The Seattle Times has published multiple pieces on the topic of Washington’s tenant right-to-counsel law, whether lamenting the shortcomings or exploring the issue from the tenant counsel perspective. As someone who has been representing housing providers in the region since 2011, I would like to share another perspective.
The law is not preventing evictions. It’s stretching them out. And it’s doing so because the state chose to fund lawyers rather than rent assistance.
At its core, the eviction process is ugly and should be considered a last resort. Tenants facing eviction are often doing so amid a litany of additional unenviable problems. In its present form, the eviction process yields no real winners, save for possibly the attorneys involved. In theory, giving tenants attorneys levels the playing field. No one disputes that legal help matters. But the state built a system that treats eviction as a legal puzzle to be solved in court rather than an economic crisis to be solved with assistance funds.
Talk to small landlords around the state and you’ll hear the same story. Cases stretch upward of a year or longer. Hearings are continued again and again. Attorneys file motions that do nothing to resolve the fact that the tenant cannot pay the rent and has no realistic path to doing so. Debt accumulates and the tenant does not focus on moving to a more realistic housing situation for their budget.
Meanwhile, the housing provider absorbs months of losses in addition to their legal fees. In my world, these aren’t corporations with deep reserves. They’re small mom-and-pop housing providers creating affordable housing opportunities for families in our communities; they are the backbone of the region’s family-suitable rental stock, and many are now deciding it’s simply not worth it. When small landlords sell their properties or leave the rental market entirely, the region’s already strained housing supply tightens further. That drives rents up for everyone — the very opposite of what lawmakers intended. I wrote about this in a Seattle Times op-ed five years ago, and just last week The Seattle Times started conducting a survey on the premise that single-family rental housing in the city is becoming “increasingly rare.” Hate to say I told you so!
Legal representation is important. But it cannot be the centerpiece of Washington’s eviction‑prevention strategy. It should be a safeguard, not the entire system. Attorneys should be held to higher standards, be required to properly vet their clients, and be called out for their constant delay tactics. This system, by way of organizations such as Housing Justice Project, should not be propping up the likes of Sang Kim in Bellevue, who famously avoided eviction and paying rent for two years despite entering his lease with an income of over $30,000 per month. Tax dollars (yes, your tax dollars) funded his legal defense. Is this the kind of person who should be receiving extensive public assistance?
If lawmakers redirected even a portion of the money currently spent on extended litigation into a dedicated, ongoing rental assistance fund, far fewer cases would ever reach a courtroom. Tenants would stay housed. Housing providers would stay solvent. A tenant assistance program in the form of House Bill 1099 would be an excellent place to start. For those cases that do end up in court, passage of HB 1089 (tenant safety & eviction reform) would be very beneficial. (Both bills were filed in 2025.)
The right‑to‑counsel law was built on the belief that justice requires representation. But justice also requires pragmatism. Washington cannot litigate its way out of a housing crisis. It must pursue the solutions that promote housing supply and give tenants in need a more effective helping hand.
