Seattle Landlord Fights Violent Tenants Amid Eviction Delays in Court

SEATTLE— During his time as a landlord in Seattle, Osho Berman said he has had tenants vandalize his apartments, attack his neighbors and even threaten to kill him, but he has no effective way to get them out of his building.

A combination of Seattle’s tenant protection laws and the backlog of eviction cases in court have left him powerless to act, Berman said, and he feels as if he has lost control of his own properties. Worse yet, you can put the rest of the tenants in your building at risk.

“My biggest frustration right now is my inability to manage dangerous or disruptive tenants,” Berman said.

RELATED | Landlord Says Seattle Housing Policies ‘Enable’ Problematic Tenants

When he started, Berman hoped to provide some stability to low-income people who wanted to get back on their feet but faced barriers and needed housing that other landlords wouldn’t provide. He said that in recent years his initial intention had backfired.

“It’s just a nightmare in Seattle. It’s just an absolute lawless disaster and we’re done,” Berman said. “We’re literally stuck with them in our buildings. “We can’t get rid of them and in many cases they are dangerous to other tenants.”

Berman recently sold an apartment complex in north Seattle, where many of the problems occurred. A tenant stabbed another tenant’s guest with a screwdriver and then started a fight in the parking lot. Berman was unable to get him out of the building.

The tenant got a taxpayer-funded attorney to fight the eviction process, and as the legal process dragged on, Berman reluctantly agreed to a deal.

“They effectively blackmailed us,” Berman said. “The only way he would go is if we agreed to limited disclosure so we couldn’t reveal how violent he was to other owners he might apply to in the future.”

Another man stopped using the bathroom in his apartment and started defecating all over the apartment. He would also bang on the walls to the point that items would fall off the shelves of his neighbors’ units.

“When we tried to send him a notification, he lunged at me on camera and violently punched me,” Berman said. “I was able to break free and run for my life just to get away from him.”

In the end, he had to do a “cash for keys” exchange, essentially paying the person to break the lease. Two weeks later, Berman said the tenant’s friends broke into the unit and claimed the apartment as theirs. He said he called the police, but the squatters were not arrested.

Berman said a series of tenant protections adopted by the city council also protect bad actors from being kicked out of a building while putting the rest of the tenants in good standing at risk.

“It’s a disaster in Seattle and it’s become very dangerous,” Berman said. “It has become more unsustainable than ever since I started providing housing to low-income people in Seattle.”

SEE ALSO | Fentanyl crisis collides with eviction regulations for Seattle landlords

Evictions, or what courts call unlawful detainers, have faced huge delays in King County.

“Earlier this year, early spring, it took us six to eight months to get to the court docket because we had so many cases,” said Judge Ketu Shah, president of the King County Superior Court.

The court then made changes and came up with both a short- and long-term plan to expedite illegal detainer filings. To see some immediate results, King County came up with a new way to classify cases into priority groups.

“We kind of funneled cases into multiple clusters and changed some of our local rules,” Shah said, “and that has led to a turnaround time of about three to four weeks.”

In the long term, the courts are asking the King County Council, as well as the Washington State Legislature, for more judicial resources so they can hire additional commissioners to oversee unlawful detainer proceedings.

Shah said they also have a new process for tenants who are dangerous or destructive.

“In cases where violence or destruction of property is alleged, the kinds of things that cause serious risk of harm to others, we change our local policy to expedite those cases,” Shah said. “When a petition comes in and makes those allegations, those cases accelerate.”

Since the rule change in May, Shah said they have only received six cases alleging a dangerous or disruptive tenant.

When Berman started out as a low-income housing provider, he used fixed-term leases and put challenging tenants on a probationary period. That way, you could have the option of not renewing the lease if the tenant created safety issues. Such arrangements are no longer permitted and were replaced in Seattle by a just cause eviction ordinance.

“You have what they call just cause to get rid of them, but the reality is it doesn’t work,” Berman said. “It sounds good on paper, but it doesn’t work.”

Berman said he still plans to invest in new rental properties, but is looking outside the city of Seattle and King County in general.

King County currently has 2,400 unlawful detainer cases before the courts and an average of just under 650 new cases filed each month. This is well above volumes seen before the COVID-19 pandemic, when there were around 350 eviction cases pending and around 240 new ones filed each month.

“I understand the frustration and we continue to try to make our court better and accessible to everyone,” Judge Shah said.