction proceedings, and as the legal process dragged on, Berman reluctantly agreed to a deal.

“They effectively blackmailed us,” Berman said. “The only way he would leave is if we agreed to limited distribution so we couldn’t reveal how violent he was towards other landlords he might apply to later.”

Another man stopped using the toilet in his apartment and started defecating all over the unit. He also punched the walls to the point where items fell off the shelves in his neighbors’ units.

“When we tried to give him a warning, he lunged at me with the camera swinging violently at me,” Berman said. “I was able to break free and ran for my life just to get away from him.”

Ultimately, he had to conduct a “cash for keys” exchange, essentially paying the person to end the lease. Two weeks later, Berman said the tenant’s friends broke into the unit and claimed the apartment as their own. He said he called the police, but the squatters were not arrested.

Berman said a series of tenant protections passed by the City Council also ensure bad actors aren’t removed from a building while the rest of the tenants in good standing are put at risk.

“Seattle is in a mess and it has become so dangerous,” Berman said. “It has become more unsustainable than ever since I started providing low-income housing in Seattle.”

Evictions, or what the courts call wrongful detainees, have faced huge backlogs in King County.

“Earlier this year, early spring, it took about six to eight months to get on the court docket because we had so many cases,” said Judge Ketu Shah, the presiding judge of the King County Superior Court.

The court then made changes and developed both a short- and long-term plan to expedite unlawful detainee filings. To see immediate results, King County came up with a new way to divide cases into priority categories.

“We kind of put things into multiple buckets and changed some of our local rules,” Shah said, “and that led to a turnaround time of about three to four weeks.”

In the long run, the courts are asking the King County Council and the Washington State Legislature for more judicial resources so they can hire additional commissioners to oversee unlawful detention proceedings.

Shah said they also have a new process for tenants who are dangerous or destructive.

“In cases where they allege violence or destruction of property, something that poses a serious risk of harm to others, we have changed our local rule to expedite these cases,” Shah said. “If a petition comes in making these allegations, things will be expedited.”

Since the rule change in May, Shah said they have only received six cases involving a dangerous or disruptive tenant.

When Berman first started as a low-income housing provider, he used fixed-term leases and put difficult tenants on probation. That way, he could have the option of not renewing the lease if the tenant were to create safety risks. Such regulations are no longer allowed and were replaced in Seattle by a just cause eviction ordinance.

“You have what they call a reason to get rid of it, but the reality is it doesn’t work,” Berman said. “It sounds good on paper, but it doesn’t work.”

Berman said he still plans to invest in new rental properties, but he is also looking beyond the city of Seattle and King County in general.

King County currently handles 2,400 unlawful detainer cases in court and averages just under 650 new cases filed each month. This is far higher than volumes before the COVID-19 pandemic, when there were approximately 350 pending eviction cases and approximately 240 new ones filed each month.

“I understand the frustration and we will continue to try to make our court better and more accessible to everyone,” Judge Shah said.