(The Center Square) – The Tacoma City Council is exploring changes to the voter-approved Landlord Fairness Code Initiative amid an increasingly unstable rental market, while the group suing over the law is urging the council to scrap it entirely.
Approved by a narrow margin in November 2023, the Landlord Fairness Code Initiative requires landlords to provide two rent increase notices – the first being between 210 and 180 days prior and the second between 120 and 90 days prior. It also caps late fees at $10.
During a study session on Tuesday, the city council discussed proposed amendments from Tacoma City Councilmember Sarah Rumbaugh, including replacing the dual-notice system with a single 120-day notice, which is 30 days longer than state law. Councilmember John Hines suggested extending that to 180 days and eliminating the second notice entirely.
Another amendment would replace the $10 late fee cap with a charge equal to 1.5% of the monthly rent, capped at $75 per month.
“I’m really concerned about some of the impacts this current code as written is having on some of the most marginalized people in our community and their ability to find housing,” Hines said during the Tuesday study session.
In 2024, the Citizen Action Defense Fund sued the city over the Landlord Fairness Code. The case is pending in Pierce County Superior Court. CADF Executive Director Jackson Maynard said his organization is not surprised that the city council is now looking to possibly revise the initiative.
“It is somewhat ironic that non-profit housing providers are complaining about how unworkable the act is for the very reasons that we have highlighted since we filed our lawsuit,” Maynard said in an emailed statement to The Center Square. “As it turns out, when you can’t evict people for not paying rent for vast swaths of the year, tenants are not particularly inclined to pay it.”
HUD data shows Tacoma has 5,696 low-income housing tax-credit units. The Tacoma Housing Authority, the city’s largest housing provider, manages just under 2,000 units.
Tacoma City Councilmember Jamika Scott said another proposed amendment in the eviction moratorium from five months to three months between Dec. 1 and March 1 are stark and instead proposes setting the range from Nov. 15 to March 15.
“I’m suggesting that because the weather data shows that these dates most accurately capture our cold season here in Tacoma,” Scott said.
According to Rumbaugh, the amendments are an attempt to match Seattle’s winter eviction exemptions.
“Rather than tinker at the edges of a failed policy or copying parts of Seattle’s disastrous code and making it easier for non-profits to evict people, the city should use this opportunity to repeal the initiative and start over,” Maynard said.
Rumbaugh said that small landlords have struggled to house larger families, noting a shortage of apartments that have enough bedrooms for households of three or more people.
The council will continue deliberations on these proposed changes next month. In the meantime, CADF is continuing its case against the city over the initiative.
“We will be carefully considering the proposed changes and will evaluate how and whether we may need to adjust our legal arguments to convince a court to strike it down if the city fails to do the right thing,” Maynard said.
