EVERETT — Members of the City Council have been discussing creating a registry program for all of the city’s rental properties, part of a larger policy package that would expand the rights of local tenants.
The Rental Registration Program, if enacted, will require landlords to obtain a city license for each of their owned properties. The license will need to be renewed annually, and the process of renewal instructs landlords to complete a health and safety checklist.
Within this checklist, landlords will be expected to self-report their property for structural damage, signs of infestation, and if they have functioning water, heating, and ventilation services, among other standards. False reporting would be a violation of the law, though how such cases would be detected and enforced remains unclear.
Discussions are still being had over which properties will be exempted from the program. In the initial proposal, exemptions were carved out for care facilities like hospitals and retirement homes, rentable guest rooms in a landlord’s home, lodging businesses like hotels and motels, and emergency shelters.
City Councilwoman Paula Rhyne has been considering community feedback on whether to remove all exemptions, or to add short-term rentals to the list. She has acknowledged concern that the rulebook may be too malleable, allowing bad actors to take advantage of the grey areas.
“If the owner is just renting their back bedroom, maybe that’s not enough to trigger a registry. But if there’s an attached dwelling unit with a separate entrance, does that quality as a threshold for registering?” said Rhyne. “I think it can get murky quickly.”
The registration program is being considered alongside a tenant protection proposal, a sweeping expansion of the city’s current renting regulations.
If the protection proposal is passed in its current state, tenants would be empowered to spread out their move-in fees over several months, to request rent due dates that occur after their fixed
payday, and if they don’t speak English, to request notices translated in their language of choice.
Landlords, meanwhile, would be required to provide notice to tenants four months ahead of time when raising rent by what they call a “severe” increase, more than 10%. They’ll be required to provide relocation assistance to low-income households if rent increases have displaced them, and they’re prohibited from denying applications which fail to provide a Social Security number. Security deposits would also be capped to a maximum price of one month’s rent.
The four-month notice requirement has been one of the more controversial elements of the proposal, as state law already requires a 60-day notice for rent increases of any size. This sparked debate among the council on whether additional notice for severe increases would be necessary, as well as the usual concern of bad actors. Rhyne expressed concern that landlords might raise rent by just 9.9%, rather than 10.
“The 10% threshold is not unreasonable, from feedback I’ve heard across the board, because that is a substantial increase in one’s rent,” said council member Mary Fosse in response. “The point is not to have people go homeless, and giving people a little bit of grace.”
Addressing the city’s homelessness problem has been a priority for the council, and they’ve taken a multifaceted approach. Alongside pushing forward their own reforms, they’ve been supporting Compass Health as they’ve been renovating their crisis services center, near the corner of Broadway and 33rd. When the center opens in May 2025, it’ll act as a stopgap for residents going through a mental health emergency, preventing direct trips to jail or the E.R.
When the council might take action on the proposal, for now, is unclear. The proposal was initially written with the intention of reviving pandemic-era tenant protections that were phased out in late 2023.
However, state lawmakers have proposed similar bills in Olympia, HB 1124 and HB 2161, which hope to restore these protections all across Washington. If the bills pass in the next legislative session, they’d make Everett’s plans mostly irrelevant. So, the council might bide their time, as they’ve spoken about potentially placing the proposals on a four-month hiatus.
The Everett City Council meets every Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. (excluding the fourth and fifth weeks of the month when it meets at 12:30 p.m.) at the Everett Police Department’s North Precinct at 3002 Wetmore Ave. You can sign up to give public comment at their meetings in-person or virtually.
