No “wave” of evictions in Spokane County, but concern remains

If evictions were a tidal wave, rent support and tenant protection might have been the levee.

Spokane County has not seen a surge in eviction requests over the past year following the expiration of a moratorium issued by Gov. Jay Inslee in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thanks to the federal COVID-19 response, more than $50 million in rental subsidies has flowed into Spokane to keep tenants afloat who would otherwise have faced evictions.

The state legislature last year enacted new protections for renters to ensure people in need have the right to an attorney if they face eviction and required landlords to at least offer mediation and a payback plan before trying to evict a tenant.

Thus, the feared “tsunami” of forced evictions in Spokane did not materialize.

From October 31, when Inslee lifted the moratorium, 124 evictions were filed in the Spokane County Superior Court through the end of the year. For the same two-month period in 2019, before the pandemic, 172 eviction cases were filed.

And while that’s welcome news for tenant advocates, fears remain. Tenant protection is permanent, but rent support is not. Rent advocates fear that if rental subsidy funding dries up – and rents continue to rise, rent protections will not be enough to keep people in their homes.

And they question whether the new safeguards in Spokane have been as effective as elsewhere.

There were 61 eviction notices filed in Spokane County as of November 2021. That’s more than King, Snohomish, or Pierce Counties, all of which have more residents than Spokane.

But a direct comparison is difficult. Seattle has imposed its own moratorium on evictions that will remain in effect until at least February 14.

Part of the problem in Spokane last November may have been that rent support payments took weeks or even months to process.

“We have been told through our contractors and community-based organizations that we work with that the availability of rental subsidies for tenants is more transparent and accessible – which really seemed to be the biggest issue from October (to) November,” he wrote Philippe Knabb, Office of Civil Legal Aid eviction defense program manager, in an email to The Spokesman-Review.

Meanwhile, landlord representatives have repeatedly argued that the moratorium has forced many smaller landlords to sell their properties and go out of business altogether.

rental assistance

Spokane County has spent more than $24.8 million on rental grants distributed by nonprofit Spokane Neighborhood Action Partners. There’s $1.2 million left, but more money is expected to come, according to Nicole Bishop, a spokeswoman for SNAP.

The city of Spokane has committed almost all of its $27 million in available funds to rent subsidies, officials warned earlier this month. The rental support website is now warning applicants that funds could soon be exhausted, although city leaders have pledged to work to find more funds.

Last year, a SNAP employee visited the Nine Mile store where Rachel Roberts works part-time and urged her to let customers know rental assistance is available for those in need.

“I was like, ‘Stop it, I’m behind on my rent,'” Roberts said.

Roberts was fired from her job early in the pandemic. A short time later, her husband was hospitalized with pneumonia from which it took six months to recover. He went back to work for a month but got sick again.

Unemployment benefits helped, but Roberts lost access to them when she turned down a job offer from her old employer, the YMCA.

“I turned down the job because I couldn’t risk my husband getting sick and I didn’t want to expose us to so many people,” Roberts said.

With neither parent working and a son living in their home in Nine Mile Falls, the family fell behind. Roberts’ landlord of seven years is great, she said, but “at some point you know they have to do something.”

“It was just so stressful,” Roberts said.

When she found out about the rental assistance program, Roberts applied. She paid her overdue rent and the next three months in advance.

That buffer helped when Roberts’ son recently tested positive for COVID and the family had to quarantine, forcing them to miss time from work.

With the rent prepaid, they’ve been able to pay other bills, and Roberts is confident they’ll be able to meet their obligations when rent payments resume.

“I’m so happy,” said Roberts.

Tenant protection

The main focus of the new state law is to prevent evictions before anyone enters a courtroom.

To request an eviction, a landlord must first offer a tenant an opportunity to arbitrate through an eviction schedule program and provide defaulters with a “reasonable repayment schedule” of no more than one-third of the month’s rent.

The Eviction Resolution Program can help connect a tenant to rent assistance programs, deter eviction, and pay off the debt to the landlord.

But should a case go to court, the new law guarantees a person’s right to a lawyer, even if they can’t afford one. Previously, only about 8% of tenants facing eviction were represented by an attorney, according to a 2019 University of Washington study. Proponents of the new law argued that the power imbalance favored landlords.

Now landlords are forced to confront a client with the right to an attorney.

“Some hearings last up to four hours. Eviction notices really didn’t exist like they do now,” Spokane County Bar Association executive director Julie Griffith wrote in an email to The Spokesman-Review.

Often, cases brought to court do not meet the standards for eviction under new state law.

“Right to Counsel’s attorneys have the ability to contest these evictions and maintain the tenancy,” Griffith said.

The Tenants Union of Washington State has made efforts to make tenants aware of these rights.

However, many don’t realize they have access to an attorney, according to Terri Anderson, Spokane director of the Tenants Union of Washington. She has warned officials that many tenants are agreeing to leave rather than fight the eviction.

Anderson is also concerned that landlords are simply choosing not to evict because of unpaid rent, but instead because of one of the other options still allowed under state law, such as evictions. B. Failure to comply with rental terms.

“When tenants don’t show up in court, not only do they get served with a default judgment, but they never know they’re entitled to a free attorney,” Anderson said.

Knabb fears that landlords will massively increase rents in order to squeeze out tenants.

“Our attorneys believe aggressive use of such notices leads to a significant number of ‘self-evictions’ and defaults,” Knabb said.