[WSBARP] Landlord question - next legislative session

[Roger Moss]

Brilliant Rani, thank you!

Changing vocabulary and messaging is a precursor to more fundamental change. With the current eviction mediation pilot in mind, I offer that “mediation” is no less shudder-producing than “litigation” for many people, especially small landlords forced into last minute exercises over which adversarial process looms.

The pilot reflects a dualistic split that should be resisted. It’s either adversarial, producing losers, or a dive into traditional reflective listening and related tools. Neither represents the best way to address disputes in real estate, especially those involving tenants and landlords.

Start with the terms tenant and landlord. Replace them with resident and provider, which reminds us that we are talking about people’s homes, and the responsibilities and sacrifices required to sustain them. These things connect to community and commonweal.

Housing disputes in a rental context are best addressed through swift intervention by people or teams who possess a combination of skills, most critically practical knowledge in real estate problem-solving. They need to be available on short notice and be willing to compress time and drive solutions while maintaining neutrality. 

Such thinking and systems are very effective in preventing eviction, reducing burdens on courts, and even reducing tax payer expenditures. Most importantly, they engender constructive tenant landlord relations that other processes poison. Creating them starts with a big shift in thinking and messaging that is nowhere to be found in the current resources being offered or contemplated by the pending legislation.

Roger A. Moss 
Mediation Counsel
Rincon Resolutions LLC
206.790.1971 Seattle
415.371.9724 San Francisco
RinconRes.org

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> On Dec 24, 2020, at 1:34 PM, Rani K. Sampson <rani at overcastlaw.com> wrote:
> 
> We’re changing our language from “affordable housing” to “attainable housing.”  ~Our Valley, Our Future <http://www.ourvalleyourfuture.org/>:  Housing Solutions group.
>  
> I’m concerned that the proposed statutes will drive out small landlords, leaving even less housing for tenants.  Several attorneys in this conversation have confirmed that they know of landlords who are selling their rentals, some of which are turning into McMansions.
>  
> Rani K. Sampson
> Overcast Law Offices | Attorney
> 23 S Wenatchee Ave #320, Wenatchee WA 98801 | (509) 663-5588 x 6
>  
> From: wsbarp-bounces at lists.wsbarppt.com <mailto:wsbarp-bounces at lists.wsbarppt.com> <wsbarp-bounces at lists.wsbarppt.com <mailto:wsbarp-bounces at lists.wsbarppt.com>> On Behalf Of Carmen Rowe
> Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2020 12:51 PM
> To: WSBA Real Property Listserv <wsbarp at lists.wsbarppt.com <mailto:wsbarp at lists.wsbarppt.com>>
> Subject: Re: [WSBARP] WSBARP Digest, Vol 75, Issue 36 Landlord question - next legislative session
>  
> Lord help me but I feel compelled to give my $.01 on this - I'll reference Kary's as a succinct encapsulation of my thoughts:
>  
> > You're generalizing.  The moratorium protects an entire class regardless
> > of their need, at the expense of another class, regardless of their need.
> > If it were based on economics I'd have little problem with it, but it's
> > not.  Beyond that though, I'm worried about the long term adverse effects
> > on those who actually need the protection.  The moratorium may have given
> > them a false sense of security and lead them to make bad decisions.  Back
> > when I practiced law I did primarily debtor bankruptcy and the moratorium
> > is likely causing people to make decisions that no competent financial
> > planner would ever advise them to make.
> >
> > Also, you can't even assume someone who rents cannot afford to own.  They
> > may just not wish to own for many different reasons.
> >
> > Kary L. Krismer  
>  
> It is the "regardless of need" on either the tenant's or the landlord's side that I think takes away all of the generalized philosophical conversation about distribution of social needs - the generalization of tenants as victims and landlords as capable of shouldering society's needs.
>  
> I liken this to requiring that restaurants provide food - as hunger and even starvation are most definitely very real to the same if not greater extent of homelessness - with the promise that the people will come back and pay them for it when it's all over.
> 
> The thought that it's all ok because the tenants still owe the rent is poppycock. If they can't pay it now, you think they'll have a $10K-plus stash to pay the landlord with when the moratorium is lifted? worse than illusory, it's purposefully ignoring reality to support a social argument. It equates constructively taking the property for social purposes. Unless perhaps the government commits to paying any defaulted payments - though, like most things, that help would likely come far too late to prevent devastating impact on many landlords. 
> 
> The thought that the landlords are in a better position to bear the burden is also poppycock. Taking out of the picture the bigger landlord operations (though there are arguments there too that are problematic in putting the burden on them), what about all of the small rental owners? I'll throw myself on the sword, lay my personal life bare and use myself as an example. A decade ago my partner and I opted to move to his house (which is paid for) and rent out mine (which was not) for the nearly sole reason that paying the mortgage posed some serious questions of hardship (for various reasons both of our jobs were in flux, and I have that pesky law school debt to deal with). I couldn't sell without knowing bankruptcy could be a very real necessary piece of that decision, as that was in the dip in market and I couldn't have sold it for enough to pay off the mortgage. Now, it's different - but at the time, if I couldn't have gotten rent, I very possibly could have lost the house and still owe money and probably file bankruptcy. I know a lot of people who did just that, who weren't so lucky as to have somewhere to go that enabled them to rent their home.
>  
> I'll also lay myself bare to say that any comment that rent takes up a disproportionate amount of salaries means that the landlord should take the hit, as they were "benefiting" from that gouging, is a problem with pay, not rent, and part of an ongoing gross mischaracterization of the status landlords are in financially. I make a whopping $200 a month over my mortgage payment, which I assure you doesn't even carry the costs of upkeep, necessary repairs or replacements, etc.
>  
> I know a lot of retirees that are reliant on their modest rental income, they certainly can't cover expenses with their social security. I know many who planned for their retirement this way - keeping their home after a necessary move to assisted living, buying a duplex that they could both live in and rent, investing in a small rental property(ies) to supply that supplementary income. None of whom are "gouging" anyone with rent.
>  
> And to Kary's point, and a gross generalization of the victim-renters, I know a lot of renters who are very well off, particularly in the urban areas, who opt to rent rather than buy for any number of reasons. And just because they can pay doesn't mean they do. There was (is?) even a commissioner in Olympia who openly refused to pay rent in "solidarity" with those who couldn't afford to. Thus sticking her landlord with carrying the property when she had every capability to pay what she contracted to pay.
>  
> I guess this comes back to Kary's observation - any argument about who should bear the burden for the greater social good is false when it generalizes the tenants as victims and the landlords as sufficiently privileged and well off to bear the burden during this time. I don't see how you canNOT consider that a taking. The illustory concept that the tenants will pay the money at the back end is meaningless in any case where the tenant truly couldn't pay rent. 
>  
> Ok so I gave more than $.01. Some of that is I have lived the flip side of these arguments, and I share this not to embarass myself but to show that my view isn't an academic one in a philosophical argument on social justice and balance. I am particularly aghast at the idea of imposing social idealism to protect people who may not need it, and make those who may not be able to afford to carry the financial burden of a social need, based upon a dismissive view that "the landlords can take it" and the "tenants will otherwise be homeless." Who said? some, sure. Many, no.
>  
> Again, consider a restaurant. If someone orders, eats, then says they can't pay, why is eating any less important than housing? so if the restaurant is not considered appropriately on the hook to let them walk out the door with an "IOU" to come back and pay when it's all over, why is a landlord? Any argument you may make on this landlord/tenant situation would apply equally to any other provider of essential goods, and yet something in our social mindset (perhaps primarily in urban areas) thinks that for this one class of people, it's ok for them to be the ones that pay.
> 
> The views I have seen in that vein have been consistently based upon the premise that the landlords are in a better position to bear the loss. And it just isn't true, that is a skewed and false perception that in the end serves a great social injustice in and of itself.
>  
> And then there is the fact that because of these types of decisions on blanket prohibitions on landlords regardless of their needs or the actual needs (or, not) of the tenants, most small-scale or single-rental landlords I know are looking to back out of the fiasco of renting in Washington as quickly as they can, which strips an awful lot of affordable housing. But another topic, out of so many.
>  
>  
> Carmen Rowe, Attorney/Owner
>  
> <image001.jpg>
>  
> Phone: (360) 669-3576 (direct cell)
> Email:  Carmen at GryphonLawGroup.com <mailto:Carmen at GryphonLawGroup.com>
> 
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