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Seattle Tenant Board ‘Powerless’ to Advocate for Tenants Due to ‘Continued Neglect’ by Mayor Harrell and City Council

Posted on by angelo
Seattle Tenant Board ‘Powerless’ to Advocate for Tenants Due to ‘Continued Neglect’ by Mayor Harrell and City Council

The Seattle Tenant Commission (SRC) has accused Mayor Bruce Harrell and the Seattle City Council of “continued neglect” that not only “impedes” the commission’s work but “insults” the communities it is meant to serve. In the past eight months, Harrell has failed to provide $50,000 in funding to convene a new tenant task force, and the Housing and Human Services Committee has failed to appoint members to the commission, according to two public letters from the SRC. The mayor and council have not responded to their letters.

SRC co-chair Lydia Felty said officials need to provide good reasons for the delays, or they’re leaving tenants wondering why the city would strip the tenant advocate at City Hall of power while the council considers rolling back tenant protections.

The SRC provides information, advice and guidance to various city departments, monitors the application and effectiveness of tenant laws and advances policy proposals.

“It’s really hard to think that the City Council or the mayor sees our commission as anything other than a performance,” Felty said in a phone interview. “They can make us look good with their concept, but they can disempower us and make us powerless to actually advocate for tenants. Tenants deserve a strong voice at City Hall now more than ever.”

Harrell and Social Services Committee Chair Cathy Moore did not respond to my request for comment.

Can you give me some change, sir?

The SRC sent the mayor a On June 5, the city council sent a letter to the tenant expressing its “frustration and concerns” about delays in establishing a new tenant task force, promised during budget negotiations last fall. He has not responded, according to the SRC.

Last year, City Councilwoman Tammy Morales and former City Councilwoman Teresa Mosqueda passed an amendment to allocate $50,000 to the Seattle Department of Building and Inspections (SDCI) to convene a task force that would help establish a new office dedicated to enforcing current tenant laws and establishing new ones, according to the text of the amendment. The task force would be comprised of three tenants appointed by the SRC, two eviction defense attorneys and two tenant organizers.

According to the SRC letter, the commission began the process of nominating the three tenants to the task force in February, but the commission’s Department of Neighborhoods (DON) liaison asked them to suspend the nomination process until they “obtained the go-ahead from the Mayor’s Office or the City Budget Office” (CBO). That go-ahead never came. The inaction, the commission wrote in June, is unacceptable.

“As volunteers committed to serving the best interests of Seattle tenants, we refuse to accept a purely symbolic role as a commission in name only, devoid of the power to effect real change,” the CBC wrote. “This delay has not only hampered our ability to fulfill our responsibilities, it also represents a disregard for the democratic process.”

The city appears to be tightening its purse strings ahead of a tough round of budget negotiations in which the mayor and council must eliminate a quarter-billion-dollar budget deficit. Felty said no city official has cited the deficit as a reason for delaying the $50,000, but advocates have accused Harrell and the council of hijacking programs, particularly those supported by progressives, to balance their budget without imposing new taxes on the corporate interests that funded their campaigns.

The city hall, the CBO, the SDCI and the DON did not respond to my request for comment.

Pick up the pace, Moore

In an Aug. 5 letter, the CBC demanded immediate action from City Councilor Cathy Moore’s Housing and Social Services Committee to address “long overdue” appointments to their committee. According to the CBC, Moore did not respond to the letter.

The SRC is supposed to have 15 members, but right now it only has five. They approved five more members, but Moore needs to put those appointments on his committee’s agenda.

With only five members, the SRC has a quorum of three, so if three members talk to each other without calling a formal meeting with 24 hours’ notice, they could be violating the Open Public Meetings Act. That hampers the commission’s ability to carry out its duties.

Moore seems friendlier to landlords, having invited them to air their grievances at a committee meeting last month. And, not to be mean, the committee used to have “Tenants’ Rights” in its title before the new council took over.

The CBC also expressed concern that the late nominations excluded Black people from the commission. The CBC stressed the importance of hearing the perspectives of Black commissioners, given Seattle’s history of redlining, gentrification and displacement of historically Black neighborhoods.

“The Council’s lack of engagement reflects a misguided view that the SRC is a formality that can be ignored, rather than a valuable collaborator in solving these critical issues for our community,” the SRC wrote. “This dismissive attitude undermines the effective governance of our city.”

If the city doesn’t respond to the SRC, Felty said, the commission will become “louder and harder to ignore.”