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Photo by KOMO News
Yesterday I covered a recent vote by Renton City Council regarding the best way to provide reasonable financial protections for renters to help keep them in their homes when possible. Today’s story serves as a reminder that not all evictions are about rent payments.
A Renton landlord with a home on Wells Ave in North Renton explained to KOMO news that he was trying to evict a tenant for a year and half who was generating complaints in his neighborhood. After months of King County Superior Court and Sheriff’s delays, gunfire at the home killed one man and wounded another. The murder led the Sheriff’s office to finally complete the eviction, but then fire destroyed the home.
Just like tenants sometimes need protection from predatory landlords, landlords also need to be able to reasonably evict challenging tenants before a dysfunctional rental situation spirals into bloodshed. It’s important to keep this in mind as local Council Members for jurisdictions like Renton and King County blunder into the complex minefield of writing their own landlord-tenant laws.
Here is the story on KOMO news.
Long eviction moratoriums also make landlords very cautious on who they rent to. They aren’t as willing to give people with credit issues second chance knowing that they could be looking at months of “free” rent.
This is bad, because a lot of us need a second chance now and then.
He should vet his customers better. The neighborhood suffers so he can make a buck.
With such slow eviction processes, every landlord is learning to vet their prospective tenants much more thoroughly. Fewer and fewer landlords are willing to take risks by giving second chances. This probably will help reduce neighborhood complaints and hopefully prevent the kind of calamity that happened here. The downside of more careful vetting is that renters with past evictions, or past arrests, or only fair credit, or fluctuating income, or limited time in their current job, or past complaints, will all find it even harder to rent a home in the future.