Tacoma Renters Beat The Landlord Lobby Over And Over Again –– And They Aren't Done

In 2023 I had the opportunity to serve as a field director for Tacoma for All on our campaign to win a Tenants’ Bill of Rights for Tacoma and pass the Landlord Fairness Code (LFC) into law. The campaign turned into a point of major contention for the entire city, with regular dueling op-eds, town hall debates between campaign representatives, and, near election day, a record-breaking opposition expenditure, largely from outside landlord and real estate interests.

At the time, the conversation centered around questions like: Was relocation assistance even legal in the state? Would eviction moratoriums destroy the rental market? Would lower late fees and stronger protections encourage tenants to stop paying their rent?

When the initiative passed on the November 2023 ballot, our team of Tacoma for All and DSA organizers were ecstatic, having overcome an unprecedented opposition campaign to win the strongest set of protections in the state. But anxieties still lingered. Coming out of the election, questions remained: Would the new laws be enforced? What would happen in two years, after which this council that was unanimously opposed to the initiative gained the legal authority to amend it?

With that two-year window of protection for citizen’s initiatives set to expire on December 8th, 2025, Tacoma for All started our no-repeal campaign far in advance. But our worries only materialized when, in October, council member Sarah Rumbaugh, a landlord, unveiled her designs for an expansive rollback of the LFC protections. This included means-testing, expanded exemptions, increasing late fees, reducing the winter eviction moratorium, and reducing notice periods.

Already in motion, Tacoma for All and allies kicked into high gear, getting community members to send hundreds of letters to their council members, organizing regular lobbying meetings, and repeatedly mobilizing tenants and advocates to City Hall. At the peak of the no-repeal campaign, tenants and allies packed City Hall with what Mayor Woodards called “unprecedented” numbers, filling council chambers and three overflow rooms during the first reading of the repeal ordinance.

At the December 9th meeting, the ordinance passed on a 7–2 vote, but it wasn’t the repeal CM Rumbaugh and the landlord lobby had wanted. In the face of massive community mobilization, means-testing was outright defeated, and landlord proposals around late fees and the eviction moratorium were significantly reduced, while tenants won a key victory on closing a relocation assistance loophole.

Still, let’s be clear: this was a step backward. Especially with exemptions for non-profit landlords passing, thousands of our low-income neighbors most in need of fair housing protections will be stripped of their rights. At the same time, after two years of anxiety around this exact moment, what I felt most following the vote was a sense of relief that the broad repeal we had feared from a mostly opposition-dominated council never materialized.

More importantly, there’s another story here that you won’t see in the press: we have completely transformed the conversation around tenant rights in Tacoma. Where the debate was whether we should have eviction moratoriums and relocation assistance at all, now it’s how strong these protections should be.

In fact, this vote was an admission on behalf of the landlord lobby that they lack the political capital necessary to win the full repeal they wanted. It clearly points to a dynamic social movements have experienced throughout history: once new protections are won by working people, it is much more difficult to take them away.

Of course, we aren’t just winning rhetorical victories. Alongside policy wins, on December 6th, Tacoma for All and renters at the New York Apartments went public with the city’s first building-majority tenants’ union. When it comes to the enforcement of the LFC and other related protections, some provisions like the eviction moratorium have been broadly enforced by the courts, while others like fee caps and maintenance standards are often ignored by landlords.

In our efforts to educate tenants on their rights, we’ve also seen a pervasive pattern of tenants experiencing retaliation from landlords. So even when renters know their rights are being violated, they don’t fight back. What’s clear to us is that the kind of grassroots and solidaristic action promoted by tenant unions is exactly what our community needs to not just enforce current protections, but fight for better ones.

Following the launch of the Union, we’ve received not just an outpouring of support, but a torrent of interest from tenants across Tacoma describing horrible abuses at the hands of their own slumlords and wanting to organize in their own buildings.

On top of this, we’re already gearing up for the potential of another major ballot initiative in 2026 to strengthen enforcement and enshrine tenants’ right to organize into city law. We know our fight is not a linear one and we have a long way to go, but what cannot be ignored is that the housing justice movement in Tacoma is more powerful than ever, and we aren’t going anywhere.