Tacoma landlord says new tenants’ rights are a disaster. If only it was that simple | Opinion

It’s been six months since a controversial slate of tenant protections, narrowly approved by Tacoma voters last November, became the law of the land.

It’s been almost a year since the Tacoma City Council, faced with a brutal housing market that’s displacing scores of lower-income residents, took its swipe at bolstering renters’ rights, adding requirements and regulations to the city’s Rental Housing Code designed to even the playing field between vulnerable tenants and their landlords.

In the background, the state Legislature has pushed the plight of renters statewide — including passing a law in 2021 that guarantees free legal representation for low-income tenants facing eviction.

Paul Patino? Well, he’s seen more than enough. He’s ready to call it.

At least in Tacoma, it’s a disaster, according to Patino, a 56-year-old condo-owner-turned-fuming-landlord.

“We will never be landlords in Tacoma again, I will tell you that,” he proclaimed, speaking with pent-up frustration.

“Everything is just geared to protect and shield bad actor tenants from any responsibility,” Patino told The News Tribune.

“There’s no good reason to be a small landlord in Tacoma at this point. There’s no way to make it worth it.”

For those who followed the divisive, bare-knuckle fight that culminated in the passage of Tacoma’s Landlord Fairness Code Initiative, the sentiments Patino holds so strongly are hardly new. If anything, they serve as no-duh confirmation of what many local landlords have claimed all along: that the new protections go too far, and instead of improving the prospects in Tacoma for renters, they’ll make matters worse by driving decent property owners out of the business.

That’s what Patino considers himself: one of the good guys, a landlord who did everything right and still got left holding the bag.

He has a point, it’s worth noting. But there’s a significant caveat.

What Patino says he’s experienced since late last year, including ten months of headaches, minor indignities and missed rent, shouldn’t happen to anyone playing by the rules.

Whether it’s as simple as many landlords suggest, however — and whether new tenant protections in Tacoma and across the state are entirely to blame for the hardships he’s endured — is a more complicated question to answer, at least according to local attorneys and housing justice proponents.

Tacoma will debate it all fiercely over the next year and a half; by law, the City Council can’t touch the Landlord Fairness Code Initiative until December 2025.

Working with a team of academics from the University of Washington Tacoma and a cross-section of local rental housing providers and tenants’ advocates, former Tacoma Housing Authority Executive Director Michael Mirra and The News Tribune recently launched an effort to study and assess changes related to the passage of Tacoma’s Landlord Fairness Code Initiative.

“The City Council of Tacoma will have a chance to review and possibly amend the (tenants’ rights) ordinance in a year and a half, and in the meantime (the city) is conducting an experiment,” said Mirra, who expects the study to be completed by fall 2025.

“The study is meant to help the city understand the effect of the ordinance on a wide range of issues,” he added.

“Otherwise, decisions will be made based on a haphazard collection of information.”

In the meantime? It’s worth digging into horror stories like Patino’s, at least in my book — as long as we take them for what they are: small, anecdotal pieces of a much larger picture that also includes various ripple effects and renters who’ve stayed in their homes or avoided evictions altogether thanks to the new protections.

According to data provided by the Pierce County Superior Court Clerk’s Office, in the two years prior to the 2020 COVID pandemic, the court received an average of 236 new unlawful detainer eviction cases a month. Throughout the pandemic, including the 20-month statewide ban on evictions between March 2020 and November 2021, the number plummeted, predictably.

By 2023, the average number of eviction cases filed each month in Pierce County court had rebounded to roughly 240, the data shows.

To date in 2024, Pierce County’s average is closer to 300 new eviction cases a month.

‘Disheartening and sickening’

Two years ago, Patino and his wife relocated to North Carolina, the longtime sales representative recently explained.

Patino followed a job that promised greater long-term security and better benefits, he said, but Tacoma — and specifically the $500K condo along Stadium Way with a view of the water he purchased with his wife in 2020 — was always supposed to be the couple’s long-term home after retirement.

Working with a local property management company, Patino put the two-bedroom, 1400-square-foot property on the market. Before long, he had tenants. The rent — roughly $3000 a month — was drawn up so the couple could break even on their mortgage, he said.

Then, things went south. The job fizzled and Patino and his wife decided to return home. In September, his renters were informed that they would need to be out by the end of the year, satisfying the 90-day notice requirement included in state law since 2021.

That’s when the rent stopped coming, Patino said. Soon, the months ticked by.

Come January, Patino’s tenants had yet to vacate. Same thing in February, by which time an eviction case had been filed and was slowly working its way through Pierce County Superior Court, documents in the case show.

Two months became four, then five. Patino’s tenants finally hauled away the last of their belongings this month, he said, with Pierce County Sheriff’s deputies on site to carry out a writ of restitution issued by a Pierce County Superior Court Judge in early April.

To add insult to injury, Patino and his wife have been back in Tacoma since January, he explained, renting a condo in the same building — living one floor below the tenants who just wouldn’t leave.

Attempts to reach the condo’s former tenants were unsuccessful.

Patino — who mostly blames recent state laws and Tacoma’s contentious tenants’ rights initiative for the lengthy ordeal — now hopes to move back into the unit in July.

“It’s just disheartening and sickening,” Patino told The News Tribune.

Patino provided a list of damages he’s been left to deal with and a running total of incurred costs exceeding $30,000. His tally included back rent and fees, the $2400 rent he and his wife have been forced to fork over while they wait to return to the condo they’re still paying a mortgage on, and repairs ranging from fixing holes in the wall to replacing broken cabinets and kitchen appliances.

“We’re grateful they’re gone, but absolutely heartsick at the state of our home,” Patino said.

“There’s no weapon, but we were still robbed.”

Overwhelmed courts

Mark Morzol, managing attorney at the Housing Justice Project, bears witness to the other side of stories like the one Patino told me.

Leading a nonprofit legal aid program contracted to provide free representation to lower-income Pierce County renters facing eviction, Morzol said his office has recently been referred between 250 and 300 eviction cases a month, describing it as a dramatic spike that dates back to September of last year.

Under current state law, Morzol estimated that 90% of tenants facing eviction in Pierce County qualify for free legal representation. The law stipulates that s tenants who receive public assistance or have incomes at 200% or below the federal poverty level are eligible.

Court records show that Patino’s tenants met the criteria for the program and were assigned free legal counsel in late February.

More than any new tenant protection, however, Morzol attributes the recent increase in Pierce County unlawful detainer eviction cases to the high cost of housing and widespread economic desperation in the area, heightened by the evaporation of COVID-era assistance programs.

At the same time, Morzol validated some of Patino’s anger: The local eviction system is bogged down, he said, and the delays that have resulted carry real-life consequences.

Back in 2021, when Washington became the first state to guarantee legal representation to low-income tenants facing eviction, the Housing Justice Project was fully staffed with 18 attorneys and assigned to somewhere between 120 to 140 Pierce County cases a month, Morzol told The News Tribune.

During this “golden period,” as Morzol described it, when the Housing Justice Project was assigned a client during their first court hearing, it often required only a one-week continuance to mount a defense, he said.

Today, facing more than twice as many cases, the Housing Project has nine attorneys on staff. The court continuances granted tend to be closer to a month, Morzol indicated.

The nonprofit is struggling like many employers to recruit and retain qualified candidates, he said.

Morzol also underscored the importance of providing tenants with representation during eviction proceedings, regardless of whether it slows down the process — from the view of someone who’s seen the consequences when legal defense is a luxury few can access.

“It’s about accountability for the entire system. There are a number of tenant protections in place — across the state of Washington and in the city of Tacoma — but if you talk to any given tenant, they don’t know what their rights are. They have no idea, because it’s gotten so complicated in this area of law,” Morzol said.

“Without having an attorney to step in and review a case, you simply don’t know if it’s a lawful eviction or not,” he added.

“You also don’t know if the landlord is complying with local regulations and ordinances.”

‘Giant backlog’

The slowdown doesn’t end in Pierce County Superior Court.

According to Pierce County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Darren Moss, even after a judge issues a writ of restitution eviction order — directing a tenant to vacate the property and authorizing local law enforcement to step in if they don’t — it often takes more than a month before a Sheriff’s deputy is available to act on it.

In Patino’s case, that’s exactly what happened.

Across Pierce County, the Sheriff’s Department is responsible for serving and executing any eviction order issued by a judge, including in Tacoma.

A look at the department’s data helps illuminate what Moss describes as another “giant backlog” in the local eviction process.

So far in 2024, Moss said PCSD has received an average of 219 court-ordered writ of restitution eviction orders a month. Throughout the pandemic, when most evictions were banned, it was closer to 70, but in 2022 the numbers began to creep up.

Last year, PCSD received an average of 259 eviction orders a month.

To put those numbers in perspective, Moss noted that, when fully staffed, PCSD has four deputies assigned to evictions and other, often more important court-related matters, like serving protection orders.

It’s hardly enough deputies to handle the recent spike in evictions, Moss said.

Earlier this month, there was a 42-day backlog between the time a judge issues an eviction order and when PCSD can serve it, he indicated.

Moss also acknowledged that the department has far more pressing holes to fill, and not many lawmakers or elected officials seem keen on the idea of providing more money for cops to serve evictions.

Moss attributed the delay to “multiple factors,” including staffing challenges and what he described as “an overwhelming number” of eviction orders processed after Tacoma’s new ban on cold-weather evictions ended in April.

Data provided by Pierce County Superior Court doesn’t show a massive bump in the number of eviction cases filed in April — in fact, there were roughly 30 fewer filings than in March — but the 330 cases filed in May represent the highest single number of filings in any month since at least January 2018, the earliest figures requested by The News Tribune.

“It’s just too expensive to live right now for a lot of people, so the evictions have been high,” Moss said.

“Nobody is pushing for more people so we can do evictions faster,” he added.

“The summer’s going to be busy.”

Balancing interests and regulations

Not every unlawful detainer eviction case culminates in a writ of restitution eviction order.

Sometimes, tenants leave before they receive their day in court.

Other times, the two sides reach an amicable settlement, an outcome that’s often in the best interest of tenants and landlords, according to Ann Dorn, a volunteer member of Tacoma For All, the grassroots organization responsible for the successful passage of Tacoma’s tenants’ rights initiative.

There have been an average of 292 unlawful detainer eviction cases filed each month, Superior Court data shows, suggesting that slightly more eviction filings have resulted in something other than a court-ordered writ of restitution carried out by PCSD deputies every month this year compared to 2023.

Dorn has experienced eviction firsthand, she indicated — describing herself as a single mom displaced with just 20 days’ notice back when such things were legal.

Six months after Tacoma’s Landlord Fairness Code Initiative took effect, Dorn is largely encouraged, she said.

During Tacoma For All canvasing events, Dorn has spoken with scores of local tenants, she said, all of whom are grateful for the new protections. She’s also encountered plenty of landlords who voted for it.

Recently, Dorn met a local father who fell $500 behind on rent, she indicated. Even after pulling extra shifts to make up for what he owed, his landlord refused to accept it and proceeded to file for an eviction, she explained.

Tacoma’s ban on evictions gave him the time he needed to save up enough money to move into a new place, Dorn believes.

If you want to blame anything for the state of rental housing in Tacoma — and the sudden plight of local landlords struggling to contend with new regulations enacted to protect their tenants — point a finger at the system itself, she said.

“You have to balance the interests of landlords against the rights of working people, and you have to acknowledge there’s a tension there. We have to decide as a community, are we going to protect working people? I think that’s really the fundamental question in front of us,” Dorn said.

“Industries change. Regulations change. What people are willing to accept changes. … I think you are seeing a growing movement of people who are no longer willing to accept the price that working people pay when it comes to housing,” she added.

“When it comes to landlords, what we’re seeking to protect is their wallet. When it comes to working families, what we’re seeking to protect is their lives. These two things are not the same, and we need to start from that understanding and recognition.”