^{Wealth & Poverty Review} Eviction, Revenge, and the Importance of “Speedy Adjudication”

The Seattle Fire Department showed up to an apartment building late one night in May to discover that a tenant on the sixth floor had clogged the drains in his bathtub and sink, turned the faucets on full blast, and left. Water was filling the sixth floor hallway when another resident alerted building staff.

Days earlier, the tenant had been served an eviction notice. Likely an act of revenge, the tenant deliberately caused flooding that cost the property $6,853 in services and repairs. A private security company was called in for an after-hours emergency response, and a cleaning and restoration team had to extract the water, remove 76 feet of water-damaged baseboards, and fan-dry the spaces for 3 days.

Following a successful eviction shortly thereafter, court documents show that the tenant owes $24,795 in unpaid rent and late charges. The judgment does not include the cost of damages from the flooding incident. He began renting the unit in early 2021 for $799 a month thanks to a Section 8 rental voucher. Section 8 vouchers allow tenants to pay a fixed amount based on their income, with the government paying the rest of their rent directly to the housing provider. But after about two and a half years, it appears that the voucher was removed, and the tenant began being charged for the full $1,413 per month in rent. Tenants can lose their Section 8 vouchers for various reasons including failure to pay rent. By this time, he had missed 19 months of payments, incurring $16,800 in unpaid rent.

In the next 11 months leading up to the flooding incident, the tenant failed to make a single payment and had racked up a balance of nearly $30,000. Which raises an obvious question. How could a resident live in an apartment without paying for more than two and a half years? The answer is a combination of laws designed to aid tenants during the tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic brought about an emergency eviction moratorium that lasted more than 2-years, during which Seattle landlords were prevented from evicting tenants for nonpayment of rent.

In November 2022, just a month after the protections put in place by the moratorium ended, a Washington State Court of Appeals heard arguments to resolve a conflict between a federal, COVID-related eviction rule and the existing rule in Washington. The court ruled that the state’s 14-day notice period before an eviction process could start was superseded by a federal rule requiring a 30-day notice. The decision required the property owners above to restart the process to remove the non-paying tenant. But it didn’t end there. The property owners would attempt to start the eviction process two times between 2023 and 2024, create a repayment plan for the tenant, and attempt a dispute resolution through an outside party.

Finally, with $30,000 in losses (not including legal fees), the property owners could legally notify the tenant in April 2024 to pay or vacate, serve a summons and complaint a month later, and receive a writ of restitution to physically evict him in June. Alas, the eviction would not occur before the tenant intentionally flooded his unit.

Fortunately, most tenants pay rent, and those who don’t also avoid sabotaging their home when they find out they’re being evicted. The goal of sharing stories like the one above is not to convince the public otherwise and stoke fears about retaliatory tenants. The goal is to illustrate two hidden realities: that tenants and landlords can be the victims of injustice at the hands of the other party, and the current system is quick to enact justice for tenants and slow to enact justice for landlords.

Sadly, bad tenants, who harm property and act as though they are entitled to free housing at another’s cost, do exist. When landlords encounter them, there should be an expeditious way to remedy the situation and cut their losses. The Supreme Court recognized this in a 1970 case Lindsey v. Normet, in which the court acknowledges that “speedy adjudication is desirable to prevent subjecting the landlord to undeserved economic loss and the tenant to unmerited harassment and dispossession.”  

We’ve come a long way from the times prior, when self-help evictions invoked “violence and quarrels and bloodshed.” Under “unlawful detainer law,” it is now illegal for landlords to take matters into their own hands to remove a tenant. But if landlord law enforcement is rightfully prohibited under the law, surely tenant revenge should be matched with the same strength of legal response.

The pendulum has swung too far. Property owners in Seattle are restricted on when and how they can pursue an eviction for nonpayment of rent — facing month-long notice periods that can restart over and over, moratoriums, countless continuances, and a backlogged eviction court. Justice in the form of “speedy adjudication” is needed for landlords and tenants alike, so that no one is tempted to take matters into their own hands.