TACOMA, Wash. — Tacoma native Chelsea McElroy said she remembers when she couldn’t wait to move out of her parents’ house to find a place of her own, but that’s almost impossible now given how fast rent has risen in her hometown.
“I’m a preschool teacher, and we barely make above $20 per hour, and if I can’t survive on my wage, then I have to supplement in other ways,” she said. “Even areas that aren’t very nice, or places that don’t have amenities are charging over $2,000 a month.”
Finding an affordable place to rent in Tacoma has been a growing issue.
According to a report issued by the city in 2021, Tacoma rent increased by 21% from 2016-2019, but renter income only increased by 12% in the same time period. A recent report by Apartment List showed that from 2020 to 2021, rent in Tacoma shot up nearly 19%, the highest of any metropolitan area in the region.
“Every other month, or at least every three months, there was an eviction notice on my door,” McElroy said. “I’ve never gone through the full process of being evicted because I’d always borrow money, or go drive InstaCart or braid hair to try to find a way to make ends meet so I don’t get evicted. However, it’s because the rent is too high that I can’t keep up.”
McElroy said her story is common among many in Tacoma, and most of her friends have already left the city in search of housing. But she hopes Tacoma for All may have a solution.
The renters’ rights group proposed a set of initiatives commonly known as the Tenant Bill of Rights to be added to the November ballot.
“We want relocation assistance for rent hikes over 10%, we want eviction protections for families during the school year, and against winter evictions, capping late fees, and ensuring that landlords have to give six months’ notice for all rent hikes and other measures,” Ty Moore with Tacoma for All said.
The city offered an alternative set of policies for voters, but on Wednesday a judge ruled that because those policies were already laws, they couldn’t be included on the ballot.
Moore feels many in Tacoma, and Pierce County overall, can’t afford to wait for change.
“Pierce County has the highest eviction rate in the state,” he said. “The situation is dire for a lot of folks living on the edge.”
But Sean Martin, CEO of the Tacoma-Pierce County Association of Realtors, said Tacoma For All’s initiatives could have unintended consequences. Martin said the proposed initiatives would hit smaller landlords the hardest, forcing them out of the market, which would lower the city’s already limited housing supply.
“We need to provide more housing options for people to keep things affordable, not make it harder for people to provide housing,” he said. “We’ve seen in other areas that the actions that Tacoma for All is pushing, pushes people out of the market. They’ve made it harder to provide housing in other areas, we’ve seen that already and we don’t want it to be like that in Tacoma.”
Jim Henderson of the Rental Housing Association of Washington said he’s already seeing landlords preparing to leave, because the proposed reforms are stacked against them.
“They have real concerns,” he said. “If someone isn’t able to pay rent, there’s not the federal renters’ assistance that we had during the moratorium. So landlords are going to have to really think about the risks that they’re taking and if can they afford to take the risk and stay in the business of being a housing provider.”
Both Martin and Henderson said they support what the city has already put in place to help Tacoma’s renters and would like to see policies like the Home in Tacoma initiative in action before changing the Rental Housing Code again.
Meanwhile, Moore said Tacoma for All will be focusing on reaching out to voters to drum up support for their initiative.
Now, as the city prepares for some big potential changes to its rental housing code, McElroy hopes something can be done to address the needs of Tacoma’s renters, otherwise an entire generation of Tacomans may leave town.
“We can’t afford to buy homes here, we can’t afford to rent here, and then we leave the city entirely, then what makes Tacoma, Tacoma, if not its people?” she asked.