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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">We’re changing our language from “affordable housing” to “attainable housing.”</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> ~<a href="http://www.ourvalleyourfuture.org/">Our
Valley, Our Future</a>: Housing Solutions group.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#003300">Rani K. Sampson<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#003300">Overcast Law Offices
</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#7F7F7F">|</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#003300"> Attorney<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#003300">23 S Wenatchee Ave #320, Wenatchee WA 98801
</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#7F7F7F">|</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#003300"> (509) 663-5588 x 6<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b>From:</b> wsbarp-bounces@lists.wsbarppt.com <wsbarp-bounces@lists.wsbarppt.com>
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Carmen Rowe<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, December 24, 2020 12:51 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> WSBA Real Property Listserv <wsbarp@lists.wsbarppt.com><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [WSBARP] WSBARP Digest, Vol 75, Issue 36 Landlord question - next legislative session<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif">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:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">> You're generalizing. The moratorium protects an entire class regardless<br>
> of their need, at the expense of another class, regardless of their need.<br>
> If it were based on economics I'd have little problem with it, but it's<br>
> not. Beyond that though, I'm worried about the long term adverse effects<br>
> on those who actually need the protection. The moratorium may have given<br>
> them a false sense of security and lead them to make bad decisions. Back<br>
> when I practiced law I did primarily debtor bankruptcy and the moratorium<br>
> is likely causing people to make decisions that no competent financial<br>
> planner would ever advise them to make.<br>
><br>
> Also, you can't even assume someone who rents cannot afford to own. They<br>
> may just not wish to own for many different reasons.<br>
><br>
> Kary L. Krismer</span><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif"><br>
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. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif">Carmen Rowe, Attorney/Owner<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in"><img border="0" width="200" height="71" style="width:2.0833in;height:.7395in" id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image001.jpg@01D6D9F9.6F390420" alt="Image removed by sender."></span></i><i><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;color:#660000;background:white">Phone: (360) 669-3576 (direct cell)</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;color:#660000">Email: Carmen@GryphonLawGroup.com<br>
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<b><span style="background:white">Mailing address: </span></b><span style="background:white">1673 S. Market Blvd. #202, Chehalis, WA 98532<br>
<b>Olympia/Lacey office: </b>1415 College Street SE, Lacey, WA 98503</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
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