Renters Commission Appointments Thwarted by Saka and Nelson's Last-Minute Absence from Their Own Committee

Saka was reportedly in his office during the meeting. Nelson's whereabouts remain unknown.

By Erica C. Barnett

For 18 months, under former city councilmember Cathy Moore's leadership, nominees to the Seattle Renters Commission did not receive a single hearing. Moore, whose job as housing and human services committee chair included confirming appointments and reappointments to volunteer city commissions under the committee's purview, refused to seat the Renters Commission even as she worked on legislation to dramatically reduce eviction protections, an issue the commission would have worked on if it was ever allowed to exist.

After Moore resigned, the vice-chair of the committee, Mark Solomon, approached the renters' commission members and unconfirmed nominees and told them that before Moore's replacement—likely former councilmember Debora Juarez—takes over next month, he would finally appoint as many renters' commission nominees as possible, said Kate Rubin, whose membership on the renters' commission expired in February.

Thrilled, commission appointees showed up at City Hall Wednesday morning—only to learn that their appointments would continue to be delayed: About three minutes before the committee was scheduled to start, Councilmember Rob Saka sent a message down from his City Hall office that he would not be attending.

Before Solomon adjourned the meeting (and re-convened the same gathering as an informal "community discussion" to avoid breaking council rules), Rinck went to Saka's second-floor office to see if he was there. Saka's staffer disappeared behind his closed inner-office door, emerged a few minutes later, and told Rinck that Saka wasn't available because he was meeting with his chief of staff, Elaine Ko.

In a statement Wednesday, Saka told PubliCola, “This morning I was unable to attend the Housing & Human Services committee meeting due to unexpected personal conflicts. I understand this may have caused undue frustration and inconvenience for attendees and I will work with my colleagues to discuss next steps to carry out necessary committee business.”

The previous day, Council President Sara Nelson, who reportedly got an email from Moore asking her not to allow the appointments to move forward earlier in the week, had reportedly asked Solomon to remove the appointments from the committee agenda. That same day, Nelson reportedly told Solomon she would not attend the meeting, leaving the committee with less than the three-member quorum required to meet.

Nelson confirmed that she told Solomon Tuesday afternoon that "I wasn't going to be here, so they already knew." She declined to comment further about why she wasn't present.

Solomon told PubliCola he was "disappointed" in the lack of quorum, adding, "I believe it’s common-sense good governance to promptly seat all vacancies on City commissions. It’s what constituents should expect from our work. These commission volunteers took time out of their day to show up both in person and online, to talk about their qualifications and lived-experiences as renters in Seattle, and to share their vision for their work on the Seattle Renters Commission. I am grateful to everyone who showed up and enjoyed learning more about these qualified nominees.”

During the meeting, commission nominees expressed frustration at what many of them described as Saka and Nelson's callous disregard for people who showed up to accept appointments to a volunteer commission.

Commission member Julissa Sánchez, the advocacy director at Choose 180 and a former advocate at the Tenants Union, said she was"very disappointed that we did not meet quorum, because we have been waiting for two years to expand the Seattle Renters Commission."

Sanchéz, whose term expired in February, said, "I'm here to be reinstated into the Seattle Renters Commission, because ... renters [for whom] English is not their first language, or who may not speak English at all, are often left off the table or out of access to different resources."

"I am so furious," Rubin told PubliCola on Wednesday. As the only paid staffer for the renters' advocacy group Be: Seattle, Rubin said advocating for the renters' commission "is pulling me away from my actual job, seemingly for no reason," given that the council appears to have no interest in seating the commission.

"It’s so disrespectful to waste our time in this way we’re not being paid to do this work and there’s no real voice for renters at city hall other than Councilmember Rinck. ... It's hard for renters to show up to testify. It’s been just awful."

Rinck, who became visibly emotional while expressing her frustration Nelson and Saka from the dais, echoed Rubin's sentiment about disrespect when we spoke a few hours after the meeting ended.

"It’s my job to sit in this seat. I had the time on my calendar dedicated to be there. It’s my job to be there. Everyone else in the room was there on a volunteer basis," Rinck said. "We want people to be engaged in our local government and have trust and have a collaborative relationship with our commissions, so what I’m struggling with is the disrespect to those folks that [Saka and Nelson] displayed by just not even showing up to committee."

Many of the renters' commission appointments were from Mayor Bruce Harrell; a spokesperson for the mayor told PubliCola his office was "disappointed that the Council’s Housing and Human Services committee was unable to reach quorum today, given we had commission nominees who we had asked to attend, and the agenda contained important legislative matters, including our proposal to protect constituents from predatory homebuying practices."

In addition to the renters' commission appointments, the committee was supposed to approve appointments to the Disability Commission, the Seattle Housing Authority Board, and the Seattle Social Housing Public Development Authority Governing Council.

And it was supposed to adopt an annual action plan for $16 million in federal Housing and Urban Development funding that has not been canceled by the Trump Administration. Delaying that action plan won't put the funding at risk in itself, but Rinck said it speaks to the absent committee members' priorities that they allowed such an important vote to slip.

Members of the renters' commission planned to attend a meeting tonight of an ad hoc group called the Safe and Stable Housing Working Group to discuss potential reforms to Moore's draft legislation, which would have ended the winter and school-year eviction moratoriums, eliminated limits on fees for late payment, and overturned a law allowing tenants to add new roommates without prior approval, among other changes.

"Councilmember Solomon said his intention was to ensure that nobody was forced out of their housing and to make the nonprofit landlords whole," Rubin said.

Now, the meeting may end up focusing on the council's refusal to seat the renters' commission. Before she resigned, Moore had suggested creating a joint landlord-tenant commission with seven landlords and eight tenants, which Rubin said would be unworkable. (The renters' commission is the only city body that works and advocates on behalf of tenants.) "Having worked in those spaces, I can tell you that the renters would have been shut out," Rubin said.

In an email to committee members on Wednesday, Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness director Alison Eisinger said the council's refusal to seat the renters' commission in the last scheduled housing committee meeting before the council goes on its August recess "undermine[s] not only that group’s ability to convene and meaningfully carry out its role" but contributes "to the sense that 'government' has no interest in solving problems of the people, by the people, and for the people. There is work to be done in this city regarding housing and human services, and it’s reasonable to expect that City Council Committee meetings are one of the places where it gets done."

Saka's office sent an automated response to Eisinger and others who contacted his office about his absence, which included a link to "Eviction Assistance." That link leads to a 404 Error page.