Residents of Bellevue support changing city codes to provide more protection to renters

Peo­ple liv­ing in King Coun­ty’s sec­ond largest city would like to see local laws changed to help peo­ple who rent stay in their homes and main­tain bet­ter rela­tion­ships with their land­lords, a sur­vey recent­ly con­duct­ed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and the Belle­vue Hous­ing Research Coali­tion has found.

Aver­age sup­port for six ideas we asked about totaled 70.5%, or more than sev­en in ten Belle­vue res­i­dents. Aver­age oppo­si­tion totaled a mere 22.5%. That’s strik­ing, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that most Belle­vue res­i­dents we sur­veyed are home­own­ers (a major­i­ty of 53% own their own home with­in the city lim­its). It’s also evi­dence that Belle­vue is a city where peo­ple real­ly do care about each other.

The Belle­vue Hous­ing Research Coali­tion — a project of NPI, Com­plete Streets Belle­vue, the Sight­line Insti­tute, East­side For All, and the Hous­ing Devel­op­ment Con­sor­tium (HDC) — set out this past sum­mer to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how peo­ple in Belle­vue feel about the local hous­ing mar­ket and pro­pos­als being stud­ied by city staff and the Belle­vue City Coun­cil to make it eas­i­er for peo­ple in Washington’s fifth largest city to find attain­able and afford­able homes.

We released our ini­tial find­ings on Sep­tem­ber 12th and a sec­ond set of find­ings at the end of the month. On Octo­ber 3rd, we released a third set of find­ings.

Today, we’re pleased to be able to share even more great data from our poll.

Here’s the ten­ant pro­tec­tion ques­tion we asked and the respons­es we received:

QUESTION: Please indi­cate whether you sup­port or oppose each of the fol­low­ing ideas for pro­tect­ing ten­ants resid­ing in the City of Bellevue.

IDEAS & ANSWERS

Give land­lords the flex­i­bil­i­ty to alter due dates if the ten­ant can demon­strate that their pri­ma­ry source of income is a reg­u­lar, month­ly source of gov­ern­men­tal assis­tance that is not received until after the date rent is due in the rental agreement

Sup­port: 80%		Oppose: 10%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	10%
47%	32%	6%	5%	———

Require land­lords to give at least 180 days’ (6 months) writ­ten notice of any rent increas­es more than 10%

Sup­port: 78%		Oppose: 19%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	3%
60%	18%	11%	8%	———

Require land­lords to give at least 120 days’ (4 months) writ­ten notice of any rent increas­es more than 3%

Sup­port: 76%		Oppose: 21%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	3%
57%	19%	11%	10%	———

Lim­it move in fees to no more than one mon­th’s rent and allow renters to pay it in installments

Sup­port: 73%		Oppose: 21%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	6%
48%	25%	12%	10%	———

Lim­it late fees to no more than 1.5% of the month­ly rent

Sup­port: 65%		Oppose: 25%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	10%
46%	19%	10%	15%	———

Pro­hib­it land­lords from declin­ing ten­ants because they don’t have a Social Secu­ri­ty number

Sup­port: 51%		Oppose: 39%		Not sure:
Strong­ly	Some­what	Some­what	Strong­ly	10%
33%	18%	12%	27%	———

Our hous­ing-focused sur­vey of 475 Belle­vue city res­i­dents was in the field from Mon­day, August 15th, through Fri­day, August 19th, 2022.

The poll was con­duct­ed entire­ly online for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and its part­ners by Change Research. It has a mod­eled mar­gin of error of 5.2%.

Fol­low this link if you’re inter­est­ed in a detailed primer on the survey’s method­ol­o­gy along with infor­ma­tion about who took the poll.

As the find­ings above show, every idea has major­i­ty sup­port and all but one idea has sup­port of about two-thirds or more of respon­dents. Half of the ideas test­ed had the sup­port of three-fourths of the respon­dents. Those are huge margins.

Many of Belle­vue’s neigh­bors have adopt­ed these ideas into their local codes already. Red­mond has done it. Kirk­land has done it. Ken­more has done it.

Pro­tect­ing ten­ants is an action many res­i­dents empha­sized when we asked “What do you think the Belle­vue City Coun­cil should do to make hous­ing more afford­able?” ear­li­er in the sur­vey. Quite a few respon­dents answered that ques­tion by declar­ing that the city need­ed to bet­ter sup­port renters.

Although we did­n’t ask about rent con­trol in our ten­ant pro­tec­tion ideas ques­tion, it’s evi­dent that it is an idea that is on a lot of res­i­dents’ minds.

“Look into fair rental prices,” one down­town renter said.

“Low­er the rent,” said a Fac­to­ria renter.

“More rent con­trolled hous­ing, caps on how much land­lords can increase year over year,” said a Cougar Moun­tain / Lake­mont homeowner.

“Make rent afford­able by income lev­els,” said anoth­er Fac­to­ria renter.

“Prop­er­ties need to be required to offer more income lim­it­ed res­i­dences and for fam­i­lies,” said anoth­er down­town renter, who added: “Most apart­ment build­ing have only 2–3 income lim­it­ed apart­ments and they are usu­al­ly stu­dios. Noth­ing suit­able for sin­gle par­ent house­holds or fam­i­lies. Require more income lim­it­ed apart­ments and imple­ment a rent increase cap.”

Even Repub­li­can res­i­dents voiced such sentiments.

“Rent caps and charg­ing even more tax­es towards investors (silent)/owners of big rental prop­er­ties,” a Bri­dle Trails home­own­er who iden­ti­fies as a Strong Repub­li­can told us. “I’d rather not con­tin­u­ous­ly see mas­sive­ly over­priced hotel style rental prop­er­ties if it means some­one can live comfortably.”

A Lake Hills res­i­dent who also iden­ti­fies as Strong Repub­li­can and nei­ther rents nor owns was even more stri­dent: “Rent con­trol is the only option.”

“There should absolute­ly be rent con­trol,” yet anoth­er down­town renter told us. “A 100% increase in rent from one year to the next should be absolute­ly unac­cept­able. The increas­es should be capped at 15% or even 20% as a mar­ket. Any­thing above that is just fly by night numbers.”

It may not be fea­si­ble for the city to cap rents at this junc­ture, but it def­i­nite­ly could adopt the ideas that its neigh­bors have embraced. And it should. If Belle­vue is to be an inclu­sive city that’s open and wel­com­ing to peo­ple who aren’t high earn­ers, then it needs to have stronger ten­ant pro­tec­tion laws.