^{Wealth & Poverty Review} As Affordable Housing Crumbles, Reconsider School Year Eviction Bans

In 2021, the City of Seattle instituted a school year eviction moratorium. Households with a child under age 18 on the lease cannot be evicted for nonpayment of rent from the start of the school year in September through the end in June. The legislation may have been crafted in goodwill — to keep children housed and their lives stable — but the outcomes have been disastrous. 

In a recent letter to the Seattle mayor and city council, Sharon Lee wrote: “the City’s own policies are causing the stock of affordable rental housing supported by the Office of Housing to fail…the problems of nonpayment of rent have reached crisis proportions.” Lee is the Executive Director of the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), which provides 3,400 affordable housing units across the Puget Sound region. In the letter, Lee wrote that “Seattle’s affordable housing crisis is made worse by the City’s moratoriums” and asked for an amendment to exclude tenants with incomes from the eviction ban.

Preventing income-earning households from utilizing the school year moratorium flows from Lee’s claim that “the vast majority of those who don’t pay rent have sufficient income to pay but choose not to.” The claim was made in LIHI’s application to the City of Seattle for $1 million of  $14 million in emergency funding to stabilize affordable housing in financial crisis. LIHI was one of 24 affordable housing providers who submitted applications for funding. All the providers point to insurmountable losses from unpaid rent and the barriers to eviction for nonpayment.

LIHI says it has lost a total of $1.9 million in unpaid rent and describes the eviction moratorium as “exceptionally detrimental” to the collection of rent. The organization says its residents know “that the courts are horribly backed up and…if there is any reason that can be found to reschedule an eviction, the courts will reschedule it.”

In 2023, LIHI received $40,862,629 in funding from the state, $3,603,726 in county funding, and $24,121,039 in city funding. Now, LIHI’s director is personally beseeching the City of Seattle for help, unsure how her organization can go on without generating revenue from rent. 

When the Seattle City Council voted to adopt the school year eviction ban in 2021, former Mayor Jenny Durkan refused to sign it, objecting that “these bills are unlikely to actually protect tenants and are much more likely to subject the City to protracted, expensive and losing legal battles.” This is significant given Durkan’s lengthy extensions of the COVID eviction moratorium.  Three years later, and the school year moratorium hasn’t gone anywhere. 

Of course,  Seattle is not alone in having a school year eviction ban. Tacoma recently passed a similar ordinance, creating a defense to eviction “if it would require the tenant to vacate their dwelling unit during the school year.”  In May this year, tenants in a Tacoma apartment stopped paying rent and were served a notice to pay or vacate. When the residents did not pay, the eviction process was started in July, and on August 28 the court ordered a writ of restitution and a judgement against the residents for $6,515 in unpaid rent in addition to attorney’s fees. Normally, the next step in the eviction process is for the writ of restitution to be executed by the Sheriff’s office — the physical eviction. However, with the start of the school year approaching on September 9, the court ordered that the physical eviction could not occur until after the school year ended, delaying the physical eviction until June 23, 2025. The tenants are not obligated to pay rent during this time.

In law, the school year eviction ban is 9 months long. But in practice, it can force landlords to provide housing without compensation for over a year at a time. The case above is not isolated. At another Tacoma property, one household is estimated to owe $27,482 in unpaid rent by the time the ban ends on June 23. 

Yes, children are harmed when they lack a stable place to call home. But whose job is it to ensure that stability? Cities and courts should not be coercing housing providers into providing free housing for families in need (even assuming all tenants who don’t pay rent are truly in need — a notion that LIHI firmly rejects). The reality is that the school year eviction ban has proven to be self-defeating — threatening the financial stability and sustainability of housing. And thus threatening the access to housing so desperately needed. 

Everyone wants to see children and families thriving in stable and healthy homes. But it’s time to reconsider lengthy delays to inevitable evictions as a just means to that end. Not only are the moratoriums unjust towards housing providers, but the delays are a dismal substitute for lasting housing stability. Delays don’t address the underlying reasons why a household isn’t paying rent. Helping families connect with a network of support and resources to find steady employment, manage their income, and become self-sufficient tenants is a far preferable path. If cities continue to coerce housing providers into providing housing as a public benefit, those providers should be compensated by public funding. Better yet would be to abandon eviction moratoriums for a healthier housing market and more stable homes for everyone.