are very lucky to have with us live in the studios want to show us a want is an economics teacher at seattle central community college in two thousand and twelve she ran for washington state legislature in the forty third district against democratic incumbent frank chop and received twenty nine percent of the vote and she is here to talk about her candidacy for seattle city council position to position currently held by richard conlon thank you very much for coming and spending time with us this morning for having me mike so start out let's start and have you tell us a little bit about socialist alternative socialist alternative is a nationwide organization of really dedicated and committed activist we are fighting for our social economic and political justice all around the united states we have branches in new york city in minneapolis boston you know of course in seattle and  other cities in the northwest and just to give you an example of the kind of political campaigns we have taken on in the interests of ordinary working people of the working class the you know basically all the people who are shut out of the mainstream political debate we see the we see businesses and we see the political corridors of power completely working in the interests of big business and the super  wealthy and we are on the other side where we are raising a very very important wars in the interests of ordinary working people and to give you an example of some of the campaigns we've been involved in in one thousand nine hundred nine or one of the forces that mobilized people for the w t o protest you know that really rocked the city of seattle and we also carried out a campaign against the presence of military recruiters on high school campuses and we actually were able to pass both here an minneapolis a historic move by school board we had to you know force the school board to pass the most severe restrictions against military recruiters on campuses and anywhere in the country more recently called occupy homes minnesota where you know a real grassroots movement that has been inspired by alki by has had amazing success renegotiating loans with these big banks  just just by having a sustained movement of people who are showing up every day who say that you know you guys are making such obscene profits and you're saying that a low income woman can't have a house so they've actually had success on four or five such things and that has actually inspired spinoffs everywhere in the country and in our very own seattle there's a really you know great group that is community organizing group called safe down against foreclosure and  been doing similar work so that's some of the history of our organization but as you mention we you know we are we are we are trying hard to mobilize mass movements for the social justice and for the environment but also as you mentioned you know we also ran a political campaign last year against frank job and it was an absolutely historic victory for grassroots movements because we won nearly thirty percent of the of the vote which if you consider the shoestring budget  had and running against the most powerful legislator in the state that was a huge step forward for our movement everywhere and i would also like to mention that it was the biggest vote that any gun pain that is independent of the democrats on the left was able to win last year there was even a little bit of a battle we won't go into too much but with you just trying to get your group on the ballot there because there wasn't enough room for socialist alternative to be printed there that's true and in fact that came out undemocratic view that we should not be able to put our party preference on the ballot and i think that yeah that was a huge democratic victory for ordinary people everywhere all right so talk about why are you running for seattle city council well you know in many ways i think our campaign because it will was such a significant step forward last year we believe strongly that that has to be carried forward and not only me but there have to be other leftwing challengers everywhere in the state everywhere in the city everywhere in this country and we're hoping that by our campaign to bill inspired such such you know grassroots ventures but at the same time i would also say that you know we if you look at seattle city politics it's really essentially no different than the point that we were bringing up about state politics last year it's basically controlled by corporate interests it's pretty naked if you want to go and look it's a pretty blatant  manner in which they control all the political and economic and even social decisionmaking but if you look at seattle and compared to the state it's in fact even more blatant in the sense that in seattle it's the democratic party elite establishment that controls the entire city and that ellida stablish ment is in the pockets of the not yet alysa o c a ssion of real estate conglomerates and other are big business and if you look at the policymaking in study hall for the most part it is heavily skewed towards big business and the superwealthy no different than the state except that they can blame it on the republicans here you know it is they who are carrying out this big business agenda and to the extent that some little policymaking happens in the interests of ordinary working people that has to be rested it has to be wrenched you know from the hands of big business you know fighting tooth and nail and so we're saying why is it that the whole city council is populated by people who are fighting for big big big business why don't we have at least one weis that is a genuine wars for ordinary working people and we think that if we are if we win this  election which we you know be absolutely intend to run a very very serious campaign then that would be a huge step forward for the interests of ordinary people in seattle so why a focus on richard carlin's position right i mean if you look at conlin's record first of all he's a sixteen year incumbent so i would say that in terms of you know giving somebody an opportunity to do something that you know that really works for ordinary people i think you know sixteen years is enough of a dime for somebody to have that but if you look at the specifics he was the only council member who voted against the really progressive basically legislation that the other council members  ere willing to spearhead a year and a half ago and you know they if you look at his reasoning for not supporting it he it's left governor you know he uses a left language as cover for his religion which is you know not to actually push forward legislation that is going to put a cost on big business you know when you want to when you want basically for ordinary working workers then somebody has to pay the bill and it has to be the business and it could have been better i'll be honest with you it was not exactly what i would if i was to write it i would actually make sure that the cost is not fall on small businesses that are themselves struggling to pay the bills but the costs should fal on the shoulders of big business and they should subsidize the costs for small businesses but nonetheless it was a huge step forward and you know that was an example of a legislature in that you know they didn't write it the economic opportunity which is you know research organization but a great fighter for the interests of ordinary people put it forward it fell in his lap and he didn't take it so what kind of representative is he for ordinary people and then if you look farthe r he was one of the forces that combined together to essentially kill the monorail he's in bed with real estate developers and that if you look at his history he has a long history of smoothing the way for real estate corporations to carry mentions that are hugely profitable to them while the space for ordinary people low income and the middle class gets increasingly squeezed and you know forget low income housing that is of obviously this disappearing but housing that ordinary middle class people with jobs going to ford is disappearing and very recently if you look at how he has laid out the red carpet for vulcan this will be down and take thought like union is a good example of us modus operandi and you know for who may not know vulcan is the giant real estate shark by paul allen and if i notice that this building is owned by paul allen and these microphone say vulcan so you can see the reach of these real estate you know basically predatory animals that are taking over just devouring the city's real estate while the rest of us are pushing being pushed to the fringes of the city but i will you know i  to add that conlon unfortunately is not the exception to the rule the mayor's office the city council and indeed the politics and business of the entire city is controlled by the democratic party elite who are systematically carrying out the bidding of big business you know like paul allen's well can you know for decades the city council has been gifting away major chunks of real estate dude those of you know big business real estate conglomerates and richard conlon as being one of the people who has presided over this corporate give away and my question is he's been there for sixteen years why should we think that he's going to do any different all right so specifically what talk about programs or focuses you would have if you were elected right and the first point you know i think to notice really is something that is written i mean for a fact that reflects how out of touch aren't near one hundred twenty thousand for some of them i think they are greater than that so these are people who are taking six figure salaries and as a matter of fact if you look at the statistics you'll find that the salaries for city council members in seattle is second only to los angeles in the entire nation this is the second highest salaries domi how can somebody who's taking home under an int when he thousand dollars of a paycheck have any sense of what ordinary seattle lights face in their day to day living they're so out of touch and so the first thing that i want to point out about our campaign is that if i am elected as a representative of the people of the city of seattle i will take home only the average worker's wage or less the average worker's wages you know say forty to fifty thousand dollars but i will most likely take less than that because i'm i am not in this race do you know  line my own pockets but i'm here in order to give a voice for people like me i am an ordinary working class person myself and if you if you you know ask what would what would happen to the rest of the money the rest of the money would be democratically decided by people who are involved in the campaign to put into social movements and mass movements you know we we want to help we want to do whatever we can to help mass movements get stronger because h shows that that is a real challenge that can unseat corporate power in any way and we need a combined struggle from ordinary people where they're out on the streets in the form of movement but they're also trying to occupy the corridors of power in city hall in the state capital and you know the white house and in terms of the other points on our agenda we are calling for a citywide minimum wage increase to fifteen dollars an hour i think it is high time i mean you talk to any gone amiss and look at the cost of living and the way it is soaring in the city and what people would need in any realistic sense in order to have  halfway decent standard of living i think this is something that we need to fight for and if you look at a lot of information i mean you know a lot of people will tell you oh that may not war and all that all those naysayers but if you look at and i have some data from the national employment law project which is an organization that has been working to pass city wide minimum wage increases they have been successful in cities like santa fe san francisco california  with this needs to be done in seattle we're also calling for attacks on people who are earning incomes over a million dollars in the city and for that money to be used this this is you know this is getting us several steps closer to climate catastrophe not to mention the immediate citywide problems that we will see of proliferation of pollution  d really horrific respiratory illnesses because of the coal that will be you know that will be transported through the city and and i'm not sure how many of your listeners know how bad it's going to be i mean we're going to have nine trains every day filled with coal going to the city if we let this happen and the reality is that if we don't stop this right now if we let this go through this will not be the end of the story it is going to be a slippery slope towards many more cold or imminent and coltrane's all along the western seaboard of the united states and we should actually turn around and create a different history where we should put the brakes on the coal trains in seattle so that it inspires just on the basis of public health they could do that yes they will face a challenge from vital authorities you know in terms of interstate commerce you know because if you look at the way the constitution is written you know a lot of it is written with a huge bias towards big business but i mean i will say do things about that yes it will be challenging but the city council can do a large just to delay and delay and delay and completely derail the process and in the meanwhile the city council members should be going out there and inspiring people to join mass movements and to inspire people into carrying out a mass blockade of the cold track we need fighters for the environment not people with so called green resumes who are going to massage the way for corporations and the only hope that corporations have in in the cold rain issue is that it is supposedly going to create jobs but if you look at studies that have been done by community organizations it's a wash i mean the jobs that will be lost are going to be equal or more than the jobs that will be created but it's go it goes for the know that further than that the jobs that will be created are not going to be living wage unionized jobs that come with security and you  know other benefits there are going to be minimum wage jobs because these call corporations are cutthroat and they're not here to create jobs but they're telling you that so that you will you know you will not oppose it and so our campaign is putting forward an al we're saying that no we don't need call for jobs in fact we can save the environment do away with these really dreaded respiratory illnesses that lie on the horizon for us and say that we're going to create green sustainable unionized jobs for people we can do that but we need political power to do that and that is why we are running this campaign we need a voice for ourselves and so it's very important for us to win and then the other point you're raising in the campaign are against police brutality harassment of people of color and if you see some of the really more striking acts of violence against people of color even you know the killing of john deeble you williams you know why hasn't his perpetrator been been brought to book but also if you look at the oppression of political movements all the way from the black panthers to the w d o protest to the occupy movement the s p d is used by the mayor's office and by the city establishment as a tool of repression against people when they raise their voice against injustice and our campaign is saying that the s p d needs to be accountable to us people ordinary people not the elite and the super wealthy and the democratic party establishment and so does s p d they're saying that we need a democratically elected citizens oversight committee with full powers with full jurisdiction  reach out to people who have been at the receiving end of brutality from the police and also to reach out to unions locals and rank and file workers which we plan to do you know we appointed where we are bringing up are directly in the interests of ordinary workers and our message is that yes we can be successful in this campaign we can win but we need your support and i and for those of  people who are up early and listening to your show i you know i make that appeal you know join us help us to carry out a vigorous and serious campaign and we can take things from there how do you define big business well you can you can come up with a lot of technical terms in terms of you know how much profits they make or how much revenues and so on but in reality what we're talking about are you know giant real estate developers who have  you know who have millions if not billions in profit we're talking about boeing they're talking about amazon dot com starbucks microsoft and so on you know so those are you know involved and of course which i've already mentioned but the you know these are these are big businesses and there are a lot more that are also big business but are not that well known who you know who also should be included in the list you know but the list is very long i mean there are i mean if you look at if you look at the wealth in seattle and surrounding areas there's a huge guns and ration of melt and that comes from the people who are running big businesses i mean that's how they get their well you know the big businesses consolidate such an hard off amount of wealth by gouging their workers by gouging consumers in terms of how much rent they're paying if you look at the profits of some of the real estate developers you know the so called developers i don't i don't consider development jet you know necessarily but they those those humongous profits are coming from charging just skyrocketing rent from people who actually can't afford it in fact i don't have it with me right now but the stranger had a really interesting article just a few days ago in which a building on madison you know in capitol hill just a few blocks from where i live has been booked bought up by a real estate and they are going to increase rents fifty percent seventy percent and for one of the residents by ninety two percent that's like doubling of their rent who can afford this you know so what's happening is that they're you know building all these high rises of you know condos that are that only a stratosphere of wealthy people are going to be able to afford in the rest of us are being pushed as i said but the fringes of the city and look at how the city is paving the way for these real estate guys to do it you know they if you look at the language of many of the seattle council members you know they have like i said this so called green resumes and you often hear them talking about density you often hear richard gong and talking about density and how we need to we need policy making and land use especially land use policy making that is geared towards density and on the face of it that sounds like a good idea i mean if you're an urban planner and my mentalist or you know who have those interest or you know you're an environmental activist you might think that's a good idea but the kind of density they're talking about is building these housing that only the rich people can afford while low income housing and below market rate housing that ordinary people middle class and you know low income and poor people can afford those housing units are quietly at the different office buildings and in universities where are these people supposed to go they have to have their own wife and the only way we can create that wise is if we go ourselves and fight for it so we only have about a little less than five minutes left so what do you what would you see as your average day if you were elected because one gets the impression from listening to your press conference on wednesday that you're going to be spending more time in the streets then let's say down at city hall crafting legislation right yeah i think that's an important question i'm glad you asked so i mean it's a it's a complex thing in the sense that yes the mentally we do need to legislation in the interest of the constituency that we are representing you know that i would be representing as a city council member which is people like myself and people who are disadvantaged people who are disenfranchised people  who may have the right to vote on paper but but in any other significant way our interests are not being represented about you know people who are disabled the elderly children and youth women who are looking for affordable childcare we are you know the whole idea is to represent all the sections of society that are completely shut out by the democratic party elite so to that extent i think if you if you see ordinary people have advanced you know their own interests in order to you know actually carry out humane what you would call humane they just lation it really well the only way you can do it is if you take on this battle against big business and the super bowl it is no use to pretend that you know if you'd sit with them nicely they will agree with you because if if they had that would have happened a long time ago however you know so show it to that extent we do need movements but on the other members if there is a progressive legislation on the table there's no question that it is in the interest of the people i would represent for me to work to get that passed to work with the other council members so you know just to use a very recent example that i already mentioned if there was a legislation like the paid sick leave initiative yeah you know there are there are things that i would write differently but there's no question that on the balance it was a huge step forward for many people yes then in that case i would do i would you know try to move heaven and earth in order to get that passed but to the extent that the city council members want to set up dishes leigh advance the agenda of big business no i would be completely uncompromising on that because the whole point of me running you know i'm not a politician so the whole point of me running is to represent ordinary people so if i go there and do exactly the same thing that the city council members currently are doing then the whole purpose is defeated so we have to understand that you know yes there will be  you know policymaking into this legislative work that needs to be done but it has to be done in a way that is completely and i would say dramatically different than the way the city council does you know right now the bulk of the legislation is in the interest of big business and the wealthy and a little a really really tiny bit i would say grain in the sand has to be you know wrenched from that for people that's not what i call you know legislation in the interest of ordinary people no i would say that you know it has to be an all out  you know courageous battle to represent ordinary people and that would actually involve connecting with people and so i think i mean i come from from activism i'm an activist so i don't i don't if i going to city hall i don't have to artificially create that mandate for myself because i come with that mandate and i don't have to create an appearance of meeting people that is what i would be doing i wouldn't be you know i'll tell you very honestly i'm not going to be playing golf and having dinner very much mike i really appreciate are very lucky to have with us live in the studio this morning jonathan grant jonathan grant has been the executive director of the tenants union of washington state since two thousand and ten and previously worked at solid ground a community action organization he has directly counseled over three thousand tenets on strategies in sorting their rights across washington and has successfully advocated for the expansion of tenants rights on the local state and federal level jonathan thank you very much for coming in and spending time with us this morning community that were having problems with landlords and there needed to be some sort of collective response to build power in the community to respond to those issues over the years the organization grew and right now we have five different zero five zero zero is open on mondays tuesdays and wednesdays and then we also have various satellite clinics around seattle that folks can stop by and talk to attend a counselor about learning what their rights are and how to assert them the other program of  union is our section eight tenant organizing project this is a program where we have community organizers that go into affordable housing or to subsidize buildings and we work with tenants to collectively bargain with the owner to keep those properties levels with the city of seattle and other you know civil areas around king county and then also statewide advocacy down in olympia as well we are primarily a community organizing group we are not we don't really view ourselves as a social service agency that we do provide  some social services through a tenant education program our mission is to empower renters to create systemic change and to organize educate and advocate with with renters across the state so how many renters are there in seattle and across the state well i don't have the numbers off for the state off the top of my head but to give you an idea for the city of seattle there's about one hundred fifty seven thousand rental units in the city of seattle and over fifty percent of the residents in seattle are actually renters and how many of those now are are owned by tenants well there's lots of different affordability structures out there right now the ben association which is down in kent washington that's the property that we are part of that ownership structure and that where the tenants actually own their own buildings it's about thirty four different units a series of duplex is actually very in this community and kind of making this wonderful place to live and so that was that was born out of a human organizing project back in two thousand where it was actually a good subsidized property where the owner wanted  to opt out of this federal subsidy program that kept the rents affordable for very low income people and the tenants wanted to fight back and make sure that they had a place to live and so the tenants union worked with the benson east tenants and formed into a tenet association there and that association was able to raise over two million dollars in private funds to purchase the property out from underneath the owner before the subsidy expired so that way the affordability for those tenants will be will remain in because there's no reason why they would want to and their own own contract so that was a huge success for the tenant union so defined section eight is that the same as subsidies yeah you know it becomes a real mishmash of different programs and there are probably hundreds of different types of subsidies but one of the largest providers of fordable housing for the very very low income is the section eight program and that can be either a contract a building enters into with the federal government or the department of housing and urban development or had that is called the project a subsidy so it stays with the building and then there's section eight vouchers which is a subsidy that travels with the tenants so the move from one building to another building the subsidy goes with them depending on where the are even if that building is not a federally subsidized building now beyond that program there's also tax credit housing where basically there are what are called private investors and that could be large multinational corporations like coca cola or microsoft or what have you where they will front the money to the government basically and say you know here's a block of here's a block of change you know use this to build an affordable housing complex and in return the government will give them a tax credit now that is you know it might surprise a lot of folks that it's actually not the department of housing and urban development they're actually not the largest housing the largest provider of affordable housing is the i r s through the tax credit program and it's a wonderful it's a wonderful thing that helps a lot of folks but what people need to understand is that it's not a deep subsidy like white house will provide for very low income person tax credits subsidies are for more working class people because rent rents are just you know getting jacked up day after day this program will serve folks that are about sixty or eighty percent of the area median income which in seattle is sixty thousand dollars so we're talking about folks that are you know firefighters paralegals office assistance you know but if you were on a fixed income or on social security you would not be able to afford affordable housing so when those corporations do those particular deals do they attach any strings to that or is it pretty much they got it turned out well the pretty much have to agree to i mean they don't really get to negotiate with the with the federal government about what they want to get out of it it's more or less you know do you accept the terms and agreements of these you know if you if you agree to become an investor then you're putting money in and you're getting this tax credit the real question is what do the actual housing developers who go out and build these properties what buildings do they build where do they build them how fordable are they and depending on the subsidy that that building gets that it could really vary what kind of community that will serve so the tax credits are allocated to each state and so in washington state you know many nonprofit housing developers will use the tax credit to build an affordable housing complex and then they'll add an additional layer of subsidy with a section eight voucher or with a section eight project base up city they keep their hands even lower for the very low income so in order to get these rents at a level where people can actually afford there's often multiple layers of subsidies in order to allow folks to be able to live in those communities all right so talk about what you see as some of the biggest problems renters are facing right now well you know i think it really needs that can't be stressed enough i mean there is renter's rights are under attack i mean there is a huge problem right now in the state of washington with the majority coalition caucus that currently controls the senate it's been i can't remember the last time that i've seen so many anti tenet bills being introduced there were eleven bills that would have stripped away tenants rights introduced into the legislature this year and so by and large tended advocates have been kind of playing on you know defense in order to stop these things from going through and to give you know idea of what some of these bills would do  would make it easier for a landlord to throw out a squatter and basically what that would mean is that rather than going through some sort of court process or a formal eviction process the property owner or even a neighbor could call somebody could call the police to have the person removed the bill is written terribly and would have been one of the worst rollbacks of tenant rights that we've seen and in many decades because one of the issues that the built in addresses you know what if you're a month  month tenant has got a verbal agreement and you pay your peer landlord in cash how are you going to prove you not us water and even if you could prove that you were a squatter you would have no recourse to prove it because you wouldn't get to go to court and the state of washington a landlord cannot do what's called a self help of action they can't just lock you out lock your doors or call the police there needs to be a formal court and many renters don't realize this many tenants will think that the landlord can kick them out so i think it's important  that folks know that they do have rights that a court process by and large is always required to receive proper notice and in a lawsuit with this bill would have done was to remove all of your due process protections basically if you do know some really concrete way to prove that you're a tenet you could be deemed a squatter and then the police would haul you out the door and so we fought that bill down olympia this year and fortunately it did not move forward but some of the other bills that were anti tenet are moving i'm not sure which of the two and those those were two more conservative members of the senate all right so that one's not moving forward others are moving forward yeah there is another one that we're really worried about  kind of it doesn't really have a clever name it's just the deceased tenets bill so basically the question is what happens what to your stuff when you die you know if you're a renter how long does your landlord have to hold onto your thing you know and w the what the bill would have done is that it would have essentially created a kind of a second class status for tenants in probate law where basically if you if you die you have an estate that will often come in and deal with your possessions you know maybe you've got you know family photos or keepsakes or you know you know property that's worth quite a bit of money who knows what the bill would say is that regardless of what's in much in your unit even if you're paid up in rent  the landlord would have and if they didn't if you didn't tell the landlord in writing who was the designated person to to get your possessions the landlord has essentially throw your stuff out now in in other areas of the law there is actually a process where if the tenant abandons the property and just leaves their stuff there and there's a lot of protections built in when that happens first of all the lender can only through your stuff out after your rent has defaulted what this bill would do is that even though you were  say you paid your last month's rent and you pass away you you know expire well then you've got that month that your rent paid then another month you might have sixty days to try to for the estate to go and get your possessions what this bill would do is that even though you're paid up in your rents in less you designated somebody for landlord to follow up with the would have an ability to throw out your stuff and he would have to store it for any meaningful amount of time and in other areas of law when this happens the landlord actually has to sell your property and then give that money back to you or in this case to the estate there is no provision for that and also it was crazy how this provision in the law that said here's all the rules and requirements that this law you know will require of landlords and tenants but then it had a provision in it that said the two parties can agree to something else other than what's in this law and then later in the law it said if you follow this law the landlord is one way is not liable for any kind of damages so basically you could have an agreement that said you know tenant agrees that all of the you know income derived from this property that sold goes to the landlord and that's just it well that would be legal if this law had passed and the state would be able to sue the landlord because it would remove all of their liability so that bill is still being discussed i don't know if it's going to pass out this year but it is still moving forward and we're very concerned about it is that prior to this is that common to have something with your agreement with your landlord in case i die you know it because it seems to me if the landlord was presenting things like that you know make a question about the place i was moving into yeah it's i would be very skeptical of a property owner if they're like well in case you pass away here's what i think but it's a very it's a very problematic proposal on all sorts of levels and you know i think the bigger picture message is that you know with the new conserve conservative majority in the senate the rental industry groups are kind of like kids in a candy store they're pulling all these things off the shelf that they've been wanting for years and that's why we had eleven bills this year that we had to fight back and some of them are moving forward  and i think that's why you know that organizations like the tenet union which is a membership based organization is so critical and in times like these because we're the ones going down there in partnership with other housing advocates testifying against these bills and you know there really needs to be some sort of safeguard for these kinds of encroachments on people's rights because i mean as outrageous the things they're talking about criminalizing you know behavior they're talking about taking your possessions after you die they're talking about there is part of that bill would have required you to register every single guess that comes into your into your home with the landlord and the landlord have to approve them i mean that's just basic freedom of assembly you know i mean there's there's been some someone stopping by to visit you that's right  let's say if you you know how to caretaker or let's say that you had a partner that lived off site the landlord if one of the these bills that's was being introduced was passed would have the right to approve them and make sure that they weren't a squatter and so every every guest potentially would have to be registered with the landlord and approved i was actually you know it was funny i was talking to some of the tenets of the beds and has tended to sociate in which is the you know that tenant on a property that the two use a part of a lot of is tenants are from former communist eastern bloc you know countries like like romania and and russia and i was describing these bills to them and they were saying you know and i'm speaking you know speaking through an interpreter they're talking in russian in romania and they're saying to me my god you know it wasn't that bad under the communists i think we'll get more freedom over there so i mean these are really serious problems that you know really it's remarkable how much energy it takes to try to fight back these these kinds of encroachments did recover the proposed fair tenant screening act so i think what's remarkable for the housing advocates and i and i want to give a lot of credit where credit is due we work in partnership with the washington low income housing alliance which is a group of housing advocacy groups and the tenant union is a part of we've been working in partnership with a housing alliance to fight for reforms in the tenets of tenant screening industry  and there's a bill right now that's been pulled to the senate and house floor that would vastly improve tenants rights especially for for women and i'll talk about the proposal but i want to talk about the problem first so there's this kind of invisible problem for many renters and almost every writer has been touched by this issue it's the tenet screening process it's when you go to apply for housing it is now pretty much the the industry standard to use a private company a third party company to do a background check on a person who applies now the tenet never interacts with this company in fact they never get to see the background report that gets created about  but every time you pay that thirty five dollars fee that's what that money is going towards you know it might be thirty five might be fifty dollars and i was utterly criminal about it is that every time that you apply for housing the property owner will use any number of different companies to pull the exact same information and it's the tenant that's paying for this product right even though you're paying for this product that essentially protects the landlord's assets you never get a copy of it and you have to pay for it over and over and over again i've heard i spoke to a tenant who had spent it was a small family there was like two eighteen year olds in the family and as a result of that everyone who was over eighteen had to fill out a separate screening report so they're paying for four or five screening reports every time the apply that amounts to hundreds of dollars just to be considered for housing so that can rack up especially if you've got something on your record so for those folks they're spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars for  background reports for a product they never get to use the analogy that i use it's like it's like you were to buy a d v d box set of your favorite t v series and then after owning it you'd have to pay to rent it out every time you wanted to watch the episode you wanted to see i mean this is extreme thing  now unfortunately the bill got stripped down a bit because of the conservative majority in the senate it's not going to address just the ford ability the piece that it's really focusing in now is is protecting domestic violence survivors so there's the afford ability piece but then there is this larger question of well what can be put in a tenet screening report and ought not to mention that why don't i get a copy of it you know this information is being aggregated by these these data miners these companies that just mine public public data banks and put it together in this report and they don't do a great job of analyzing what's in that report and so many times that will paint tenants in a in a false light or include information that might be illegal for them to include it so what the current for tennis can act does is that it would actually prohibit the use inclusion of domestic violence protection orders so if you're a survivor and you're skipping an abusive situation and you need to get out of that home find somewhere else to move it is very often the case that you'll get a protection order to protect you from your abuser now when you do that you go down to court and you file to get one now that enters the the court records which are all public and look these are called domestic violence protection orders that d v p o will then be included on this background report when you go to apply for housing now here's the thing it's actually already illegal for a landlord to use domestic violence information or your status as a domestic violence survivor and their decision in whether or not to rent to you so that you've got to ask yourself why why is it on one hand illegal for a landlord to use his information to discriminate against you know women but on the other hand it's legal for them to see it right many property owners just won't rent to domestic violence survivors there are there are stigmatized in our society and in two thousand and four the state legislature took acts to protect them and that's why it's illegal in the first place in two thousand and four domestic violence advocates and housing advocates fought to get these protections for survivors so that they won't be discriminated against their housing the one piece that they couldn't get past the the legislature discrimination because it would what happen is that if survivor will ply for housing the landlord will charge them for the screening report it will come back and they'll see while that person's got a protection order on it and then maybe they'll see something else like you know their credit score isn't quite what it should be or maybe they'll just say that the you know just were the second person in line there's no way for the tenet to actually know and it creates this pretextual discrimination where the owner can point to something else on the screen report or just simply say that you know it actually you came after the person who came before you and there's no way for the tenant to prove it so it was this really perfect kind of clandestine way for owners to deny survivors and the survivor would never know that the protection order is on the report because they don't get a copy of it so what this bill would do is they would finally make it illegal for these screening companies to use to include a domestic violence protection order which has been something that's been almost ten years now that when we've been fighting to try to get it passed it looks like we're finally getting close to to accomplish in accomplishing that this year you know if your listeners out there of this is something if you if you care about women's rights if you care about tenants rights i strongly encourage you to go to our website at  tennis union dot org this bill is being debated this week it's on the house both the house and senate floor and if you go to our web site at again tenants union dot org you can see there's a on the landing page there you can click the link and  these days do tenants rights and legislation tend to come from the state or from people's local cities well there's it really kind of comes from all over i mean that what happens with the tenants union is that will you know we got that hotline and it's kind of a barometer for what's going out on for ten is out in the community you know we hear from folks all across the state mostly from king county in the seattle area and you know this this issue of housing access is something that comes up over and over again and the reason that it's so tenet screening it is so central is that regardless of whether you've got a problem with getting a repair in your apartment because you've got a leaky roof or if your landlord's entering your  without getting proper notice or you know they're serving you some sort of bogus notice so you have a disagreement about of or it provision in your lease the landlord's ultimate recourse to get you to comply with something is to threaten a fiction so all roads can lead to addiction now if that's the case then you have a tenet screening industry that it's that kind of tracks every so every single public record that's out there on you if you try to assert yourself or  avail yourself of your rights and any kind of meaningful way the land that can turn around and file an eviction lawsuit against you now again same thing with domestic violence protection orders when you file that eviction record it creates a permanent public record that follows you everywhere you go in fact it's a very particular type of record called an unlawful detainer record which is the kind of legally as way of saying eviction so let's say you know you're living in an apartment complex the roof has been leaking for weeks you've got black mold growing in  the walls you know your kids are getting sick from the black mold you know you're your recourse under the landlord had to act is to write a letter to your landlord to compel them to fix the problem all landlord tenant laws are self inforced there is no landlord tenant police that go out and make your landlord be a good landlord it's up to you to assert yours assert your rights so let's say you do that you write the letter and you say you know you've got x amount of days let's say ten days to begin making repairs and the landlord fails to do that well there are certain remedies that you're allowed to do and one of them is to actually make the repair yourself and then deducted from the next month's rent and just for anyone who wants to consider that option you want to document that very well because here's what happens when you do it the land will often turn around and say you know what this was not a lawful deduction of your rent you were illegally withholding your rent and i'm going to sue you and evict you for nonpayment this is very often what happens with this remedy even though it's a legal remedy that's outlined in the law so let's say you go through this process and then you get sued for eviction you go to court and you show the judge the photos of the black mold on the wall you know the hospital bills that you're you know from your kid's going to being sick and and the judge actually agrees with you that you know what you followed that you follow the process correctly you wrote the letter you documented things you kept the receipts and you win let's say you prevail in court and you're just the mirror filing that  victim record has now permanently marked you as a rental you know the person you know it's like a scarlet letter that follows you everywhere you go and when you apply for housing the first thing that most landlords are looking for is do you have an eviction filed against you now that's an important distinction not just an eviction outcome like did you win or did you lose was it filed because that is an instant red flag and when the only venue for you to assert your rights  is the very same venue that marks you for life as a bad renter it creates a chilling effect on every writer's ability to be able to assert their rights because what person would try to contest something with their landlord if ultimately they could just simply file something with the court that would not cause you to be denied housing time and time again have to pay for all the screening fees and essentially in many cases become homeless so we're talking to tenants all across the state of washington that are that are being kind of painted in this false light by these misleading eviction records and it's crazy i mean there's actually a process for somebody with a criminal record to expunge or seal that record after a certain amount of time i mean i could actually go out and steal your car and then seven years later how that record expunged and then i would you know be able to go and get housing and that's that's good that's important and it's good to reduce recidivism but then you have a tenant who's a good actor and actually one in cord that person doesn't have an ability to remove that eviction record and so when they apply for housing it's going to show up every single time the first tenant screening act this year had a provision in it that would have allowed would have prohibited screening companies from using eviction records where that one or the case was just missed unfortunately  because of the pushback from the conservative components in the legislature that was stripped out of the bill so we're going to have this incredible accomplishment for you know protecting women and protecting domestic violence survivors