If you want a sympathetic poster child as an example of someone who shouldn’t be evicted, a family containing two members who have jobs and can afford to buy cars but still has not paid rent in 10 months is not it. There are deadbeats in the world and these people would appear to be them.

"Eviction cases shot up in King County to about 55% of pre-pandemic levels when pandemic aid dried up . . . ."

I've been waiting for the Stranger to circle back and report on the predicted "tsunami" of evictions. Sounds like it never materialized.

Hasn’t paid rent in 10 months but claims he’s being harassed.
Ridiculous, but completely believable in a place like Seattle.

It's very hard in TS reality bubble to admit that while an overall policy can be beneficial there are going to be cases where people abuse said policies. Instead of doubling down and demonizing those who are victims of these abuses TS should admit when an abuse has taken place and then they would have much more credibility when they comment on these things. This goes for tenant rights, the serial shoplifters and the various vagrants populating parks. The only thing TS accomplishes by leaning into nonsense like this is losing more and more of the popular support for these policies which is why you saw the police chase ban completely overturned in the last legislative session.

Completely absent from this story is the fact that Kim apparently pulled this same non-payment squatter scam on the last house he was in. From the Daily Mail:

"But the squatter's freeloading dates back almost four years, according to a declaration signed by local estate agent Jani Spencer in support of Singh's eviction proceedings against Kim.

In her statement, Spencer claims a couple she had sold a $1.3million Bellevue property to contacted her in September 2020 complaining that they had rented it to Kim but he was no longer paying up.

Kim was served with a 90-day eviction notice, which he ignored, but it then took until March 2022 to get a court date and the summer of that year for him to finally be evicted, Spencer stated.

She said that during that time she spoke to Kim 'several times' and he 'always had a story about getting money, waiting for some partner or employer to pay him'.

Ultimately, the landlords lost two years of rental income, worth around $100,000, $5,000 in unpaid utilities, $20,000 in repairs and around $100,000 in the value of the property once they were finally able to sell it, Spencer claims."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13215967/serial-squatter-refuses-leave-seattle-property-landlords-rent.html

Sadly, this squatter and the rental policies of Tammy Morales, Teresa Mosqueda, etc will make it very difficult for people with lower incomes or credit scores below 700 to find housing.

If this is what people want, than local government must build massive public housing projects.

Seattle's $1Billion Housing Levy only promises to build 3,100 units over seven year 2024-2031. 3,100 apts.

In 2022, Seattle lost over 10,000 apts--yes, in just one year. (Source: Seattle's Rental Registration database)

Small landlord are selling out to developers and affordable apartments are being turned into $900K townhouses.

Good luck finding an apartment!

@3 and 6 this is in Bellevue you're embarrassing yourselves

Facts aside, co-opting a slogan originally intended to bring attention to police brutality is low. It’s laughable, considering the growing influence of corporate property owners. Will someone think of the portfolio please!

@6 - that's exactly right. There are lots of decent people who have low credit scores but will pay their rent just as they should. Pieces of shit like this guy are precisely why most landlords won't consider renting to them. Requiring a high credit score is the best way (and really the only way in Seattle) to weed out the Mr. Kims of the world.

@8 - whether this particular scumbag is in Bellevue or not is irrelevant. This is a Seattle paper, and the major laws that are making it hard for tenants (e.g., pushing landlords to require high credit scores) are mainly Seattle ordinances. While most of the discussion we see here pertains to Seattle, this case nicely illustrates the problem created by 1) making it hard to weed out bad tenants before you sign a lease and 2) making it almost impossible to get rid of them once they turn out to be deadbeats.

@11 "the problem created by Seattle laws is perfectly illustrated by this example from Bellevue" is absurd on its face.

But engaging with the merits anyway for the sake of argument, the article says absolutely nothing about the landlord having had challenges screening tenants, and he probably would have got his eviction last year if--as the article explains--the suit he filed in July didn't inexplicably neglect to mention that the tenant had stopped paying rent in May. This landlord isn't in this situation because of any unfavorable laws, he's in this situation because all available evidence indicates he's incompetent.

@12 Perhaps the guy is not incompetent but rather a small time property owner without experience in this world. He is paying taxes on this property and these people, with a history of this foolishness are taking advantage. No attempt to make any payments at all. Sorry but the wrong poster children for your cause.

@12- I’m not arguing that this happened because of Seattle's laws. Obviously it’s Bellevues that would matter. I’m pointing out that there really are deadbeat tenants in the world, as this demonstrates, and that the raft of “tenants’ rights” laws that have been enacted in a variety of jurisdictions are raising the risk of getting into this situation dramatically. Yes, the landlord here screwed up procedurally. If he were in Seattle, he might not even have had the chance to try an eviction. No evictions during the school year, for example if the city wants to make housing a guaranteed right whether you pay your bills or not, fine. But that cost should fall on the entire city, not the minority who own rental property.

@10 dvs99 Exactly right.

There are so many people that have had hardships--like divorce, medically bankruptcies, etc--that has ruined their credit scores. The Stranger and liberal leftists would excoriate these renters. They will never qualify to rent an apartment in today's rental market. No small landlord will ever risk renting to a rental with less than a credit score less than 725.

The Stranger and progressives think this is great. Small landlords think this is tragic.

Seattle will now be dominated by big, corporate, Wall Street landlords. Progressive have removed small, mom-and-pop, local landlords from Seattle Fuck you Tammy Morales, Teresa Mosqueda, and Kshama Sawant--you have fucked over marginal renters.

So the son and wife live in the house, work, bought cars and they haven't paid anything towards rent for over one year? And you defend this? How about if your employer did that?

so, like, i'm a fucking landlord. of one property, which i inherited because my parents died of cancer at an unfortunately early age. i rent the rooms out, at cost, often to friends, or friends of friends. i have been treated well by many. sometimes been fucked over. whatever. the problem i see here is that we have a defecit of affordable housing. its unachievable to rent a fucking house on a single family based income. so, yeah, people are going to default on their stuff. sucks for the landlords right? also sucks for the fucked and bound lower class. even in this city, we are not catching up. how can any one of you argue that its the "landlords fault" when our rental housing market got entirely bought up by shitbag investment firms. for fuck sake, i get about 7 calls a week from those companies asking if i will sell my property. i refuse. TS is actually calling out a legitimate problem here and you all can't even be spared the expense to see what's wrong in our system. please take some time to see why our housing situation is so messed up.

@17 - you're right there is a housing crisis. We have not built enough houses. THAT is the root of the problem.

But the way we manage what we have also matters. And the crowd who insist that tenants have a God-given right to stay in a rental place whether they pay rent or not are contributing mightily to the problem. People like Mr. Singh, who own one or a few rentals, are getting out of the market as fast as they can because the risks have become untenable. And the only landlords left will be the large corporate ones (your "shitbag investment firms"). And what rentals are going to be left will be increasingly unavailable to tenants seen as higher risk. Some of them are asshats like the Kims. More of them are probably people who had medical debt or are coming out of a crisis like a divorce, as @15 notes. But the Kim of the world and their enablers (as in the good Sen. Kuderer, or the Seattle City Council) are ruining it for everyone.

Reminder to 12 Thirteen12: Teresa Mosqueda is now on the King County Council. Her rental laws from her time on the Seattle City Council resulted in the loss of over 10,000 locally owned affordable rentals--in just 2022 alone. Seattle will never get those rentals back.

Mosqueda's war on landlords and The Stranger's "I hate landlords" articles--are hurting lower income renters and/or renters with credit scores under 700.

As local, mom-and-pops sell their rentals to developers and leave the market, Corporate Landlords--with teams of lawyers--fill the void.

Be careful what you wish for....

@19 you're wrong, Seattle added housing units during that period

https://publicola.com/2023/12/26/decline-in-mom-and-pop-rentals-driven-by-national-trends-not-local-renter-protections-city-audit-finds/

@20 "both the renter and landlord seem like assholes here"

100% agree that's why all the people protesting on behalf of one of those assholes (in this case the landlord) are weirdos

@21 thirteen12 - I was not there for the protest last weekend, but I would love to go for the next protest. You say - "both the renter and landlord seem like assholes here". Yes, landlord was perhaps naive (for screwing up the eviction process) and overzealous (for organizing the protest in front of his house). But the renter is a thief. If he does not have money to pay for rent, he should have moved. I am sure there are other houses available in the Seattle metro that will fit his budget. If you cannot pay, you cannot stay. The owner of the house, Singh, has to pay the mortgage too - if he does not, his house will get repossessed. He is running a business - and Kim is stealing from him. It is as simple as that.

@22 - I wonder how many of the people defending Kim would be sympathetic if Kim moved but the landlord kept taking rent out of his bank account for the next year? It's really no different.

@22 the landlord's not running a business he made an investment in housing. Sometimes investments don't work out.

And the tenant isn't a "thief" the parties are having a contract dispute which is playing out in court per the applicable law. Like I wrote, if the landlord wasn't incompetent the tenant likely would have been removed last year. Given the way he's now choosing the handle the situation the landlord appears to be not just incompetent but also a clown. I don't feel bad for him at all.

@23 presumably Kim would contact his bank to report and put a stop to the fraudulent withdrawals. Or maybe he'd be too stupid to accomplish that and instead a year later organize a ridiculous protest in front of the landlord's house in conjunction with a local failed journalist Twitter influencer.

This is the low quality of journalism I’ve come to expect from the far-left news site, The Stranger (it couldn’t even make it as a newspaper. It’s a glorified blog at this point).

The author of this article makes Kim out to be a “victim” of a vindictive landlord. She doesn’t even bother interviewing the landlord because doing so would be inconvenient to her strongly biased narrative. I found it amusing that she referred to the house as “Kim’s home” even though it belongs to the landlord, Singh, and Kim hasn’t paid any rent for over a year. I suppose, by that logic, I can walk into any house and say it’s mine, even if I don’t live there, own, or pay rent.

Turns out Kim also skipped out on paying rent in the last place he lived, costing that landlord over $80,000 in fees. Additionally, he makes over $400k a year in combined family income. Did he have to give his car away to his parents when he knew he was behind on rent? Is there any reason why the son with the new car is unable to contribute towards the backlog in rent payments.

He’s not the victim here: He’s a thief and a criminal who’s dragging his entire family down with him. The real victim here is the landlord, who bought the house and is now losing money on his investment.

Stranger, get your act together and at least pretend to have a shred of journalistic integrity.

@24 - thirteen12, the landlord is running a business. He is a small business owner. And this is not just a 'contract' dispute. The WA housing laws clearly say that no matter what, the tenant has to pay the rent and cannot withhold the rent. Similarly, the landlord has some obligations too - they cannot change the locks or shut down utilities or make the house uninhabitable in any way. Kim is not withholding his end of his bargain - whereas Singh is doing what he is supposed to do. Do you see that?

@27 Washington housing laws say that no matter what a tenant must pay rent? What if you let family stay in a house you own, they have to pay too? If you don't make them pay do you get arrested or your house is confiscated or what? That sounds crazy, can you link me to the law you're talking about?

An evicted person walks away whole A foreclosed person looses everything they've invested in the house, usually hundreds of thousands of dollars. This reporter obviously doesn't understand the difference.

@28 thirteen12 - Yes, the tenant MUST pay rent no matter what. That is one of the most basic expectations from the tenant. The WA housing laws are here - https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=59.18&full=true
Or a simplified (non-legalese) version is here - https://www.washingtonlawhelp.org/resource/your-rights-as-a-tenant-in-washington
Even if the landlord refuses to make repairs, the tenant cannot skip rent. That is the only way the renter can fulfill their obligations. Of course, they can take the landlord to court. Under certain circumstances, the renters can deposit rent in an escrow account - pending court judgment. And so on.
I did not understand the example you gave about renting to your family. I cannot comment on that. But net-net, if you sign a rental agreement with your family, they are obligated to pay. You are, of course, not obligated to make them pay (or evict them). I hope you understood the difference.

@24- in what universe is a landlord not running a business? An “investment” is when you put money into stocks or whatever and see what happens. A business is when you buy what’s needed to engage in business (a house), deal with clients or customers (tenants), incur costs of operation (taxes, repairs, etc.), and generate income from sales or contracts (rents). The effort involved in night and day different. And when you’re running a business, you expect that your customers will honor their end of the bargain. Kim didn’t and hasn’t. It’s pretty simple.

Wow, these numbers turn on each other worse than the lessee and landlord in the story.
I was a small holding LandLord 'til the City Council went insane. My 3 units, a total of 5 bedrooms, all at below market rate are now renting at a premium. I cashed out, retired, but I do look back from time to time... thinking I'd consider renting, banking my current equity, reducing my monthly outlay.
The idea scares me into indecision.
If all you ever have done is rent, you likely don't understand all that is at stake. At the short end is non-payment, through to cooking meth or other public nuisance. That means serious financial hardship through to bankruptcy. No wonder so many in my situation jumped ship, leaving the properties in the hands of vulture capitalists.
I enjoy the anecdotal tale of a worst case scenario that isn't a worst case scenario. But this is the margin. This story is in the less than 1% of cases. This is hype and noise, not signal.
Not the majority of what happens when the able bodied are unemployed in the easiest economy to get hired in decades.
Something smells like desperation here.