Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is extending town’s COVID-19 eviction moratorium via September

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is extending the city’s COVID-19 moratorium on evictions again, this time through September 30, her office said on Friday.

The Seattle expansion will “ensure we can provide the cash rent and housing support that are critical to stabilizing the community as it reopens,” Durkan said in a statement.

The city’s moratorium was supposed to end on June 30, but Seattle and King Counties are still in the process of distributing millions in payments to landlords on behalf of tenants who are late on rent.

A similar nationwide moratorium on evictions expires on June 30, with Governor Jay Inslee considering what to do.

Groups of apartment rental companies criticized Durkan’s announcement, while tenant lawyers welcomed the decision. According to a recent survey by the US Census Bureau, an estimated 86,500 people, or about 10% of renters in the greater Seattle area, which includes Tacoma and Bellevue, are behind on their rent.

The Seattle moratorium was originally introduced in March 2020 and is an attempt by the city to stave off the displacement of people who have lost their jobs and fallen behind with their rent payments as a result of the pandemic. This is the fifth expansion Durkan has ordered.

The city’s moratorium applies to residential tenants, nonprofits, and small businesses, with small businesses being defined as those with 50 or fewer employees. Most evictions are prohibited for these tenants, including evictions for non-payment of rent, although tenants are legally required to pay rent and may accumulate debts.

Seattle requires landlords to offer payment plans and has banned late payment interest and interest. Eviction can be requested in dangerous situations.

Landlords have spoken out against extensions of eviction bans.

“The conditions that led to the moratorium being passed no longer exist,” said Brett Waller, director of government affairs for the Washington Multifamily Housing Association, citing rising vaccination rates and the reopening of the economy.

The extension of the moratorium “is really just kicking the can on the street and not fixing anything for anyone,” he said.

Durkan’s latest order states that on September 30, the city moratorium will end and a city law will come into effect giving tenants a six month defense in court against eviction due to pandemic hardship.

Seattle City Council passed additional tenant protection laws this month, including a judicial defense against evictions based on rental debt accumulated during the pandemic. Tenants are required to sign statements that they ran into financial difficulties during the crisis.

Now that tenants can lead that defense, City Hall should focus on “helping the people who need them,” Waller’s organization and the Rental Housing Association of Washington said in a joint statement.

But tenant attorneys praised Durkan’s Friday move, saying Inslee should follow the state moratorium.

“A lot of people say, ‘Everyone is getting better. Things are opening up again. ‘ That’s not true for many low-income households in Seattle and across Washington state, ”said Michele Thomas, director of politics and advocacy for the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance.

Among white tenants surveyed by the Census Bureau in late May and early June, about 8% were behind on rent, compared with about 15% of black renters and 15% of Hispanic or Latin American renters.

Postponing evictions gives officials time to step up relief mechanisms and gives tenants “more time to get back on the workforce, find jobs and save to repay the significant arrears they have accumulated,” Thomas said .

As the end date approaches, some Washington counties have not yet given rental subsidies.

Legislators recently passed a law guaranteeing low-income tenants free lawyers in eviction courts, but those lawyers don’t yet exist. (The law gave the state civil litigation office three months to work out a plan to implement the law within a year.) The state is also establishing referral programs to help landlords and tenants avoid legal proceedings.

That leaves Inslee on whether the state’s moratorium should be extended again.

“We are concerned about the transition period in which these programs are not yet running,” said the governor on Thursday. “We haven’t made any final decisions yet.”

Inslee said his office would “apparently make some decisions before the end of June,” but did not provide details.

King County donated about $ 38 million in rental subsidies last fall, but has yet to distribute an additional $ 145 million in federal funding. Seattle has given out at least $ 18 million in rental subsidies since the COVID-19 outbreak and recently approved an additional $ 23 million in federal funding.

The city and county will soon be considering more funding from the latest federal stimulus, the American Rescue Plan Act.

The county is still processing rental aid applications and building a database to handle the surge, according to Mark Ellerbrook, director of the county’s Department of Community and Human Services.

More money is expected to flow in by mid-July, Ellerbrook said. To qualify, tenants must earn half the median income in the area or less; the median is about $ 41,000 per year for one person.

Daniel Beekmann: 206-464-2164 or dbeekman@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @dbeekman. Seattle Times reporter Daniel Beekman covers the Seattle city government and local politics.