Landlords skirting Bellingham’s new tenant protections, councilman says
Bellingham landlords apparently have found a way to skirt the city’s new law requiring four months’ notice for rent increases, a City Council member said.
Council President Michael Lilliquist disclosed during a Committee of the Whole session Monday, April 24, that he has evidence that some landlords are acting in defiance of a measure requiring a 120-day notice for a rent hike of any kind that took effect just a month ago.
Some landlords are giving tenants a 60-day notice to vacate, then offering to let them stay if they agree to a rent hike, Lilliquist said.
“It becomes a de facto rent increase. That is a whole loophole that had been found,” he said at the meeting.
Lilliquist asked the city’s legal team and planning staff to see if those actions are in violation of the new ordinance.
Rebecca Quirke of the advocacy group Tenants Revolt told The Bellingham Herald that her organization documented the allegations and forwarded them to the city.
“The just goes to show the speed and sneakiness that property managers will use to not honor renter protections that are required by law,” Quirke said in an interview.
Monday’s discussion came just after the City Council received a presentation on the results of rental inspections citywide, which began in 2019.
Landlords who paid for a private inspection of health and safety codes almost never failed.
City officials compared that to the failure rate of inspections conducted by the city, which was 15%.
City Council members have been looking for ways to ease the burden of housing on renters who are 56% of Bellingham residents, according to data collected by the city.
Bellingham’s vacancy rate is around 1% and the average price of a one-bedroom apartment is $1,475 a month, according to Zumper figures from April.
That’s a 15% increase from 2022.
A Bellingham resident who’s single with no children must earn $16.95 just to get by, according to recent Bellingham Herald reporting.
This story was originally published April 24, 2023 at 6:04 PM.
