By Paul Gottlieb
Special to the Peninsula Daily News
OLYMPIA — Whether you call it rent control or stabilization, the bill cleared a hurdle Friday as the 2023-2025 state legislative session approached the halfway point.
Two bills friendly to tenants and manufactured-mobile (MMH) homeowners were pushed ahead with “do pass” committee recommendations forwarded to their respective Senate and House rules committees, with the March 8 deadline to make it out of their chamber of origin fewer than two weeks away.
Friday was the tipping point for bills to pass out of committees from fiscal, Senate Ways and Means and Transportation committees.
One housing-related proposal that got the go-ahead adds to the Landlord Tenant Act for residential properties. Both add tenant protections for manufactured-mobile home communities, where residents own their homes but — sometimes precariously now — rent the land on which they sit.
Substitute House Bill 1389, which passed out of the House Appropriations Committee, would prohibit rent from increasing in the first year of tenancy.
Future home rentals and MMH land rentals would be capped at annual 7 percent hikes.
After initial occupancy, rents could not increase during the first year and during any subsequent 12-month period beyond the inflation rate or 3 percent, whichever is greater, up to 7 percent over the existing rent.
The limit could be exceeded under exemptions covering improvements, “significant hardship,” and new buildings, according to the bill.
Under a banked capacity program administered by the Department of Commerce, landlords can save the eligible rent increase for future years.
With that capacity, they can increase the rent above the limit by an additional 3 percent, up to a 10 percent annual increase, retraining leftover capacity for future hikes.
Landlords can increase rents without limits for new tenants.
Proponents call HB 1389 rent stabilization, defined at lawinsider.com as “allowing rent increases for residential premises of a fixed amount or on a fixed schedule as set by a political subdivision.”
Chris Walker, a Parkwood Manufactured Housing Community resident in Sequim, called its progression really good news.
“I’m thrilled. I’m absolutely thrilled,” Walker said Friday.
Approved along a party line vote in Appropriations, the measure would curtail “exorbitant fees” charged for rent that landlords and landowners are trying to get away with, Walker said.
“Right now, they can charge whatever they want,” said Walker, who has testified in favor of renter-friendly legislation in Olympia..
“The process is not through, but I think we will end up with something.”
Rents, which have outpaced incomes in Washington for more than 20 years, have increased in some cases by up to 40 percent, forcing residents to move, according to a summary of public testimony, which includes a comment summary against the bill, at leg.wa.gov.
Critics at legislative hearings have repeatedly called the proposal “rent control,” defined at merrriam-webster.com as “government regulation of the amount charged as rent for housing and also eviction.”
“I know they call it rent stabilization,” Sequim Realtor Marguerite Glover said Friday, adding she sympathizes with high rent increases felt by residents of MMH communities, citing Rain Forest Mobile Home Park, a case cited at legislative hearings.
Rent there is increasing from $350 to $1,000 as of Wednesday.
“To cap [rent] at a certain amount, I believe Realtors will always be against that because we believe in the free market,” Glover said.
Department of Commerce operating expenditures if SHB 1389 is approved would be $2.3 million in 2023-25 and $3.8 million inn 2025-2027.
“This bill would have a substantial, but indeterminate impact on the needs for new legal services for appeals of agency decisions on landlord hardship exemptions determinations,” according to the fiscal note at leg.wa.gov.
“The [Attorney General’s Office] is currently unable to estimate the number of applicable exemptions, possible appeals and superior court cases in order to represent Commerce.”
Also on Friday, the Senate Ways and Means Committee approved the second substitute version of the manufactured-mobile home park bill, 2ndSSB 5198 which gives notice of closure or conversion of the communities, a guardrail against sudden home displacement.
Committee approval was all but assured after a Ways and Means hearing Wednesday during which mobile home park owners and a tenant advocate agreed the bill should move forward.
The final version reduces the notice of closure from three years to two in a compromise with MMH community landlords and ownership entities.
It still includes landlord-financed compensation imposed for closure notice of under two years.
An 18-month notice results in landlord-financed relocation assistance of $15,000 for a multi-unit manufactured home and $10,000 for a single-section home.
A 12-month notice results in relocation assistance and 50 percent of the assessed value of the home.
It also requires landlords to issue a notice of opportunity to purchase the MMH park, with the provision that if a qualified tenant organization issues a notice of intent to purchase the park, it cannot be sold to any other person or entity for 12 months.
The program’s has a two year cost of $481,000 and a four-year cost of $952,000.
An amendment of the bill offered by 24th District state Sen. Van De Wege of Port Angeles includes clarification that landlords remain eligible for assistance in disposing of abandoned homes and that tenants who receive compensation from landlords remain eligible for other state assistance.
It also adds exemptions for family and shareholder transfers of MMH communities.
“We don’t love this bill, which is why I signed in as a strong ‘other,’ but we are in strong support of the compromise,” Mike Hoover, representing Detente Management, said Wednesday at the Ways and Means Committee hearing.
“This is a step in the right direction, balancing what we need operationally as owners and providing some protection to the tenants as well, so it’s a very good compromise that we support.”
Attorney Ishbel Dickens, a bill proponent and executive director of the National Manufactured Home Owners Association, said she was pleased to testify with Hoover.
“The compromise is a result of a good faith effort by everyone,” Dickens said.
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Legislative Reporter Paul Gottlieb, a former senior reporter at Peninsula Daily News, can be reached at cpaulgottlieb@gmail.com.
