(The Center Square) – Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s plan to ban what she called “junk fees” in rental agreements started with a campaign-style rally inside City Hall.
Dozens of tenants sat on the first-floor steps of City Hall on Wednesday, cheering Wilson over her proposal and holding protest signs calling for a ban on junk fees.
The rally featuring the mayor continued as the City Council Housing, Arts, & Civil Rights Committee gave the legislation a first hearing on Wednesday.
The proposal would require rental listings to clearly delineate mandatory fees that tenants must pay, such as late fees and wi-fi fees.
Some optional fees would become illegal.
Fees for pet rent beyond damage, mail collection, in-unit appliances, common area use, and paying rent by check or money order would be banned.
But the legislation does not ban landlords from taking the fees and incorporating them in higher base rent for all tenants.
Wilson has long advocated for the legislation even before she became mayor in January of this year.
“Irresponsible actors are nickeling and diming ordinary people here, finding a way to add a fee here, a fee there, whether that’s when you buy an airline ticket or a concert ticket,” she told the City Hall rally. “And with renters that hits you where it matters most, your home. The thing that you need most to have a stable and dignified life.”
City Attorney Erica Evans said at the same rally that landlords would be held liable for violating the yet-to-be-enacted law.
“You’re going to have to pay up to three times the amount of the unlawful fees that you collected,” said Evans. “This legislation was created intentionally to have real teeth. Here in Seattle, we’re not playing when it comes to protecting the people of our city.”
Numerous renters at the city council committee meeting expressed dissatisfaction with the current fees landlords may charge.
As a dog dad, I experience the absurdity of this firsthand, said renter David Hill. “In my building, pets are not driving maintenance fees, yet I am forced to pay pet rent for my little baby girl Maggie. Even though I pay an extra security deposit for her, charging a dog rent is asinine; it’s a cash grab, and it goes straight into my landlord’s profit margin, while doing nothing to improve the tenant experience.”
A city survey released at the meeting showed that pet fees received the most complaints from Seattle renters.
Landlords and developers, however, weren’t absent from the hearing.
“I have about 700 units of housing under construction, most notably not Seattle,” said Parker Nicholson, a regional apartment developer. “And there’s a reason for that. The institutional investors who fund our projects are afraid to put capital to work in this city due to constantly evolving and changing policy on the ground.”
Nicholson said he wasn’t against transparency in detailing fees to renters
Over the last several years, Seattle has instituted a series of policies aimed at protecting tenants but have also irked landlords, including laws that limit evictions, late rent fees and require relocation assistance for those priced out by sizable rent hikes.
Seattle Councilwoman Dionne Foster, who chairs the Housing, Arts, & Civil Rights Committee, also introduced the junk fee legislation.
“We are a majority renter city and we already know that many of our household budgets are stretched and that families deserve the transparency to know the real cost of a rental upfront before they are sitting down to sign a lease,” she said at the committee hearing.
Foster also spoke at the City Hall rally to loud applause, thanking the mayor for her plan.
No vote was made at Wednesday’s hearing, but the full City Council is expected to take up the matter this summer.
If approved, it would go into effect in July 2027.