Seattle Real Estate Firm Tries To Buy Tacoma’s Election To Stop City From Enforcing Renter Protections

Goodman Real Estate, the same Seattle-based real estate company that’s tried to buy the Mayor’s office and a corporate majority on the Seattle City Council every cycle in recent memory, just threw down serious money to try to stop a Tacoma ballot initiative from mandating enforcement of the City’s renter protections. 

The upcoming ballot measure, Safe Homes For All or initiative No. 1, would give the previously voter-approved Tenant Bill of Rights actual teeth. That means real fines for bad actors and that also means those bad actors are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a midsized city’s  election so they can keep breaking the law without consequence. Now, proponents of the measure are rushing to knock on 20,000 doors across Tacoma to combat the well-funded opposition in the mere weeks before the November election. 

The Rental Housing Association of WA PAC (RHAPAC) has raised more than $280,000 to oppose Safe Homes For All as of Sept. 29 according to the PDC. To put that number into perspective, that’s almost twice as much as Tacoma For All, the grassroots advocates supporting the measure, have raised. 

And RHAPAC isn’t pooling money from a bunch of your average Tacomans. RHAPAC is funded by just a few dozen wealthy landlords, and more than half of the PAC is funded by Goodman Real Estate. In August, Shirley Tacoma LLC, a real estate entity that Goodman Real Estate used to buy a Kmart in Tacoma, contributed a whopping $175,000 to RHAPAC to oppose Safe Homes For All. 

Seattle politics watchers may recognize this evergreen villain. Goodman Real Estate is a Seattle-based real estate investment firm managing about $3.2 billion worth of multifamily and commercial assets. Besides massively profiting off a basic necessity, Goodman Real Estate and members of its C-Suite also have a habit of attempting to buy elections. Goodman Real Estate as a company has spent almost half a million dollars on Washington elections since 2011. If there’s a PAC smearing a Seattle lefty, you can credibly guess Goodman Real Estate or its founder John Goodman or Executive Chairman George Petrie have thrown money behind it. Not only that, Petrie earned the distinct honor of being President Donald Trump’s highest paying donor in 2021 with his recurring $2,800 monthly donations he committed to just after Trump stoked an insurrection.  

“[Petrie], who has such little regard for democracy on the presidential level, I think is showing his cards too at the local level, spending $175,000 to try and buy our local election to serve their narrow interests,” said Tacoma For All Executive Director Tyron Moore at a fundraiser earlier this week. 

It’s no surprise corporate landlords are opening their wallets to oppose this initiative. Tacoma 4 All launched the initiative to enforce a slew of renter protections voters approved in 2023 known as the Tenant Bill of Rights. According to Tacoma For All, the City has enforced these new protections with only one fine to a landlord.

“While families deal with hazardous mold and illegal rent hikes, the Council has tied the hands of enforcement staff, mandating requests for voluntary compliance over accountability,” Tacoma For All wrote on their website. “Most tenants don’t bother reporting violations, many fearing landlord retaliation. This gives corporate slumlords a green light to ignore our rights while we pay the price with our health, stability, and dignity.”

Safe Homes For All would mandate fees for lawbreaking landlords from $500 to up to five times the unit’s rent, money that would go directly to the tenants impacted. That enforcement costs money, but Tacoma For All says the policy “pays for itself” with a per unit fee on landlords. The initiative will also establish legal protection for renters to form tenant unions and a requirement for landlords to bargain in good faith over conditions and leases.

So of course landlords are throwing down cash to make sure they can continue to violate Tacoma’s new renter protections, so their tenants won’t build collective power, and ultimately to protect their bottom lines. There’s still time to stop them — Tacoma For All will host a mega canvas Oct 10 starting at 11am at People’s Park.