‘This city is turning into an eviction mill.’

Tenant and landlord horror stories took center stage at a Monday meeting as the Spokane City Council debated establishing a new eviction prevention program.

The ordinance, which passed by a vote of 5-2, directs the city administration to create a new eviction prevention program by June 1, 2026, with a webpage that collates rental assistance programs and legal defense resources like attorneys who will represent tenants for free. It also requires landlords to notify their tenants of the program when they sign or renew leases, any time landlords give tenants notice to pay or vacate and when they raise the rent.

Before landlords evict tenants solely for nonpayment of rent, they must now engage in the eviction prevention program, sharing city resources and waiting for at least 30 days before submitting a demand for payment. This only applies to tenants who can’t pay the rent; landlords can still evict people who’ve damaged or committed crimes in the rental, or compromised the health and safety of other tenants. 

The landlords who spoke against the ordinance at the February 2 meeting said they didn’t want the headache of additional paperwork and worried that city-mandated eviction prevention mediation could delay rent payments for that month.

“ This ordinance does not increase affordability. It increases complexity,” said Daniel Klemme, speaking on behalf of the Rental Housing Association of Washington. “Tying eviction rights to a series of notice requirements across tenancy converts a clear issue of nonpayment into a technical compliance trap. A missed notice from long ago becomes a defense to months of unpaid rent today, which complexly pushes out small local housing providers.”

Adding the 30-day mediation time would add to what multiple landlords described as an expensive court filing process. Jessica Thompson, a lawyer who represents landlords at the firm Armitage and Thompson, said that it would be “administratively unfeasible” for other reasons too — requiring landlords to notify the city when they send nonpayment notices to tenants would be too burdensome. 

But tenants and tenants’ rights advocates speaking on their behalf, like lawyers from the Housing Justice Project, saw this ordinance as potential relief for low-income renters being put in impossible situations. 

One tenants’ lawyer described representing an elderly renter who had to choose between rent and being able to afford anything else after housing costs rose and her fixed income stayed the same. 

Sabrina Ryan, who had worked to help people living at Camp Hope find housing, told the council about her experience falling behind on rent after she lost her job and then had “a massive cardiac arrest.” She was unconscious in the hospital, recovering from the heart attack and subsequent sepsis and respiratory failure, when her landlord tried to evict her. 

Luckily for Ryan, a lawyer from a local right-to-counsel program took her case and represented her while she recovered, connecting her with resources and keeping her from getting an eviction on her record. But the experience was traumatic, Ryan said. 

“ I do believe that if what resources were out there were better understood by tenants and landlords, probably a lot of that could have been avoided,” Ryan said in an interview with RANGE. “Having those resources readily available is a huge help, and it’s not a huge lift for a centralized location that the landlords can just print off a paper and provide it.”

The council position

This ordinance is the latest in a series of renters’ protections council has passed in the last three years. In 2024, the council required landlords to give renters six months notice before they hike rent more than 3%. Later that year, they added teeth to a 2023 law that required landlords to obtain a business license and register their rentals with the city, requiring those conditions to be met before landlords could raise rent or evict tenants.

Originally sponsored by Council Members Paul Dillon and Kitty Klitzke, then amended by Dillon, Sarah Dixit and Kate Telis, the goal of the program was to create stability for renters and landlords alike. If tenants know about and can more easily access rental assistance programs, it could be a win-win for both renters and landlords, Dillon and Klitzke stressed: renters keep their housing, landlords are paid their rent and don’t need to proceed with costly eviction filings.

Dixit described the program as a cost-effective, upstream approach to addressing the housing crisis in Spokane. 

“It’s also important to note that it’s much more expensive to house someone after they’ve become unhoused versus helping them stay housed,” Dixit said. “ One emergency expense should not cost someone their house and being able to have housing.”

Council President Betsy Wilkerson and Council Member Michael Cathcart ultimately voted against the ordinance. For Wilkerson, the policy didn’t go far enough — she wanted to see the city create a housing navigator position to help renters navigate the assistance available. 

“As a landlord and other landlords I know, the last thing we want to do is lose a tenant. It’s expensive to lose a tenant and expensive to get a tenant,” Wilkerson said. “ I would absolutely be in support of this, if we put in this the housing navigator piece, because when [tenants] call or go through the website, then have we been absolved? You just gave ’em the information. Some of ’em can work through it and some of them cannot.”

Wilkerson and Cathcart also agreed on one key point: the pool of rental assistance money isn’t limitless. Landlords are required to participate in the monthlong eviction prevention program whether rental assistance money is available to tenants or not, Cathcart stressed, which could cause unpaid costs to pile up.

“There’s no guarantee we’ll actually have dollars from the state,” Cathcart said. “ Ultimately, we create a lot of, I believe, false promises and false hope.”

Council Member Zack Zappone, who voted in favor of the law, said that while he was sympathetic to landlords’ arguments of lost costs, the priority for him is giving people extra tools to stay housed.

“I grew up experiencing housing instability,” he said. “Sometimes just that extra little time is enough to get by and get stable again.”

‘This city is turning into an eviction mill.’

The debate over the eviction prevention came the same day that the Seattle Times reported eviction levels have hit an all time high in Washington state for the second year in a row. According to data from the state’s Office of Civil Legal Aid, eviction filings in the state are up 47.6% from 2019.

Evictions remained high in Spokane County too, with 1,794 filings in 2025 — accounting for about 7.5% of the state’s evictions. According to 2024 census data, Spokane County makes up 6.99% of the state’s population, making the region overrepresented in eviction filings. When you break it down by county data, it’s one eviction filing per 309 people. 

In Spokane County, it’s not just the number of evictions that’s daunting, it’s also the speed at which they proceed, the Housing Justice Project’s lead attorney Hannah Swenson told the council during public comment on Monday.

“This city is turning into an eviction mill, and I’m not being dramatic,” Swenson said. “One hundred and seventy cases are filed per month and our county has the fastest moving eviction proceedings in the state.”

As a right-to-counsel attorney, she represents low-income clients in eviction proceedings, working to keep tenants in their homes, connect them with other resources and keep evictions off of peoples’ permanent records. Free legal services through her firm would be on the list of resources required to be given to tenants by landlords. 

Swenson described the eviction prevention ordinance as “crucial.”

“ We can all agree that a DV [domestic violence] survivor with two toddlers should not have to live in her car on Thursday of this week for not getting rental assistance in time. It was awarded three days too late,” Swenson said to the council, describing a client of hers. “She’s gonna be living in her car over $900 of rent from when she was being abused. The landlord’s attorney made $3,000 on that case. That wouldn’t be happening on Thursday if this ordinance had existed last month. We need this.” 

Even if the rental assistance pool has been depleted, getting lawyers like Swenson and her colleague Joe Ehle — who also testified in favor of the ordinance — before an eviction is actually filed can still help tenants. 

The requirement for landlords to notify tenants of resources like the Housing Justice Project at the time of leasing, rent raises and first nonpayment notice can help tenants in need connect with free legal help earlier. Then, lawyers can help tenants negotiate settlements or repayment plans with their landlords to avoid legal filings, which are costly for both parties. 

The new eviction prevention program will buy attorneys and nonprofits more time to find and connect with tenants, and ultimately, keep them from an eviction.

“It gives [tenants] a chance to avoid the black mark of an eviction on their record and on their credit history forever,” Swenson said at the meeting. 

Quoting from a constituent email, Telis made a similar point:

“ Evictions for these families are rarely the result of unwillingness to comply. More often they stem from miscommunications, confusion about timelines and not understanding the options are available until it’s too late,” she read. “Once an eviction filing occurs, families cannot navigate the process on their own, and the consequences follow them long term, limiting future housing options and increasing instability.”

Swenson said she has seen evicted clients forced to survive in places managed by slumlords, their cars or the streets. She and Ehle hope this legislation can be another tool to keep people housed. 

 ”Just last week we were talking with another tenant. She had no plan for where she was going to go that night. She had a son who was, I believe, seven or eight, and another child that was three years old,” Ehle said. “She had fallen behind and needed this assistance. And again, had she simply gotten that hand up to help her get up to where she needed to be, she could have stayed housed.”