Jesse Jones: Washington is only state providing tax-payer funded lawyers to tenants facing eviction

Story: www.kiro7.com/...

[@madderscience]

Small landlord here. Jesse: You are great. Thanks for this reporting. Mr. Witter: You can't stabilize tenants by destroying their landlords or driving them out of business. Driving up landlord costs by delaying tactics for legitimate nonpayment and other evictions will only result in stricter screening and higher rents as we must respond to protect ourselves from the increased costs and risks of having to seek eviction. Please focus your taxpayer funded assitance on the merits of a case and not on delays, procedural roadblocks, intentional lack of preparedness as an excuse for continuances and such. There is no justice in forcing a private landlord to house somebody else for free for months on end waiting for a court date. No matter what their differences in wealth or income or skin color might be. Yes, I agree with RHA that many of the legal funds could be better spent just paying off tenant's arrears. I'm sure there is more to the story as to the headline woman's eviction case than a broken faucet and Oven handle. I could probably fix both of those in less than an hour. If she (claims) to have the money to pay rent and the landlord (she claimis) won't take it there is some other disagreement or contention that was not disclosed. I have a tenant who stopped paying rent last April after suffering a health incident. He has since stabilized. Prior to this incident he had lived at the property for at least a decade (longer than I have owned the property) apparently without ever missing rent payments. His rent is about $1100 so affordable even on WA minimum wage. He was able to get some of the back rent repaid but is still approaching 6 months behind, plus damage costs resulting from the incident. We have been very patient with him but finally served him a 14 day notice this week. Fortunately this is in Snohomish county not King, but I fully expect if the worst case occurs and he refuses to obtain employment (working age, able bodied) or find some other path to paying and refuses to move out, it may still be months before we recover the unit. I dont WANT to evict this person but the alternative is keep paying to allow him to live for free forever, because its become apparent nothing is going to change absent taking this to the next step. He may have been a good tenant up until now, but for whatever reason it seems to have changed.

[@BeyondPC]

Dont't act like you aren't the problem. If one person tosses garbage out the window it's just a little trash. If everyone does it our world quickly becomes a landfill. You feel like you are a 'good one' but combined landlords make all citizens poorer. Combined they have bought over 95% of all homes to rent back AT PROFIT. The citizens pay off your properties via rent and they themselves will never have an opportunity to own. There are no good landlords due to this - you literally deprive our population of ownership and you engineer narratives that you are doing a 'good thing'. You are NOT.

[@thatsjarrod1965]

Anyone that rents out their property in this state is out of their mind

[@PoliceMisconduct-wf2kk]

We heard Senator Kuperer in 2018 blame housing providers for all the homelessness. We knew AG Ferguson and WA State wanted to destroy small housing providers. Now we have Representative Liz Barry destroying more small businesses under HB. 2118. Anyone with a small business in WA State needs to "choose Wisely "if they want to continue to conduct business in WA.State with our present politicians.

[@icelandviking1961]

The state Should not be wasting our tax money on this!

[@betrevryday1]

Washington State how do they come up with so many bad ways to spend our tax dollars ? 😢

[@KyleTaylorLucas]

Yet another Conservative property rights story by Jesse Jones. Clearly, KIRO 7 News and Jesse Jones have Conservative landowner/landlord private property rights political perspectives. There is no "fair" and independent news anymore, so it's not really surprising. That said, I didn't expect Aaron Wright, Monique Ming Laven, and Jesse Jones to be so "in your face" with their contempt of the peasants.

[@charlesscott1849]

I’m a landlord and down to my last rental and renter who is great but once he and his mother are gone I’m selling. All I can say over the years good tenants and bad is verify all your checks and hope for good luck. It’s just not worth the risk anymore.

[@657spy]

Pay your rent, on time, every month. Why should anyone, get to live for free. Landlords need the rent money, to pay for the property.

[@tommygamba170]

5000 cases and they got paid 5.6 millions$ for their budget for each year. Wow sign me up

[@BeyondPC]

Housing will never be stable with foreign investors buying all the domestic domiciles. Our economy will always get weaker if the rents keep rising to extract the wealth of our nation into foreign coffers. Our country will never be 'free' if homeless citizens are not allowed to EXIST anywhere, even in their own 'homeland'. Our nation will never recover while greed burdens the struggles of necessity. Ban domestic domicile speculation - only allow citizens to own properties. Force those holding land and homes as tax write-offs to sell. Cap the rents. Give the people the ability to exist.

[@madderscience]

we will never be free unless we massively restrict property rights, in other words. Wait a minute....

[@kstadives3]

amen!

[@Stonewallgaston]

Keep providing free lawyers these landlords don’t care about there tenants. Crazy if they were migrants they could live for free

[@RandA1220]

Keep doing this and you'll pave the way to only corporate landlords and see how much better you like them

[@Stonewallgaston]

@@RandA1220 see you let me school you on landlords. Think about how many local landlords aren’t complaining. If a building of 12 apartments has 4 low income units and 8 regular units. 8 of those tenants cycle in while for always remain

[@RandA1220]

@@Stonewallgaston School of making stuff up? I'm sure you have supporting evidence of that instead of just making that up?

[@RandA1220]

Keep this up and soon all the mom and pop will sell to corporate landlords. Corporate landlords will have more lawyers to fight back these city lawyers or tie them up where the 5.5m won't go very far. At which point WA will need to massively increase the budget by raising taxes or cutting programs

[@Livefreeordie-182]

GOOD LUCK trying to get one.

[@Intheemorning]

Greed. A wise landlord knows that keeping rents at affordable prices keeps tenants paying the rent. The current business model of getting rich off housing is the principle contradiction in this issue. Until that is addressed, the current status of stupidity is the dominant paradigm of Seattle and most of America now.

[@tommygamba170]

Never helped me. Must be only helping black people

[@Livefreeordie-182]

Please stop treating renters like TRASH & allowing landlord abuse!! Washington state is a joke.

[@rholmst]

Thank you Washington state democrats! I look forward to buying rental properties from landlords that are desperate to get out. I’ll convert them into condos for sale (no more rentals!). It will be one of the greatest wealth transfers in Washington state history!

[@AshleySpeaks4U]

Nice Try, but Washington no longer allows condos built because the quality was so poor the buildings were coming apart within 10 years. Too many scammers in Washington. Gobs of slumlords. They LEAVE us in dumps. It's disgusting.