Osman Osman, tenant activist, addressing a rally outside of Carl Haglund’s office in October 2015.
After more than a half-year of organizing, tenant activists and housing justice organizers have won a major victory with the unanimous passage of the Carl Haglund Law. This bill will ban rent hikes in buildings with code violations, a horrendous practice that has been legal and all-too-common. I want to thank everyone who fought in this struggle. Let’s use this victory to bolster our movement, and expand the fight to:
- win a full-fledged tenants’ bill of rights;
- build thousands of high quality publicly-owned affordable housing units; and
- overthrow the state ban on rent control!
We have two more tenants’ rights bills on the way this summer:
- a bill to massively expand relocation assistance for tenants forcibly evicted by dramatic rent increases; and
- a bill to cap the exorbitant move-in fees that are found all over this city.
We will need to work together, form more tenants unions, and continue to organize and build our movement to shift the balance of power away from big landlords, slumlords, and Wall Street speculators to tenants and ordinary working people in Seattle.