Wednesday March 11, 2020

To Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan:

The coronavirus crisis, now officially a worldwide pandemic, is ravaging our community. Working people already are seeing reduced, and even entirely eliminated, paychecks, and they will find it difficult if not impossible to pay the rent or mortgage beginning next month. Struggling small businesses are at risk of being shuttered.

We, the undersigned,  join with Councilmember Kshama Sawant in calling on you to act urgently to prevent what could potentially be thousands of working families facing eviction, bankruptcy, or both. Specifically, we call on you to exercise your emergency powers, granted by a City Council vote, to:

1. Ban all economic evictions and late fees – for both residential and struggling small business renters.

2. Ban all coronavirus-related home foreclosures.

3. Require landlords, utilities, and residential mortgage-holders to work out payment plans that allow tenants and homeowners who are suffering economically due to the coronavirus epidemic up to 24 months to fulfill their payment obligations. Without reasonable repayment plans and timelines, tenants and homeowners will face crushing debt once the crisis is over.

4. Require all residential landlords to extend expiring leases until at least three months after the end date of the emergency declaration.