Eight Out of Nine Seattle Council Members Own A Home In A Majority Renter City

Homeowners have twice as much representation on the Seattle City Council as they deserve

After months of working behind the scenes, the Seattle City Council may be closer than ever to unveiling the long awaited eviction empowerment suite. The package, based on the landlord wishlist I leaked late last year, may include rollbacks to the winter and school year eviction moratoriums, shaving time off the six-month notice requirements for rental hikes, a bump to the $10 late fee cap, the repeal of the 2019 roommate law, and replacing many of the seats on the City’s renter commission with landlords.

I’m sure working people are in for a long, annoying fight with the City Council, full of very mediocre highs and dismal lows. But to manage expectations, do know that there’s not many members who can empathize with the plight of Seattle renters. 

According to their most recent financial disclosures, only one council member, Alexis Mercedes Rinck, is a renter. The other eight members, a whopping 88% of the Seattle City Council, own a home. About 55% of households in Seattle are renter occupied, according to RentCafe. That means renters have about one-fifth of the proportional representation they should have. If the City Council truly represented its constituents (on this one access), 5 members would be renters and four would be homeowners. 

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And the council boasts twice as many landlords as tenants (yes, two is technically twice as many as one). According to her most recent financial disclosure, Council Member Martiza Rivera collected up to $29,999 in rental income last year from her tenants at a newly constructed townhome in Ravenna she and her husband bought in 2021 for $754,000. Council Member Mark Solomon, who the council appointed earlier this year, also collected up to $29,999 in rental income last year, according to his financial disclosure. And as honorable mentions: Council Member Joy Hollingsworth may still hold a financial conflict of interest when it comes to tenant law because her family member is a landlord and Council Member Cathy Moore recently retired from lording the land, as I previously reported. 

But there’s certainly been progress for renters in spite of their underrepresentation of Seattle City Council. The previous council made major strides for renters, including many of the items Moore may seek to repeal. The 2019-2023 City Council consisted of seven homeowners and two renters, Council Members Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss who both became homeowners during that term. 

Perhaps more telling than their homeownership status, is whether or not the real estate industry and landlord lobby groups supported their campaigns. For example, Council Member Rob Saka raked in $35,000 from the Affordable Housing Council, $25,000 from the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, $8,000 from the Washington Multifamily Housing Association PAC, and tens of thousands more from other commercial real estate industries through an Independent Expenditure committee supporting his 2023 campaign. 

Real estate interests threw tens of thousands behind every single City Council member besides lone renter Rinck. So, in this case, the venn diagram of home-owning council members and those backed by commercial real estate appear to create a singular circle.